Gadgets Blog

Losing track of time is never a good thing, especially when you need to get moving in order to get to work on time.  Instead of worrying that you’ll glance at the clock and suddenly 30 minutes have disappeared out from under you, get this clock that helps you keep track of the minutes.  With it you’ll always know just how much time you have to get up and going.  If you’re not so bad at keeping track of your time, this might be a great gadget for your school age kids that like to procrastinate getting ready.

The clock not only displays the time, but announces the time you have left before you need to leave.  You set two different alarms on it, one to get up and one for when it’s time to leave.  Then the clock will announce the remaining time at 1 hour, 45 minutes, 30, 20, 15, 10, 5, 3, 2, 1, 30 seconds, 20, and then the 10 second countdown.  That is a lot for it to announce, but you’ll never lose track of time again, whether you like it or not.  To purchase the Morning Countdown Clock it will cost you $33 from the Japan Trend Shop.

Source: OhGizmo

Love playing tops? I’m guessing kids these days hardly have enough playing time with traditional games such as these since the scourge of video games have long taken over, with first blood drawn by Zelda’s sword when the NES was in its element. Well, travel a few decades back with the top and infuse it with modern technology, resulting in the Non Stop Top.

The Non Stop Top bucks the laws of physics with ease, you spin it and off it goes, not for a minute, not ten, not twenty, not an hour, but for up to eight hours!! All it takes is a gentle twist and the motory gizmos inside the top (powered by a couple of watch batteries) spring into action, the lights flash bright and before you know it, it’s picking up speed and steadily working its way around your desk. Addictive, silly, mesmeric, and strangely not as impossible as you’d have thought. You could probably win quite a wad of cash by taking bets from the uninformed as to how long your new top will spin.

A couple of CR2032 batteries will power this £9.99 device, and it will certainly prove to be a source of amusement for some time to come, especially during those boring, slow days at the office desk.

The ancient Catholic Church derided Galileo as a heretic simply because his scientific line of thinking did not concur with what the Church thought, but bring home a piece of the legend today in the form of the Galileo Thermometer. What makes the Galileo Thermometer different from the rest as it comes in the form of a single floating disk, encased between a couple of glass panes in the process. It doesn’t matter which continent you live on, since the temperature reading is available in both Fahrenheit and Celsius readings, making this one decent desk accessory or functional decoration for your home or office. Interested? ThinkGeek is offering it for $49.99 a pop.

Panasonic continues with its barrage of digital camera releases by unveiling the latest model in its new FP-Series, where the LUMIX FP-8 aims to achieve a careful balance between design and function. With that in mind, you can be sure that you won’t be shortchanged should you decide to bring this puppy home as a present to yourself or a loved one, as you can now capture your favorite memories in full 12.1-megapixels glory, thanks to its high-quality 28mm wide-angle, 4.6x Leica DC lens with folding optics, all stashed away within a futuristic-looking stylish body.

Apart from the relatively unique design, the FP8 will also boast advanced functions such as high-speed Auto Focus (AF) and Panasonic’s Intelligent Auto (iA) suite of technologies. The fast AF, when coupled with a high-speed start-up of only 0.95 seconds, will enable anyone to capture even the most fleeting of shots courtesy of the FP8’s fast response time. In addition, Panasonic’s iA, a popular feature on LUMIX cameras, will now include POWER Optical Image Stabilization (O.I.S.) that boasts double the repression power compared to the previous image stabilization system, MEGA O.I.S. You also need not worry about blurry images due to hand-shake generated during the pressing of the shutter button, or when capturing images under low light conditions using a slow shutter speed thanks to the improved POWER O.I.S.

Some of the features of the DMC-FP8 include :-

• HD Movies with VIERA Link Networking - Records dynamic HD motion pictures in 1280 x 720p at a smooth 30 fps, in addition to WVGA (848 x 480) and normal VGA (640 x 480). With HD component output capability, the user can enjoy watching photos and video in stunning HD quality by simply connecting the camera to a television via an optional component cable (DMW-HDC2)
• Scene Modes - Twenty-seven scene modes are available with the FP8, including the High Dynamic mode which helps to capture a scene with moderate exposure, even though the scene may contain both bright and dark areas together
• PHOTOfunSTUDIO 4.0 - Included with the FP8, this software allows users to view, edit and archive captured photos and videos with greater ease. The new PHOTOfunSTUDIO 4.0 features dramatic speed-up of operation and also allows users to store and sort for photos by a specific, recognized face in the image

You will be able to pick up the LUMIX DMC-FP8 this September for $299.95, where color choices are limited to black, red and silver.

Press Release

Panasonic has rolled out yet another digital camera for the masses, and it seems that consumer level compact digital cameras seem to be more and more powerful these days that they tend to reach early DSLR performance. The LUMIX DMC-ZR1 is one such shooter, as it boasts the title of featuring the first 0.3mm thin aspherical lens in the world, making room for the innards of this digital camera to be crammed into such a compact body, all of it despite carrying a powerful, 25mm ultra-wide-angle, 8x optical zoom LEICA DC VARIO-ELMAR lens. Panasonic’s ZR1 compact digital camera will give consumers unprecedented flexibility when it comes to snapping photos, bringing its famous long-zoom capability into a tiny body without compromising on both style and substance.

According to David Briganti, Senior Product Manager, Imaging, Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company, “The ZR1 answers the call of consumers looking for a truly pocketable digital camera, while still featuring a zoom more powerful than typical compact cameras. We know consumers want to catch every shooting opportunity, and with the ZR1, this is possible through unique features such as the ultra-wide-angle lens and Panasonic’s popular iA Mode.”

The ZR1 will feature a zoom range of 25-200mm, enabling one to capture expansive scenery photos and close-ups in a jiffy. It is also important to note that this powerful zoom also works equally well during video recording, making sure you never miss a moment be it from close or afar, while the 12.1-megapixel resolution it captures images in enables one to blow up photos to a huge size without compromising on overall detail. Some of the features found on the Panasonic DMC-ZR1 include :-

• Hand-Shake Component - Answers the problem of natural hand-shaking that goes along with pressing the shutter button
• Face Recognition - Up to six faces can be registered, and up to three can be simultaneously recognized to show their names once registered
• Travel Mode - Users can quickly organize information related to travel, including destination, date and time. Playback of these photos is just as easy, by designating the date or period of travel on the calendar menu interface
• High Dynamic Mode - Helps to capture a scene with moderate exposure even when the scene may contain both bright and dark areas
• PHOTOfunSTUDIO 4.0 - Included software allows the user to view, edit and archive captured photos and videos. It features dramatic speed-up of operation and also allows users to store and sort photos by a specific, recognized face in the image

Interested? The LUMIX DMC-ZR1 will be released later this September for $279.95 and will come in a choice of black, red, blue and silver colors.

Press Release

Panasonic is on a roll where digital camera announcements are concerned, with the LUMIX DMC-FZ35 digital camera aiming to make it for a September release later this year. Just to whet your appetite before a month rolls by in a fleeting manner, the LUMIX DMC-FZ35 will be a feature packed shooter that will come with AVCHD Lite, High Definition (HD) video recording capability, coupled with a powerful 27mm wide-angle, 18x optical zoom LEICA DC lens. The LUMIX DMC-FZ35 is tipped to succeed the hugely popular FZ28, where it will come with enhanced creative features combined with the power to shoot HD videos, including motion zoom capabilities to make sure the included 18x zoom is not wasted. Panasonic has also modified the operational layout of the FZ35 to come with a dedicated video record button, turning it into a true blue hybrid, where this particular model is able to function seamlessly as a digital camera and camcorder, offering smooth and easy operation in either mode.

Some of the manual controls and creative options available on the LUMIX FZ35 include :-

• Creative Movie Mode - Allows the user to set the shutter speed and aperture manually to make even more impressive movies. Changing the shutter speed brings special effects to movies, which is especially suitable for shooting fast-moving subjects. The ability to control the aperture is convenient when there are several subjects at different distances
• My Color Mode - This special option gives free reign to the user’s creativity. The color, brightness and saturation parameters can be freely adjusted while seeing how the adjustments affect the picture, live on the monitor
• High Dynamic Mode - Helps to capture a scene with moderate exposure even though the scene may contain both bright and dark areas

You will find that the 12.1 mega pixel-FZ35 comes with an updated POWER Optical Image Stabilizer (O.I.S.), bringing twice the repression power compared to the conventional image stabilization system, MEGA O.I.S., alongside the ultra high-speed Auto Focus (AF) that enables one to shoot action scenes just as they happen. The enhanced energy-efficient image processing LSI will give the FZ35 a superior battery life of approximately 470 pictures per charge, making this $399.99 purchase a more than decent one when it arrives. Unfortunately, there is only one color to choose from, which is black. That limitation might put some people off…

Press Release

After taking a look at the My Passport Essential SE Portable USB drives, let us check out what else Western Digital has to offer - their new line of Scorpio Blue SATA hard drives that are able to reach new capacity extremes thanks to the technology involved. The main highlight of this new release would be the 1TB model, giving it the (temporary) bragging rights of being the highest-capacity 2.5″ drive available in the industry, courtesy of industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology. Just in case you are on a tighter budget and would like to have something smaller (in size and retail price), there is always the option for a 750GB model, although as we know very well, one can never have enough USB ports and memory - they’re somewhat like how shoes and handbags are to the ladies.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives will come in a svelte 12.5 mm form factor, making them perfectly suited for use in portable storage solutions including the hot-off-the-shelves My Passport Essential SE Portable USB Drives. OTher devices that could take advantage of the new Scorpio Blues include a range of notebooks as well as small form factor desktop PCs that are proliferating the market these days, where both quiet and cool operation are of importance in addition to performance, as the WD Scorpio Blue drives are no slouches in that department by delivering a 3 gigabits per second transfer rate.

Features of the WD Scorpio Blue include WhisperDrive technology, ShockGuard for superior data protection in the event of a knock or accidental drop and SecurePark that stashes the head off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. You can pick up the 750GB and 1TB models from selected distributors and resellers, where the 1TB capacity model can be found in the My Passport Essential SE USB drives. Both the 750TB and 1TB models are going for $189.99 and $249.99, respectively, where each purchase comes covered by a 3-year limited warranty.

Press Release