Gadgets that Pay for Themselves

Coin Sorter
A list has been posted of 25 gadgets that will pay for themselves. This is a really cool list that I found linked over at coolest-gadgets and does make you realise that you can spend money to actually save money. Items such as battery chargers and rechargable batteries cover their costs with in months of having them. How many of these money saving gadgets do you own?

The list can be found at Thesimpledollar and has some interesting points like a laptop that you use at home on battery and charge in the office could pay for it’s self in saved electricity each year.

One I didnt see on their which is a big saving for me is saving 5 quid a month cutting my own hair 🙂 My clippers only cost about 30 quid and they have been in use well over 5 years.. thats a 270 pound saving!

Via: Coolest-Gadgets

Universal Charging in China

USB Charging
China are to be praised for this decision. They made a rule that in China, all mobile phones are to use a standardized USB charger. This is a GREAT move forwards for China and I hope that all mobile phone companies follow suit and do this. This basically means that any mobile can be used with 1 charger and not a charger for every phone. It will be very handy for those who either forget to charge their phone, or want to charge their device via their laptop or another USB device.

Via: SlashGear

Ricavision Vista remote

Vista Remote
The ricavision vista remote has a 2.5 inch colour screen and get this… a 100 meter operating radius. The ricavision remote will be able to control Media center and will be hitting the shops for 200 dollars early next year.

Via: Fosfor

Wiimote Controlled Car

Wiimote Controlled Car
We just love the Wii hacks here for the Wiimote control. The latest I came across today was the Wiimote controlled car. It comes from a german modder who made a script for the wiimote enabling movement of the wiimote to control the car. It can control the car in the basic moves which are backwards, forwards, left and right.

The system works with the help of a laptop and a bluetooth dongle. Pair up the wiimote with the laptop and run the script on the laptop. Then the script passes signals on to the remote control via a serial cable which inturn controlls the car.

Via: TechEBlog

Kokuyo Mouse and Laser

Kokuyo Laser Mouse
The Kokuyo mouse is designed as a defense weapon for those using a PC with important data on it. The laser is the weapon that can be drawn at any time to warn off foes. Ok, I lied. The Kokuyo mouse is handy for those who do powerpoint presentations and need to point out something on the screen. Unfortunatly it is not cordless and it seems it might not be as useful as it is meant to be. The laser has a range of 25 meters and no more details are available yet.

Via: UberGizmo

POV Christmas Tree

POV Tree
You have probably walked through an airport to see one of those fancy spinning screens which seems to always face you. You have also probably seen the frisby with a bank of LEDs on which you can throw and it spells out words in the air. The POV Christmas tree works on a similar principle. It is a bank of LEDs in the shape of a tree. The LEDs spin around a central point fast and it shows the appearance of a christmas tree out of LEDs. They are cool to watch. The tree is powered by 9V batteries and full instructions can be found at the link at the bottom of this post.

For those of you who are not sure what POV means, it is persistance of vision.

Via: OhGizmo
Instructions: Make

Inspired by DS – Built by Ben Heck

Atari VCSp
Ben Heck has created a new Atari and this time it is inspired by the Nintendo DS. The device that was cut up and reshaped was the Atari VCSp. A step by step guide is included on the website for those of you who are electronically minded and want to try this out. The result is a kind of chunky DS like device with a fold out screen and a cartridge slot at near side. It is amazing to see the size of DS cartridges compared to Atari cartridges and the amount they have shrunk… also take in to consideration that the amount of data stored on a DS will be larger then that of the Atari cartridge.

Via: BenHeck

8Gb SDHD Card

8Gb SDHD
Ultra Products have released an 8Gb SDHD card which costs just 150 dollars. It has a transfer speed of 2Mb/second but the shear size and small price is pretty cool. The card is only compatible with a number of readers, so do check first that you have an SDHD compliant device before forking out 150 dollars for one of these.

Via: Engadget

Samsung SPH-B5800

Samsung SPH-B5800
Samsung has come up with a nice looking mobile phone. It has GPS built in and offers a number of other features such as an MP3 player, DMB functionality, a dictionary with 330000 words, audio book reader, document viewer and of course a digital camera. The digital camera is a little on the low resolution side at 2 mega pixels but I doubt that would turn anyone off who was interested in this great looking phone.

Via: UberGizmo

Aliph Jawbone Headset

Aliph Jawbone Headset
The Aliph Jawbone headset looks like a pretty cool Bluetooth enabled headset. It’s a sleek red, black or silver colour and uses noise canceling technology which uses a number of microphones to detect noise around you. It will cost around 120 dollars and is available from Cingular. The guys over at slashgear have a few more details about the sleek looking Aliph and is well worth checking out.

Via: SlashGear

XBox and XBox 360 Chopped Up

XBox
The XBox and XBox apparantly are not quite the right shape for some people… so someone decided it was time to get a very high powered jet and cut it like a hot knife in butter. The jet was used to chop up the 2 xboxes and it came up with some interesting results.

Check out all the images over at MAKE which show the process and the final images of what happened.

Via: Engadget

HTC Athena

HTC Athena
This is one seriously nice looking mobile device. Slashgear has posted a number of images of the device which can be checked out at the link below. HTC have created some excellent devices in the past and according to the spec sheet we are in for a treat with this device.

Via: SlashGear