The only thing they’re promoting the awareness of is your own love of photography, but these Lens Bracelets are a clever alternative to those yellow LIVESTRONG bracelets if you’re a shutterbug. They both look like zoom rings that have been pried off an SLR lens, but are actually made from silicone rubber complete with embossed lettering and ridge details. They’re available in a 24-70mm zoom design, or a 50mm prime, for $10 each from Photojojo. Or you can order the pair for just $15.
Even though I love Christmas, at times I find the more commercial aspects of the holidays a little annoying. But I’ll never be annoyed as much as the person who finds themselves gifted with ThinkGeek’s Tannenbomb($11.99). Hidden inside the silver geek-inspired ornament, which is adorned with traditional Christmas icons like robots and zombies, is one of their annoying sound devices that’s been tweaked to spread holiday cheer.
When hung from the branch of a Christmas tree the weight of the ornament activates the electronicy bits inside, and after a while it will start to randomly emit one of four different sounds including beeping, mosquito buzzing, a Christmas cricket and an Elf giggle. The battery is designed to last for months and when removed from the tree the sounds will automatically stop. So when the Christmas decorations are packed away those mystery sounds will disappear until the holidays roll around again next year.
Don’t you hate it when you see one of those good ideas that’s been poorly executed? I believe that this Orca PowerStrap falls into that category. Imagine, if you will, a fashionable bracelet that houses a battery. You can plug in a variety of mobile gadgets into the bracelet to recharge them while you’re using them. Sounds pretty neat, right?
Enter the $65 Orca PowerStrap. It’s everything mentioned above, minus the word fashionable. Rather, it is big and ugly. I understand that batteries can only be made so small before they’re unable to hold a decent charge. However, if the product isn’t something you’d want to wear most of the time, it really defeats the purpose.
Back in August we brought you the Pinball Magic ‘appcessory’ for the iPhone which in a nutshell was a plastic housing that turned your smartphone into a bonafide desktop pinball machine. And while it’s not listed on the New Potato Technologies website, this iPad-friendly version is simply the bigger brother of the iPhone model.
Like its smaller counterpart, Pinball Magic for the iPad includes a physical plunger for launching the virtual in-game ball and paddle buttons on either side for keeping it in play. There’s also additional light up features on the headboard adding to the ‘fun’ of things, and of course you’ll have to download the free Pinball Magic app before you can use it. It looks like it might be a Brookstone exclusive, and you’re going to have to really like pinball to pick one up since it’s $79.95.
Today marks the beginning of the end for fans of the Harry Potter movies. Starting tonight at midnight in some cities the first half of the final film in the Potter series opens, and I’m sure those in attendance will be all decked out in Hogwarts or Slytherin garb, complete with fake wands. But instead of pretending to blast your friends with spells, these infra-red wands will actually let you have a ‘realistic’ laser tag-like battle so you look about 0.0023% less dorky.
There are four styles of wand to choose from, including Harry’s, Hermione’s, Ron’s and Voldemort’s (that’s right, I typed his name!) and they each feature authentic sound effects from the movies and even light up when a spell is cast. They’re available from ThinkGeek for $22.99 each, and while they probably won’t arrive in time for tonight’s midnight showing, at least you’ll be ready for when part 2 opens next year.
Last time we wrote about Dell’s UltraSharp IPS monitors, we were looking at the U3011. It was a rather large 30-inch mammoth monitor (not an HDTV here so don’t expect much larger; it’s supposed to go on your desk), with a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution IPS panel, 7ms grey-to-grey response time and 100,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio. After the deal, it was $1,349. Well, prices drop. Now you can save 25% on that same screen, making it $1,124 after rebate, shipped.
But today’s deal doesn’t just extend to that particular model: you also can get 25% off on the 27-inch U2711 ($824, shipped) and the 21-inch U2211H (a paltry $209).
Pretty much anything you could ever want to watch is already available online, but there’s still something to be said about flipping on broadcast TV and just taking what they give you. So once again I kind of wish I lived in Japan (or technically Brazil, Peru and Argentina) so I could pick up one of these 1seg digital TV tuner dongles from Buffalo which lets you enjoy live TV on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
It looks fairly compact to use and carry around, and it’s even got its own rechargeable battery good for about 2 1/2 hours of vegging out so you’re not draining the battery on your idevice at the same time. It will be available sometime in early December, though with a somewhat hefty price tag of ~$127 (¥10,600).
Isn’t progress a wonderful thing? Diseases get cured, we continue to unlock the secrets of the universe AND we no longer have to choose between playing with an RC car or an RC helicopter! The Egg from Kyosho combines the best of both worlds into a single RC toy that’s safe to play with indoors. Of course from the looks of things in this video it’s really just an RC helicopter with a set of unpowered wheels thrown on, so ‘driving’ it around is basically akin to flying it at ground level, but that doesn’t make it look any less fun. I mean look at the faces of the family in this video!
While probably readily available in Japan, the Kyosho Egg can be purchased in North America via the Japan Trend Shop for $91. And if you happen to have a few spare minutes this morning, make sure to visit its official website which is a real assault on the eyes.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got more gadgets than you can keep track of. Unfortunately, almost all of them require a battery of some sort to function. This means you need a lot of free outlets to keep them all full of juice. Thankfully the people at IDAPT have a great solution.
Updating their Universal Desktop Charger, the company has released the i4. This time around you can charge up to four devices, instead of three. You still only have the three docks, but they have added on a USB port to the side for charging another gadget. The three docks have interchangeable tips, which can be used to charge everything from your digital camera, to your portable gaming device or even your phone. If you’re looking to cut down on the clutter while keeping your gadgets in one place, this definitely looks worth the $60 price.
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