Christmas Gadgets & Gizmos

Flashing Mobile Christmas Stickers

Here's a nice bit of gaudy, tat for your mobile phone this Christmas. Just what we like. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without annoying flashing lights everywhere, and we'd certainly be chuckling with idiotic delight every time our little phone stickers lit up if we had some. Stick a Flashstick  on the back of your phone (so long as you've got an internal aerial) and when a call comes through the LEDs light up. Once you've answered the call, the flashing stops to be replaced by a more migraine-friendly glow.

Read [Via SiteSpecific via Textually]

Budget personal DVD

Trouble with those personal DVD players is that they are normally too darned expensive. So hat’s off to Firebox for delivering one that not only delivers top notch sound and picture quality, but also comes at a giveaway price.

The Shinco SDP-1731a comes with a five, seven or even nine-inch screens, costing £150, £200 and £400 respectively. The player not only spins DVDs, it will also play back CDs including  any you might have that are loaded with MP3s or JPEG images files.

The larger screen versions also come with flash extras like DiVx playback and card slots.

BUY HERE

MP3 player for swimmers

Over the past few months we have written about several waterproof MP3 players, though we have never really expected to see a product launch in the UK.

Well Oregon Scientific has obviously been listening to the silent pleas of TD's swimming-obsessed team for it has lined up a September launch the £100 Oregon Scientific MP120 waterproof MP3 player.

The small flash-memory based device has 128MB of storage - enough for a couple of hours of Beach Boys tunes - and, apparently, you can even take it surfing.

Nearly world's smallest MP3 player

We've already told you about the waterproof MP120 MP3 player that Oregon Scientific has just launched, but the company also has a number of other new products in its music player range. We popped over to the launch last night to see what was on offer.

Probably the most eye-catching player on display was the MP100 (pictured), which, at only 28g and measuring just 40 x 28 x 18mm, is a serious contender for the much-coveted title of "World's Smallest MP3 Player". Whatever, it's certainly a very tiny device indeed. The blue backlit LCD display provides basic track info, while the 128MB player has room for around 2 hours of MP3s or 4 hours of WMA files. The MP100 costs £80 and is available in four colours: orange, blue, black and titanium.

Vivitar camera/personal video player

Firebox’s Vivitar Multimedia PVR is a complete multimedia experience in one unit. It works as an MP3 player, digital camera, camcorder and portable video player all in one device. The player lets you record from pretty much any video source and play back movies on the 3.5-inch LCD display. There’s 20GB of internal memory, but you can add more via the SD slot. The 3.1-megapixel camera/camcorder module is detachable and can be swivelled round so you can take pictures and videos of yourself. You can obviously also use it as a digital photo album for viewing stored images. A very interesting device indeed. But, inevitably, it’s pricey at £399.95.

BUY FROM HERE

iStation iPod speakers

Logic3 has rocked the boat a little with its iPod speaker system - it's gone and stuck a hyphen in between the i and the Station. Still, that's the only even slightly controversial aspect of the i-Station speaker set, with the colour and design very much in keeping with the Apple ethic (even if those buttons do look a little clunky next to iPod's lovely smooth touch wheel). The speakers will set you back £49.99 and include a subwoofer and 3D surround sound. The dock will work with both iPod and iPod mini players and will recharge batteries as it goes. If you fancy doing a bit of old-style ghetto blaster shoulder-holding, the unit can be powered by four AA batteries and it weighs 400g so you shouldn't be crippled after a day of carrying (just deaf). The speaker set can be synchronised with your PC or Mac via USB and FireWire and will also work with other music players such as MP3, MiniDisc and CD players.

BUY FROM HERE

Leather iPod cases

If you're looking for something that's going to keep your iPod safe from harm, these leather cases are a pretty good bet. They're made by Exspect, a company that specialises in cases of all kinds - including CD cases and laptop bags. There's two versions of the cases available. The EX500 has a gun metal finish and costs £19.99, while the EX510 has a black leather finish and will set you back £29.99. The front face plate of the case is detachable so you can get at the control wheel. The company also makes a case for iPod minis. It's a similar design to the standard cases, but you can choose from a choice of blue, pink, green and silver lanyards so you can match it to your iPod. Obviously, the company has decided that there's not enough people buying the gold one to make it worth their while making a strap to match that.

Exspect

NHJ video player

Continuing that long and annoying tradition of replacing all 'a's for @ signs, the V@MP Media player is a 60GB MPEG-4 player from NHJ (the same innovative company that brought you the Wrist Watch TV and those Bluetooth headphones). The player comes in a rather retro-looking black finish, or in every gadget-lover's current favourite silver hue. The 2.5-inch 60GB memory can hold up to 30,000 music files, around 100,000 JPEG images, or 60 hours of MPEG-4 movies. There's also a memory card slot (SD/MMC) if you get greedy for more. It's got a 3.5-inch screen for movie and picture viewing and a built in TV tuner in the docking station so you can record TV straight onto it.

GadgetShop is selling it now for £399.

New old phones

The British obsession with nostalgia continues apace. While Stuart Maconie is no doubt somewhere working on the first draft of the script for "I Love the Noughties" you can feed your love of all things 80's and 90's with an old mobile from Retrofone. The UK company has gathered up all your discarded 8210s and Z7s and is now hoping to sell them back to you to grab its own slice of the nostalgia pie (probably Black Forest Gateau - remember those?! Ah, those were the days. etc).

Prices start at around £15 for a handset like the Nokia 2110 up to about £125 for a Nokia 6310i.

Get yours here. [via CoolHunting]

Oregon's budget cam

Oregon Scientific's DV100 is the latest flash memory-based video/still camera to be launched in the UK. The 4-megapixel camera costs £200 and has 16MB of internal memory as well as an SD/MMC slot. It can record video footage as MPEG4 or ASF files at 30 frames per second. Other features include automatic white balance, various exposure and focus settings and a 6x digital zoom.

Oregon