I did buy a Motorola Bluetooth ear piece a while back, as you may remember, but I find myself fairly dissatisfied with it. For one thing, it's big and clunky, and for another, its battery seems to wear out pretty darn quick. But most of all, I think I need to bring the sexy back.
The newly redesigned Aliph Jawbone fulfills at least part of that. This is possibly the slickest looking Bluetooth headset I've ever seen—but it's not just a pretty face, nosiree. The Jawbone integrates military-grade noise-cancelling technology, just in case you happen to waltz into a combat zone. Its $120 pricetag might seem a bit steep, but did you read what I just said? Military-grade. It's available from Cingular in silver, with black and sexy red offerings on their way direct from the source.
[via SCI FI Tech]
When I was growing up, we used to keep a backdoor key in our garage, just in case I got locked out. That said, I did have to break into my house a couple times, though it was usually only a partial success—I could get into the basement, but the door from there to the house proper was usually locked. And after the time I accidentally broke a basement window trying to break in, well, that was less of an option too.
The $50 Digital KeySafe is designed to prevent just such a jam. It offers a compartment in which you can leave a spare key, and secures it from would-be thieves with a numeric keypad (powered by an included 3v lithium battery, which hopefully won't explode). An activity log also shows you the last nine attempts to open the safe, including date and time, so you can smile as you see recount little Johnny's desperate try to remember the secret code.
If you prefer the cheaper option, you can always pick up the magnetic Stor-a-Key for $4. Or the ever popular fake rock route. Nobody can spot a fake rock. Or—and this is radical, I know—you could remember to take your keys with you.
[via Gizmos for Geeks]
Wi-Fi detectors are handy little gadgets, but not all of them are created equal. Some of them just blink cryptic light messages at you, possibly in Morse code. And some of them outright lie.
But this $70 Digital Wi-Fi Detector from Think Geek is a little more eloquent in its communication. Besides telling you, on its backlit LCD screen, whether or not you're in range of a network (in its case, from up to 200 feet away), it'll also tell you the network's name (SSID), the signal strength, the channel, and whether the network is using encryption (WEP or WPA). You can scroll through all the available networks, should you be in a particularly saturated area.
It works with both 802.11 b and g networks, and runs on a pair of included AAA batteries. And to keep those from running down, it'll auto power off if you haven't used it in awhile. Best of all, at 2.5" x 2.75" x 1" thick, it won't take up a lot of extra space in your laptop bag.
[via Ubergizmo]
Yesterday I tried to convince my boss that instead of money, perhaps I could receive as compensation this official replica Cyberman helmet from Doctor Who. Sure, it costs over $1100, but that's a small price to pay for the look on my face on Christmas morning, right? Right?
Okay, so that idea didn't fly. But aha, what's this? Okay, so it's not all official and everything, but this $58 Cyberman helmet is even functional: it incorporates a voice changer that lets you threaten to DELETE with the best of 'em (oh, and there are flashing lights, did I mention that?). Also, it's way creepier when seen on the body of a little boy.
[via New Launches; Gadget Review]
LCD picture frames seem to pretty much a dime a dozen. So when one comes along with an interesting twist, I'm all ears. The eStarling frame is Wi-Fi-enabled (802.11b/g), boasting the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed on Flickr and display pictures from it.
While this is a pretty slick idea, it's pretty much only a matter of time before someone takes advantage of the situation to start popping inappropriate pictures into your photostream. Even more dangerous, the eStarling has a dedicated email address to which you can send images that it will put into its rotation. I don't know about you, but I get a fair amount of spam featuring images that I wouldn't want to pop up in the middle of a family dinner. Better make sure you've got good filtering on that address.
The eStarling runs for $250 and is available from ThinkGeek. It requires Windows for the initial setup, but is standalone after that.
[via Gizmodo]
My house this year is severely lacking in the spirit of the season. No lights, no tree, no joy. There are probably complex reasons for all of these, but when it comes to the tree, the explanation is simple: I can't keep anything alive. Me remembering to water a tree is pretty unlikely, sad to say. And those dead firs, they suck up the water.
Of course, you could probably rig some sort of crazy watering system, if you were more MacGyvery than me, but what kind of an eyesore would that be? Alternatively, you could spend $23 on the Gift-Wrapped Tree Reservoir, which disguises a two gallon water reservoir as just another present under the tree, though under my tree, the impeccable wrapping would probably give it away on the spot.
Even better, though, the reservoir makes it easier to refill the water supply—no more crawling on my hands and knees under the tree. On the downside, no more pretending I'm a sniper slipping into position for the perfect shot. Oh well, the holiday season giveth and taketh away.
[via OhGizmo!]
While doing the mindless mall-shuffle the other day, I came across the Teavana store. Gadgetboxers know that I prefer the leaf to the bean (if you know what I mean, eh? eh?), so I was intrigued to see their Auto Tea machine—it's kind of like a coffee maker, but for tea.
To be fair, in my day we called a device like this a teapot, but the Auto Tea takes some of the manual labor out of the process by steeping the tea for a desired amount of time (between 2 and 12 minutes), and then keeping it warm, without even the need for a tea cozy or the emasculating side-effects of owning one.
Unfortunately, unless it really catches on, we probably won't ever see the Auto Tea coming to feature parity with the coffee makers of the world—that means no automatic timers and no weather functionality. Blast.
Keeping the old mug of tea warm while in a high intensity blogging session is a challenge. Sure, you could buy one of them USB cup warmers, but got an old Pentium chip lying around? You can roll your own mug warmer with that sucker. Just attach the Pentium chip to a USB2 connection, throw in a couple of resistors, some thermal paste, and whammo—instant beverage hotplate.
There aren't really detailed instructions to putting this together, but if you know something about electronics, you could probably muddle through it using the info on the forum post above. Since my last exposure to soldering was, oh, eighth grade, I think I'd probably better avoid the temptation, lest I burn down the Gadgetbox HQ.
[via Everything USB]
I enjoyed my cameraphone...for about fifteen minutes. I barely use it nowadays—it's handy, but the pictures it takes are just too grainy. But the quality of cameraphones is constantly increasing. However, the one thing that they might be stuck with is that terrible digital zoom. Optical zoom is far superior, but it's pretty tough to fit a zoom lens in a cell phone.
If you're desperately in need, though, Brando's got you covered with their new $19 Mobile Phone Telescope. This add-on lens fastens to your cell with an elastic band and gives you a 6x optical zoom, letting you take those elusive paparazzi shots of celebrities going shopping, picking their nose, or whatever it is celebrities do in their spare time.
Unfortunately, the telescope is only compatible with a handful of Sony Ericsson phones, the K750i, W800i, W810i, and W5500i/W600i, so me and my Motorola are out of luck. Darn.
[via Shiny Shiny]
