Hands free action camera £39.95

Nothing captures all those extreme sports moments like video footage shot from your point of view as you pull off that awesome stunt, but how are you meant to hold a camera and have your hands free to do what they need to and ensure you don’t end up in a crumpled heap on the floor? The helmet Camera is ideal for just such situations being easy to use straight from the box, and able to strap to helmets, arms and the like. Once secured, press the button to start recording and off you go, no messing about, no fuss, and no awkward hand held devices.

Powermonkey Classic £34.99

The powermonkey classic is the essential travel companion providing portable power for your gadgets when you need it most. It incorporates a lithium-Ion battery which can recharge your mobile phone fully up to three times before you’ll need to recharge the powermonkey unit. It will also give you up to 40 hours of play time on your iPod, 48 hours on your PDA and up to 5 hours gaming on your handheld games console.

Gorilla Pod camera grip from £19.95

Grab the perfect picture thanks to the utterly brilliant gorilla pod – give all your photo opportunities and memories a boost. Gorilla pod camera grip firmly secures your camera to just about anything (or anyone!) – anywhere and everywhere. Unlike traditional tripods, the gorillapod doesn’t require a flat surface for you to take the perfect shot.

Leatherman £149.99

The ultimate all in one tool! Resplendent in its lightweight premium grade 6061 T6 aluminium alloy handles, heat treated and hard anodised for unparalleled wear resistance, the Leatherman Charge AL is tough enough to handle any task. The pliers have always been known as the strongest out there, but now they’ve been redesigned giving 133% more squeezing load.

Waterproof notebook and pencil £8.95

Perfect for any watery or moist persuit this waterproof notebook is perfect to stash away in your pack. Picture yourself on a blustery and showery day in the hills, feeling inspired by the fresh air and awe inducing views. Instead of reaching in your pocket for a soggy note pad try this waterproof notepad and pencil – your poetry / bright ideas / ‘help’ note will be easily jotted down.

Garmin GPS £159.99

The robust, waterproof Garmin GPS 60 is the perfect, low-cost navigator for wherever your spirit of adventure takes you. The large, sunlight-readable, four-level grayscale display with bright LED backlight makes it easy to find your way day or night while a rockerpad control button gives easy operation. It comes preloaded with a worldwide city point database and a 1MB internal memory for adding optional MapSource Points of Interest data.

Aquacase for Phone and iPad from £19.95

Devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry and iPad are incredibly sophisticated little chunks of technology but they are still very much susceptible to the damaging effects of liquid and grit. This renders them unsuitable for use where they might come into contact with water or sand which can be a pain when you want to take them away on holiday or out into the great outdoors.

The aquacase is the protective shield that gives you that extra portability with your iPhone, Blackberry or iPad. A transparent touch sensitive perspex skin framed by an airtight rubber seal means that you can still maintain full touch-screen functionality with your device while protecting it from harm. Allowing you to text, talk and tweet by the pool or lounge on the beach with a good book on your iPad.

2 way radios £69.99

Fully featured, tough and iconic in style these 2 way radios by Motorola are the ideal way to stay connected in the outdoors. On the trail, scaling a peak or accessing your favourite snowfield the TLKR T6 is packed with functionality including a range of up to 8km, multiple call tones and rechargeable batteries.

Pocket fishing rod £19.95

With this ingenious Pocket Fishing Rod you can kick back, and relax with a spot of fishing any time, any place, although we recommend doing it near some water so you don’t look too silly whilst casting your line. At first glance you’d never suspect that this clever little device can be quickly and easily extended to just over a metre long with just a flick of the wrist. When collapsed down this fishing rod is just the size of a large pen, and will fit comfortably inside a pocket, glove box, or bag. Perfect for unexpected fishing opportunities on adventurous trips abroad!

Water purifying kit by SteriPen £114.99

The SteriPen Adventurer Opti water purifier offers the ultimate in fast, convenient water purification. Compact and lightweight the SteriPen Opti is easy to pack and ensures you’ll always have access to safe drinking water. SteriPen creates ultraviolet light that disrupts the DNA of microbes in seconds. Without functional DNA, microbes can’t reproduce or make you sick. Simply press the button to activate, place in clear water and stir until light turns green.

This is a guest blog post from Ellis Brigham Mountain Sports who specialise in offering top end outdoor clothing for a wide range of adventure sports. They share our passion for gadgets, and are offering a gadget prize for a New Year gadgets competition – watch this space!

Regular readers will know that today is normally ‘Murray Monday’ however due to an influx of lovely Christmas orders over the weekend I’m filling in so Murray can concentrate on sorting them all out for you.

Having not posted anything since August plus stepping in right at the last minute I must say I feel a bit rusty and lacking somewhat in ideas of what to write. So hands up I’m going for the easy option and I’m just going to plug a couple of my favourite new products. Well I’ve spent the last few months traipsing round trade shows and trawling through endless emails to find these things for you so I think its allowed!

First up is the Melting Snowman. Being a little over the wrong side of 30 you tend to get disapproving looks when making snowmen unless you have countless kids in tow. Or there’s the comments ‘aren’t you a little too old for that’ to quote my dad when I bought a sledge the other week, thanks dad!

My latest snowman

With this little kit I get to make the perfect snowmen and like the real thing it melts so I can make them time and time again all from the comfort of my desk.

Next is the Nose Warmer, don’t ask me why I like this product I just do. Would I wear it, most probably not, do I know someone who would wear it, most probably not either. Would that stop me from buying one, most definitely not. In fairness it’s a pretty bizarre and strange product however that’s the beauty of it. All though unlike most other crazy products this one actually has a good use should you be brave enough to give it a go!

Tartan nose warmer

Well thats it from me, have a good evening.

M

I will however take any reason I can get to join in with a little Star Wars mania and in the spirit of all things Jedi and Sith, I bring you my top five favourite Star Wars parodies. The farce is strong in this one.

5. Spaceballs

Mel Brooks applies his genius comedy mind to all things sci-fi, including Star Wars. Most notably the Dark Helmet of course.

4. Adam and Joe Star Wars

Back in the 90s, comedy duo Adam and Joe didn’t just play with their Star Wars toys, they superimposed their own mouths onto them and re-enacted British TV shows. Blind Date, Chew’ve been Framed and Chew wants to be a millionaire included.

3. Robot Chicken Star Wars

Seth Green’s robot chicken explains the sad tale behind Luke’s altercation with the ‘orrible thing in the cantina. Poor Ponda Baba.

2. Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager

Chad works at a convenience store and regularly clashes with customers and senior management. Matt Sloan’s impression of James Earl Jones’ Sith Lord is so impressive that it actually led to him being employed by LucasArts for some voiceover work.

1. Family Guy – Something something something Darkside

As I’m nearly as much of a Family Guy fan as I am a Star Wars fan, it’s obviously going to be the winning combination for me. Seth McFarlane’s Blue Harvest was brilliant but Something, Something, Something, Darkside was just pure genius.

These are not the toys you were looking for… But now you’re here, be sure to check out our Star Wars gifts section including the cutest plush characters in the galaxy.

So far the Time Lord, his faithful Scottish companion and that other bloke have come up against a miniaturised justice league piloting a shape-shifting robot from what looks suspiciously like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise…

Make it so... wait... wrong sci-fi.

…and of course dollies. ‘Orrible dollies with no eyes. ‘Orrible dollies with no eyes that look a bit like Jonathan Davis from Korn. It was enough to have you cowering behind the sofa like the kids did back when Patrick Troughton was the doctor.

Korn dolls were all the rage in '05

I wasn’t surprised to learn that the last episode was written by Mark Gatiss, who is generally top-notch I reckon. If you’ve seen The League of Gentleman or last year’s Sherlock on the BBC, you’ll recognise him. Partly because he’s charismatic, but mostly because he’s dead creepy.

If you’ve got any Who fanatics in your household, don’t forget that we’ve got gifts covered for them. There’s the Adipose stress toy for their desk and the TARDIS mug would be perfect for when you’re settling down tomorrow night for the next instalment. This clip from tomorrow’s episode promises killer robots that look as if they were made by Apple. Surely that just means your death would be more stylish and desirable than other more affordable deaths. We’ll have to wait and find out.

Bobbing along...

I think the thing that makes the fish strangely beautiful is how realistically it moves through the air as if it were in water. A belly-full of helium allows it to defy gravity. Then the remote control makes it flap it’s fins and controls a small weight on it’s underside which makes it dip down or float upwards. It’s just for indoors as a big gust of wind would be enough to send your fishy friend flying. I’m told there’s also an Air Swimmer shark, sounds terrifying!

No sooner had it finished I was in the kitchen rummaging around the cupboard looking for one of the many items I’d stashed away a few months earlier due to a broken cooker. The first item that came to hand was the PAC-Man cookie cutters.  I’m more of a cake than cookie person so I found it very helpful to have a basic recipe on the back of the packaging. It saved me from having to look one up on the internet or consult one of my many recipe books. The ingredients needed were all from the store cupboard so I didn’t need to rush out to the shops which was handy as it was getting late into the evening.

Having followed the easy instructions within minutes I had a bowl of yummy cookie dough ready to go into the fridge to rest. After half an hour of resting I set about using the cutters to make my pac-man characters. The cutters worked well and I found the recipe provided enough dough to make a whole army of ghosts. After only 10 mins in the oven they were done.

Now at this point it was late and I was feeling tired, I should have left them to cool and finished them off today. However me being me I wanted to get the job done right then so I set about icing them while still warm. This was a bad move! The icing ran everywhere and the choc chips I used for eyes started to melt. I quickly put them in the fridge to try and cool them however this didn’t really help much. Here is a picture of the few I managed to rescue, the others weren’t so lucky.

I think this is a great set for a beginner cook or for cooking with kids. I’ll certainly be using it again with my nephews when they visit in a couple of week’s time!

Luckily the folks at John Lewis understand our need for classy contraptions and they’ve given us a rather dapper red 500GB hard drive worth over £69 to give away to one of our lucky blog readers. You’ll even get a cool case to keep it safe.

And you can’t get much more stylish than the new Dell Switch laptops with interchangeable lids. John Lewis are also offering fans the chance to win a Dell Switch and a Design Studio lid of their choice until 17th August to celebrate Dell’s search for a new lid design.

Win this smart red hard drive and trendy travel case.

With all this sleek modern technology on offer, we started thinking about how different computers were thirty-odd years ago and wondering what on earth we did before they could access the internet? Did people go to each other’s houses and write their names in each other’s photo albums before Facebook? Did anyone know what Stephen Fry was eating for breakfast pre-Twitter? How did we ever prove anyone wrong before Google!?

All you have to do to be in with the chance of winning our prize is to tell us about the first time you ever used a computer; whether you were illuminated in the green glow of a monochrome monitor or sitting amongst the wrapping paper with a shiny new laptop on a Christmas morning. Do you remember your first ever search on the World Wide Web? (Bet it was your own name right? Yeah we thought so.)

Just leave your comment in the box below, we’ll choose an entrant at random and announce the winner at the end of the month on the 31st of August. Best of luck and we hope you enjoy reminiscing.

John Lewis sell a wide range of laptops and laptop accessories, as well as other gadgets such as iPods and the iPad 2.

I’ve always liked beanbags, there are few things more comfortable than sinking down into one, with the beans supporting you just where you need it for maximum comfort. Named as it is it would be rather silly if the Beach Bum Beanbag wasn’t ideally suited to being utilised on the beach of all places, but all that sand and sea water would put any lesser bags in peril of getting waterlogged and decidedly damp. Not so the Beach Bum with its special double stitched seams and PVC coated material. This beanbag is made especially for you to be able to relax wherever and whenever you should want, also being virtually child proof!

The sustained appearance of the sun has also got us revisiting some of our older gadgets such as the Zoku Pop maker so we can enjoy some cool fruity treats in the sunshine. You may remember Mandy’s post describing all the fun we had with this in the office last year, and the funky designs we managed to create.

I’m sure we all well aware of what is happening and going on around us in the world at the moment, but what was happening back in 1981? I’ve had a quick look and these are just some of the events of 1981:

• Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister, and would be for a few more years, whereas Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as the 40th president of the United States.
• The first ever London Marathon was run with in the region of 6,400 runners completing the course (compared with 36,550 runners finishing this year)
• Bucks Fizz won the Eurovision Song contest for the UK
• MTV was launched in America

The world has changed an awful lot in 30 years, but if you do miss the 80′s then we do have a number gadgets themed in accordance with this fondly remembered decade such as our 80′s Retro iPhone Case, or Rubik’s Cruets, among others.

As well as being a religious celebration of particular significance this weekend also saw the return of Doctor Who to our TV screens. Of course we here at Gadgets Towers are all big fans of the doctor and his adventures, what with the Sonic Screwdriver being possibly our favourite gadget of all time! As such we do of course have a few Doctor Who themed gadgets and gift ideas that might take the fancy of the Doctor Who fan in your life. My personal favourites are the squishable Adipose Stress Toy, and the Dalek Desk Protector.

Not only is the Adipose Stress Toy pretty darned cute, but it will ease away the worries of even the most hectic day, whilst the Dalek Desk Protector will keep away any unwanted intruders from your desk, so you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that your paperclips, and sticky notes are safe!

Of course there are a few other Doctor related items on our website as well as plenty of other great gift ideas!