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I'm just going to leave this here.

I had one of these a while back (this one). I used it all the time with my mobile phone and it was both a great conversation piece and ergonomically and functionally superior to putting the mobile to my head.

Be ware, there are lots of people out there now manufacturing similar things and the quality varies dramatically. The one linked in PP looks to be of pretty poor quality.

The phobile is no longer available as far as I know which is a shame.

Geek watch? Check. Good Looking? Check. Conversation Piece? Check.
http://www.firebox.com/product/3525/Devon-Tread-1-Watch

Taking bets on how long before a USB powered vacuum cleaner comes out of Asia!

Like this?

Please Note:

        This is not a USB device

Yes, like this, only USB powered... like he said...

Taking bets on how long before a USB powered vacuum cleaner comes out of Asia!

Like this?

Firebox sell an electric guitar with a USB connection - I guess it's got a built-in pre-amp, because you can listen with headphones. It's 99 quid (that's about 200 bucks)

Funnily enough was looking at this earlier today - I have one and am likely to get another.

The 'switch' is a beam, not sure what kind, which controls on/off and and brightness for a lamp. You don't flick anything, you just move your hand across and the lamp switches on.

Irritatingly the Mathmos website is arranged such that you can't directly link to a product, but here's a video of the lamp in action on another site. I know the tech isn't the highest in the world, but who cares? It looks fantastic.

Cheers,
Ian

Hasbro has been modifying our foods for years, and the results are horrifying.

No! Coffee passed through the gastrointestinal tract of the Sumatran civet cat within the last four hours has the best falvour.

It's......not.....dead.......yet.....!!!!

http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&acti on=product&pid=1001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV

Layne

Get with the program people. A frog in amber is soooooooo much less tasty than scorpions in lollipops http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&acti on=product&pid=618&src_t=sbk&src_id=lollipop

Curse that headline. I thought this was going to be an article about the inner workings of some extreme version of Buckaroo!.

I was so disappointed when I found out it was about a sci-fi film.

Buck-A-Rooooo!

sensible soccer! - you can even buy a standalone version these days. Get a pile of mates and beer and setup a league. awesome multiplayer game.

There is also worms or scorched earth as other people have mentioned.

Total Annihilation was always a favourite in our house, although you need multiple PC's for that one.

If you trust your mates not to peek then there is the classic Laser Squad and variants.

Sorry, I just had to! Flying Car for sale

You're right though, there is no free lunch and certainly no free energy. Let's not rule out that there are other ways to convert energy into electricity that we haven't discovered yet. I don't think these guys have done it but I'd still like someone of more science background than I to evaluate on its technical merits.

I think the big issue is their wording for "Free Energy" which pretty much totally discredits their findings but the possibility exists that someone that isn't very educated may have found something new totally on accident. This does happen and just because they can't describe it properly doesn't mean that it didn't happen. All the more reason for others to review the data and reproduce the results.

If we could manipulate gravity today, we still wouldn't have flying cars. Several practical working models of flying cars already exist. (http://www.labicheaerospace.com/ and http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&action=product &pid=415)But imagine the dificulty of avoiding mid-air collisions if even half the traffic on the streets in a mid-size to large city were flying around town instead. Without any existing roadways, lanes, signals, etc. We have a hard enough time avoiding accidents WITH all of those restrictions, and on the ground to boot. You'll see flying cars catch on a few years after the market gets comfortable with purely autopilot vehicles, with which the only user interaction is inputing a destination and hitting "go".

Time Tags are pretty cool in that they just clip to your sleeve. Mind you, don't most geeks just use their mobile phones nowadays?

I suggest you try a decent 5.1 headset : http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&action=product &pid=691. Provided you upmix to 5.1 (with creative audio player for example) you'll not want to go back to stereo phones (in your living room anyway, I agree this setup won't exactly work on an ipod in the bus. But in that case your not going to get a quality listening anyway.

The patents on the machines might be expired but the copyrights on the games certainly haven't. Unless they get permission to republish the games from the original copyright holder (such as with the 10-in-1 Atari joysticks), you won't be seeing them in legit shops any time soon.

Buy one of these R/C UFOs and find a fly-weight WiFi camera that it can lift. (Better kill the LED strobes if you're peeping at night.)

The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.

thats pretty cool.. on my infrequent trips back home in the last 25 years, i often look for the old gamer spots, but alas the city has moved on .. though i did one time see a Galaxian t-shirt in the window of the 'fashion shop' that once was a chips&coke deli i spent far too many hot afternoons in, shooting along ..

seems so weird to me now, spotting the cultural cue's and echo's of those games, resonating out into the world, now, for 25 years ..

off to play a little QIX on the all-in-one'r, which i'm sure will follow me into the retirement home/old-persons dwelling-shanty, heh heh ..

In no particular order..

Perhaps it doesn't appeal to the stereotypical geek, but the vibrator. The pocket calculator as well as; The calculator/remote control/radio controlled/FM radio *wristwratch* (surely the pinnacle of minitiaturization!).

Of course, the bonefone: link. The transistor radio. The world receiver radio. The wind-up/clockwork radio/charger. The intimidating maglite flashlight. Glowsticks! Neither electonic, nor moving parts, but who can resist luminecence!

7" 33 1/3rpm vinyl gramophone records; or I can do you even better than that - 7" 33 1/3 rpm plastic gramophone records that were given away as inlays with MSX Magazine, that you'd dub on tape, and you'd "load" programs off of the tape using the regular "data cassette recorder".

CB (Citizen's Band, 27 "megacycle") radio. ZX80. C64. Nuff said. The lava lamp! Duh! The strap-on (wait for it) keyboard (keyboard guitar).

The hearing aid. The answering machine remote control/handheld DTMF tone dialer. Also; the blue box! The minox sub-miniature "spy" camera (as seen in james bond). The SLR Single Lens Reflex camera. Automatic tweezers (They don't work particularly well, but they have a gadget-esque movement)

The portable DVD player. Toys robots (remote controlled, especially; the robosapiens is a good stab at the concept). Magnesium firestarters. (I'm the firestarter!)

Personal Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (P-EPIRBs) RC cars, helicopters. E.g. The translator pen (scans text when you move across it, translates) The penman robotic plotter and of course the closely related concept of the Logo turtle..

The random movement printer (If and when it becomes widely available..) Lego mindstorms (programmable bricks..)

The most important hand-helds historically; the Smith&Wesson and the AK47.

Also, though not an autonomous device, nor mechanical, nominated for achievements in disrupting the global economy, I'd like to recognize bubblejet printer ink, for costing more than its weight in gold or oil.

Aerosol spray canisters; specifically,
every graffitti artist's friend: spraypaint and every gadget-minded geek's friend: deodorant (especially the miniature cans) and of course; aerosol cheese! Also, perhaps slightly more
palatable, mace pepper spray.

The electric toothbrush (with induction-loop-charging-circuit magic!)
Not the greatest gadget in history until you consider it's "dual use" nature, and the fact it's marketed so widely.

Sattellite TV. Not the most portable of gadgets, but come on! Windscreenwiper glasses. (Though more of a chindogu) The mac. The iMac for doing it twice. The aibo.

The "orgasmotron" (actually just a head massager, not at all naughty) Stylish pin clock. The keyghost hardware keystroke logger.

The digital camera. The digital photo frame.
The credit-card sized Anything, but in particular, the cre

Last year I got Robosapien for my Birthday off my fiance, and I was a little disappointed too.
Its movement is very rigid, and the autonomous systems are very basic. However now and again it is fun to switch on and watch him waddle around the room (think Kryten in RedDwarf for style of walking).
The object detection sensors (to stop him bumping into things) are very basic and need quite a strong positive feedback to trigger, so most things are broken by the time it stops.

If they fix these bugs, and add what is truly listed on the article then it looks like its getting really interesting. I'm fascinated by robotic devices, and it is a cool bit of technology.
However, for a robotic pet I recommend Gupi, its cheap, and does act very much like a guinea pig!!
http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&acti on=product&pid=783

I'll go walk around in the rain with my brand new Bright Night Umbrella!

I had been wondering when someone would steal that idea from Blade Runner...

Check out the Kameleon. It's a multifunction remote control, not a touch screen, but it has numerous Star Trek-like features, like dynamically reconfigurable display, a pleasing rubbery feel instead of a slick glassy surface, etc.

More info on the new game can be found at Firebox.com (link courtesy of matteo bittanti's blog).

It's not quite a processor...

The Canon A60 has a huge amount of flash memory, so it records 3 minutes of continuous video before it has to stop and save the video to the CF card. Copying to CF is incredibly fast too, less than a second, so it must be caching it to the card or something, but that allows you to just start taking video again with that small ~1 second pause.

CNET really hated the SiPix DV100. They said the audio sucks, which explains why most the sample videos on firebox have music over the sound. I really feel sorry for the guy that took the Car ballet video, looks like he was on vacation when he took that, bet he was pretty upset when he got home and saw that horrible video quality and sound.

And don't tell me the videos had to be compressed for easy download, they're sample videos, they should be the best possibly quality to sell the product.

Take a look here for a handheld camera which can be upgraded to use 128mb SD cards. In it's standard 8mb form, it can take 2 minutes of low res footage at 15fps.

Just a comparison. We got one, it's really pretty good for the price.

Personally, an authentic Vietnamnese ice coffee rocks

Not the Vietnamnese weasel coffee?

One of their features is the user/product photos. The one for Octane Shower Gel was shown on their main page. Of course, right below it was the nice request for "videos taken of/with this product"... Only 10 pounds for a promo tape using a shower gel product. What some people will do to get cheap porn.

FireBox is great for gadgets and toys, run by a couple of real geeks, and no I dont work for them, family member etc, I'm just a customer.

When you want the best, you want coffee that's already been eaten by weasels.

Firebox's Weasel Coffee

I've already bought some for my (sadly ex-) boss, who was proud of his weasel status and not under fond of the odd cappuccino.

D.

• The Puzzle Alarm Clock (yes they are out of stock right now but this changes frequently).
• The BioBrite Sunrise Alarm Clock - I actually own this thing and recommend it. It makes waking up in the morning about twice as easy.

Anyways, just because your alarm clock sucks doesn't mean every one does :D

Like this you mean?

...and lots of it.

The Airzooka here looks a lot more fun, being able to fire invisible balls of air at people at around 20ft (& ruffle hair, etc) and it can do smoke rings too, IIRC. Check out the 'Airzooka action video' near the bottom :)

Atari is still making money off of a number of those games. I agree it would be incredibly cool, but from their perspective, why on earth would they want to give the source away to the public?

I have one of these.

Target, 15 bucks or so. Money WELL spent. How long has it been since YOU held a joystick like that?

perv.

What I want for Christmas? To help lead my nieces down the path of geekdom. To inspire and educate them with some of the coolest toys around.

1. A nice chess set
2. The Hobbit + Lord of the Rings (the books)
3. A telescope and a star map

   And the coolest thing I've seen in a while...

4. The Vectron Blackhawk

Oh yeah, it's gonna be a sweet Christmas!

I see this one (the tiny l'espion camera), but see no supplier in the U.S. (anyone know of one?), which appears inexpensive and very light (40 grams!).

There's also the SiPix StyleCam Blink, which is about $40, and slightly larger but takes higher-res pictures, too.

What other tiny ones would be suitable for tossing on a kite (whether or not the two I've named would be), and what would be the best way to trigger them?

timothy

A cheaper device for Atari aficionados...

There's something like this already available in the mega joy 2 - since the games are all unlicenced, they all have different names, but you get three-times the names.

I wonder what it would be like playing chess stoned. You'd probably make amazing insights into the other players strategy (they're basing their attack from Darth Vader's plan in The Empire Strikes Back!)... all wrong of course.

Alternatively we could numb the grand masters brain cells with alcohol. http://www.firebox.com/product.php?id=115

What are you looking to get? Unless your friends/family are all geeks, they will probably wnat to get you something practical, so the trick is to get cool practical stuff. I recommend either Crate & Barrel or Williams and Sonoma. Both has tons of good stuff, and you'll need a lot of kitchen stuff after the marriage. (Actually, I confess, W&S is on the list because I'm a cooking geek, if there is such a thing).

For those that want to get you something different, register at Home Depot for power tools (MORE POWER! I need MORE POWER!) and other hardware. Finally, although they don't have a registry, Firebox is a great site for geek stuff.

Congratulations on getting married!
--
He had come like a thief in the night,

Well I'd been sitting here for the last month trying to think of what to ask people to get me having decided that the race boat is probably outside of my families budget, but I was distressed to see my dream gizmo not on the list, how come the automatic solar powered lawn mower never made it? It can mow the lawn whilst I hack away at the pute.

Well I'd been sitting here for the last month trying to think of what to ask people to get me having decided that the race boat is probably outside of my families budget, but I was distressed to see my dream gizmo not on the list, how come the automatic solar powered lawn mower never made it? It can mow the lawn whilst I hack away at the pute.

Here's the same idea but on a programmable Frisbee

Will wonders never cease.

They've been selling this at firebox.com for a while now, for £169.95, in a choice of colours.

How is this "news"?

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