Specialty online store JetPens sent me a couple of their products to check out. Yes, pens, but they import many of their products from Japan and Germany, so you’ll be hard-pressed to find most of these stateside. And yes, even when it comes to something as mundane as writing, the Japanese and Europeans have some different ideas than we do.

I received 2 products, the Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto 5 Color Multi Pen and the Tombow AirPress.

The Tombow AirPress

First, let me hit the Tombow AirPress. The geek factor in this one is that it injects air pressure into the ink cartridge every time you press the cap to keep the pen writing even on dirty or wet surfaces. Of course, I had to test out the ‘wet’ claim. I splashed water onto a sheet of paper, and before it was absorbed completely by the paper started writing. Well there was some ink bleeding of course (can’t help that), but sure enough, the pen wrote. Impressed. On the other hand, I can’t imagine having to write on wet surfaces too often.

The Tombow also wrote pretty nicely, although not as smooth as a felt tip pen, but then again a felt tip wouldn’t do well in water. I also found it a little short, but that’s personal preference that is heavily influenced by the way I hold my pen.

Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto 5 Color Multi Pen

The next pen took me back to my high school days when I had a similar, but much cheaper version ‘multi pen’ made by Bic. That one had 4 colors and they were pre-set. The Coleto takes 5 ink cartridges and you get to pick the colors that go into it, and you can replace the cartridges as needed. Love it. This one will stay on my desk, as I’m always looking for a black, red, blue or green pen, and now I won’t have to keep 4 or 5 of them around.

I found the writing to be a little scratchy, but that’s due to the smaller nib on these pens. I’m not about to write my next bestseller with it, so I can live with that in exchange for the convenience. Oh, also cool is that you can also insert a mechanical pencil or stylus as well. Take a look at the video to see how the 5 carts fit into the body.

While you’re persuing JetPens, you may also want to check out the Uni-Ball Kuru Toga that keeps the pencil lead constantly sharp. The Monteverde One Touch Ballpoint is a pen, but flip it over and you have a touchscreen stylus. Apart from pens and pencils and of course refills, they also stock specialty paper, journals and notebooks.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

Have you ever needed someone else to hold a flashlight for you in a badly lit location, despite how bright the room may have been? (Think inside of a computer case.) Well, startup MicroLite Tech has a solution – their self-named MicroLite. It’s an approximately 1 cubic inch cube that stores a small LED light that is turned on when you press on the top of the unit and pop out the light.

I tested it out behind my computer (of course!). It works as advertised. I only had 2 pieces of constructive criticism. First, I don’t care for the pop-out mechanism. It requires pushing in and then pulling out with your finger/thumb. When this gizmo is attached semi-permanently (via the 3M self-adhesive tape) somewhere, you’ll notice it takes some rocking for it to pop up. I’d rather it just be a simple push in to pop out, push to pop back in.

Second, I find it a bit pricey – $10 for a single unit or even $20 for 3 is a bit much. I think somewhere around $3 is probably about right. It does have a 1-year warranty and the lights last for 30 hours which should translate into much more than a year of use.

But I can’t complain about what it does. Definitely falls into the ‘hey, why didn’t I think of that?’ category, so well-done MicroLite. They’re also developing a magnetic one so that it becomes a lot more portable instead of having to stick and unstick. BTW, they’re always on the lookout for new and useful uses for the MicroLite, so let them know if you come up with one!

Unless you’ve been under a rock the past 2 years or so, you’ll know that HTML5 is the next generation of the markup language that has been powering the Web since its inception. Tech publisher O’Reilly has been busy ensuring that they do their part to educate the Web developers and programmers of the world and they accordingly have a slew of books on HTML5, one of which is in their Head First series.

Head First HTML5 Programming is really that – a book about programming, specifically in JavaScript. It is expected that you already know HTML and CSS, and while some JavaScript would be good, it’s not a requirement. The book starts off with a quick intro to HTML5, but by page 20, you’ll already have seen some JavaScript code.

Next up, it gets into the DOM (Document Object Model) that modern browsers are based on, and then you’ll naturally learn how to manipulate the DOM to get those fancy effects that you see Web2.0 sites sporting. After that, it goes full steam through the highlights of HTML5/DHTML features, programming, and techniques that power today’s Web2.0. For example, Head First HTML5 does a good job of devoting entire chapters to discussing some of the compelling multimedia aspects of HTML5 including video, and the Canvas tag. And it also covers advanced topics such as Geolocation, JSON and even Web storage.

As with the other Head First book we’ve seen (Head First WordPress), this one has you interacting with images, photos, call-out boxes, cartoons, and much more to keep you engaged and active. I can’t say enough good things about it, and I’d like to see other publishers ‘steal’ the technique!

If you’re looking to learn HTML5, I can highly recommend this book, but keep in mind that this is not meant to be a reference or a cookbook but a learning book; there are lots of others out there that that fill that function.

While you’re at it, you should also consider getting an up-to-date CSS3 book like Gasston’s The Book of CSS3. While it’s more of a reference than this text, it covers the bulk of CSS3′s new features including new text styling, positioning, gradients and 2D & 3D transformations, and it includes enough examples to help you better understand the material.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

This is one product category that has tons of nondescript entrants, and for the most part, they all do the trick more or less, and that’s to wipe your gadget’s screen. Kimberly-Clark decided to try something a little different – make them dry, disposable and inexpensive.

The KIMTECH Touchscreen Cleaning Wipe are made especially for touchscreens, which we all seem to be adopting at a rapid rate. I tried out a sample and wasn’t disappointed. These come 10 to a pack, and while dry, they are soft, and had no fear of using it to wipe the screen on my iPad or smartphone.

It got rid of my fingerprints and smudges. Now if you have the kind of grime that has built up over weeks, you may need a liquid cleaner, but if you’re good about keeping your screens clean, the KIMTECHs should usually do the trick.

A 10-pack is only $3 and you can get them in dollar-stores and at Amazon; actually, Amazon has a 2-pack (so 20 wipes) for $5. Even at $3 for a 10-pack, it’s a good deal, and that way you can have a wipe everywhere you need it – in the car, in your bag, on your desk at home and in the office, with some to spare.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

Unlike the FoneStand which does not fold up, the next gadget, the Mobile Multi-Stand 360, is a portable smartphone stand that folds flat and slips into your pocket/bag, etc.

The MMS360 as it’s known for short, requires a little installation. You first need to take one of the 3 included self-adhesive foam dots and stick it to the back of your phone. These protrude perhaps 1/8″ and have a lip that allows it to slip inside the stand itself.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth what, a million? Take 45 seconds to watch how the stand works including how it rotates, and then I’ll tell you more about what you can’t really see in the video.

First of all, you do have to spend more than 10 seconds up front to ensure you stick the other half (the dot) on your phone, or you won’t be able to use all 3 of the positions on the MMS360 without your phone tipping over. Unfortunately, repositioning the lip means getting some adhesive remover to take it off as it’s a fairly strong bond.

Unlike the FoneStand, the MMS360 has more than just 2 possible positions and angles – although you can rotate the stand 360 degrees, it practically only has 2 angles – the 2nd being 90 degrees out of phase with the first. So with the 3 angles, you really have 6 positions, which is nice depending on your preference (from almost vertically standing to almost flat).

But that’s not the real value in this – it’s super light; put it in your pocket and you’ll forget it’s there, so it’s one more gadget accessory you can carry around without a weight worry.

Given how light it is, I really would have liked it to be wider, because I found that with my somewhat heavy phone, if I didn’t take an extra second (yes, I’m impatient sometimes!), the phone would tip over. A wider stand would be a quicker balance.

The MMS360 is only $5-6, and you can get it directly from the vendor, Amazon or eBay.

Now that memory cards are no longer the tiny, pricey luxury enjoyed by the few, manufacturers are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. Samsung thinks it has found a way – create SD-type cards that are supposedly waterproof, shock and shatterproof and magnetic proof.

I took an 8GB microSDHC card for a spin, and really only cared about one test in particular – whether or not it’s water proof. In case you’re wondering, I figured that the risk from magnetism-caused data loss was pretty low, and as for being able to survive being run over by a car, if I’m in a situation where I pull out my memory card and it gets run over by a car soon after, I’m doing something wrong and have more to worry about than the survival of my SD card.

So my test was pretty straightforward – I loaded up the card with a bunch of data – photos, files, etc., then I dunked it in a cup of water and let it sit for an hour, which I thought was more than enough time for water saturation. Incidentally, this card is supposed to handle up to 24 hours in sea water which has to be more damaging than mere fresh water.

I let the card sit overnight to dry out after yanking it out of the water. (No, I didn’t expect to just plug it back in and get it working!)

And what do you know? My data was still there. I’m usually wary of things advertised as waterproof or worse, water-resistant, so it was nice to see something like this work well.

These Samsung SDHC cards come in sizes 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32GB. The 2 and 4GB models are class 4 devices; the 8 and 16GB can be found in either class 6 or class 10 models; and the 32GB is a class 10.

One other very nice feature is the that it comes with a microSD adapter and a clear plastic case. You can find these cards at Amazon and lots of other retailers starting at under $13.

Our thanks to MemoryCardZoo.com for the review sample.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

Here’s another one of those no-batteries-needed accessories for what is probably our most treasured of gadgets nowadays – our smartphones. The FoneStand is a black (or white) plastic stand for your iPhone, Android or other smartphone or even some tablets that lets you view them in either portrait or landscape mode at an angle.

The feet of the FoneStand are rubber pads to keep the whole contraption from sliding around on your desk, and where the back of your phone makes the most contact with the FoneStand is a large rubber pad to prevent the phone itself from sliding around when it’s seated in the cradle.

The FoneStand fits most smartphones even with a case on, although with the lip at the front, it may not fit some of the larger cases. It would be nice if the retaining lip was adjustable, but then that would probably raise the price.

This is a fairly inexpensive accessory for your flat phone that has lots of uses (the video below does a good job of showing some of those off), but think on your desk at work, on your night stand (clock), in the living room, etc. About the only thing I’d like is for a slightly lower price or better yet, a discount for buying 2 or 3 at once. Even so, I highly recommend it. You’ll probably be surprised like I was at how quickly you get used to having this to plunk your phone into, especially on your desk.

Here’s a gadget that you may never have heard of, but would probably fall into the “why didn’t I think of that” category. It’s an electronic replacement for the age-old peephole standard in so many front doors of houses across the world. No more do you have to plant your eye right up to that ridiculously small piece of glass to figure out who’s knocking at your front door. Instead, you press a button and see a nice flat (not a tiny fish-eye view) 1.3 megapixel color video image on a 2.5” TFT LCD screen. Definitely a nice improvement, wouldn’t you say?

I took the Brinno/Phase 3 Systems Electronic Peephole Viewer, model PHV1325 for a spin, and found a lot to like. Installation was fairly easy, although it does involve some minor surgery on your door in replacing the existing peephole viewer with the one provided, but that’s easier than it sounds. The video shows you how to do it. Once you do that, the actual LCD screen snaps on easily.

Normally the screen is off, but all you need to do is press the button to activate it and up comes your video. The screen turns off 10 seconds later. What’s really nice is that you no longer have to stick your eye up to the door, which also means it doesn’t matter who tall or short you are. Oh yes, one additionally nice security feature is that your caller doesn’t know you’re on the other side looking out, unless you make a lot of noise of course.

One minor problem is that if you have very low lighting conditions, your image quality isn’t going to be great, but that’s true even for a traditional peephole. The easy solution is to install a motion-sensitive light outside your front door. The difference between using a traditional peephole and this large flat image is stark enough.

The Brinno Peephole Viewer sells for about $80 (Amazon)-$90 (Smarthome), which I think is a bit steep, but really adds a huge heap of convenience, so it’s your call.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

Here’s my list of favorite, must-have, daily use Web and tech products (mainly software) inspired by Michael Arrington and his annual list over at Techcrunch. For some reason, this year, he hasn’t published a list (yet?). [Here's his list from Jan 1, 2010.]

There are 19 products on this list most of which I feel are the best web services available today. And while I absolutely use many more times that number of online web services and other software on a regular basis, I took a cue from Mr. Arrington’s list, and this is the top must-have services and products that I couldn’t live without and that I use practically every day, and in most cases in both my personal and work life.

Gmail. Hands-down, the best e-mail webmail account and client out there. I gave up using Thunderbird — excellent product as it is — years ago and now use Gmail exclusively. Throw in its excellent array of powerful (yet optional) add-ons in Gmail Labs and its ability to suck in mail from other accounts and you have a winner. Gmail may be the best example of a perfectly executed Web 2.0 service.

POBox

PObox just forwards my mail wherever I’d like (in this example from john@pobox.com to john@gmail.com). It also does spam checking and filtering using a slew of methods and controls, further simplifying my life. I can also have multiple email aliases (ex: johnsmith@pobox.com). The basic service is more than worth the $20/year of never having to send out an e-mail that says “Hey, please note my new email address.”

Dropbox

Of course, you can also access those files via the Web as well. Upgrade to paying accounts to get 50 or even 100GB of storage.

Evernote

Things you can drop into an Evernote folder include photos, web pages, scanned documents and raw notes. Evernote indexes them all, and in particular does a nice job of scanning text in images. And of course, you can share notebooks (folders) as well.

Evernote is another great example of a well-done Web 2.0 service.

Toodledo

1Password

Agile Web Solutions’ 1Password solves that problem nicely by letting you keep them in sync with Dropbox. It also does a better job of ‘remembering’ passwords that some websites try to stymie the browser from doing so, and will also perform a 1-click and fill-in login.

Available now for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad an Android platforms. And by the way, their support is fantastic.

Backblaze

I went with Backblaze as it’s unlimited, continuous backups for $5/mo, encryption of my data and a non-intrusive application.

Skype

Facebook

Delicious

Twitter

One of the most important things that Twitter ever did was to create a very open API that allowed hundreds of developers to create clients and tools that far exceed Twitter’s web interface. For example, I use TweetDeck and HootSuite far more than I ever use Twitter.com.

WordPress

Google Reader

Google Docs

Google

And this was just the start of their slew of free online services.

Firefox and Chrome. These are the top 2 web browsers for just about anything and let’s face it – you use web browsers every day as well, quite possibly more than you use any other application.

I used to be a hardcore Mozilla Firefox purist, but Google Chrome has really caught up in the extensions department and just does a fantastic job of rendering JavaScript-heavy pages (like Gmail for example) and flawlessly moving tabs around. I still use Firefox for Web development though, and I can’t wait for version 4 to see how much they’ve improved the speed.

DVR/Digital Video Recorders. Remember when we didn’t have these? Yeah, life was tough then. I feel helpless when I can’t pause, rewind or cue up a previously recorded program – every time I go to a hotel room comes to mind. My drug of choice – DISH Network’s receivers with built-in DVRs rock. Tivos rock too.

Livescribe

And don’t worry, they’ve also got a web service online that let’s you get to your notes via the Web and/or share them with friends/colleagues.

That’s it for now. Tell what you think are the best online services in the comments. See you next year!

So I got an interesting little gadget recently, what the vendor calls a fingertip USB mouse. Ok, so perhaps it’s not fingertip, but just finger. Take a look at the photo – that little black contraption has a piece of velcro wrapped around the user’s middle finger.

So how does it work? Actually, does it work? Yes it does. But it’s not for everyone. I found that I just didn’t have enough control with my finger to prevent the mouse from shaking constantly, or being able to keep my finger down enough to allow the laser to ‘catch’ and get mouse movement on my screen.

The mouse has its scroll wheel and buttons on the side that you would operate with your thumb. While really light, it’s not nothing, and you really notice it when you type a lot. Needless to say, I didn’t wear it while typing this review. I try to be a predominantly keyboard user where possible anyway, so this wouldn’t be a hardware switch that I would gravitate to.

This really does require practice time, but could be fairly useful in tight spaces – think airplanes. The fingertip optical mouse costs a mere $4.80 from one of the many little computer/gadget e-commerce sites springing up out of China.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)