Unlike most lap guards, the Digital Innovations Portable LapGuard  (4290400) actually protects you from the potentially harmful wireless radiation your laptop emits with patent-pending technology. It features two whisper quiet fans. The top of the LapGuard is made of a grounded metal plate covered in air holes. There is a rubber non-slip grip that runs along the back of the plate which slightly props up your laptop and prevents it from sliding around. The underside of the LapGuard is cushioned with a soft mesh covering. There is a USB cord that wraps up and snaps into the underside. The USB cord is plugged into your laptop to power the dual fans. It isn’t necessary, but it keeps your laptop, and your lap, much cooler.

The LapGuard is quiet, comfortable, and does the trick. Even without the fans running, it dissipates a lot of heat. If your laptop gets especially hot, the fans are a must. LapGuard is pretty light and also quite sleek; stowing it away or packing it is not a problem. Can we be sure it’s really protecting our reproductive organs from radiation? No, but we will assume that it does, and that makes it more valuable than the traditional lapdesk. We had just two gripes. Firstly, the grip didn’t work well enough to keep our 13″ MacBook Pro from sliding. Lastly, the USB cord is a bit annoying to rap up and snap into the underside. The fans are just audible; there is a good chance your laptop makes more noise. The Digital Innovations LapGuard(4290400) fit our 13″ MacBook Pro with a bit of space on all sides. It probably won’t fit laptops larger than 14″ inches (screen diagonal). It costs $39.99.

The Good: Quiet, Comfortable, Lightweight, Works Well Reducing Heat, Radiation-Protection Technology

The Bad: Cord is Tricky to Rap Up and Snap into Underside, Laptop May Slide, Website Makes No Mention of Compatible Laptop Sizes

Note: Some laptops can power USB devices when turned off; this means the fans will stay on and probably drain your laptop battery.

USB flash drives are slowly turning into dinosaurs. After all, who needs to carry around a USB Flash Drive anymore, when there are great free cloud storage services like Dropbox available to use? That said, this USB Lipstick Flash Drive makes me want to carry around a flash drive again. Of course this flash drive appeals to the girly girl in me, but who could deny how clever a USB key design this is?

The USB Lipstick Flash Drive from Brando, is available in three capacities – including a 2GB capacity for $16, a 4GB capacity for $18 and an 8GB capacity for $25, and the flash drive itself weighs just 10 grams. Almost the same weight of that red Revlon lipstick.

The Metal Detector Sandals are a nice pair of rubber slip-on’s that will not only protect your feet from the elements, but also let you beach comb and wade through piles of sand as your feet try to find hidden riches. On the surface the slippers are very plain, but to their credit  they are unisex so that way women can get in on the fun too. There is nothing fancy about them at all, they are comprised of a thick black rubber with some support for your feet.

It took us a while to actually get some decent weather to take these sandals out for a spin, but we finally got our chance July 4th weekend to hit the beach and soak up some sun. Of all the beaches we could have gone too, we chose Atlantic City. We figured that someone must have dropped some change on that beach before hitting the casinos.

The sandals don’t require much to get started – but just a 9 Volt battery which isn’t included. You slip the metal detector sandals on your tootsies and then strap on the ‘actual metal detector’ on your calf which  connects to the right sandal via a USB port.

The metal detector on your calf looks like you are a white collar criminal on home detention, but nonetheless it is required for it to work. The contraption straps on and the box is comprised of the unit which has several lights. The device will also make that famous quivering noise, helping you detect that metal is definitely in the area so that you should keep on going. There is an on off switch and a switch to make the device quiver when metal is near.

Once I slipped the sandals on and strapped on the metal detector box to my calf, I was ready to start collecting my treasure – or tin cans. As I made my way along the beach there were no signs of anything. No crackling – no noise – just dead silence. It was obviously a very poor beach. After a while I gave up and decided I would just supply my own change. I scattered the change around and covered some sand on it and stomped around to find it. NOTHING! Not even a wee little crackle. The sandals did nothing. I dug up the quarters and placed them back in the sand and covered it up very lightly again. Finally I placed my right foot right over it, and the metal detector went crazy and the green LED light lit up. I had found my quarter. So it seems that you will only find anything with your right sandal – your left sandal is basically a waste. Also, the sandals will indeed detect metal, but only if it is light covered with a skim of sand and if it comes in contact with a certain area on the sandals sole.

In conclusion, the Metal detector sandals are great novelty gift for those who like to explore and have fun doing different activities at the beach, besides building sand castles. However if you want a serious metal detector, these won’t do the job at all. You have to be careful not to get them wet (I don’t get how that is possible at a beach) because of the USB port on the shoes which did get some sand in the port anyway.  But if you are in need of a unique gift and one that won’t break the bank, the Metal Detector Sandals will do just fine. The Metal Detecting Sandals retail for $59.95 at Hammacher Schlemmer.

The Good: Sandals are well made shoes and are quite comfortable. These are perfect for those who want to break in to metal detecting without the hassle of lugging around a big machine.

The Bad: The sandals don’t pick up any metal until you are right on top of it, and only if its covered very faintly with sand. Also, the quivering is not loud enough, especially for a beach.

Almost alien like in design, Mr. Brightside is a portable light for your keyboard for those that don’t have backlit keys. It’s bendable neck make it easy to position to anything your little heart desires.  Just plug it right into your USB port and you are ready to go. To me Mr. Brightside looks like a one eyed mutant or that alien in the Flight of the Navigator movie.Currently available in the colors black, red or blue it retails for $8.99 or a pack of three at $20.22. (People Magazine, April 22nd)

Looking for a piping hot meal but don’t have a microwave at work well there is always the USB Lunch Box Warmer. Not the same one that Thanko came out with last year, this one seems a bit better and more trendy looking. The concept is the same just plug one in end into your computer and watch your lunch get warm. If you aren’t near a computer there is also an included AC adapter as well. You make your lunch heat up to 50° C or 122° F – exciting!! It comes with a USB cable, AC Adapter, Plastic Lunch Box, and the Lunch Box Warmer obviously. The best part is it is available in either red or black – who says bagging your lunch has to be boring. The USB Lunch Box Warmer retails for $30.

As we all know safes are meant to store and protect our most valuable possessions. With that being said the Sentry Safe is a bit different than your typical safe. Not only will it protect your items, but it also has built in ports which allow MP3 players and digital cameras to be backed up through the door. You can also connect it to your laptop or desktop via an external USB port. So not only can you protect your collection of every iPod generation, but you can sync to them as well without ever having to actually open the Sentry Safe door. The safe protects and connects: Flash Drives, iPods, Memory Cards, and digital cameras. There is even a CD/DVD organizer tray inside which will hold up to 72 jewel cases. The Sentry Safe retails for $419.99.

Unlike many USB keys these days – preloaded goodies come loaded on to it. RayD80 comes fully loaded with games, wallpaper and it is also serves as a regular thumb drive, which these days is very handy to have with you. The games that are already loaded onto this thumb drive are similar to a Tetris game where you need to line up three of the same color blocks in order to get rid of the color line and as the blocks build up, they come down faster. You are also able to rearrange the colors so they can fit to the blocks that are already lined up. This is a very classic game which makes the player think quick and ahead. It is a good game to keep the mind going as I find myself playing similar games online all the time.

Another great feature the Mimobot has is wallpapers for your computer. You can personalize your computer  with the Mimobot as it comes preloaded with different wallpapers, avatars, and desktop icons. This is something different that no other thumb drive will have. If you purchase other characters from the Mimobot line you will also get games, avatars, wallpaper, etc..associated with that character.

RayD80 is plug and play and your computer will recognize the software and begin searching through different wallpapers and other available applications. There really is no thinking involved.

Conclusion:
Overall this is a great purchase which has some nice features and also serves as a storage device. Also included in the package is a cute Mimobot felt jacket for your character and some stickers.  I highly recommend the Mimbot to any student or adult on the go looking to to get their USB Key noticed. It also makes for a cheerful desk decoration.  RayD80 retails for $24.95 for the 1gb version, 29.95 for the 2gb version, 39.95 for the 4gb version, and 59.95 for the 8gb version from Mimoco.

The Good:
Adorable  and fun design, comes preloaded with goodies like wallpaper and games

The Bad:
More expensive than ordinary USB keys, but worth it

Design:
Lacie’s new iamaKey promises to be shock-proof, scratch-proof and water resistant. And the iamaKey does indeed have a sturdy design – just like a real key. It’s also got a silver metallic finish like ordinary keys and thus it will easily blend in unassumingly on your key chain.

The iamaKey feels like it will withstand the riggers of everyday use much better than your average plastic USB key, and it seems like it will also have a longer shelf life than ordinary USB keys. The iamaKey is definitely a USB key for the clumsier amongst us or those that work and play too hard for their poor little flash drive’s own good. The iamaKey also come with a little see-through plastic cap to cover the part the USB connector, the cap fits snuggly, but we imagine that it can be easily forgotten or left behind because it’s so small and see-through. And by the time we actually got to writing this review, we had already misplaced the cap.

Performance:
Lacie claims read speeds of up to 30MB/s and write speeds up to 10MB/s. In real world tests we got consistent 10MB/s read and write speeds on average when transferring video files on to the iamaKey. Below are the Xbench’s results. We also noticed that the iamaKey heated up significantly during use.

Conclusion:
If you’re in the market for a USB key that is quirky, rugged, and affordable – look no further. Lacie’s iamaKey comes in 2 capacities – of 4GB or 8GB and it comes standard with a 2 year warranty. The 4GB version retails for $17.99 and the 8GB is $27.99.

The Good:
Adorable design, more rugged than your average USB key, affordable

The bad:
USB connector cap is easy to misplace

The FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player is a pretty unique product, and in some ways it’s the first of its kind. There are an assortment of multimedia hard drives out there that are designed to carry multimedia content like videos and music from your computer that will play on to your TV. However, with these types of products you are locked in to that specific hard drive. The FreeAgent Theater on the other hand is just a hub. In a way you can think of it as a DVD or VHS player with its own built in software that plays movies off of a medium. In this case, the medium’s format is actually the popular Seagate FreeAgent Go Harddrives.

The FreeAgent Theater hooks up to your TV to play video, photo and audio files off of a docked FreeAgent Go Hard Drive. So lets say you downloaded some videos (torrents, cough) that you would like to watch on your TV instead of being constrained to your computer, all you have to do is sync the video or photo or audio file on to your FreeAgent Go hard drive and then dock the hard drive in to the FreeAgent Theater which in turn connects to your TV. If you have several FreeAgent Hard drives, you can easily swap them out. Want to set a side one FreeAgent Go hard drive for photos, while another one just for your Dr. Who collection? You can keep it organized in that way too and when you’re ready to play the files, just plop it in to the FreeAgent Theater. You can even rip DVDs on to the hard drive so that you can essentially play DVDs on the FreeAgent Theater, complete with menus and subtitles. The FreeAgent Theater also sports an impressive amount of support for different file formats. Here are the specs from Seagate themselves.

Supported Formats:
Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (AVI/DivX /Xvid)
Subtitles: SAMI(smi), SRT and SUB
Video resolutions: NTSC 480i/480p; PAL 576i/576p, supports video (HD and upscaling) up to 720p/1080i*
Audio: MP3, AC3 (5.1 audio – Dolby® Digital) WMA, WAV, OGG
Photo: JPEG files up to 20 megapixels
* supports MPEG-4, Xvid up to 1280 x 720 60fps and supports MPEG-2 and photos up to 1920 x 1080i 30 fps

Design:
The FreeAgent Theater itself is easily portable, and pretty lightweight. It’s got a glossy black exterior that wlll blend in well with most home theater systems, yet it’s much smaller than your average home theater component – size-wise it’s on par with that of a portable DVD player. You can easily transport it to a friend’s house and share your videos and multimedia, by just hooking it up to their TV. A small black remote is also included with the FreeAgent Theater.

Set-up:
The FreeAgent theater comes with simple fold out set up guide and a software disc containing Windows-only software. The FreeAgent Theater software lets you manage the different FreeAgent Go drives you may be using with the FreeAgent Theater. It also enables you to easily sync your media files on to a FreeAgent Go Drive, automatically or manually. The software is straightforward and easy to use. However, Mac users are out of luck. Also, even though the device supports VOB files from DVDs, the system does not come with DVD ripping software, so you’ll be left to your own resourcefulness if you want to transfer the contents of a DVD on to the FreeAgent Theater.

Interface:
The interface is clean and very easy to use. It is designed much like other Media Center software, though not quite as sleek as something like Windows Media Center. Even novice users will be able to get up and running with the interface right away.

Video Quality:
The device has the ability to playback HD videos up to 720p/1080i via upscaling. In practice, video files and photos – especially HD video, looked good on my 42″ 720P Samsung Plasma. We played back a 720P AVI file that had been filmed on a digital camera and also tested a HD DIVX movie file. Both played back without a hitch and were pleasant to watch on screen. Photos looked good on screen as well. The FreeAgent Theater will automatically turn your photos into a slideshow.

You can connect the FreeAgent Theater to your TV via Composite, S-video, or Component video connections, and for audio – the FreeAgent Theater provides Stereo, and coaxial S/PDIF connections. AV Cables are included to connect the FreeAgent Theater to your TV. However, if you have an HDTV – you’re gonna want to use component cables if you really want to experience the best image possible.

Conclusion:
Another notable feature of the FreeAgent Theater to its credit, is that it can connect to other drives via a USB connection. However, one aspect of this system that does concern us is that while the FreeAgent Go Hard drives do have a solid shelf life, eventually the FreeAgent Go hard drives will be updated with new models. So our question is, what will happen when you want to buy additional hard drives to use with the FreeAgent Theater for docking? We hope that Seagate has the foresight to make future hard drive models compatible with the system as well.

The FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player delivers an easy to use home theater experience for those who want to easily playback their multimedia files on their Televisions. It’s a great affordable alternative to complex media center PCs and other wireless solutions. The device is easy to set up and to use, and it also is conveniently portable. Unfortunately we’re disappointed in the lack of Mac support and we long for at-least a native resolution of 720p and an HDMI port so that users could really appreciate the advantages of bringing their multimedia files on to the big HDTV screen in their living room. That said, we imagine that the FreeAgent Theater will be popular with pack rats who have a lot of saved and downloaded media that they’d like to unlock off of their PCs and experience on the big screen. Also, in a way, the FreeAgent Theater is the answer to a modern day projector. Thus, it should also be popular with families who want to easily share and present movies, photos, etc without too much expense and complication involved. The FreeAGent Theater HD Media Player retails for $129.99 without a FreeAgent Go hard drive. Packages with a 250GB drive and a complimenting FreeAgent Go dock are available for $229.99 and a version with a 500GB hard drive retails for $279.99 .

The good:
Very easy to use, Solid amounts of files supported including Divx support, can play off ripped DVD files, portable, good video quality, good user interface

The Bad:
Software not available for Mac, would have liked to see HDMI included.

Update 03/09/09: While the FreeAgent Theater does not support MOV formats out-of-the-box, third-party software is available to convert MOV (H.264) video to either MPEG-2, Xvid or DivX format which can then be viewed using FreeAgent Theater. The FreeAgent Theater media player also supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, and DIVX files with video resolutions for NTSC, PAL and HD up to 1080i and even provides support for subtitles.

Update 03/17/09: It turns out that Mac users are not totally left out in the cold if they want to use the FreeAgent Theater. If someone wants to use their Mac with the FreeAgent Theater – they must connect a hard drive to it that is a FAT 32 formatted drive. In which case they could connect an external hard drive via the USB port on the FreeAgent Theater, or they could reformat a FreeAGent Go drive to Fat32 and then be able to use their Mac to drag and drop files on to it.

Design:
The Lubix NC1 Bluetooth headset is designed to not only be wearable as a necklace but also be customizable to your taste. Lubix offers consumers a chance to create a skin for their pair of Lubix NC1 headphones and you can choose from predetermined designs or you can create one yourself.  The skin itself is of good quality since the folks behind Skinit are behind it, so we were more than pleased. The pair we tested actually had two skins included which was a nice touch.

The Lubix NC1 headset may look a bit out there since the earphone pieces are a bit on the large size. However, they are designed this way because of all the jog button controls that are located on the left earphone. The headset is held in place together magnetically in a form that resembles a pendant. The two pieces easily pull apart when you are ready to use them. Once you are done using your phone for the moment, then just bring the two parts together and they will seal closed magnetically.  The necklace cable is comfortable to wear and you can adjust the choker for neckband length. Included in the package is a manual, large/small eartips, USB adapter, and USB cable.

Setup:
Like any typical Bluetooth headset, the first thing that needs to be done is for the device to be paired. There are no batteries that need to be inserted but the device does need to be charged. Once the charging was completed, the next logical step is obviously to pair the device with your cellphone. I was using the new Blackberry 8900 Curve and turned on the Bluetooth feature to begin searching for Bluetooth devices in the area. Immediately I switched on the headset and held in the Talk/3D Sound button on the Lubix NC1 and the blue LED started to flash to indicate the pairing had begun. The Lubix NC1 was picked up immediately and I paired both devices. Now both the audio and phone calls would be heard and received by the device.

Features:

A key selling point of the Lubix Bluetooth headset is the stereo quality with 3D sound effects. I was impressed with the sound quality overall considering this is not a dedicated pair of headphones. The sound was of decent quality and when you switched on the 3D sound effects it only enhanced the aural experience. The different options consist of lowering the noise in the background of the song, delivering music that gives the impression of a live performance, or enhancing the vocals. With each effect you could hear a difference, which again I did appreciate for a bluetooth headset. Changing the volume can be done from the NC1′s earpiece’s jog button. Since the controls are on the left earbud of the NC1, it will take sometime to train yourself for as to which button does what, if you do it blindly. But if you just take the piece out of your ear for a moment the task can be completed easily.

Using the Lubix NC1 as a headset, I was able to hear callers on the other side of the headset just fine. However, when I was in a noisy environment, people on the other end of the call said that they did have problems hearing me because of surrounding noise, and as a result I would have to speak up a bit. Hopefully the next version of the NC1 will include noise cancellation tech in it.

The only real disappointment I had with the Lubix NC1 was that the buds were just too big for my ear canal. I switched to the smaller buds that were included and even squishing and pushing made no difference. They still kept falling out of my ears. If I stood still they stayed in my ears but as soon as I walked they popped right out of my ears. Of course I could just have an abnormal small size canal so this might only be an isolated problem with me. Many folks out there may not have the same issue.

Conclusion:
The Lubix Bluetooth Stereo Headset accomplishes what it set out to do. Be a decent handsfree device as well as a fashionable pair of stereo headphones. The fact you can customize (if you so choose) the NC1 with SkinIt skins and wear it as a necklace is a nice touch that makes it stand out from the very crowded Bluetooth crowd. Except with my own personal issue with the eartips – I think anyone who purchases the Lubix NC1 will be happy and pleased with a uniquely stylish and customizable product and the fact it can do two features well. The Lubix Stereo Bluetooth Headset SkinIt Bundle retails for $60 and the headset itself is available in blue, black or white. The Lubix Stereo Bluetooth Headset without the SkinIt option retails for $54.

The Good: Customization via skins is cool, fashionable pendant design, good stereo sound quality, easy setup.

The Bad: Eartips were a bit big for me, lack of noise cancellation

Meet Robot Dreamy Tina, the newest member of the Philips Active Crystals line from Swarovski. She joins her relatives Robot Happy Laura and Robot Naughty Raymond. Dreamy Tina has cute pinkish cheeks and her violet outfit is filled with Swarovski crystals. This is a perfect adornment that can be worn as a pendant or charm. Tina can store up to 500 songs or 2000 photos with her 2GB capacity and her LED ears shine as data is transferred, she retails for a whopping $180.