The Week in Gadgets.

We take a brief look at something for everyone this week with kids’ spy toys, dog gadgets and photo equipment.

Fans of the Parrot AR Drone quadricopter and of not spending £300 might like to check out the Hawk Eye – an indoor video camera helicopter. Whilst lacking in the AR Drone’s iPhone enhanced augmented reality “omg are you controlling that with your iPhone?!?!” factor the £59.99 helicopter can record 5 minutes of colour video at 320×240 or many more photos at 640*480. Even better, instead of replaceable batteries, the Hawk Eye charges through your computer. It also provides free access to an easy to use online video-editing platform aimed at kids but open to anyone really into taking low res aerial images for fun. The Hawk Eye will be available in late November and is clearly aiming to work its way under some Christmas trees.

If you are really into playing with spy stuff then head on over to spynethq.com which has a range of inexpensive spy toys for children that are more fun than anything you would find in GCHQ. There is the SpyNet Video watch (£49.99), which features on board video, audio and photo recording capabilities, a Flex Neck Snake Cam (£24.99), a Voice Recording Spy Pen (£19.99) a Voice Changer (£9.99) and most intriguingly some Rear View Spy Glasses that give you eyes in the back of your head (£7.99). For some adult spy toys, take a look at Naomi’s review of the Y-Cam.

If you prefer Golden retrievers to Goldeneye then you might be interested in the DOG-e-walk - an ultra sonic gizmo that stops dogs from pulling on the leash, but somehow incorporates anti interference technology (a Non Irritation System) that stops it from annoying passing canines. Interested? Check out the Company of Animals website for more info.

If however you prefer Leica to Laika, Lastolite have released a new Ezybox Speed-Lite a 22 cm x 22 cm mini softbox that can pop straight onto a flashgun and provides an inner and outer diffusion layer. Tiny, collapsible and lightweight it can be yours for £49.00.

Of course the one thing that unites nearly all gadgets is batteries and Orca Trading have a neat gadget that should help with power on the move. The Powerstrap is a wearable rechargeable battery pack that contains 6 LiOn battery cells which is about 1500 mAH of power. It comes with 10 adaptors for a variety of devices (check) and save you in a pinch – or power a short street party. I’m not sure why you’d want to wear it rather than just have it in your bag, but that aside, additional battery power on the go is always welcome. Yours for £39.99.

[Source: TWIG: Hawk Eye spy-copter, Lastolite Ezybox and the Powerstrap]

It is that time of year again where parents pay out huge amounts of money so their children can have the latest and greatest for the new school year. We also have the university students who are soon to be off in the big bad world. I can say with absolute certainty if I had just a handful of the gadgets available for students when I was at university, my life would have been so much easier. Well here are some gadgets to help you along the way whether you are preparing for your GCSEs or degree.

I don’t know about you, but my textbooks were enormous. Right at the top of my wish-list at university would have been an e-reader. Instead of breaking your back why not have all your textbooks on an e-reader? Most publishers are now providing digital textbooks. Samsung have released the Samsung E60, available from WHSmith, to rival Amazon’s Kindle. With 2GB of storage and Wi-Fi access, you can read books in PDF, TXT and ePub formats. The memory is expandable to 16GB. It also comes with a MP3 player and organiser. You can annotate books and newspapers and images by writing them. For students, this would great feature to add notes while in lectures. At £199 it is more pricey than the Kindle but for students, the ability to annotate books is vital.

Livescribe have released the Echo smartpen. Echo, the successor to the Pulse smartpen, records audio and everything you write at the same time so you never have to miss anything from your classes. Built-in speakers can play back your recorded audio and you can transfer notes and audio to your computer using the USB connection. It captures everything you write using an infrared camera in the replaceable ink tip. It comes in 4GB and 8GB sizes enabling it to hold 400 or 800 hours of audio. You can use customizable Livescribe applications allowing you can write and email by hand or even write a word down and hear the translation in Japanese. The Echo is available from Amazon where the 8GB will cost £180 and the 4GB costs £160. A handy little timesaving gadget.

Language students should check out the Rosetta Stone, which attempts to recreate immersion – one of the best ways to learn a language. The Rosetta Stone is a software or Flash based web service that tests your reading, writing, speaking and listening. Each skill is broken into short little chunks – so you can do a 10 minute writing lesson, or a 5 minute listening test, making it ideal for a busy student lifestyle. The whole course is carried out in the target language – forcing you to learn and hammering home grammar and vocab until you get it. However the Flash based nature of the website means there are certain portable devices (iOS ones most notably) that won’t run, making it a little less flexible than it could be. However the Rosetta Stone people have assured us that they have noticed the relentless march of apps and are working on some mobile solutions.

Our top application to help with your studies is iStudiez Pro. Student life can be hectic juggling different classes and knowing your homework deadlines. iStudiez Pro offers a detailed schedule planner and a daily calendar view of your classes for the day and what homework is due in. You can view by week or month to plan ahead. Push notifications will alert you to any upcoming classes and tasks. Courses can easily be setup for a term and labelled with colours. This app will always ensure you are where you meant to be.

Remember: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Good luck!

[Source: Back to school gadgets roundup: Samsung e60, Rosetta Stone, iStudiez Pro, Echo Smartpen]

IFA or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin as it’s never called, is one of the world’s largest consumer electronics trade fairs and is held annually in Germany. Latest Gadgets will be heading down for the press day today. Here are a few things we’ll be excited about seeing.

In the same way the iPhone redefined smartphone, the iPad is helping to reshape the world of tablet computing – and dramatically polarising opinion as it does so (someone is getting angry just at the mere mention of the iPad). Competition is rife and we are looking forward to playing with the new “iPad beating” Galaxy Tab tablet on display from Samsung.

Auluxe, makers of the Dew, which we described our love for here, are set to launch the Reverie II, a luxury iPod dock crafted from wood (pictured) that apparently takes 13 hours to manufacture. Altec Lansing and Pioneor will also be unveiling some iPod docks and headphones.

Epson will have the latest and greatest in their Full HD home cinema range and showing off developments in 3LCD projection technology.

We are also eager to see Viewsonic who have an affordable 3D camera that can record at 720p for £199 and a handheld 3D TV, 3D digital camera and 3D digital photo frame. Keen to jump on the *other* bandwagon this year as well, they will be previewing a 7″ tablet computer – the ViewPad, which is Android powered and features 3G, GPS, Micro SD and USB ports and front and back facing cameras. A dual OS 10″ tablet will also been on display. I’m most excited about seeing the VMP74, not just because of the name but due to its award winning HD streaming capabilities.

Of course some of the more exciting innovations come from the smaller names and we will be keeping an eye out for the new and unusual from all corners of the show.

Depending on WiFi connections and roaming charges we should be tweeting our findings via @latestgadgetsuk and will take an in-depth look at our findings over the next few days.

[Source: Latest Gadgets at IFA preview: Tablets, docks and much much more.]

The Week in Gadgets

If you found our recent feature on what to do with old gadgets useful then you should check out trashnothing.com, who contacted us via Twitter to talk about their site. Whilst there is a lot to love about freecycling, its reliance on the old world charm of Yahoo! Groups tends to make each and every visit into a field trip to 1998. trashnothing.com takes data from Yahoo! Groups and reorganises it into a modern, manageable interface, making it much easier to browse, search and share. It also shields you privacy a little better and helps protect you from some of the more common free cycling scams.

If however, you liked the sound of a field trip to 1998 and would like to walk even further down memory lane, then you should definitely check out the re-released classic 80′s toy BigTrax. Whilst iPhone controlled, Augmented Reality quadricopters may be the latest and greatest, there is something to be said for the decidedly old school feel of BigTrax’s programmable fun. The little keypad at the top of the unit accepts 16 different commands that send it whizzing around your carpet making cool 8 bit sound effects and there is a mild degree of educational benefit you can teach your young one about control systems. Unfortunately, the 80s homage extends to the packaging and batteries are not included. Bigtrak is available to buy for £39.95 with Free Delivery at www.gizoo.co.uk

We also did a feature on iPad cases, and even had a few to give away. Another interesting iPad accesory was Australian company STM’s “jacket” – a super light iPad bag. Providing just enough room for your iPad (or similarly sized laptop or tablet) the jacket has high density foam and water resistant fabric. I was a bit too scared to test it against a full on downpour but the jacket provided adequate protection against casual bumps and splashes. There are some extra pockets for a few cables and papers and one zipped pocket to keep things from flying out. The jacket comes in iPad, extra small, medium and large sizes and the iPad jacket is SRP £24.95. STM bags will hook you up.

Next week at in IFA in Berlin there will be lots of big releases from Epson, Samsung, Viewsonic and many others. We’ll be there, tweeting (@latestgadgetsuk) or blogging as much as possible.

[Source: TWIG: STM iPad jacket, trashnothing.com and BigTrax]

A study has revealed that Brits throw away an unbelievable £6 billion a year in unwanted gadgets.

With just 20% of electrical devices recycled, the report, from www.weeebuy.co.uk, reckons each of us is around £90 out of pocket thanks to our wasteful habits.

As we know our readers love their gadgets (well, you wouldn’t be reading this otherwise would you?) we don’t like to think of you throwing good money down the drain, when you could be using it to indulge in your next piece of gadgety goodness.

So, here are a few ideas about what you can do with your unwanted gadgets, whether it’s making yourself a bit of cash, doing a good turn for someone less fortunate, or saving the earth with a bit of the old reduce, reuse, recycle ethos:

Sell them
As you, our astute readers are obviously aware, www.weeebuy.co.uk didn’t carry out that study entirely for philanthropic purposes. They wanted to get their name out into the open, so that we tech-heads would sell them our gear. So, let’s pander to them, and we’ll tell you how it works.

Log on to the site, enter the products you want to sell and they’ll tell you how much they’ll get. They then data wipe and refurbish devices before selling them on. Personally I’d wipe my device myself, but I guess it adds an extra level of security. If they’re not working, they may be broken down and used for parts to fix other devices.

I though I’d check out a few of my own devices – my EOS 350D DSLR would get me just over £13, while my Sony Ericsson F500i phone (I know, I really need to upgrade!) would get me a paltry two quid. My Nintendo Wii, however would bring in a not inconsiderable £47. You can also swap your gadgets for vouchers if you prefer.

If you send in five or more gadgets you get a better price, so if you have a drawer (or cupboard) full of old gizmos, it’s worth a go. I’d say for more up-to-date kit you’d be better off selling privately on eBay or on a second-hand site such as pre-loved.com or gumtree.com – or even at a car boot sale. At most car boot sales I’ve sold at (especially in London) dealers will pounce on you as you arrive asking for old cameras, electrical and computer equipment, so you’ll be in demand. Just go prepared, with an idea of what your gadgets could fetch, and if they ask how much, always go in with a higher price as they will want to haggle you down.

Recycle mobile phones
You’ve all seen the sites for mobile phone recycling from the likes of Envirofone and Mazuma Mobile. But which one to choose? Well, just like pretty much everything else these days, there are price comparison sites that will trawl the recycling sites and find the best deal for you. I used this and discovered I could get £130 for my husband’s Apple iPhone 8GB 3g (don’t tell him though!).

Donate to charity
Last month, Michael Lucas, retail director at the British Heart Foundation, appealed for Britons to donate their small electrical items to charity shops. Rather than hoarding old CD players, radios and other electronic, give them to charity. Last year the British Heart Foundation raised more than £9 million from selling old electrical goods. Oxfam and Cancer Research also accept small electricals, but it’s worth checking with your local shop that they will accept them before you haul in a boxful of gizmos.

Diabetes UK, meanwhile, offers a free collection service for gadgets including mobile phone, laptops, notebooks and even ink cartridges. They will receive upwards of £3 for each phone, 50 for ink cartridges and up to £100 for old laptops, so it’s a simple way to donate to charity without doing any legwork yourself. For details log on here.

Your local council has to offer a similar service under the WEEE directive, which is aimed at reducing the amount of electrical products produced and the amount thrown away, rather recycled (find out more about WEEE here ). You might find you have to pay them to take your gear away though.
Check out more about local recycling at www.recyclenow.com

Give it away
Don’t forget that someone (almost) always wants what you don’t! Communities such as Freegle and Freecycle are great places to advertise old gadgets. Often you’ll find it populated by at least one person who refurbishes laptops (whether they sell them on for their own gains, or donate them to some charity organisation or school), as well as someone desperate for a CD player that works because their new puppy just chewed theirs to bits. You’ll have to register to join your local site before posting up your offerings.

Make something new!
Finally, if you’re feeling creative and inventive, you could actually make some new gizmos from your old gadgets. Glean some inspiration from 62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer (Workman; £9.99; ISBN 978-0-7611-5243-9). This ingenious book has bright ideas for making a breathalyser machine, a water-gun alarm clock and USB-enabled fruit! Your old mobile phone can become a safe for money and thumb drives and your old Palm Pilot can become a doodle pad.
Find out more here.

[Source: What to do with unwanted gadgets: Weeebuy.co.uk, freecycling and charity]

Listen up journalists, musicians and podcasters! Olympus is launching a new digital recorder this month, which it claims allows you to record and edit your work while you’re on the move.

At a tad under the 200 quid mark, the Olympus LS-5 Linear PCM Digital Recorder records 24but/96kHz PCM audio files, which can be edited in the device at the touch of a button.

It comes with 2GB of memory (which at the highest quality offers around 55 minutes of recording time according to Olympus), which can be expanded up to 32GB using the SDHC-compatible SD card slot. To help you make the most of the space, files can be divided, partially erased and transferred between the internal memory and SD cards.

It’s vital to be organised in this kind of work – whether you’re recording a series of interviews, a step-by-step podcast for your website, or laying down a track – so the ability to set practical index marks both during recording and playback is vital, allowing instant access to your files. You can also use the supplied Olympus Sonority software to save files to multiple folders on a PC or Mac, where they can be split, marked, indexed, partially deleted and browsed by intro.

Running on two AA or Ni-Mh rechargeable batteries, you should get an admirable 23 hours recording time on full batteries, which should be enough for most tasks.

At around £99 less than its predecessor, the LS-11 (which had 8GB of internal memory and garnered some decent reviews for its rich and crisp sound, while acknowledging it was pretty pricey), the LS-5 may well have hit the right mark pricewise, so whether you’re at a concert, covering a breaking news story, or even doing professional voiceovers, the LS-5 is offering quite a lot for a little outlay.

[Source: Olympus LS-5 Linear PCM digital recorder: Mobile mini sound studio]

The Week In Gadgets

This week saw a number of interesting announcements centring about the Internet. And a Head camera.

Wired editor Chris Anderson did a Nas and proclaimed that the Web was dead, before a number of companies and columnists rose to dispute his claim. At the same time StumbleUpon released a mobile app for Android and iPhone handsets, which I found pertinent as the original incarnation of StumpleUpon helped me to “rediscover” the Internet and brought weird and wonderful websites to my attention longer before social sharing on sites such as Twitter and FaceBook and in mobile form should be ideal for “lost moments” waiting for buses or idly loitering. Speaking of which, both these social networking Titans unveiled changes, with Twitter hoping to making finding people easier via the “You Both Follow” feature. Facebook released the geolocation based Facebook Places, bringing the annoyance of FourSquare and GoWalla check-ins into your timeline. It will probably be huge. According to Facebook, “with Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time”. Thank goodness someone created a solution to that problem. Places is US only at the moment but will spread to these shores soon enough.

In the office, we took at look at Logitech’s G series of gaming hardware, for the hardcore PC gamer. We also had some quality time with the Linksys WAG320N router, a pretty robust networking solution that fulfils all your Network Admin dreams (you do have Network Admin dreams don’t you?) saved some money with Current Cost and reviewed some iPod docks.

My favourite gadget out this week was the Action Cam from Chilli Technology (pictured). Basically a medium res video camera you strap to your head, the Action Cam is a great way to capture action (or indeed arty) video shots. The Action Cam has a CMOS 1.3 MP sensor, records at 640×480 at 30 fps and takes up to 32GB of SD Card based storage. Of course there are many head cams on the market already, but the Action Cam is only £24.99, putting it in the hands of “ordinary” extreme sports enthusiasts. Footage from skiing holidays, cycling trips all possible and you can even try and recreate the Jigsaw Falling Into Place video

You should be able to pick one up from Amazon UK.

[Source: TWIG: StumbleUpon, FaceBook Places, Action Cam]

Camcorders have long been a family favourite and manufacturers are constantly looking for new features to set themselves apart from the competition. We thought we’d look at a few recently released camcorders to see some of these new features.

Firstly, why buy a camcorder at all when you have a smartphone like the iPhone4, which can shoot HD video? The iPhone 4 shoots video in 720p and has a pretty amazing lens, making it a serious option for video, especially over a dedicated portable Flip device.

If however you want to capture all your holiday shots in Full HD then Samsung’s HMX E10 has recently been unveiled, which will not only shoot in Full HD but also has a 270 degree swivelling lens, enabling you to put yourself in the picture. It also has a built-in USB port meaning you can attach it to a computer without a USB cable. The HMX-E10 will be available at $199.99 from September at selected retailers. There has been no UK price announced.

Camcorders are currently competing on zoom, so you can achieve close-up images like never before. Panasonic’s HDC-SDX1H offers 23x Intelligent Zoom and is Panasonic’s lightest HD camcorder, (some say lightest in the world), weighing in at 50lbs with the battery and optional SD Card. It is Skype-enabled so you can make calls using it as a webcam and microphone.

There is also strong trend towards making sports-friendly camcorders as manufacturers make them tougher or waterproof. We recently covered the Sanyo’s Xacti CA100, which allows underwater HD filming. You can also get rugged camcorders, which will not shatter or have so much as a dent if you drop them, which are great if you are like me, clumsy as hell.

Camcorders are becoming more pocket-friendly and networking is becoming a common feature and all the cameras featured above allow for effortless uploading to Facebook and YouTube. Do any tempt you, or are there any exciting new cameras we’ve missed? Let us know!

[Source: Camcorders in focus: HMX E10, HDC-SDX1H, Xacti CA100 and iPhone 4]

The Week In Gadgets

This week saw the launch of the Blackberry Torch 9800 and Blackberry 6 OS to a lukewarm press reaction. We also saw the release of the call-me-anywhere satellite phone – the iSatphone Pro and a cloud based music service from the Carphone Warehouse. There were also some guitars made from paper.

The good people at thepresentfinder.co.uk pointed me in the direction of the frankly amazing Remote Controlled Mechanical Arm – a build-your-own remote control robot arm.

I can’t believe I just typed “build-you-own remote control robot arm” but apparently they not only exist but can be yours for £39.99. Billed as an educational tool, the Remote Controlled Mechanical Arm lets you learn how machines work and it is a great insight into the basics of control systems. Get one from here. And get me one too.

Last week we looked at Blackbox’s i10 silencer earphones and this week they released their M10s which have the same Active Noise Rejection technology but in an overear cup style (which rotate so they are ideal for DJs). They also have a similar price to the i10 silencers, retailing at £89.99.

Travel bloggers should check out GEKKOLinks, a new service from the save@gekko people that automatically converts mentions of hotels on websites into affiliate links and makes a small box appear with relevant information including availability and prices from multiple booking engines.

In theory, the GEKKOLinks service should improve sites for readers – you could be reading a review of Hotel Yoruba, decide you like it and book a room without leaving the site. And publishers should get a cut of any bookings as well. You can sign up here.

Over the course of next week we should have reviews of some new and exciting iPod docks, a 3D camera for under £200 (well £199.99) and some spy cameras. Should be wild.

[Source: TWIG:Robot arms, GEKKOLinks and Blackbox M10s]

Always wanted to be in a band but had nowhere to store your chunky guitar or gargantuan drum-kit? Well now you can strum away to your heart’s content – or beat away, if drumming is your thing – on paper-thin electronic instruments.

Okay, maybe they’re not quite authentic enough to actually start a band with, but they’re more than suited to a quick play around in your house when your partner’s not around.

WowWee have released their range of Paper Jamz guitars – as well as drums and guitar amplifiers – that promise musical inspiration at the flick of a wrist. The main draw are the guitars, retailing at £24.99, which make authentic guitar noise when strummed. There’s a whole host of functions here, letting you freestyle and also play along with three pre-loaded rock anthems, including the likes of Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’.

These things are tiny – as little as 3mm in bulk – but are shaped just like the real thing, letting you play on a Gibson Flying V or a Fender Strat without having to shell out hundreds of pounds.

But not only can you axe-grind, you can also tub thump. Also priced at £24.99, the Paper Jamz drum-kit is a ten-piece percussive playground that also lets you play along to tracks or solo like Animal. It’s perfect for rocking out on the kitchen table, but its status as a glorified iPhone app shouldn’t be underestimated.

It, of course, is nothing like playing the real thing, so you can only imagine the shelf-life of these lightweight instruments are rather limited. It lacks the challenge and longevity of games-based miniature-guitars like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, so, whilst being a perfect for a quick Sunday afternoon jam, this Paper Jamz range of electronic instruments will probably be left to gather dust. Perhaps investing in the real thing is the best idea.

[Source: Paperback rocker: Paper Jamz guitars and drums]