You may miss the bus or get splashed by white van men speeding through puddles on your way to work but one of the worst things to happen in the morning has to be over-doing your toast.
No matter how often you set that dial, someone’s always moved it by the time you use the toaster again and the result? Imperfect toast and wasted bread.
Well, worry no more. This see-thru toaster will ensure your bread is just how you like it, everytime.
Keep an eye on your bread so that you can pop it up when it looks exactly the way you like it. It currently needs a bit of tweaking but we’ll let you know when it’s available for toasting heaven!
Meet the Chairman. We’re talking VIP but Very Important Phone as opposed to Person, because the Chairman is a new phone with a difference.
The clue is in its maker - Ulysse Nardin, watch maker extraordinaire. This phone takes top-of-the-range watch technology and teams it up with a touchscreen giving us a stylish hybrid handset. Its built-in battery is charged by the kinetic energy generated by the moving rotor so that your phone charges without you even noticing, while it’s working.
But if you thought this was a gimmick phone, think again. Ulysse Nardin have created an interesting multi-touch smartphone. Complete with Wi-Fi, 5 megapixel camera and 2.8 inch screen, the Chairman certainly sounds like a phone to look out for. Release dates and price are currently under wraps but we’ll keep you posted.
People have been talking about all the technology in your house communicating with each other for years but Microsoft’s taken the bull by the horns and done something simple about it.
They’ve teamed up with Californian company Fugoo to create a Windows-based platform which can be plugged into a whole heap of gadgets so that they can all talk to each other. And the result? An alarm clock which can talk to your coffee machine and tell it you’ve woken up and to start brewing your coffee, not only that, it can remind you of your first appointment and calculate how long it will take you to drive to work based on current traffic conditions. Your digital photo frame will also be able to sync up with your PC and display your favourite photos, stocks and shares info or the latest news as you slurp that freshly made coffee. The possibilities are endless. Pretty nifty, hey?
So what does it all cost? The system will be released in the US in June and will set you back a cool $99. The rest of the world will have to wait until 2010.
The guys behind the technology are already working on future uses for the gadget, envisaging “a refrigerator that can generate a weekly shopping list based on staples that have been used up, and then place a delivery order at a local supermarket’s web site. Or a lawn sprinkler that checks the weather forecast for the possibility of rain before turning itself on”. Watch this space!
If there’s one thing in your house that you thought they’d never computerize, would it be a tap? Well, the guys at iHome have decided that a touchscreen tap with face recognition is the future in household gadgetry. I have to admit, this is pretty cool. The SmartFaucet recognises your face and then remembers exactly what water temperature and pressure you like. And if you get bored while you soak? Just use SmartFaucet to catch up on a few emails or find out how your calendar’s shaping up for the weekend.
How annoying is changing phones and having to get all your contacts onto your new handset? Moving all your contacts onto your phone memory or SIM, taking phones apart, swapping SIMS (if your new handset’s not locked), yadda yadda. It’s got a lot quicker with the use of software and a computer but don’t you just wish it could be instant? Well now, thanks to this little gadget, it is. The Instant Cell Phone Backup just plugs into your old phone and at the touch of a button, all your contacts are stored, ready to be loaded onto your new handset.
Then just plug it into your new handset, use the aforementioned magic button and you’re done. In the words of Aleksandr the meerkat “simples”.
What do you do when your sense of direction is about as accurate as a Fred Goodwin’s in a financial crisis? You buy a pair of these sat nav shoes, that’s what. Now I know I’ve talked about super shoes before but these are pretty cool. Just enter the postcode in your heel and you’re away.
Get directions from the LED DNav Bubble on the front of your left shoe which will point in the direction you need to walk and beep if you’re heading the wrong way. You can also use a Bluetooth headset so that you don’t walk around sounding like that guy out of Police Academy and you will hear instructions like “bear left at the next McDonalds”.
It runs on two rechargeable AA batteries and it’s speakers are waterproof so jumping in puddles is still very much on the cards. And do you remember the robot legs we featured a couple of months ago? These would go perfectly on the end of them for completely effortless travel!
So next time someone tells you to get lost, just pull up your trouser leg, show off your shoes and walk away, content with the notion that getting lost is very much a thing of the past.
If you have a tiny kitchen and thought that you never be able to fit in the luxury of a dishwasher, think again. The Gota dishwasher is so tiny it can fit on your worktop. And it’s a nice little energy and water-saver too.
It’s been designed by Ibsen Caldas and is made from ABS polycarbonate. The pre-wash steams up all the dishes and then saves the water from the steam process to wash the dishes later on in the cycle. Its internal tank stores enough water for a round of cleaning.
It’s a great gadget for singles or couples without children. They’ll even be really handy for holiday homes. It has enough room for six plates and six glasses so whatever you use it for, it’ll certainly beat washing up! No news about when we might be able to get our hands on one yet but we’ll let you know.
Now here’s a new way to use a phone – with your feet. Aussie inventor, Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen has created a phone that sits in the heel of one of your shoes. So instead of fumbling around to find your phone in your bag, just slip off your shoe and flip the heel. Dr. Paul is frequently seen around his campus in Flinders University, Adalaide doing just that. And the phone has proved so popular that Dr. Paul is thinking of starting selling them online this year.
As soon as you attach a Bluetooth headset, it’ll be a whole lot more viable and a great place to hide a phone from thieves!
But apart from being a cool accessory, Dr Gardner-Stephen’s thought of how it can be used for the good of humankind. He is confident that his phone in a shoe (I’m sure there’ll be a nice catchy name soon – perhaps a “shone” or a “phoo”?), could be used to monitor patients’ vital stats such as blood pressure and pulse via a bluetooth device which will sit in the other heel. The info can then be automatically sent through to doctors wiithout the patients having to come into hospital.
It will also be used to tell emergency workers when a patient has had a fall by monitoring shocks and orientation changes. The shoe will then automatically call emergency services and put the whole conversation on speakerphone so that the patient can communicate when they’re in trouble.
So why house this genius idea in a shoe?
“Shoes are well accepted by most people, and are simple to put on and take off.”
But that’s not all of it…they’re also ideal for charging the device as “our feet, and therefore our shoes, conduct large forces as we stand and walk, and energy can be harvested to charge the device during ordinary activity.”
So it can all be recharged by walking or even standing still – now that’s my kind of gadget!
There’s a new dual screen laptop on the block and it comes courtesy of gScreen Corp. The two screens on the G400 are of equal size – both 15.4 inch backlit LEDs, so you can work seamlessly on a very spacious canvass. The G400 also comes with up to 8 GB of RAM, up to 500GB hard drive, 6 USB 2.0 ports, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz T9600 or P8400 2.26-GHz and the Quadro FX 2700M or GeForce 9800M GT from Nvidia.
Not too shabby. Of course, the double vision does mean that it’s a bit on the heavy side. The G400 weighs in at 3.49kg and is due to be released on 25th February. No word on price yet but we’ll keep you posted.
Fancy thousands of radio stations from all over the world in your car? Wish you could listen to the best US rock stations or the most popular Australian channels from the comfort of your own motor. Well, the waiting’s over - the internet car radio was unveiled by Blaupunkt and miRoamer at CES earlier this year and proved a big hit.
The gadget will bring you thousands of global radio stations which you can preset and listen to through the panel in your dashboard. At the moment, internet connectivity is through an external device such as 3G/HSDPA/HSPA devices which then connect to the panel via Bluetooth but later models will come with a built-in modem. However, this Bluetooth connectivity means that you can also access your phone, address book and sat nav through the radio. Anyone else thinking Knight Rider?
The Blaupunkt/miRoamer internet car radio will be launched in Europe late this year for around £275 US $399. It’s sure to be the first in a line of new and exciting in-car technology.
How annoying is changing 
panel in your dashboard. At the moment, internet connectivity is through an external device such as 3G/HSDPA/HSPA devices which then connect to the panel via Bluetooth but later models will come with a built-in modem. However, this Bluetooth connectivity means that you can also access your phone, address book and 
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