Shoppers to spend 40 pct online by 2020
LONDON (Reuters) - Online shopping could quadruple and
account for almost 40 percent of retail sales by 2020, a report
predicted on Friday.
Relive Space Battles For Under £4
What can you buy with £4 these days? A pint and a sandwich? Two daily newspapers? A doner kebab? How about a space battle?
Maplin, that gizmo store for big geeky overgrown kids, is selling Snap Circuits Space Battle for £3.97. Looking like it warped in from the 1970s, it produces classic space battle sounds: lasers firing, explosions, warp engines etc. Officially it comes with four projects: Double Space Battle, Space Battle, Touch Space Battle and Photo Space Battle. I like the bit where it says ‘Suitable for Ages 8 - 108′.
Now, you can run around the room with your collectable Stars War space craft and stop making the sounds yourself. Or pretend you’re actually buying it for a young nephew. Get it here.-Martin Lynch
Locca Access - Keyless Remote for Your Home
Isn’t it about time that your house caught up to your car in terms of
remote access options? The Locca Access remote key entry allows you to
open your house’s front door from up to 50 meters away—super convenient
for those times when you are laden with shopping bags, when it’s dark,
when the weather is bad or when you’re just too damn lazy to use your
complicated keys.
You can even let guests into your house remotely from up to 20 interior
meters away, so there’s really no need to put on clothes or get up from
that sofa to answer the door. The Locca Access works in conjunction
with your existing locks, contains a 48 hours battery in case of power
failure and comes with a manual key override, so it seems like they’ve
got all your bases covered. Retails for £150.
Locca Access [Locca via UberGizmo]
Equalizer Laser Mouse For The Trigger-Happy
OCZ, the performance memory/PSU supplier, is entering the fiercely competitive area of gaming peripherals. It’s first offering is the Equalizer 2500 DPI Laser Mouse. Will it top the 22 gaming mice reviewed here though?
As the name implies, it’s a performance mouse with a top DPI setting of 2500. There are six DPI settings, ranging from 400 to 2500, and gamers can swap between then with a button click on-the-fly to find the best one. The LED-lit scroll wheel even changes colour to match a different setting so that you know it’s changed.
It sports what OCZ calls a “Triple Threat†button, that enables you to fire three times with a single click. This can also be used for opening regular ‘double-click’ files with a single click but then that would assume you’d buy this with real work in mind, which is just silly.
The Equalizer comes in a desktop or mobile models. Jump now for full specs.-Martin Lynch
Equalizer Specs
2500 DPI Gamer-Grade Laser Engine
On mouse 6-DPI-Shift (400-800-1200-1600-2000-2500)
Implements Agilent 6010 Chip and high-speed 7080 FPS technology
Triple Threat Button - 1 click, 3 shots for a gaming advantage
Dual laser engine for enhanced tracking on a wider range of surfaces
Right-handed ergonomic design
Gold-Plated USB Connector
Thin, flexible wire design feels like using a wireless mouse but without sacrificing latency
Convenient ‘back’ & ‘forward’ buttons
Comfortable, no-slip grip for intense gaming battles
Plug and Play
Included Equalware software for complete customization
6 Year Warranty
Sonic Boom Love Clock: Shakes The Bed When No One Else Will
I’m not sure why anyone these days would want an alarm clock, what with phones, digital watches, the sun and noisy kids knocking around way too early.
That said, this one is shaped like a heart and, despite all the chocolates and roses you will waste good money on, many of you will still be striking out in the shagging stakes later on today, National Smoochy-Coochy-Woochy Day. Here, at least, is something guaranteed to make the bed shake.
The Sonic Boom Love Clock has an 113 decibel alarm (as loud as a jackhammer) that can blow your head off – thankfully adjustable – and a companion bed shaker. Stick the shaker under the mattress, and when the alarm goes so does this, vibrating urgently until you turn it off. Yet another vibrating product that will, no doubt, end up being used in ways not originally intended by the manufacturer.
For those of you deaf or sadistic enough to want one of these, just take your £25 here.
Not as cool as the Blowfly Alarm Clock. -Martin Lynch
Lesson Of The Day: No More MP3 Knots
All hail the Scouts! It’s not all about rubbing sticks you know and earning merit badges for helping old ladies pack their shopping. That said, this one certainly deserves the MP3 Merit Badge.
How many hours in your life have you wasted untangling your earphones cord? Well, no more. Watch this video and discover a simple way for wrapping and storing those earphones.
I just ran to the car in the pissing rain to get my £20 Nackwackanichimichii player to test this out – I am that geeky. It works. Am I happy? Hell yeah!-Martin Lynch
Zero-G Watch: So Thin & Light It Almost Doesn’t Exist
Here’s a well–named sexy watch: Zero-G. Why? Because it weighs in at 60g, which is almost too light. Just think about how many times a day you’ll scrabble for your wrist, thinking you’ve lost it.
It’s a good looking piece of anorexic timekeeping with a strap that’s just 1.5mm thin. It has a mirrored LCD display and a minimalist time display.
The LCD “hand†points to the hour and the sweeping curve ends at the minute mark. All that coolness comes at a price though, namely no other features, since it only tells the time.
If you need the date, stopwatch, calculator etc. find your nearest Timex etailer. The Zero-G costs just over £40 and TokyoFlash posts worldwide.-Martin Lynch
How To Really Really Annoy People
No matter how much of a saint we all like to think we are, there’s always one person in your life that you wouldn’t mind shoving under a bus. By accident, of course.
A healthy fear of life imprisonment though makes me seek alternative methods of revenge. Meet the Annoy-a-tron, the forgotten Transformer.
With a magnet attached for easy placement around the office or home, this tiny device is designed to beep at different frequencies and volumes until you drive those nearby insane. Choose from 2Hz, 12Hz or a funky dance mix of the two. The beeping occurs every 2 to 8 minutes just to fool the victim into relaxing. Yours for around £6. Worth every penny if you ask me.-Martin Lynch
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MouseTrapper Advance For RSI Sufferers
I don’t suffer RSI myself but I know quite a few people that do [I told you 30 hours of Halo 2 a week, for a year, was too much].
The Swedes think they have an answer with the latest in ergonomic gadgetry. Meet the vermin-named, MouseTrapper Advance, which sits in front of your keyboard and allows you to scroll with the rolling square – yeah, I know. It comes with easily programmable buttons and also acts as a wrist rest so that you can still type. It looks cute and sounds odd but you can find a short video of it in action here.
Whether it’s the answer to your RSI is debateable, but it’s certainly the answer to cleaning out your wallet in a hurry. It will set you back £170.-Martin Lynch
Asda Flogging £9 DVD Player
It has to be the bargain of the day, nay, the week. Meet the £9 DVD player from Asda, making it a lot cheaper than most DVD movies. The supermarket chain has said that there are 80,000 of the ridiculously cheap Durabrand players up for grabs in all of its 316 UK supermarkets.
It used to cost just under £18, but then so did the ones on offer by Tesco and Argos, but by halving the price you can expect these things to fly of the shelves. Is it any good though? Who cares? It’s £9.
Who cares if it’s slightly ugly or if people already have two DVD players at home, this thing will sell for no other reason than they’ll be able to whip it out at the pub in front of mates and say proudly: “You’ll never guess how much I paid for that!â€-Martin Lynch
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