This waffle maker doesnt make the usual shaped waffles, but instead it makes Texas shaped waffles. The texas shape waffle maker has an 800 watt grill which creates the waffles. The non stick great measures 8-1/4 inches.
Available from Amazon it is a cool gift idea for those who love the state they are from. Hopefully they do a UK version 
For personal security a pepper spray ring could be ideal for you. They are created in silver or gold playing and use a replaceable spray canister so that you are protected while out and about. The ring uses pepper spray rated at 2 million SHU and is effective for 2 - 3 seconds at a range of 12 inches. When the spray comes in to contact with a person the attacker will get inflammation of the eye capillaries and other mucous membranes. It is ideal for you to make your escape.
As always, it is a ring that you hope you never need to use. But on the off chance it does come in handy it could help you get away.
Product Page Via: 7Gadgets
The guys over at Yankodesign bring us another cool concept idea. This time it is the Brix phone in which the whole surface acts as a screen. To make it even better, the brix phones are capable of being connected together to make larger screens as pictured above. When connecting them together, one of them acts as the media hub for all devices. According to the designers there will be no limit to how many can be connected together and the restriction is only based on how many people you actually know who have them. Seems like a good idea although I think flexible displays will move quicker then this.
Via: Yankodesign
By modifying a laser pen and using a detector you are able to play music over distances that could reach half a mile. To do this the laser needs to be modified by using amplitude modulation. This is then pointed at the sensor which picks up the changes, converts it in to a signal that can be used as music. As with anything with a laser in, be careful when you try anything and do not look at the laser as it could damage your eyes.
To build the device you need to gather together a few components such as a potentiometer, toggle switch and a phototransistor to name a few and then follow the instructions over at Instructables.
The HTC Kaiser has now launched in Europe. It has been a long awaited smartphone. It is 3.5G compatible and runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional, has a built in QWERTY keyboard, GPS, 3 mega pixel auto focus camera, Bluetooth, 128MB RAM, Wifi b/g and a 2.8 inch display. The phone will be available on Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica Group and Vodafone.
This is one particular phone I am going to try get my hands on when my upgrade is due in a month or 2. Having the keyboard and large screen as well as built in GPS makes this phone a great phone to have.
Via: Cellphoners
Vodafone is about to upgrade its mobile broadband service which will see download speeds jump from 1.4Mbps up to a possible 7.2Mbps over a HSDPA. To add to this download speed they are also making the upload speed to be an impressive 1.44Mbps which is very good in my opinion. The upgrade is for those paying 25 GBP per month and will initially be available in parts of London and some of the major airports.
Connectivity at this speed will only be found in 3G covered areas while the 2G network coverage will provide speeds at GPRS levels. Unfortunately 7.2Mbps will not always be met although it is a possibility. Speeds will normally fall in between 1.7Mbps to 5.5Mbps. Along with having high speeds Vodafone have a fairly good usage cap of 3GB per month which should be more then enough for most browsing.
Via: TechWorld
Watches are getting very interesting over the last few years which LED watches becoming quite popular from Tokyo Flash. Often they are made from slightly different materials to get a sleek look. The latest I came across was the 900 Abacus watch which uses a ball and magnet to tell the time. There are no hands or numbers on the watch. To tell the time you take a look at the magnetic sphere which moves around the face. The sphere is not fastened down and when you walk around the sphere moves around freely under the glass till you hold the watch flat. At this point the sphere rolls to the correct time. As it only has 1 sphere, it only tells time by hours which means you need to roughly estimate how many minutes past the hour it is.
The watch is also water resistant down to 30 meters.
The watch prices will start just short of $150 with more information available at Questodesign.
Over the last year I have heard a couple of rumors floating about regarding the Sony PSP mobile phone. Currently the ideas are just concept which has inspired the picture above to be created. As can be seen it takes the current Sony Ericsson square looking type phone and includes a large screen and controlls. I am not sure if this concept or any concept will go ahead for the PSP phone, but we can hope for it. The idea could do real well if a cybershot camera, walkman type phone and PSP could be crammed in to the same package. All it would then need is wireless and VoIP and all would be perfect.
Via: TheWildKid
The phone above is by Wilcom and is shaped like a battery and uses a AAA battery to get its power. The AAA battery can power the phone for 250 hours on standby with about 5 hours of talk time. On the feature side this phone is about as basic as you can get these days. It has no screen, no MP3 player built in, no 3G access and not much else.
I am not sure how a phone like this will fair in the industry. It isnt the type I would go for as I like to have quite a few features packed in to a mobile phone. I am sure it might catch some peoples attention though.
Via: Akihabaranews
A cool app I came across today shows visually, using Google Maps, on where to point your satellite dish. To get it to work you need to enter your address and tell it which, from the many, of the satellites you are trying to point towards. Once the details are entered you click go and a blue line on the map shows which direction your satellite dish should be pointing to get the correct signal. Not only a map is available though, you can also use the satellite imagery on Google maps so you can see an image of the street you are on and which way you should be looking at with the dish.
I do not use satellite my self, so cannot verify the accuracy. However, the owner claims amazing accuracy and has now included the elevation and skew calculations at the bottom of the map.
Check it out over at UKSatelliteHelp.
I came across a cool video today from SIGGRAPH 2007 which shows a process to manipulate images with out having to chop them up the usual way. The process uses gradients to find continuous lines of pixels which can be removed without effecting the subjects of the image. When the subject of the image does get manipulated for some reason, a marker can be put on to the image telling it to preserve that part. Also, objects can easily be removed by marking them negatively. The software will then take the gradients near by to fill in the gaps.
This type of manipulation will be very useful for websites which can be displayed on various sized screens such as high res large monitors right down to pocket pc sized screens. The full effect of the image could be displayed with out cropping out the main parts of the image.
The FrogPad is a mobile keyboard which does not use the conventional QWERTY keyboard layout. Instead, the FrogPad has 20 keys but still promised easier use then a standard keyboard. The keyboard is to be used one handed allowing you to hold documents in the other hand. It is small and measures 5 x 3.5 x .4 inches and connects via Bluetooth to any Bluetooth device that supports the HID Bluetooth profile. According to ThinkGeek, you will be typing at 40 words per minute with in 10 hours of using the keyboard. Compare this to the 56 hours needed to achieve the same on a QWERTY keyboard it seems like the FrogPad is the way to go.
The FrogPad will set you back $149 for the right handed Bluetooth version with cheaper prices for the USB left and right hand version. For some reason there is no left hand Bluetooth version listed.