Looking around on the LaCie website recently I found these interesting looking USB devices: Coin Shaped USB Flash Drives
They can survive a shock in their nicely coloured die-cast casings and the USB connector can twist inside the coin. Transfer rates are up to 480 Mbit/s.
This set of food scales is something a bit out of the ordinary – instead of having your display on a little screen under that big mixing dish where you can’t quite see it, it pulls out to allow for easy reading.
Apart from the pull-out, backlit display, the scales are pretty much like any other electric scales – they support zeroing so that you can put a dish on the scales, zero them, then weigh the weight of whatever you put in them. They can also take up to 11 pounds, which should be more than enough for the domestic baker.
Price: $47.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
If you are one of the ever-growing number of laptop users, you will have noticed that you continually need to take your laptop off your lap to let your legs cool down or place something like a book or magazine underneath it. Well, laptops are not about to get any cooler, or be made with any kind of heat buffer, because that would just spoil the thin and light sexiness that so many of them sport now.
So what to do? Well there have been numerous ‘lap cooler’ type products for years now, but nothing that really becomes a permanent addition to your laptop (my current fav so far has been the simple Lapworks Laptop Desk). Enter Laptop Lifts, a product that falls into the “why didn’t I think of that?” category.
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Here’s a refreshing innovation – (reusable) stone ice cubes. These stone cubes only need to be placed in the freezer for about an hour before needed and voila – instant ice cubes. This means they are both quicker to produce than ice cubes, and (slightly) cheaper and definitely more environmentally friendly as they can be 100% reused.
Keep in mind that these also don’t water down your drink, although you may like that in certain beverages.
Price: £15.99 (Approx. $23)
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
As a follow-up to our piece on the Conficker C worm, a vendor called Trustware sent us news about their product (BufferZone) which can arguably be classified as an Anti-Virus app, but doesn’t quite work like the typical AV program. BufferZone claims to prevent malicious code from installing on your system by placing it into its own little virtual container and away from data and operating system files.
I wonder somewhat about the performance of a virtualization app as compared to a real-time virus scanner, but you can take BufferZone for a free 30-day test drive and find out for yourself.
Not every gadget out there comes with batteries or a power adapter, and of course, they can be a bit silly too! Here’s one of them: the ‘Pillow for Working Late‘ which is just like the name suggests – a pillow for those who work late and often find themselves falling asleep at their work. The set comes in 3 pieces – a collar, tie and sleeve – which can be worn over your usual dress, with the bonus of beefing you up a little.
Tell me you can’t imagine Barney (from How I Met Your Mother) wearing this!
Electric car maker, Tesla Motors, unveiled their 2nd all-electric auto this week, the Model S. Their first model, the Roadster was (and still is) sold for over $100k. Despite the price, there is still a waiting list for these cars.
The Model S will have a more down-to-earth price tag of $50k (with an approximate federal tax credit of $7,500). This may still seem like quite a hefty price tag as compared to hybrids, but bear in mind that this is an all-electric car, so no more buying gasoline, although you will probably be faced with a stiff battery bill every 3 to 5 years.
Notable in this announcement is the fact that Tesla is actually expanding and growing (building a new plant in particular) despite the downturn for the other traditional automakers. Good for them – there is hope yet for a green revolution in transportation yet and sooner than may have been first imagined.
Here’s our weekly summary of featured items from Gizmos For Geeks:
There’s a new feature from Google Labs that allows you to ‘unsend’ an email just after sending. Why oh why is the Sci Fi Channel renaming themselves to SyFy?
For noisy environments, you’ll be able to get a ‘throat microphone’ from Sanwa. Home improvement buffs may like the Ultimate Musical Doorbell and wanna-be musicians should take a look at the illuminated fret guitar.
Perhaps one of the more high-end, expensive items this week was the 3G WiFi router for Cadillacs. tikitag which was an item we featured from CES 2009 was renamed to ‘touchatag’ and got some new features as well.
For all of you who crave for faster broadband speeds, VDSL2 might have the answer with the possiblity of up to 500Mbps speeds through simple copper telephone wiring.
Finally, the most important article was that there’s a new virus making the rounds and you should update your AV definitions and security patches ASAP.
Source: Gizmos for Geeks.
The Dirty Air Filter Alarm from Filtertone is a new way to reduce your HVAC system costs, whilst reducing the pollutants in your home. The EPA ranks indoor air pollution as one of the ‘top five environmental risks to public health’ and so give this tool a closer look.
The alarm simply plugs in to your air filter with little push pins and detects when the filter is clogged up, making sure that you’re not exposed to harmful toxins that have built up in your air filter and are now being blown out. The savings will come in not straining your system in trying to blow air through clogged filters. More $ for your favorite gadgets!
Price: $14.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Remember those little holographic things you used to play with when you were a child that showed different pictures depending on the angle you looked at them?
Well the 3D Eyetracking UI from Tat does something similar – the UI can detect where you’re looking at the phone by tilting it, which allows the software to give depth to your phone’s display. This means that you can see ‘behind’ some of the menu items, and looking at it from different angles will reveal different things.
This could lead to richer user interfaces with more available ‘virtual’ screen real estate.
Pretty hard to explain and get your head around, so it’s best for you to see it in action:
