hands

Starting a new tradition here on The Digital Home, each Friday I will be telling you about my experience with some of the best home products on the market. This week you can read my impressions of the Philips AJ300D and next Friday I will be telling you about the Logitech Transporter. But until then, here is my hands-on evaluation of the Phillips AJ300D.

Ever since the iPod hit shelves, the iPod accessory market has been booming. One such section of that booming marketplace is iPod docking stations. And while the iHome has historically been my favorite in terms of … Read more

Somehow, we don't associate the name Porsche with a hand crank--especially when it's on a radio. But that's what the venerable designers have done with the "Eton Porsche Design Radio," which combines old and new by using an aluminum crank to power its "super-heterodyne technology."

The crank, of course, is designed for use in emergencies or camping trips; the rechargeable radio can also run on AA batteries or an AC plug. But the elbow grease could come in handy for other uses, such as recharging a mobile phone with an adapter that's … Read more

What ho? Why, it's Sir James Dyson, inventor of the luxury vacuum cleaner, loitering about in the men's room. We haven't seen someone with a title in there since Sir Guy Burgess.

He's there to advertise the Dyson Airblade, an energy-efficient hand dryer that strips water droplets off your mitts in six to twelve seconds.

Put your hands in, and a curtain of air traveling at 400 miles per hour removes the moisture. The drying area is relatively small--you can't stick your head in, for instance--but it will whisk away water on your hands in … Read more

If more than one-fifth of Web startups are social networking sites, as the Webware 100 indicates, then a service pooling together your various online identities should be pretty handy, just like Trillian is for instant messaging. 8hands is one of the latest services designed to coordinate social networking contacts (see YoName too). It grabs your buddies from Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, TypePad, YouTube, MySpace, WordPress, and LiveJournal and displays them in a floating, IM-sized window. This free, 8.5MB alpha app took about five minutes to download on Windows XP.

8hands is supposed to rank your pals according to how often … Read more

It may sound like a good idea--a mouse that's mounted on your finger and can point wherever you do. But Crave is picky, and we have some issues with this otherwise sound concept.

First, the size: Do you really want something this big strapped to your finger? Second, it's not wireless. And third, how can you type with this stuck to your hand?

Finally, as Chip Chick points out, Logisys has managed to make it sound a lot trickier to work than it probably is: "Provide support by using your middle finger to hold the finger mouse … Read more

A few months ago we wrote of a rather odd-looking Japanese bot named "Ubiko" whose purpose was somewhat vague--"to replace humans for such tasks as welcoming clients, promote products on site." (The "replacing humans" phrase freaked us out a bit.) Now we find out its true mission: a rolling smoke detector of the future.

Ubiko doesn't just beep when your macaroni and cheese starts to burn; it actually has olfactory sensors designed specifically to react to odors associated with fire. The robot had its first public demonstration yesterday, which Pink Tentacle described … Read more

Japan may have robots that can clean and tend to hospital patients, but German scientists are working on a model that can do both.

In addition to mopping floors, the "Nursebot" can reportedly take a patient's temperature with laser beams and thermal camera imaging. And, as Technie Diva says, "this means no more rectal temperature-taking treatment for you."

The Nursebot is scheduled for 2010, but we're looking for ways to donate contributions to speed its release.

Taiwan-based Genius is a company that seems obsessed with making all-in-one devices. But how they decide what goes into the "all" part of the equation remains a mystery.

We were mildly interested last month by its cross between a mouse and a VoIP phone, which we could see coming in handy on some occasions (maybe). But its latest Franken-product, the "Look 313," is a combo camera and speaker set--a device whose use eludes us. Electronista indicates that the USB system can be used as a hub, but we think it's real market is American Idol … Read more

Iqua has made a Bluetooth bar (for lack of a better word) phone that attaches to the back of your car's headrest.

The L-shaped device allows users to be hands-free, and free of an ear piece in their ear, while driving and talking on a cell phone. As Gearfuse points out, the headset does offer stereo speakers. The $179 phone has a battery worth 10 hours of talk time, 650 hours of standby and comes in black or silver.

Sorry, but we just don't see Iqua's reasoning behind the Iqua Snake2 HHF-601. Wouldn't a device like … Read more