gift guide 2009 Archive

  • Review: Kensington Car Mount with Sound Amplified Cradle for iPhone

    Review: Kensington Car Mount with Sound Amplified Cradle for iPhone

    Short Version: A solidly-built iPhone car dock whose unique, no-batteries-required sound amplification system actually works fairly well provided you get your phone’s microphone and speaker lined up correctly. Review: Let me start out by saying that I’m leery of iPhone docks that cost $40 and up without including built-in charging features. Thankfully, Kensington has recently dropped the [...]

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  • Gift Guide: Gadgets for the Home

    Gift Guide: Gadgets for the Home

    Gadgets need not be relegated to the darkest corners of your home office or rumpus room. There are plenty of options that can easily blend in to the less techno-centric areas of your humble abode. In that spirit, here's a list of relatively inconspicuous gadgets for the home.

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  • Stocking Stuffer: Fake pregnancy test

    Stocking Stuffer: Fake pregnancy test

    I'm just reporting, of course, so let's not kill the messenger. Don’t think of this fake pregnancy test as a cruel/hilarious joke to play on your significant other but as more of a relationship barometer.

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  • Giveaway: Olive No 4 Hi-Fi Digital Stereo

    Giveaway: Olive No 4 Hi-Fi Digital Stereo

    You like music, right? How about CDs? Do you still have CDs? Don’t have any cash this week? Did you spend a lot of money on presents for the kids already? Do you want one of these Olive No 4 Hi-Fi? Am I asking too many questions? Yes? No? Well today we have one of [...]

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  • Sunday Giveaway: Monster Miles Davis Headphone Pack

    Sunday Giveaway: Monster Miles Davis Headphone Pack

    Boobledee ooh ooh woo woo ha lala! We're coming at you with a fancy Monster Miles Davis Headphone pack. The kit includes Monster Miles Davis Tribute Jazz In-Ear Headphones, three albums, and a sassy print. Take the A train past the jump to figure out how to win.

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  • Review: Buckshot Controller for Wii

    Review: Buckshot Controller for Wii

    Short Version: Looking for a solidly-built gun accessory for the Wii? This is it right here. Looking for a gun controller accessory that grants you easy access to the D-pad, 1, 2, +, –, and Home buttons on the Wii remote? Keep on moving. Review: I opened up the Innex Buckshot Controller for Wii and was [...]

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  • The Final Commenting Day: The last step to winning a SMART Board

    The Final Commenting Day: The last step to winning a SMART Board

    Finally. We’re done. All you have to do is comment on this post and, presumably, all the other posts in this series, and then you’ll be eligible to win a SMART Board for your home, office, or school. Sorry for making you guys jump through so many hoops but I thought this would be a [...]

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  • Review: Shutter Buddy

    Review: Shutter Buddy

    So we got a Shutter Buddy a few days ago and we gave it a try. What’s a Shutter Buddy, you ask? Well, it’s kind of a satellite dish looking thing that you attach to a point and shoot. It fits over a DSLR, but not quite as well as you’d expect. You waggle the camera [...]

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  • Disappointing Gifts, 1986 Edition: The Etch A Sketch Animator

    Disappointing Gifts, 1986 Edition: The Etch A Sketch Animator

    Gather ‘round, kids. Gather ‘round. I’m going to tell you the story of a disappointing Christmas gift from back before many of you were born. With every blog on the internet doing year-end and best-of lists, I thought I might try to shake things up a bit by telling you about an overhyped and underwhelming [...]

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  • Reviews: Crazy Japanese Kit Kats

    Reviews: Crazy Japanese Kit Kats

    For some reason JList sent me a box of Kit Kats. These aren’t just any Kit Kats. They’re Japanese Kit Kats. If the Japanese are good at anything, it’s making the familiar inexplicably strange. So I decided to open up all of these Kit Kats and try them for you. I came away somewhat disappointed – [...]

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  • Stocking Stuffer: PowerGenix NiZn rechargeable batteries

    Stocking Stuffer: PowerGenix NiZn rechargeable batteries

    There’s a fine line between giving regular batteries as a gift and giving rechargeable batteries as a gift. Giving someone regular batteries is a dumb gift. Might as well give them a sheet cake. Either way, the gift is a consumable and doesn’t last long. Rechargeable batteries, on the other hand, last quite a bit longer.

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  • Stocking Stuffer: Kensington Travel Battery Pack and Charger

    Stocking Stuffer: Kensington Travel Battery Pack and Charger

    The general idea behind most of Kensington's products seems to be to perform one main task and then follow up with one or two secondary and thoughtful convergence features. In the case of the Travel Battery Pack and Charger for iPhone and iPod touch, you get a high-capacity backup battery that doubles as a horizontal stand for watching movies.

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  • Review and giveaway: Thirsty Light Snowflake

    Review and giveaway: Thirsty Light Snowflake

    Short Version: Much like the original Thirsty Light, the Thirsty Light Snowflake is a single purpose gadget designed to tell you when your Christmas tree is thirsty. Drop the dongle into your tree’s water, and hang the ornament somewhere on the tree. It blends in nicely with your other ornaments, and blinks when there’s no [...]

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  • Heated portable chair costs $120, makes being outside slightly less miserable

    Heated portable chair costs $120, makes being outside slightly less miserable

    If you've ever spent an extended period of time outside during the late fall or winter watching some sort of parade, sporting event, or interpretive dance, you'll have no doubt A) had plenty of time to re-examine your life and B) wished you’d brought a chair. Now add C) to that list: wished the chair you didn’t bring was heated.

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  • USB to SATA 2.5-inch hard drive cable

    USB to SATA 2.5-inch hard drive cable

    There's usually a lot of unnecessary foreplay that goes along with accessing an old hard drive just to pull a few files off of it. You have to find your external drive enclosure, you might have to make sure you have a screwdriver to open it up, and… well that's pretty much it but that can take the better part of a morning if you're not organized.

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