Gadgets

Sitting on the floor of LAX last summer, my cell phone plugged into an outlet that looked as if it might catch fire at any moment, I thought to myself, "There must be a more civilized way of doing this."

Turns out, there is. This month 50 mobile charging stations with four outlets each will be installed at JFK airport in New York for this express purpose, and--bonus--it's free. Travelers will have access to the outlets to recharge their laptops, phones, PDAs, etc. in every single terminal at the airport.

The original idea was to use the … Read more

When new gadgets are announced, it's often weeks if not months before you can see them in person to gauge their size. Sizeasy is a slick and simple piece of Webware that lets you plug in the dimensions of any product and compare it to real-world objects.

What really makes it fun is selecting from a drop-down list of real products to measure your object against, such as a door, a mattress, a box of matches, or a wine bottle. You can include up to five objects for your comparison.

When you're done, you'll receive a link … Read more

Leaving all personal opinions about Jeb Bush's legacy aside, it's worth noting, from a technology perspective, that he chose to include his BlackBerry in the backdrop of his official gubernatorial portrait in an attempted nod to his role as the first "e-governor," according to press reports.

Last week, at the close of the Florida governor's two-term administration, he revealed the portrait, in which he's standing next to a bookshelf topped with a family photo and his beloved device. Bush reportedly received tens of thousands of e-mails sent to his very public address, Jeb@Jeb.… Read more

Media sites are watching how we consumers spend our money this holiday season. And it looks like a double victory for the tech world.

First, online sales are up more than 25 percent from last year. Consumers are apparently comfortable now with last minute online buys.

Second, HD flat screens and Nintendo's Wii were both big sellers this season. This week tech gadgets will have to compete with even more heavly discounted general merchandise.

I'm hearing some analysts on CNBC today saying brick and mortar discounters were not even making a profit on the flat screens they sold. … 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

(NOTE: Yes, I am aware that this post's headline probably makes no sense.)

By now, it's clear that "user-generated content" is going to be one of the big tech buzz-phrases of 2006. Most of the time, it refers to the antics of AJAX-filled Web apps with cutesy names and cutesier logos, or to grainy YouTube videos of kids breaking TV screens with Wiimotes. But clearly, user-generated content goes beyond the series of tubes and into other niches of 21st-century lifestyle. Boozing, for example. A while ago, we wrote about the WinePod, which lets oenophiles with a … Read more

NOTE: From now through December, every few days a different Crave expert will be posting his or her top 10 gadget picks for the holidays. See what we crave, and maybe you'll get some ideas! Here's our seventh installment.

Erica Ogg is an unapologetic Dodgers fan living in San Francisco, has found herself hopelessly addicted to Starbucks chai lattes (with 2 percent milk), and readily admits to being a history geek. And no, she has nothing to do with Ogg Vorbis.

1. LG Chocolate. So the first version was panned by a lot of critics, but the second … Read more

The world has been waiting for the ultimate all-in-one uber-device for years, only to be disappointed time and again. So many of us are destined, at least for now, to carry a few gadgets at a time. But where do you keep your cell phone, camera, MP3 player, PDA and anything else you can't do without?

Brookstone has one alternative with its "Technology-Ready Fleece Jacket," which goes where iPod apparel leaves off. The jacket has 12 hidden pockets designed to carry all your precious possessions, as well as a "patented routing system" for earbuds and … Read more

YourMinis, from the Goowy team, is a nice service that puts two current Web 2.0 themes together: Widgets and Aggregators. It's like Yahoo Widgets meets NetVibes. YourMinis gives you a page that you can modify with your own mix of widgets--RSS feeds, Flickr images, video feeds, weather and time blocks, and so on. The widgets and the YourMinis container page are all in Flash, and the widgets are very pretty to look at and easy to move around on the page. You can also do things with them (such as rotate them arbitrarily, for a scrapbook effect) that … Read more