Crave

Forget coin meters and time-stamped windshield stickers. A new service called Mobile Parking Service, launched this week by Irish company ParkMagic, in collaboration with Verizon's Skytel subsidiary, brings parking into the digital age.

Rather than digging around for coins down the back of the passenger seat, drivers use the service to pay for parking by making a call from their cell phones, which debits a prepaid account. A message is then sent wirelessly to a digital display on the car's dashboard to show the parking time remaining. The service, which will be coming to cities across the U.… Read more

Here's yet another excuse to have those white headphones stuck in your ears: Wear your iPod Nano while flying down a snow-covered ski slope at death-defying speeds. It'll be like you're the star of your own extreme snowboard movie, complete with awesome soundtrack.

We brought you the iSoundCap hat a while ago, but it being, you know, cold outside now, there had to be another reason to sell an iPod holder, right? Of course.

The iSoundCap ski cap comes in red, white, black and kakhi, and is made of 100 percent acrylic. Though the idea of synthetic … Read more

If you're an "America's Next Top Model" watcher who can't get enough of the CW network reality show, you might be interested in this. Thanks to a new tie-in, you can play your own version of the game on your cell phone. It's a product of CBS Interactive, the new-media wing of CW co-parent CBS; and Hong Kong-based avatar and mobile-game company Artificial Life--yes, the creator of the V-Girl cell phone girlfriends. (Artificial Life also created the far awesomer V-Penguins.)

But the "ANTM" collaboration doesn't seem to be a virtual-girlfriend … Read more

It's great that solar rechargers are starting to catch on, but we're not thrilled at the idea of carrying one that's 10 times the size of the phone it's supposed to power. Brunton's "SolarPort 4.4" isn't that big and won't give us a hernia (we hope), but it's still not as portable as we'd like.

The charger, which Red Ferret says is designed for handheld devices and nothing bigger, weighs 19 ounces and measures 9.3 by 6 inches and 1.5 inches thick. That would stow easily … Read more

We dredged the series of tubes for you: here's today's roundup of link love.

--VIRTUAL EVENTS: Meet IBM's new-tech guru in Second Life (CNET News.com)

--ONLY IN JAPAN: RoomRender renders rooms intelligent (Pink Tentacle)

--ENTERTAINMENT: Hollywood's dumbest depictions of code (BoingBoing)

--NEWS: Shocker: Kids swap music on their phones (PSFK)

--HOLIDAY GEEKDOM: Imperial AT-AT and Rebel Snowspeeder Ornament (Uncrate)

--GAMING: Nintendo ships new spaz-resistant Wii strap (gmrblogs)

--VIRTUAL EVENTS: Third Annual Second Life Winter Festival (Official Linden Blog)

--JUICY GOSSIP: Fun, obviously fake iPhone concept (Cult of Mac)

I saw this on Uncrate a few days ago and even though it's not a gadget, per se, I knew I had to give it a mention on Crave. It's a very "Where's Waldo"-inspired ode to all things Web 2.0 (or at least the most recognizable players), plastering a busy city scene with logos from Flickr to Foobar. Recently I've covered a bunch of homegrown NYC start-ups for Crave's sister blog Webware, so I've come into contact with plenty of geeky, bouncy, AJAX-spouding, highly caffeinated Manhattan tech entrepreneurs. I'm … Read more

Now that smoking is out and gadgets are in, the car lighter has evolved into a different kind of lifeline. But what if you don't have a car?

The TripleCharger can power mobile phones, PDAs, personal media devices and portable gaming consoles from a car, wall outlet or batteries. You do need a converter head for each type of device you want it to charge. There is a small USB connector for an iPod or DS Lite, for example, and other heads for various phone models, but they are not that pricey.

The TripleCharger Bundle from ElectronicMetro for $20 … Read more

A Manhattan artist friend recently asked me if I knew of any "cool portable electric pencil sharpener gadgets." Someone actually has use for an electric pencil sharpener? Isn't that like using an electric can opener, when the hand crank is faster?

Actually, no. While in the zone, artists don't want to have to stop to sharpen pencils, I was informed. That would make them lose their groove. They just want a quick dunk to sharpen up so that they can go right on back to sketching.

This one may work for you, my friend. The iSharpener, … Read more

James Kim was one of CNET's most beloved personalities. For those of us who worked with him, he was our friend and a member of our family. An e-mail we got today shows that many of you felt the same way. It reads, "James came into my home once, sometimes twice a week, and he was like family."

In that spirit, we've put together a CNET TV playlist of some of the best James Kim videos we could find and a compilation of the moments that made us love him the most. James charmed everyone who … Read more