Looking through our What’s New page I was understandably drawn straight away to our new Black Hawk Picco-Z variant. After a quick rummage around I located the helicopter we had sent down to the office and set about having a test flight. It only took me a few moments to realise that I definitely needed one of these in my defence force for reconnaissance purposes. What makes this particular heli, in my view, superior to the rest of the Picco range is that it has a continual rate of forward movement, which makes it easier to navigate it to precisely where you want it. I’m sure that its LED searchlight which can be turned on/off from the remote control would come in handy!

Now, the Black Hawk is great for flying around the perimeter on patrol, but your common tea taker will be undeterred simply being spotted, you need something else to back it up. I knew exactly what could perform the ‘enforcement’ role that I needed; our Wireless Roving USB Missile Launcher. The sight of this tracked tank, equipped with four high velocity missiles heading in your direction is sure to persuade anyone after my tea to think a second, and third time! This great device is controlled remotely from your PC, and has suitable range to work well in even less than modest sized offices. The tracks mean it can handle all sorts of terrain, and will turn pretty much on the spot to ensure nothing escapes!

As a final line of defence, should any intrepid interlopers make it as far as my desk I also employed one of our Yoda USB Desk protectors. Instantly recognisable by sight, or the unique sound of his voice this Jedi Master is certain to divert even those who manage to circumvent my previous lines of defence!

If you have read anything about the N97 since release you have most likely encountered some of the software glitches that people appear to be experiencing en mass. Now, I’m not sure if some of these people have different software versions to me, or maybe branded handsets, (as an early adopter on Orange I was lucky enough to get an un-branded phone) but other than a couple of very minor niggles I can find very few faults with the handset myself. In fact, from the wealth of issues people claim to be experiencing the only two problems I have had issue with are:

• When ‘unlocking’ the handset using the slide button on the side, quite often the backlight will not come on first go, so the handset needs to be locked and unlocked again.
• After a prolonged period left on standby the widgets on the front page will cease to respond, and although you can still access the applications through the menu system, if you want to re-activate the widgets, the handset will need to be turned off and on again.I can put up with these niggles, and am assured that when the software update becomes available here in the UK that these will be addressed.

On to the plus points of the handset and I wonder where to start. It’s already replaced my iPod in the car for playing music, its 32GB of memory is more than enough for me. Any tracks I have imported into iTunes on my PC are easy enough to transfer to the phone via USB, Bluetooth, or over a network connection using one of the included applications. Of course the £20 of free downloads didn’t hurt its cause in that respect either. I have an adaptor for my car stereo, but if I didn’t I could always use the built in FM transmitter.

I haven’t had much of a play with the camera as of yet, I’m not really one for snapping at any given opportunity, as well as the fact it was my Birthday weekend so I was rather caught up in the revelry rather than taking photo’s, but with the playing I’ve done it compares favourably to the similar quality (Mega pixel wise) camera on my old N95. The keyboard is a joy to use, and this really helps it out, as it makes entering text a lot easier than using the touch screen interface as other phones do.

Last night was the key moment in my experience with the N97 however. At a pub quiz we got talking about the new series of Torchwood, and all my friends are saying how good it is. For those that don’t know they are showing a 5 part mini series on BBC1 at 9 o’clock every night this week. So upon returning home I downloaded the first part to my N97 using the included BBC iPlayer application. This took only 8 minutes to download a 60 minute episode to the memory of my phone, so I can now watch it anywhere, and I was highly impressed with both the video and audio quality the phone was giving me.

At the end of the day this really is a feature packed phone, I haven’t even got started on the Maps, Email, streaming video, ability to show flash files so you really can get the whole of the internet on this phone, and various other capabilities this phone has. It might not be as instantly lovable, to some, as the likes of the iPhone, but with just a little perseverance I personally feel this is a much better option.

And so here we are again, I don’t know about you but my weekend seems to go quicker and quicker each week! I was hoping to give you a review of the Muvi Camcorder today however after a day out with the girls on Saturday I wasn’t feeling my best yesterday and although my bike has been fixed I’ve noticed it now has a puncture, grr. On the plus side this week is a short one for me as I’ve got a long weekend in Wales coming up, should be the ideal place to test out the camera.

This week we’ve got loads of new products appearing on the website, here’s a little snippet of what you can expect to see. As Clare mentioned on Friday we have the new Travel Slanket, it’s like the original version just slightly smaller and comes in a handy little travel bag. Being 5′ nothing I found the original Slanket rather on the big side so this is the idea size for me even when I’m not travelling.

As the sound asleep pillow has been a big hit with you guys you’ll be pleased to know we will be getting the memory foam version. It works exactly like the hollowfibre version however it moulds to your bodies shape and natural contours.

Again adding to an existing but very popular range we’ll be getting the new Pink Sun Jar, Clare was very excited when she first saw this product so I’m sure she’ll tell you more about it when they are in. I could keep going as there are loads more products however you’ll need to visit the “what’s new” section on the site later in the week.

The post has just arrived on my desk and with it lots of samples, yay! So that my cue to exit.

Have a good week.

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The Tea Stain Mat is available from www.tea-stain.com. All you need to do is enter the names and drink preferences in the boxes provided, save those details and you can see an example of what your mat will look like. You can get up to 8 names printed on each mat, but if you have a number of temporary, or freelance colleagues who change from month to month, you might want something a little less permanent, which is where the Tea Stain mat really excels, as you can leave blank spaces to be filled out with a dry marker, and then simply wipe them clean and change as required.

The clever individuals involved will also include an eight sided die so that when it’s tea time you can fairly decide whose turn it is to get the round in. This comes in particularly handy for getting those round dodgers to pull their weight and pour some tea themselves.

Its mid week and what a great sunny one its been so far! Luckily for me yesterday I got to enjoy the weather as I was out of the office at my first trade show. For those of you who don’t know about trade shows, its an event where suppliers exhibit all their new and exciting products. This particular trade show was for homeware and accessories so you can imagine I was in my element having to spend the day looking at accessories and helpful gadgets.

On my travels through the day I came across the Pizza Pro Cutter which I know we have coming to you very soon. This cute pizza cutter in the unique form of a power tool, picture below, was by far my favourite kitchen gadget of the day. I can’t wait to test this little gadget out on a nice Margherita when it arrives (having to eat the pizza in the name of research of course). I also saw some great new products which we may be adding as new editions to the gadgets site soon so watch this space!

Well its back to the office today and although the sun seems to have retreated for a little while Gadgets Towers is still bright and cheery. Topic of amusement today is last nights poor show of shocking drama, Eastenders. I do believe I would have been more entertained in watching a bunch of monkeys than Nick Cotton attempting to hold up the local cafe after failing to kill his ma! Which funnily enough is what Dirk did, yes another odd channel 4 documentary. This one was based on couples who live their lives bringing up their babies….who oddly enough are monkeys. Yes, they dress to impress the little creatures as if they were their own. Strange! If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it on 4OD for the next 29 days, with a second episode to be screened on Wednesday 10th June.

Anyway have a good rest of the week! I’m sure I’m not alone in looking forward to the weekend where (hopefully) BBQ’s and pub gardens will be on the agenda!

Till next time!
xx

Firstly I can’t stress just how easy it really is to put together, and the fact that there is no messy glue needed only makes it easier. You can see the various stages of completion in the photo’s below, though I must say that after assembling the camper I realised that the customising part and attaching the various stickers is best done before assembly. Of course since there is no glue, and no permanent attaching the camper is easy enough to take apart again to put on the stickers before re-assembly.

Click images to enlarge in new window

The custom Camper Desk Tidy does the job it is intended to, but I have found that you need to make sure any items tidied lean in different directions in order to balance the weight and avoid any tip over catastrophes. Alternatively you could weight the bottom of the camper with a blob of Blu-Tack or make sure it is right next to something else to make sure it has nowhere to ‘tip’ to.

Designed to look like an IV drip, the idea is that when hooked up to your computer by a USB port it will heal any infections using pre-installed anti virus software, lighting up internally when in use. It’s only a concept design at the moment, but one that I like the look of. Whether or not you’d want the drip stand on your desk the whole time is a personal choice, but I can see it being an attractive novelty item for the medical profession.

However you explain the sightings however it doesn’t change the fact that an awful lot of people are fascinated by them. Obviously this is to different extents with some, such as myself, merely curious, or others who are certain of full blown conspiracy theories, and the other extreme of people who rubbish the whole thing.

Now, you are probably wondering why I’m talking about UFO’s and what that has to do with Gadgets exactly. Well the reason is this:

We were recently contacted by Richard Ellam, the artist responsible for the glow in the dark life-size Gray bust shown above. As everyone here at Gadgets Towers knows I’m the resident geek, and have something of a penchant for the X-Files they pushed it in my general direction.

These very cool looking sculptures are hand crafted using environmentally friendly materials and made to order. Yes, you did hear me right, you can have your very own life-size Gray sculpture. Available in a choice of glow in the dark colours you can find Richards page here which will give you further information and where you can place your order.

We started with a game of one-on-one between two of my friends to get the ball bouncing. The first thing we very soon discovered was that although we weren’t very good, and we weren’t filling the cups more than about 1/3 full, if we carried on that way it was going to end in drunken disaster pretty quickly! The second game we decided on teams of three, and played ‘North of the river versus South of the river’. Unfortunately after a very promising start my team contrived to throw the game away with a mixture of bad luck and plain ineptitude, I even somehow managed to get the ball into one of our own cups at one point.

The noise of the games and the teams cheering each other on was drawing a crowd to the kitchen, and everyone wanted to play. To say the Beer Pong was the hit of the party would be an understatement. Not only was it great fun, it brought the different groups together, and got us integrating far more readily than if we had just stood around.  Many many games later it was time to make our way home, but with new friends made a date has already been arranged for our next Beer Pong session.

I would recommend anyone gets one of these sets and gives it a go to liven up any get together. It’s simple enough for anyone to be able to play and is a great way to get people interacting.