Gadget Dose

Getting back from holiday vacation is always a bit odd… So to start the Gadget Dose machine again, I picked something practical. I’ll bet almost everyone got stuff that plugs in for Christmas…
This Power block is cool for its corner styling - and yes - you can plug stuff into it too.

Its only $12.99 and you can find it HERE

Motorola really went the extra mile on this one, (pun intended). This 2 way radio set can transmit up to 18 miles! 11 Weather channels with weather alert feature - handsfree communication mode and a vibrating alert will page you if someone is trying to reach you.

There are many times when these would come in handy, for instance finding your wife in the mall - (thats my favorite). You could use these hiking or camping, or just to stay in touch while your out walking the dogs.

* Delivers a range of up to 18 miles (under optimum conditions)
* 22 channels, each with 121 privacy codes for 2,662 combinations for clear, uninterrupted connections
* Dual power, works with 3 AA batteries (not included) and rechargeable NiMH batteries (included)
* Approximately 32 hr. alkaline or 11 hr. NiMH estimated talk time
* iVOX for speech-activated, hands-free communication
* 7 NOAA/Environment Canada weather channels and 4 marine weather channels
* QT (Quiet Talk) interruption feature helps eliminate interference
* Backlit display for readability in low lighting conditions
* Companding technology to help filter out static between words
* LCD battery meter for charge indication
* Digital Signal Processing to help provide consistent sound quality
* VibraCall vibrating alert Other features include: audible low battery alert, battery save feature, keypad lock, time-out timer and a choice of 10 unique call tones.

Wow - these are awesome! - Another really nice Christmas gift for the gadget lover in your life.

They retail for $69.99 and the product page is HERE

Wow - this has got to be the most incredible thing to get any time of the year - let alone for christmas. Touted as the worlds first video glasses with built in media player - these glasses make it seem like your watching a huge 50″ display. Imagine watching a huge screen while lying down in bed or taking a bath even. ( Just don’t drop ‘em in the water! )

Qingbar glasses features a sleek, light weight design with LCOS micro displays, which deliver crisp, vivid-color, QVGA video image simulates the image of a 50” display from a distance of 2M away. You just insert a mini SD card into the slot, and then you can entertain yourself with your favorite movie, MP3 music, lovely photos, or e-book text.

E book text? thats an idea I hadn’t thought about - now thats the way to read a book eh? a 50″ book!
You can also connect it up to a TV tuner to watch your favorite shows. Another well thought out feature is its user replaceable battery.

Sporting a digital signal processing video chip the Liquid Crystal displays have a resolution of WQVGA (432×240) - which is to say that they are not high def. Really though - who cares ? The cool factor of these things outweighs that by a good margin methinks.

Here is the Product page

The suggested price is $399 - but if you preorder now…. you get ‘em for $299.

Merry Christmas !

Todays Gadget is one of those types of gadgets where simplicity is the dominating benefit.

We all ( well, a lot of us) have gadgets that charge via a USB jack. Cell Phones, Headsets, Cameras, Mp3 Players, etc….

some times its wasteful to be running a 400 watt desktop PC to charge a low voltage device. Then again sometimes your just not near a pc - or you dread the 15 minute boot process.

Here ya go - simple and cheap ( I expect they will be as heck - how much could you charge for them really? ) - These are to be released on November 28th - and when they do I’ll update the post with price and availability.

Product Page with more details HERE

Todays post is more of a hey - look at this type of post - Buy.com has the Sandisk Sansa e250 2GB MP3 Player, FM tuner, FM on-the-fly Recording, Built-in microphone, Video, Expandable Memory - Refurbished

for $39 bucks! thats a heck of a price reduction off of the $199.99 price tag. IT sports a user replaceable battery - micro Sd expansion slot (max 8 gigs) - video playback - picture playback - voice recording - FM radio recording - all with a 1.8″ TFT screen.

the deal is HERE

And you better hurry as they have limited stock - tell me this isn’t a fantastic Christmas gift - and at this price you can afford to make it a stocking stuffer!

I remember back in the 80’s when I bought an electronic car compass, back then there were no gps models for cars- and heck in my teens I just wanted it because it lit up in blue. The accuracy of car compasses back then was awful. My blue compass picked up the coils in the engine and always pointed East.

Well, car based compasses have come a long long way since then. This model lights up in green. It still has the ability to impress however. It touts a precision digital compass with heading display.

As if that weren’t enough - it also has an atomic clock. So the unit will set itself to the atomic time server automatically. Just tell it what part of the USA you are in and the time is always accurate to the 1000′th of a second.

It has an altimeter to tell you just how far above or below sea level you are at, a barometer - so you can read the air pressure and figure out when your ears are about to do the dreaded pop.

Also included is a 12-24 weather forecast to give you the heads up on what the weather is about to do on your drive.

Very handily backlit in todays ultra cool green - the unit runs on a high powered Lithium battery so theres no need for wires going down to the lighter socket.

Suction cup mounting adheres the unit to the window - and with no wires this trumps my poor old Radio Shack compass of the 1980’s by a long shot. - Whats more is this unit wont always point East

You can find it at Skymall for $89.95
and might I add theres just about no man with a decent love for his car that wouldn’t love this for Christmas. If you want to go a bit further and get a GPS system for a gift - check out the Mio DigiWalker C320 GPS Receiver We spotlighted a while back - as its price is unbeatable.

At first look this nifty little gadget looks like any other SD card on the market. Tiny, full of space for all your digital pictures, but it boasts a hefty advance in technology. This tiny little gem carried a full ethernet card with wireless capabilities. That means when you need to dump your pictures theres no need to find the card reader or grab that USB cable ( now where did I put that again? ).
Really all you need to get your pictures from the camera is a wireless connection. ANY wireless connection. So if your laptop is nearby - boom.. connect and dump with no hassle. If you have a home or office wireless network you could put the pictures on any pc connected to the network.

But it goes even farther than that. If you upload your pictures to a photo sharing service (any of these ) The pictures will be automatically uploaded to the web whenever you are within range of the wireless network.

That means as soon as you get home you just put the camera down and automagically the pictures go to the web. If you’d rather have your photos go to a network drive - you can do that too - or how about both?

It works with 802.11b 802.11g and 802.11n - so the only folks left out are the 802.11a folks and lets face it - its time to update if you are still running that.

So you say your Sony camera runs on memory stick (I or II) - or maybe you use Compact Flash or another format? No problem - they sell adapters for those too.

This functionality is worth its weight in gold - imagine the time saved doing it the wireless way vs. booting up your desktop - getting into the operating system, and downloading all pictures and then uploading all of them to the web.

The card itself stores 2 gigs of pictures and is fairly priced at $99.99 or $129.99 with adapter

Product can be found HERE

Some accesories you might want to go with this are the wireless range extender -(to take your wireless all the way to the back yard…

or the Wireless hotspot detector T-shirt to find public hotspots for your use.

oh - and thanks to DT at Turnthescrew for sending this in!

The shape of this very low priced mp3 player is one of its best features, I could see this clipped in a shirt pocket, purse, collar, short sleeve?

Very lightweight, with animated LCD -(although black and white)… some of the neat extras are an E-book reader with long text recording function, able to copy the unread text to hard disk for the next reading.

Built in Microphone with voice recording features, keep this in your shirt pocket or on your person and you could secretly record a whole days worth of sound,

A phone book feature lets you store and retrieve phone numbers ( or any numbers I suppose ) viewable on the lcd screen.

It has all the playback features you’d expect a mp3 player to have - ( normal, menu, repeat, repeat all, shuffle. )

While it does not give you a full control EQ - it does offer the major settings ( normal, Rock, Pop, Jazz, bass )

Formats Supported are MP3 OGG WMA WAV (PCM/ADPCM) - It also sports a high speed USB 2.0 interface for speedy copying of music or Ebooks.

And the Dimensions are 59mm×15mm×16mm, weight: 150 g. Super small and lightweight - so all you fitness nuts out there could clip this on and not expect it to fall off due to its weight.

The only thing not specified is battery life, I assume its got a Lithium Ion polymer batter like most of the competition - for safe bets I’d assume a 8 hour batter life tops before recharge.

Now for the best part of this beauty - its wonderful pricetag! - at these prices you could afford to get 2 or 3… heres the rundown.

1 Gig with FM radio $30.00
2 Gig with FM radio $42.57

1 Gig without FM radio $27.37
2 Gig without FM radio $40.53

Product page for all units is HERE

And at some point I’ll add a review - (my old mobi cube player broke and I need a new one - this fits my bill! )

Enjoy! - Rob

Old razor getting you down? There comes a time in all razors lifespans when it is time to upgrade, even if your old one was you favorite for years. Thats the kind of spot I’m in - I love my old Panasonic electric - but its not holding as much of a charge and blades are almost impossible to find now. This model from Hitachi has my attention - its a wet/dry model so you can shave in the shower. If you do plan on shower shaving, go a pay a few bucks for a fog free mirror.

The batteris are Ni-CD and for a 1 hour charge they figure you’ll get a week of shaving out of it.

Like my old model - this razor uses a very high rpm - formerly touted as being sonic - 3500 rpm to be exact. Users new to this high frequency shave will need to get their skin accustomed to the unit. Expect a curve of about a week, however after that you’ll get a shave thats just as good as a blade.

Estimated life of the omni directional blades is 3 years, (keeping the unit properly oiled that is).

Here are the detailed specs -

The Hitachi Rotary Razaq SX110 comes with:
• Travel Pouch
• Power adapter
• Shaver oil, brush, and blade cleaner
• Instruction manual (Japanese)

Specifications:
• Color: Blue or Silver (default). Please specify.
• Power: AC100V 50/60Hz
• Rechargeable internal ni-cad battery
• Weight: 145g
• Size: 65 x 150 x 45m

Where can you get one you might ask? Japan. Don’t worry - I didn’t go and write this whole article only to tell you that you can’t have one …

You can get one online from the wonderful gadget store CScout HERE
Price is $149.00 - yeah, thats kinda pricey - so your probably gonna find this info on how to get some free food at your local restaurant useful.

This tiny little stealthy USB stick is packed with spying software - basically you plug it into any pc for a few seconds and it auto installs its payload - which is a spy software package that allows you to remotely monitor activity from any internet connected pc. It has a hefty load of capabilities (outlined below) - Mind you, there is a yearly charge of $14.95 for I presume the dynamic dns service needed to route one pc to another. The stick itself is $79.95 - which , for the capabilities is not bad.

Benefits And Features

• View and save an instant screen snapshot of the computer being monitored, any time.
• Monitor all web site access.
• Works with all browsers and web enabled programs.
• Monitor both sides of all “instant messenger” communications.
• Automatically translates frequently used Instant Messenger abbreviations.
• Works with all popular IM programs.
• Monitor all email access (SMTP, POP3, IMAP) to see who and when emails were
• received from and sent to.
• Monitor activities in real time, or retrieve activity logs from recent activity.
• Snoop-It Stick records everything, whether you are monitoring in real time or not.
• Store up to 12 months of activity logs directly on your Snoop-It Stick
• All program modules are updated completely automatically so you always have the
• latest version.
• Send the user a pop up message alert. A good way to tell them they’re busted!
• Turn off/on Internet access with the Snoop-It Stick locally or remotely.
• Set allowable times for Internet access.
• Prevent users from using certain types of Internet programs.
• Block access to specified ports.
• Block access to web sites.
• One click “Block Social Networking” option instantly blocks access to sites
• like MySpace.com.
• Completely secure. Only your Snoop-It Stick can access your computer or change the settings you have chosen.
• Works with Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and is Vista ready.

Quite impressive eh? Cheating spouses beware - not to mention corporations,bosses,dogs,cats, and the occasional gecko.

The manufacturers page is HERE
To go along with that you might want to get the worlds smallest video camcorder for when you confront whomever with all that incriminating data.

I know there are a lot of alternatives for listening to music in the shower, for instance there are speakers you can hang in the shower and connect to your mp3 player. To me this sounds like a recipe for disaster as the steam and moisture from your oh so hot cleanup will probably kill just about any mp3 player out there.

Those speakers don’t light up either.

With this gadget you can have your music and light up the shower a bit too.

Shaped like a computer mouse, the radio features a splash-proof body, a speaker with clear and crisp sound, and an easy hanging antenna. Also great for the outdoors and poolside parties. Available in Blue, Orange, and Green. Requires 3 AA batteries, batteries not included.

So in the morning you could listen to the news or your fav dj, and for that romantic evening tune in the some ambient music from pbs or such. Its self contained so no worries about steam. It probably won’t survive a fall into the bath though, so for that you might want to see my post on the radio bath tub rubber duck.

You can buy the mood light shower radio HERE for $17.95 - limited production so get ‘em while they last.

MP4 Watch II is a novel and fashionable design Portable Media Player (PMP) device. Just plug and play into USB port to transfer music files and data. You can Listen to Music, Watch Movie and Record Conversations wherever you go.

And just get a look at the massive feature set for this gem -

# Features: 2GB or 4GB flash memory
# MP4 Player + Music Player + FM Radio + Digital Watch + Voice Recorder + Photo Album + E-book reader, all in one featured product
# MP4 watch, support MP4(AVI) video
# High in focus 1.8″ TFT screen, 160*128 pixel image
# Shows time and date and watch design is outstanding
# Supports MP3, WMA and MP4(AVI) format, up to 8 hours of music playback
# Supports JPEG format, also displays lyrics and picture
# High-quality digital record, song circulation function and support several languages
# 5-equalizer modes, super bass 3-D sound effect playback modes
# E-book browse function
# Supports FM radio
# Build in speaker
# USB 2.0 High Speed transfer

The only thing not stated is battery life - which I cant see being more than 4 or 5 hours tops in video mode. Mp3’s and Recordings should have a much longer time frame.

It comes in a 2 gig and 4 gig size, and cost $92.00 and $118.00 respectively. Thats more than enough room for a high quality movie or two. OR 22 - 44 hours of mp3s.

You can buy one HERE

At 4.3-inches diagonal, the Mio C320 provides easy viewing. The screen enables you to see the full map view and a selection of route information as well. Easily identify route information, such as Points of Interest(POIs), without quitting the navigation function. And this very thin GPS unit slips easily into a briefcase or purse.

This little guy could help you navigate in almost any situation - from hiking and camping to visiting your family out of state. Small is the key - you could easily tuck this into your pocket.

# Touchscreen is easy to use and provides a smooth operation
# Full U.S. maps include Hawaii and Puerto Rico
# Compact and thin so it’s easy to take along
# 1.7-million preloaded businesses and landmarks let you search for gas, food, entertainment and more
# Turn-by-turn voice navigation in 16 languages (English, French and Spanish included)
# SD card slot lets you play MP3s through the unit

Yup it plays music too - and with turn by turn directions you wont have to pay 500 - 700 dollars for a separate car gps unit,

The price is great at $299. - and its being offered exclusively through Radio Shack — yeh - go figure.

Once your phone is activated, use MyTicTalk.com to set up parental controls. Enter phone numbers that can be called anytime and phone numbers that can only be called during permission-based times. Choose what times the phone can ring. Send your child a reminder message. And, you can enable or disable features on the phone whenever you like.

So you can set this phone to only dial mom and dad - and maybe an emergency phone number if you want. The phone has presets - so your child wont need to remember dads number at work.

The phone plan itself is a pre-paid plan so its good for the younger ones as an emergency communications link. This , I think would not be for the teens.

With 8 hours talk time and 100 hours of standby - this just might save you when the bus dosent come or if the kid gets out of school early and you werent aware of the earl dismissal.

I’ve got no definite word on price but Ive heard its less than 100 - heres the manufacturers page

How many time have you been on the road - saw someone driving like an utter idiot and thought.. “Man, I wish I had a camera - I’d turn this guy in.”

Or on the other hand - when you get into an accident and its purely your word against theirs.

With this dash mounted video camera all that can be a thing of the past - and if you want to take the camera out of the car to record something - pop in 2 AA batteries. Wherever your car is ….you are likely to be as well - so you’re never far from a video camera.

You can record up to 5 hours of video on a 2gb flash card - and to record more - just slap in a second card. - It records in .avi format so its very easy to work with on a Mac or PC.

Imagine your insurance companies surprise when you tell them not only was it not your fault, but you got the whole thing on tape.

and its only $79.95 Product Page

One thing to keep in mind is there is no built in transfer port so you’ll have to pony up 20 or so bucks for a flash card reader.