The Laser Guided Pool Cue

You know that if you need one of these when you’re playing pool at your local that you should just give up the game altogether because you clearly can’t cut it. The laser guided pool cue is for those that take things way too seriously and has a touch sensor that enables you to quickly turn the tiny laser out and its range will easily cross the length of a full size snooker table. You really can’t blame the spin on the white when you use the laser guided pool cue because you will hit the sweet spot every time.

It’s the equivalent of about £40 and it has a bag that lets everybody know you’re crap enough to have to use a laser guided cue but it also comes with a fine assortment of accessories including six 1.5V batteries (the cue takes three of these) as well as tip scuffers, chalk, and ferrules. Considering the price of a bog standard laserless pool cue that really isn’t bad.

In the picture it looks a lot like you should take it fishing rather than carry it into the pub.

Dark Knight Brilliant According To Politicians

In my eyes, nothing makes a film more appealing than it getting berated for having an inaccurate certification. Black Knight, the latest Batman movie, is the most recent film to undergo these perils. The film has been rated a 12A which means that anybody can go watch it but that children under the age of twelve should be accompanied by an adult.

However, politicians Ian Duncan Smith and Keith Vaz believe that the 12A rating is not enough because of the graphic realism that is present in Dark Knight, unlike previous Batman films. Such is the current trend with this type of film, Dark Knight is a much grainier and perhaps realistic incarnation of the film.

Smith, who took his 15 year old daughter to the film described Heath Ledger’s Joker as being “a brilliantly acted but very credible psychopathic killer, who extols the use of knives to kill and disfigure his victims during a reign of urban terrorism laced with torture.” - So I think it’s reasonable to assume that I’ll be heading off to see that then. “Brilliantly acted but very credible” seems like an odd statement too.

The film is doing well in terms of complaint ranking, bagging an impressive 82 so far although it still has a little way to go before it reaches Casino Royale’s magic 100 figure. We also thought we’d use this post to try out some tabloid title writing techniques.

Kingston DataTraveler Mini Slim Flash Drive

Kingston has certainly been batting out the PC storage devices lately and have a seriously extensive range of flash drives, portable hard drives, and stone tablets (probably). The DataTraveler Mini Slim is not only vying to be the flash drive that incorporates the most variants of the word small as possible, but it’s actually living up (or down) to its name.

Roughly one and a half inches long, they are minute and you’ll have to be careful not to lose it in the USB plug on your computer never mind in your pocket. They’re available in 2GB and 4GB models for around £5 and £8 respectively. Colour choices are pink, blue, and black

It can’t feasibly be possible to make flash drives very much smaller than this, although I know that marginally smaller devices do exist, because if they were any smaller they would be useless. If you’re into modding everything you ever put near your PC then you’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to slip this into any object and make your very own unique USB flash drive.

With up to 4GB of storage and surprisingly good prices, though, they do represent excellent value even without making them into a fish finger styled USB drive. They’re also a great way for Kingston to make money as people will undoubtedly need replacements regularly.

Yamaha Hybrid Bicycle

As soon as you write a piece on electric motorbikes and how there’s so very few of them available, especially from the big motorbike manufacturers, you should expect to read something within a few days that completely trumps that post. And so, on to the Yamaha PAS Brace hybrid bicycle – OK, so it’s not an electric motorbike but is in fact a modern take on the electric assisted push bike and very modern it is.

The hybrid system intelligently works out when it can be used to optimum advantage and will operate at any one of the eight gears that it features, apparently providing a sporty ride for owners. The majority of the assistance comes at low speed when we need to expend more energy, it then begins to lower at moderate speeds, and switches off at high speeds.

The hybrid bike from Yamaha Motors is due for release in Japan in just a couple of day’s time (8th August to be exact) with 2,500 of them initially going on sale. The price tag is the equivalent of about £600 and presumably if sales go as well as hoped it might (and I stress, might) be available elsewhere.

Intelligent Solar Powered Street Lights

Welsh inventor Ross Lovegrove recently created the solar street lamp that resembled a kid’s cartoon of a tree and several of them were unveiled in Vienna where they apparently went down a real hit. As a result, Ross is now working on an updated version of the solar street lights that will this time include several intelligent and adaptive features that should improve their use, prevent them from being damaged and, frankly, scare the crap out of people.

The branches of the tree will follow the sun, avoiding shadows, and resting in the brightest area they can in order to increase the amount of solar energy they are able to harness. They will also bunch up when it’s windy, making them less of a health risk in high winds, and they will then return to their full branched glory at night when they’re needed to do something quite radical like provide light.

Perhaps even more bizarrely, it is also the vision of Lovegrove to include air purification into the street lights so that they effectively purify the air around them in much the same way as a real tree does. Awesome idea, but I’m not sure how much of their annual budget local councils will pour into buying a set of these.

Toyotron Hunter Electric Motorcycle

It looks decidedly Retro, but the Toyotron Hunter is one of a range of electric motorcycles from the Thai based company. Electric motorcycles haven’t exactly faced the same kind of surge (so to speak) as hybrid motorcars with the majority of motorbike makers reluctant to scare their existing customers off by producing such an oddball contraption. That’s left the market (if there actually is one) wide open to others.

To be fair, though, it most definitely works out to be cheaper than running a scooter, which we all know can do about 300 miles for the cost of 2 litres of cider. It also charges from a standard power outlet and has a reasonable range to boot. While it might prove popular with certain groups of people I don’t see it being that regular a feature on British roads.

First off, Toyotron claims that the Hunter will cover a range of 70km on a single overnight charge plugged in next to the fridge. Based on Taiwan’s current electricity costs that’s about one tenth of a penny in running costs. That’s a lot cheaper than the Red Bull it would take for me to cycle there and the Hunter can apparently reach a top speed of 43mph, which is most certainly better than I could manage.

The Intelligent Wine Cooler

You’ve got to either really love your wine, or simply have to have every conceivable digital gadget on the market, to want a device that will precisely cool any bottle to the perfect temperature dependent on the type of wine. Well, if you fall into either of the above categories, then you’ll be pleased to hear that IWOOT has just that very product at a not entirely unreasonable £69.95(!).

The Intelligent Wine Cooler negates the need to alter the fridge settings just to get one bottle of wine to the right temperature. It also assists those of us that don’t have the first idea of what the correct temperature for a bottle of wine is. As well as being a rather impressive looking cooler it also has an LCD display with a database of 30 of the more common varieties of wine including their ideal serving temperature.

Basically, you slap your bottle of Lambrini into the gadget, use the buttons next to the backlit screen and either select the type of wine you want or enter your own temperature settings. The cooler, which includes a cooling/warming collar, will then do the rest of the work for you.

2 New NVIDIA Graphics Cards

If you’re looking for high quality graphics cards for laptops or desktops, then NVIDIA is the name that you would usually look for first. They have consistently produced exceptional quality and continue to push the boundaries in computer graphics, even if you do have to pay a premium for the privilege. They have announced the release of two new graphics cards that will further enhance the graphical capabilities of your laptop computer.

The 9M Series NVIDIA graphics cards are receiving two new additions in the 9700M and 9800M use the parallel processing design in order to deliver exceptional 3D graphics. PhysX technology from NVIDIA helps to deliver 3D graphics in real time, with the end result being excellent 3D graphics delivered quickly reducing lag and frame rate issues that can sometimes be experienced with the most demanding graphics applications.

The two 9M series graphics cards also use new technologies to reduce the operating temperature of the cards, improve battery life, and reduce the noise. Video playback technologies include PureVideo HD technology to improve video quality such as the colour and contrast. While the two graphics cards offer excellent quality for any type of application, it’s gamers that typically benefit and the SLI multi GPU delivers an even higher quality of graphics especially for notebooks.

Nokia N96 Release Details

Iphone or Nokia? 2 of the most understandably popular phones in recent years have been the Nokia N95 and the Apple iPhone. With the 3G iPhone being released, Apple looked to have taken something of a lead despite the fact that the N95 is (in my opinion, at least) a better phone than its competitor.

The Nokia N96 is the 3G updated version of the flagship N series from the world’s most popular handset manufacturer. Nokia has today announced that it will be released in the UK On 1st October through 3, Carphone Warehouse, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Phones4U, and Orange. Unfortunately, several of the new features may not be particularly advantageous to us in the UK

3G connection is obviously good, and is something of a given for high end phones in the current market. It will also have a TV tuner, but the majority of people won’t be able to watch the TV because of a poor reception. Using DVB-H to offer freeview digital channels means that you have to live in an area that has exceptional quality reception (namely, elsewhere in Europe). Advanced GPS software should be a good addition, however, and it will also include 16GB of memory and a 5MP camera. All in all, not bad at all.

WoW Characters - Apple iPhone Application

World of Warcraft is, to everybody, more than just a game; it’s a lifestyle. Those that love it will tell you that it’s an online social phenomenon bringing like minded people from all over the world together. Those that don’t like it or haven’t played it will undoubtedly tell you something a little different about the type of people that play it.

Well a small application type addition to World or Warcraft, or WoW, can now be downloaded to your mobile phone so you don’t have to let a little thing like no access to a computer prevent you from checking in. The program, called World of Warcraft Characters is one of the more recent additions to the iPhone application library.

The free program lets you view WoW characters, stats, combat data, and the avatars. It will even automatically update to your current in-game level so the data you view is always up to date. Whatever your character, class, and race WoW Characters is completely free to download and can be synchronised to your existing WoW account once you’ve purchased it from the Apple App shop.

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