The Smorgasbord

The other day we had to get an alarm clock for the oldest who’s know in college (who happens to have a problem getting out of bed everyday!).  I was looking for different kinds of alarm clocks online (loud and annoying ones) and I came across these different and unusual ones that seem kind of fitting being back to school time and all! Some of these could make great gifts for college students, friends, and family! Buy one now and you have one less thing to buy at Christmas time.

Puzzle Alarm Clocks that require manual intervention to turn off

The Puzzle Alarm Clock may look childish but try saying that when you have to put it all back together in your morning haze. When you set the alarm, the puzzle pieces pop up and the alarm will not stop till you put the pieces back in their correct spot. By that time, you’re awake and the Puzzle Alarm Clock ‘s job is complete! Puzzle Alarm Clock Features: – Large and easy to Read Backlit Display – Easy to Set – Remote batteries included.- No Snooze Button. – Clock Requires 3 AA Batteries (Not included) – Color pieces may vary.

Extra Loud Alarm Clocks

iHOME has a great loud alarm clock that works well and is a very reasonable cheap price:

If a Sonic Boom alarm clock can’t wake you up, you’re probably asleep for good! In addition to extra-loud beepers, their startling bed-quaking vibrators will rattle you out of any slumber. Your alarm clock will get your attention every time if it’s the Sonic Boom bedside clock with a detachable bed shaker. Variable tone and volume controls let you set the most effective alarm. Position the bed vibrator under the mattress or a pillow and it will pound the bed when it’s time to wake up! Includes AC adapter.

Sonic Boom SBB500ss Sonic Bomb Loud Plus Vibrating Alarm Clock NEW!
	USD 35.48 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-09 09:37:54
SONIC BOOM ALARM CLOCK
	USD 10.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-04 19:26:37
SONIC ALERT BOOM SBB500SS SONIC BOMB LOUD ALARM CLOCK W/BED SHAKER-THE LOUDEST!!
	USD 36.90 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 17:20:32
Sonic Boom Alarm Clock Shaker
	USD 32.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-04 21:10:11
Sonic Alert SBP100 Loud Boom Alarm Clock & Bed Shaker
	USD / 29.40 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 17:43:05
NEW Sonic Boom SBB500ss Sonic Bomb Loud Plus Vibrating Alarm Clock FREE SHIPPING
	USD 36.49 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 18:37:30
Sonic Alert Boom Vibrating Alarm Clock - sb300ss
	USD 10.99 (3 Bids) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-04 20:53:11
Sonic Boom Analog Alarm Clock Super Shaker Extra-Loud
	USD 31.95 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-04 19:25:38
Sonic Boom SBB500ss Bomb Plus Vibrating Alarm Clock NEW
	USD 38.95 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-08 02:25:27
Sonic Boom "Skull" Alarm Clock w/ Bed Shaker for Deaf
	USD 56.95 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-08 03:18:24

Now you will never sleep through the alarm again. This specially designed Timex extra loud alarm clock emits a loud alarm that you won’t be able to ignore – even if you are a sound sleeper or hearing impaired. It features an accurate quartz movement, a sweep second hand, an easy-to-read dial and luminous hands that glow in the dark. 41/2″ x 3 1/4″. Uses 1 C Battery (not included).

DELUXE SCREAMIN' EAGLE ALARM TIMER 110DB EXTRA LOUD NEW
	USD 9.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 18:21:45
Advance Time 6028AT 90 dB Extra Loud Alarm Clock LCD
	USD 10.49 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-09 06:52:08
Timex T126r Extra Loud Digital Alarm Clock / Red
	USD 17.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-11 16:50:57
Extra Loud Vibrating BEDSHAKER ALARM CLOCK wakes you UP
	USD 59.90 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 15:55:46
Extra Loud ALARM CLOCK and Pillow/Bed SHAKING Vibrator
	USD 49.90 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 03:17:48
Sonic Boom Analog Alarm Clock Super Shaker Extra-Loud
	USD 31.95 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-04 19:25:38
Sonic Boom SBA475SS Extra Loud Alarm Clock w/Bed Shaker
	USD 36.95 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-08 19:00:14
New Sonic Boom Analog Vibrating Extra Loud Alarm Clock
	USD 39.95 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 20:40:41
Timex ADVANCE ALARM CLOCK PERP BATTERY LCD EXTRA LOUD
	USD 7.19 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 14:09:02

Annoying Alarm Clocks

I like these annoying alarm clocks the best because you REALLY have to wake up to turn them off. The first is the “helicopter alarm clock” which shoots up in the air when it goes off, and you actually have to find it, and replace it before the alarm goes off.

Crazy Annoying Loud Flying Helicopter Alarm Clock Black
	USD 7.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-04 23:28:09
Flying Helicopter Alarm Clock
	USD 23.62 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-06 16:04:03
FLYIN HELICOPTER PROPELLER DIGITAL ALARM CLOCK WATCH W
	USD 18.47 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 07:37:05
Super ALARM CLOCK Loud Crazy Annoying Flying Helicopter
	USD 14.20 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-11 10:10:44
NEW ALARM CLOCK Loud Crazy Annoying FLYING Helicopter
	USD 16.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-09 02:16:54
9504 Helicopter ALARM CLOCK - New & Boxed
	USD 4.66 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 15:53:57
Crazy Annoying Loud Flying Helicopter Alarm Clock Black
	USD 15.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-08 16:59:43
NEW ALARM CLOCK Loud Crazy Annoying FLYING Helicopter
	USD 16.87 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-08 16:41:44
V5525 New Creative Clock Backlight Flying Lazy Helicopter Alarm Clock Toy Gift
	USD 10.02 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-05 04:06:01
FLYING LCD Flying Helicopter Alarm Clock Watch black
	USD 9.69 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 13:24:51

The second I remember seeing a long, long time ago when the prototype was invented by an MIT student as a project. The “clocky” alarm clock leaps from your nightstand when it goes off and just runs around the room relentlessly going off until you find it, catch it, and turn it off (at which point you should be REALLY awake!).

CLOCKY-Alarm Clock That Rolls Away-Almond/Off White/Cream-EXC USED COND
	USD 19.99 (1 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-06 21:39:51
NEW Clocky Alarm Clock On Wheels Orange by Nanda Home
	USD 39.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-11 02:57:39
Clocky Runaway Alarm Clock with Wheels the alarm Clock you have to chase!!
	USD 19.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-07 10:23:08
Clocky Alarm Clock on Wheels - Orange NEW IN BOX
	USD 29.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-09 23:32:18
Clocky Alarm Clock on Wheels Coco Clocky Brown Brand New In Box
	USD 24.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 02:42:46
Clocky The Robot Alarm Clock - Almond White - by Nanda Home
	USD 64.99 (0 Bid) | Buy It Now End time: 2012-02-10 07:13:10

There are a lot of portable MP3 players on the market, and we review the Nextar T-30 with Christmas looming just months away…

I think a lot of people often wonder what’s out there besides iPod’s in the portable MP3 player space. Nextar now has the Nextar T-30 for under $100, and it’s just a half inch thin, and weighs only a few ounces. You get a 3.5″ display in 320×400, 4GB of internal storage, and 8 hour battery. It has an FM tuner (and recorder), and has a voice recorder and eBook reader. It even has an SD slot!

The iPod is so wildly popular (and still expensive) that competitors are coming out with quality products that have features the iPod doesn’t.  I’ve had iPod owners tell me “I don’t care about FM radio”, but you know, it’s nice to have when and if I want to use it!  And in my opinion Apple is very self serving (and stupid) for not equipping all new generations of iPod’s with SD card slots.  I’m sorry, if you are going to sell me a portable multimedia device capable of viewing movies, pictures, and music – there better be a damn card slot on it so I can interchange between my cell phone, laptop, digital camera, or whatever!  I think for $100 the Nextar is a steal…

Here’s the best prices you can get a Nextar T-30 for now (buy an Xmas gift early!):

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The Color Pattern Geek Clock is the perfect geek gift. You’ve seen those crazy geek clocks and watches that display the time in hexadecimal format. Only hardcore geeks can read those. Why not have a clock that looks as “techie”, but anyone cal learn to read? This Color Pattern Geek Clock is the perfect solution! Everyone that comes over will talk about it – and everyone will be able to tell time using it! Cool and useful.

Check prices on the Color Pattern geek Clock

This would great to buy now and put up for one less Christmas present to buy later!

The LG BH200 Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player is now much more affordable than ever before, and even though Blu-Ray is now pretty much decided on as the standard for surpassing regular DVD’s in HD format – having the “HD-DVD” format option available is a bonus! If you’re wondering what the big deal is about a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc versus a traditional DVD movie – all you really have to know is that it’s displayed at nearly TWICE the resolution! If you thought a traditional or progressive scan DVD movie was a pretty good picture – if you own a flat screen LCD or Plasma television, you OWE it to yourself to upgrade your DVD player to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD!

Having said that – the LG BH200 is the one we picked because it not only plays in full 1080p output, but this player upscales the picture of traditional DVD’s to Full HD as well! It’s already setup to handle the “BD-Live” features touted ahead for Blu-Ray discs, but the LG “Super Blu Player” will also do MPEG’s, H.264 Quicktime, and DTS-HD audio as well. Oh, of course it has HDMI 1.3 out too. It also has S-Video and Component outs, but who would want to use those?

Guess what – it has USB “media host” too so you can set it up to access digital pics and MP3′s. Plugin your external hard drives, portable drives, or flash sticks for quick access and review of your multimedia files. The one thing we noticed was that this thing was practically silent when playing discs. It even has a network ethernet jack!

This would be a good treat for yourself and the old home entertainment center before you have to start saving to buy other people Christmas presents! Or, you could even put it away as an early present for that special someone.

Here are the best prices you can get on the LG BH200 Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player:

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This “Sata HDD Dock” is one of the coolest things ever! I purchased some cables a long time ago where you can hook up a hard drive via USB, and I thought that was pretty cool. But you still have to deal with the cable. If you have hard drives laying around, or you repair PC’s for family and friends this is just the must have geek gadget tool! It’s a hot-swappable dock, and all you have to do is just plugin your drive in! That’s it! You can get them in Sata and eSata, and most will take 2.5″ AND 3.5″ drives – that means notebook drives too! The ones I looked at even had an eSata cable port on the back of the dock for even faster data transmissions! Who needs a flash drive when you have a port for an entire hard drive!

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Ziotek Wireless Night Vision Kit

I came across the Ziotek Wireless Night Vision kit ZT-812C2 the other day, and it’s the first kit I’ve seen with “night vision”. I reviwed some wireless and IP cameras awhile back, but the Ziotek bundle has high quality picture and sound – and it’s weather resistant, meaning you can mount them outdoors. The range of the wireless cameras is over 350 feet, and the system can be used with a TV, VCR, or other monitors or recording devices. You can switch between the two monitors with the push of a button. If you monitor your home or business, this can be a great way – but I love the fact that these are wireless. That’s such an advent of technology – the ability install security without running camera wires all over!

With this two camera set you can literally see in the dark. These compact cameras provide excellent color video with sound and are weather resistant for use outdoors. The desktop receiver has an adjus With this two camera set you can literally see in the dark. These compact cameras provide excellent color video with sound and are weather resistant for use outdoors. The desktop receiver has an adjustable antenna for fine-tuning reception and a remote control so you can switch monitor channels at the push of a button. The cameras can be powered using 9V battery with battery clip or with 110VAC (battery, clip and AC adapter included).

Click to check prices of the Ziotek Night Vision Camera Kit

We just bought an RCA RTD217 home theater for our living room. It was kind of unexpected, but I thought I would blog about it because it was such a good deal. I’m no audiophile by any means, and I’m pretty geeky when it comes to computers and gadgets – and I do have a flat screen LCD hanging on the living room wall. But for some reason we just never got any kind of surround sound or home theater system. Probably because I spent the money on an external hard drive or something else.

So I’m in the store and we see they have some display models on clearance – and I took a look. They had 2 DVD players and one was HDMI output that was pretty cool. But then I saw this RCA surround sound system for half off the retail. It was 250 watts (50 per speaker), a 5 disc DVD changer, AM/FM radio, but the thing that sold me was the fact that it would play CD and DVD data disks, Windows Media, DivX, PhotoCD’s – just about anything. The selling feature was the fact that it had a USB port on the front that said it would accept both USB flash drives or external hard drives!

So at half off we couldn’t resist – we snatched it up and took it home. I hooked it up to the 5 prong component cable to our flat screen, wired up the speakers, and fired it up! It has 4 levels of subwoofer, both surround and stereo modes, DVD’s were awesome (progressive scan), and we sent audio from the TV back to it so the cable could play through it on the AUX channel.

Then we brought in the external hard drive, and that’s when the surprise came in. We plugged in a 300GB Western Digital Mybook and brought up the menu on the TV. MP3′s played fine, pictures were great, but we couldn’t get it to play any video at all. Not Windows Media, DivX, MPG, anything! Arghh! We went back and read the manual and found out that the USB port only plays AUDIO!! Crap! All is not lost because we can still play data discs, but that means burning one every time. I guess we just have to get some rewritables. I still say that at half off it was a good deal. Let this be a lesson to you if you go shopping for a home theater with a USB input jack!

I am however, going to start searching for a stereo system that you can hook up external drives too and play video!! I’ve heard you can “hack” the menus of some DVD players too (through the firmware) and this is something that we’re certainly going to look into.

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If you’re thinking being green, saving gas, and looking futuristic – the “UNO” motorcycle has all that and more!

They call the “Uno” an electric unicycle, but I don’t think that’s actually a good descriptor since it has two wheels (side by side) and it doesn’t require any balancing like a unicycle does. It has an internal gyroscope – like the Segway to keep it balanced. This blog says it’s a Segway with a seat.

There are lots of quick blog posts about the Uno and it’s creator, like this one on MakeZine, but none are quite as in-depth as the Motorcycle Mojo interview. It turns out that they found the Uno at the 2008 International Motorcycle Show in Toronto. The bikes inventor is from Canada as well, Ben J. Poss Gulak. What you might not know is that he is only 18 years old and just now enrolled in MIT.

So, how does one invent something so unique and innovative at such a young age? Well, Ben’s grandfather had a machine shop in his basement, and Ben made plenty of projects like model rockets and trains. In the 9th grade he invented a simple model car that “shot round a track using accelerator coils” that allowed him to represent Canada in an international science fair. His grandfather passed away within a month of that competition, but the machine shop was willed to Ben – who continued to learn and work on projects.

So, for the next international science fair he invented the Uno (version 1). What you see in the picture above is revision 3. The difference being, Ben got a little help creating the body and programming the digital gyroscopes for this version. Follow the Motorcycle Mojo link for the full details. You can read about version 1 of the Uno here on engadget, and here on canoe technology.

The Uno is said to be able to reach 40mph and weighs about 120lbs. It only has one control, an on / off switch. You just lean forward (or back) to move, and it’s powered by 36v wheelchair batteries. To charge – you just plug it into any standard outlet. It has a range of about 2 1/2 hours and would be perfect for commuting. I’ve read revision 3 has a top speed of 25mph for now, but with bigger motors that will increase. Even though the wheels are mounted side by side, they are independantly operated making turning more precise (treehugger).

Ben is currently looking for some investors to get this thing into production, visit the Official Uno Web Site (be warned, it’s kinda under construction a bit).

Is the Uno the only electric unicycle like thingie out there? Well, no, the Bombarider Embrio electric unicycle also exists.

Memory Cards keep getting lost? Get a “Memory Card Case” to organize them so you have them all in the same spot – each and every time!

I can’t tell you how many times I went to the Camera case and all the memory cards were gone. Or the times that I grabbed my digital camera and either no memory card was in it – or the card in it was full of pics (I wasn’t sure if I could erase yet). Flash memory cards are small, and the microSD ones are smaller than a thumbnail.

Of course, there’s already something you can buy to fix this problem – and it’s a “memory card case”. There’a ton of ‘em on eBay – and they don’t cost that much at all. In fact, it’s probably more expensive to replace a lost flash memory card than it is to get the case, not to mention the cost you can’t put on precious memories and pics and if they aren’t on your PC yet. These would make excellent gifts for Christmas or any occasion – you should stock up now!

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Gorillapod – the digital camera tripod with a twist

Looking for an innovative flexible tripod for your digital camera that will go anywhere and work in the worst of situations? I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to temporarity “mount” my digital camera for either a good picture or some short video.

I play in bands out in the bar and you can’t always get right in front of the stage for good pictures or video. And who wants to hold the camera steady for 10 minutes or more anyway? They make these little flexible tripods you can wrap around a post, pole, or nearly anything and then mount your digital camerea temporarily on. If you use your digital camera a lot, I highly recommend you get one of these and stick it in your bag. It’s definitely worth the $20.

Gorillapod uses its 30 adjustable joints to grip to trees, fences or posts–anything it can wrap its legs around–to provide a steady and secure platform for your digicam! No more hunting for flat surfaces at eye-level: just wrap or hang Gorillapod on any handy object and get in the picture! tripod,”camera tripod”,”flexible camera tripod”. Click here for the latest price. This would make a really cool gift idea for just about anyone.

Oh – you can find (different versions and sizes) of them on eBay as well:

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