So you have recently discovered the wonders of VoIP and have managed to track down your long lost relatives who are currently residing across 6 continents to hold a Skype conference on a weekly basis, catching up on old times. The eternal question then pops up – which is the best gadget to purchase for your VoIP needs that will not add unnecessary clutter to your desktop while offering great voice quality in a nice looking package? Gizoo claims to have the answer with the Street Mouse VoIP handset. It looks very much like the well-loved Beetle and retails for an affordable £21.95.

What does the Street Mouse VoIP have to offer for the casual user? Apart from the cute looks, it comes with fully functional LEDs in the car’s headlights for that extra novelty factor. Not only that, the Beetle-inspired design is there for a reason, and is surprisingly ergonomic in nature. From the mousing perspective, you get an industry standard 800 dpi optical mouse, a couple of buttons, and a single scroll wheel for easy desktop navigation.

As a VoIP handset, the Street Mouse VoIP works pretty well, where the pair of included headphones is plugged into the 3.5mm jack which is located in the front right wheel. The built-in microphone also works pretty well from an arm’s length. Does the Street Mouse VoIP warrant a purchase? The answer is in the affirmative only if you do not have a VoIP handset already.

via: coolest-gadgets

October 23, 2006 Text-to-speech converters suck, or at least they used to suck – these days the latest converters such as the US$30 Odiogo are remarkably good at giving the written word a coherent news reader voice. Odiogo downloads your favorite RSS news and blog feeds and converts the text into spoken word so it becomes available via an MP3 player, when you want. Odiogo converts any RSS news and blog feed into a Podcast! As seen in the pages of the Red Ferret Journal.

This video shows a very simple, yet ingenious way to save the planet from destruction by a giant meteor.

You’ve got a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and wireless speakers, so why are you still connecting to your monitor with a cable? What are you, some kind of luddite? You need a wireless monitor connector, like the new WID101 from Teq Gear. This device connects the DVI port on your PC to the one on your monitor over an encrypted 802.11 a. g or b network, squishing the video data down to fit. It’ll run at resolutions up to WXGA (1366 by 768 pixels; good enough for a 17-inch LCD screen) and will set you back $995. – Richard Baguley

WID101 [TeqGear]

Why wouldn’t women in Korea also have the right to customized domestic appliances such as washing machines? There are companies such as Mugen which turn any Honda into a fighter jet, so why not…

Ladies, Samsung offer a new nice and bright RED washing machine, which is, be prepared for a shock, a creation of Andre Kim! Maybe that doesn’t ring a bell, but Andre Kim is a very well known designer in Korea. Even Michael Jackson calls on her. Considering its shitty taste, that’s probably not a good reference, but it’s better than nothing…
Anyway, if you like fancy gilded and kitsch stuff, this washing machine is right for you.
via : akihabaranews

SolidAlliance came up with an original idea and throws in a competition at the same time. If you’re like many other people and think there are not enough original USB keys, that could change quickly…
SolidAlliance offers to print your creations on this small USB key. You need to send them your design on a CD, and you may be surprised to see that design end up on their keys.
If the idea is interesting, I would have liked to see a blank model upon which you could draw anything you want.
via: akihabaranews

Alright, this seems really pointless, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. It would have been even cooler if it could just assemble a little faster. Created by Raffaello D’Andrea and Max Dean, the Robotic Chair is meant to be an art piece that employs robotic technology. By communicating with a computer, the disassembled chair is able to find its way to the rest of its parts and joins them back together.

“Some people thought it was a hoax, or fabricated or computer animation,” D’Andrea said. “Others thought it was remote-controlled. The reality of it is, it’s not. It’s a self-contained system that does what it does.”

“It’s continually reassembling itself,” he also said. “Somewhat like what we do in our own lives. We fall apart and put ourselves back together.”

Ahhh…artsy fartsy people, I can never seem to understand them

via : hiptechblog

This one’s for all the parents out there who will inevitably have to deal with their child going through the ‘I wanna be a drummer’ phase. Instead of having to shell out a ridiculous amount of money for a drumset that will be forgotten in 2 months why not instead shell out a slightly-less ridiculous amount for this electronic version.

Besides taking up far less floor space than a real set this USB drum kit is also completely silent save for the quiet thumps of drumsticks on the rubber pads. It connects to your PC via included software where the actual drum hits are converted into one of 233 realistic drum samples which can be heard through the computer’s speakers or even better, a pair of headphones. The kit’s six playing pads are also velocity sensitive to adapt to your playing or music style and can be even be choked (stopped) by grabbing them with your hand.

The USB Drum Kit can be found at Firebox.com for $244.10.

[ USB Drum Kit ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]