Happy Birthday to you Apple! The Apple Geeks of the world appreciate your 30 years of innovation and imagination and award you the Gizmo of the Day for perhaps the best software package value on the market today for iLife ‘06!

Honestly, what can iLife ‘06 not do? iLife ‘06 includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb. iPhoto allows you to import, organize and work with your digital photos. iMovie easily allows you to convert home video into home cinema while iDVD allows you to produce your own DVDs by burning movies, photos and music to standard and widescreen DVDs. GarageBand is an interesting application that allows you to create your own soundtrack and record music and podcasts. Finally, iWeb lets you easily create web sites and blogs. Overall, if you have a Mac and an older version of iLife… it’s time to upgrade.

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ORLANDO, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 30, 2006–One Voice Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:ONEV), developer of 4th Generation voice solutions for the Telecom and Interactive Multimedia markets, today announced that Honeywell International is demonstrating their home automation control integrated with One Voice’s voice recognition technology at today’s Electronic Home Expo (EHX) 2006 – booth #1500, March 30 – April 1, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. For more information on EHX 2006, visit http://www.ehxweb.com

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IRVINE, Calif., March 31 — SmartLabs Inc.(TM), the world’s leading authority in home control, today announced the addition of Gil Amelio to the SmartLabs board of directors. As a director, Amelio will assist in further refining the future direction of the company and will leverage his industry connections and expertise in technology to pursue strategic alliances.

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You ever had that moment while driving where you realize you were asleep for the last quarter mile and then you start the cold sweats while thinking about what could have happened?

Well, rather than rolling down window in the middle of winter, blasting the cold of the air conditioner on you, or just pulling over to stop you can try the Drive Alert Master which will beep in your ear if you start to nod off.

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ORLANDO, Fla., EHX 2006, Booth #1228, March 30 — Exceptional Innovation, makers of Life|ware, hardware-friendly home control software, today announced all INSTEON(TM)-enabled products are now compatible with a Life|ware home control solution. INSTEON is the wireless home control technology developed by SmartLabs Inc., the world’s leading authority in home automation and control.

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The Slappa PSP Complete Case successfully protected our PSP last week, so today the Geeks tested Slappa’s smaller Playstation Portable (PSP) case called the HardBody Case. We have been testing Slappa products for quite some time now and Slappa has garnered our respect for making high quality protection systems for various geek gear. Read on to see if this trend continues…

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Attached to your iPod at the hip? Yet you want to have PDA-like functions without lugging around another device? Then try out the iExtend from Memeo. It’s a piece of software that syncs up things like your e-mail, notes, calendar, contacts and even files with your iPod. Memeo also touts iExtend as a great mechanism for using your iPod as an alternative to a USB memory stick. One of the software’s features is something called SmartPick which tracks and backs-up files on your computer to your pod. This is a pretty slick piece of software for the price.

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Automobiles now sport some sophisticated video electronics in addition to the audio electronics. Sony’s MEX-R5 is a DVD receiver featuring dual-zone capabilities so both the front and back passengers can enjoy a good movie, especially with a 12-second memory buffer to protect jumps in skips while driving. The unit also features a wireless (2.4GHz) A/V transmitter enabling flexible and wireless in-car video setups.

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A new consumer device, called the Spam Cube, claims to stop 96 – 99% of spam regardless of your computer platform or the type of e-mail you use, and it plugs right into your home network. Oh yeah, and it works without a subscription. Now my interest is piqued. Works without a subscription, without updates? As a sys admin who has worked with SpamAssassin, the Open Source community’s venerable spam tagger, I’m really curious. What sort of magic algorithms is this little company using? Will it still work well in a few years, or even 6 months? The war between spam and spam-recognition has been something of an arms race or of escalation. Everytime you think you’ve contained 99% of it, spammers seem to come up with a new method to avoid your spam-blockers. So how does Spam Cube do it? I really have to try this to believe it, but at $150 a pop, I’m not about to shell out that much for it. So far, Gmail does enough of a decent job for me not to worry about more than 5 spams per day.

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Sony introduced the HDR-FX1 last year and probably should have been the Gizmo of the Day then, but… better late than never.

The HDR-FX1 is the first 1080i (HDTV) camcorder that was available in the consumer class. Since this mamouth digital camcorder was released, several other 1080i digital camcorders have hit the market but the Sony HDR-FX1 is still the best (and biggest) in the market.

The Sony HDR-FX1 HDV Handycam camcorder: the revolution begins.

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