Boys and their Toys

A strange question about everybody’s favourite music gadget, but maybe not so strange in the innovative technology world. Talk about a Frankenstein’s monster of a gadget. Someone must have been sitting in a bar or at a party one day with a bottle of bear in one hand, with the top still on, and their iPod Shuffle in the other hand and thought about how they could merge the two together. What they did was to create the Bevy.

This little gadget is a hardy plastic keyring that encloses your Shuffle allowing it to be carried around on your keys. The openings allow full access to all of the controls on the Shuffle and to the rear clip and the outer casing of the Bevy will protect it from knocks and scratches. Around the outer edge is a groove which lets you store your headphones. Just wind it round and you won’t have your cable and earphones dangling from your keyring or loose in your pocket.

If you remove your iPod, at the top of the Bevy you will find a metal part for biting down on to bottle tops and ripping them open. A flash of genius or a moment of madness? Whichever it is it can be had for around £10.

In days gone by when CDs ruled the music world, to have a selection of your tracks you needed to, either copy the selection to a number of CDs and swap them out when you wanted to listen to them or purchase a jukebox that you placed under your seat or in the boot. This would normally hold 6 or 8 CDs and you could make the selection from you stereo. Now, bringing that idea into the 21st century is Pioneers DEH-P4100SD car stereo.

This music gadget tries to cater for all of the digital formats that are around and the way it accepts these formats is via an SD slot or a USB port. Through the USB port it will support audio players and simple storage drives. The unit can also control certain types of iPod gadgets with the correct USB dock using the rotary control on the front of the stereo.

The SD slot is situated behind the faceplate of the stereo and will also accept SDHC for capacities of up to 32GB which will hold many more songs than any CD jukebox can ever hope to hold.

Output is through the amplifier and will give 50W with Delta Sigma 24 bit D/A converters and ASR technology which restores harmonics lost through compression of music files.

This all comes at a price as it will cost around £145.

When you go out looking for an alarm clock you don’t expect to find one to help you sleep. That’s not the usual job you would associate with any alarm clock, but the Axbo gadget does exactly that. It is an Austrian invention that, with the help of sleep phase detection technology, works out the kind of sleep you are in.

It does this with the help of a wristband that you wear. During the night the motion detector that is inside the band lets the clock know how much movement your body is going through and so what sleep phase you are in. The sounds that the clock plays to get you off to sleep, such as waves or a rainforest, is automatically switched of once you are in the right phase.

When it is time for you to wake up, the clock can tell when you are in a shallow sleep and if it is within 30 minutes of when the alarm is due to go off, it will wake you up making for a more gentle introduction to the day. The gadget comes with two wristbands allowing you to program two different wake up times. There is also a feature for uploading your movement data through the night to determine what can give you a peaceful sleep.

With gadgets becoming similar in their contents, manufacturers have to find a way for their products to stand out. It seems most phones have Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS, media player and expandable storage. Media players have large screens for video playback, Wi-Fi for connection to the Internet and expandable storage. What is there left to attract more people to spend their hard earned cash on a particular gadget if it is identical to any other similar gadget? Sony is banking on the fashion stakes with their new Walkman E-series players.

With this new line in players you will be able to change the front panel and cap to a colour that suits the shirt or dress you are wearing that day. Sony will surely have enough colours available to go with any outfit you have. As for the players other features, they will offer between 2GB and 8GB, FM radio, 3 hours playback on a quick 3 minute charge and up to 28 hours on a full charge, a colour LCD display and earbuds.

Is this how our gadgets are going to be from now on? Will I have to consider what I am wearing when I take my device out with me or suffer the wrath of the fashion Police? Personally I think it is pointless as most of the time our gadgets are in our pockets of bags, but I suppose manufacturers have to try everything to get their products sold.

What should you wear to prepare you for the day? Our weather is changeable at the best of times and kitting yourself out with the right clothing for the whole day tends to be a bit of a gamble when you go by the weather forecast on the TV. Your own personal weather forecasting gadget is what is needed and Lexibook can provide it with the Evolution Plus Weather Station.

Standing at 8 inches high you can sit it on a small table or shelf and get your own weather forecast for the next 12 hours. It contains a blue electro luminescent backlit LCD screen with animated weather symbols for easy reading letting you know the type of weather to expect. Symbols included are for stormy, sunny, rainy, cloudy and fine weather.

Coming with this handy gadget is one remote sensor, but it will support up to 3 sensors. Site the sensor indoors or outside and with its built-in LCD it will display the temperature and humidity. You can program an alarm that will alert you when the temperature drops below or goes above a set temperature. There is a 12/24 hour clock and it can give you tide and moon phases throughout the year.

You will need 2 x AA and 2 x AAA batteries to power it and the sensor to turn you into the local weatherman for your area.

With so many of our gadgets being portable, there could be a tendency to misplace them, leave them behind or even have them stolen while you are out and about. All very annoying when it happens, but being human, for some of us, inevitable. In more industrial times we would probably have tied a piece of string to them and attached it to our wrists of belt, but being in the age we are at the moment a more futuristic solution is called for. Recently released by TenBu, a British company, is a gadget called Nio that is a Bluetooth based alarm system.

The Nio uses software that is designed to link with existing Bluetooth enabled PDAs and phones. You set up a security zone of up to 20 metres around the device and once that distance has been exceeded an alarm on both the Nio and device you are monitoring is activated. You can also set the Nio to send a vibrating alert. In addition to this the locate feature can help you find any tagged gadgets you have misplaced.

Its rechargeable battery will stay charged for several weeks ensuring piece of mind with your gadgets. Other features include, Bluetooth USB dongle, anti tamper motion sensor, three selectable security zones and calendar surveillance settings.

For around £40 this could be a worthwhile security gadget to have.

With a plethora of cheap netbooks these days the challenge is to improve on the components in them while keeping the price low and the power consumption low improving battery life. Nvidia are trying with their ION Graphics Processor that produces 10 times faster graphics and now they are transferring it to a PC. Not only do they aim to improve the netbook gadgets, but in the Acer AspireRevo they will reduce the cost and increase the graphical power in the small form factor PCs.

The AspireRevo is the first desktop to incorporate the Nvidia ION graphics processor and promises much. The price of the PC hasn’t been released yet, but should be at the low end of the scale. It will deliver 1080p HD video and 7.1 audio and with a HDMI port can connect to your TV allowing you to stream TV shows, films and music from the internet and with its extra power will allow you to play games.

It will be controlled from a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor, can have up to 4GB of RAM and a 250GB had drive. Internet connectivity will be through either an Ethernet connection or the 802.11b/g WI-FI. For added storage or connection of your gadgets there are 6 USB ports and a 4-in-1 card reader.

Certainly in these credit crunching times it’s nice to see the affordability applied to the netbooks now being applied to desktops and improving on their performance.

Great gadgets are not only “can’t do without” devices, but they are also stylish. You would feel proud to whip out your latest purchase anywhere in the world without feeling the need to hide round a corner to use it for fear of being isolated as a nerd. When you demonstrate your gadget to onlookers they also need to be hassle free when using otherwise they will soon be walking away yawning. This could well be where the Kisai Denshocku watch could fall down.

A stylish design is unquestionable. A custom made aluminium strap inlaid with stainless steel attaches to a solid aluminium case that has a hairline brushed finish. The watch face is made up of 12 orange acrylic light bars going downwards which, so say the manufacturers, “present the time in a simple and easy to read format”. By pressing the button at the side the bars of light fill up giving you the hour. With another press the bars fill up giving you the tens of minutes and a third press will give you the single minutes.

All this sounds like a neat little toy for those of us who love these futuristic looking devices, but it might be a turn off for people who don’t want to have to count when they want to tell the time.

I don’t smoke myself and I’m not a reformed smoker so I have no idea what keeps people sucking in that cancer causing smoke even with all of the advertising saying how it can kill you. It’s even written on the front of the cigarette packets. But this doesn’t make those people exempt from gadgets being made for them. And those gadgets claiming they are good for your health like the 3 in 1 Cigarette Lighter, Air Purifier and Perfume Sprayer.

This little device is only 13.3cm x 4.3cm x 4.6cm big and is marketed as a healthy smoking machine that is ideal for the car. You push your cigarette into the hole at the front and once it is alight it kicks it back out. While you are driving along and the smoke is filling up your car the Ion Oxygen Hydronium function purifies the air, thus avoiding the stale cigarette smoke smell when you next get in the car, or so that is the theory.

Not also does it do the above, but it contains a 15ml perfume bottle that will make the air smell nice. You have access to the bottle so can put in any fragrance you want. Maybe if you like the smell of cigarette smoke I’m sure someone has created this as a perfume that you can use.

If you want to enhance your driving experience you can pick this up for around $55.

We all crave smaller gadgets for portability. It’s just another excuse to buy the latest devices. And if those very gadgets can fit in our pockets or wallets all the better. Just imagine the looks on your work colleagues faces when you pull it out and then explain what it can do. For those of you who use voice recorders, your latest devices still seem a bit chunky. However, the Ultra-thin Digital Voice Recorder will now change that.

The size of a credit card, this little device will give you everything you need in a digital recorder and you can carry it around with you and not even realise you have it. Integrated into this marvel of technology is a USB connector which flips out allowing you to upload your recordings to your PC. You can also download music to it and use it as an MP3 player.

It comes with 1GB of storage giving up to 69 hours of recording time. The Li-Ion rechargeable battery will last for 4.5 hours on a full charge which can be done via the USB connection. All of the controls are flush mounted so there are no unsightly bulges from the surface.

Coming with the voice recorder are ear buds, for listening to your recordings or music and a neck strap. Ideal for meetings or interviews if you are a budding reporter, this gadget should be in everyone’s wallet.