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Gadgets, Technology, Public speaking and IT from an undergraduate's perspective.
More Cool Inventions! Top USB gadgets and Cool USB Toys
USB has always fascinated me — it’s amazing how you can transfer both data and power through USB. And many companies have leveraged on that to create some really cool inventions! Just check these USB gadgets that I found..some of them are positively zany - like the USB Chameleon, while some can really promise serious fun, like the USB Laser Guided Missile Launcher!
I think they make fantastic gifts too, because anyone can get a kick out of them. Especially since computers are so common too.
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USB BirthDay Decoration Kit
Celebrate birthdays the high-tech way with this USB-powered instant decorating kit - it comes with festive lights and ribbons along with a birthday wish mouse pad and party hat! |
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USB Mini Arcade Basketball
You can take a break from your work day or homework to get in some quality court time with this USB mini arcade basketball set! You don’t have to wait in line at busy arcades - all you need is a computer with a USB port to start the fun. Great for challenging your friends and co-workers to see who can score the highest in a 30 second round! |
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USB Missile Launcher
The USB missile launcher is a simple, fun toy that fires three foam darts from any Windows computer with the handy included software. (Some enterprising hackers have also rigged up open source software for even more compatibility!) |
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USB Pole Dancer
The USB Pole Dancer is the perfect gift for a friend in the office, a bachelor’s party gag or the gadget loving guy. She (it?) will perform to the default dance track, or you can connect your MP3 player / iPod and she will dance to your favorite tunes, all the while moving to the beat of the song. It’s USB powered, so no batteries or software required. |
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USB Airplane Powered Fan
This airplane fan simply plugs up to your computer with a USB cord to set the propellers spinning. Uses a high quality quiet motor, so you don’t have to worry about it making excessive noise. |
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USB Humping Dog
USB Humping Dog is a unique USB toy for computers. Just plug it into an USB port and watch it in action. This spunky mutt will not stop, until you pull him out. |
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USB iMood Clock
Color changing desktop alarm clock (blue, green and red) that runs off USB, or even batteries if you want! Has 8 different melodies for the alarm function. |
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Twistable Notebook Light for Laptop
There are tonnes of notebook lights on the market, but beware because some have off-white (or even blue) lights, aren’t long enough or have inferior bulbs that blow easily or aren’t bright enough. This one is definitely a cut above. Produced by Thermaltake, the two LEDs are bright and are controllable by an on/off switch, and feel well-constructed. |
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USB Laser Guided Missile Launcher
There are USB missile launchers, and then there are USB missile launchers. This is the next generation USB Missile Launcher that features a powerful Class 3 laser. Powered by your computer, you can actually use it to properly aim at your foes in the office. Simply install the accompanying targetting software, then connect the Striker II™ toy to your USB port on your computer. Now defend your space with foam missiles and a real laser! Moves 180 degrees left and right, and tilts up and down 45 degrees. Awesome fun! |
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USB Family Guy Stewie figure
I love Family Guy, and Stewie rocks! So I thought this makes a pretty cool USB toy. Stewie responds to keystrokes with movement and sound! He blinks his evil beady eyes, menacingly waves his arm and his leathel laser lights up too. Ignore him and he will remind you who is boss with random phrases and action |
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USB Circus Cannon
You plug the USB Circus Cannon into your computer and then using your arrow keys and space bar, you can aim and fire at anything within 10 feet of your PC. It has pretty cool sound effects and shoots with authority. |
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USB Chameleon
With its bendable arms, legs and tail, you can place your Chameleon anywhere you want. When it’s connected to a USB port, it will randomly roll its eyes and stick its tongue. |
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USB Tengu
Working on your PC can sometimes be a lonely experience. Well, not anymore, because now you can get yourself a new buddy in the form of Tengu! He’s (though he might be a she…) a USB-powered gadget that lights up and lip-syncs to music, or your voice, or whatever noise happens to be banging around at the time. Tengu has seven different facial expressions, and when there’s no sounds to lip-sync to, he’ll simply nod off. As soon as he detects some noise, he’ll wake up and lip-sync along to it. Tengu is a fun little object that guarantees to raise a smile as he lip-syncs along to your favorite songs. |
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USB Plasma Ball
This is a miniature plasma ball which works in exactly the same way as the full-sized ones found in museums and in the movies! As a kid, I had always wanted one of these…on touching it, blue flashes of lightning will move to greet your fingertips. Just plug this plasma ball into any USB port on your computer, flick the switch to ‘On’ and watch as it comes to life! |
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USB Mini Aquarium
Watch beautiful tropical fish swimming and playing in these desktop aquariums and feel your stress fading away. They won’t starve, they don’t make a mess, and they just swim gently back and forth with playful movements. |
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Homer Simpson USB Desk Light
This is a cool looking USD desk light that’s actually Homer Simpson relaxing as usual in his armchair. Seat him right next to your computer — the lamp lights up when plugged into any USB port. |
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22 Mar 08 | Toastmasters Table Topic Ideas for Impromptu Speaking - Current Affairs
This Table Topics idea is great because as Toastmasters, we have to be able to speak on any topic, and be especially familiar with current affairs. So select a current affair from the news and have each Table Topics speaker discuss the topic.
Tags: Public Speaking, table topics, Tips, ToastmastersRelated posts
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Top Freeware Applications / Software (That’s Right — Entirely Free!)
I think free software is simply awesome. You get so much functionality and power out-of-the-box, and most of the time, these software developers are really passionate about what they do, and even release frequent updates. Here’s a list of my top freeware applications. There are some programs that I just have to pay for, so I’m not including them in this list.
- FileZilla is an open source FTP client with a full set of features. It rivals commercial-grade software in its functionality, and is user-friendly with an attractive UI.
- Audacity is a powerful audio editing software, great for recording music, tweaking sound files and also for podcasts.
- Winamp is a great music player for those looking for a alternative to the relatively bloated and slow “iTunes”. It’s the defacto audio player that supports almost all kinds of audio formats and is extensible through the use of plugins.
- Miranda is a fast and lightweight all-in-one messenger that uses very little resources. It is plugin-driven and you can enable support for MSN, AIM, ICQ, JABBER(G-Mail Chat), YAHOO, and even IRC out-of-the-box. Great piece of software, especially if you are using more than one messenger service.
- Paint.Net is a free image editing software that’s incredibly easy to use and powerful as well. For those of you who don’t have Photoshop and don’t want to use GIMP, this is the best you can get.
- UltraVNC is a remote desktop control software. It comes in 2 parts - a server and a client. You run the server on a computer that you want to control, and run the client anywhere else that you want to control the server computer from. With this freeware, you can remotely do anything with your computer - it’s just like you were there physically.
- TrueCrypt provides industry-standard encryption features that enables encryption of any drive. The cool thing is that you can create hidden volumes, and as you move files to that drive, the files encrypt automatically. TrueCrypt is great for keeping important information away from prying eyes.
- Skype is a voice over IP (VOIP) program. While pc-to-pc calls are usually free, and are supported by many other instant messenging services, Skype actually allows pc-to-landline or landline-to-pc calls at a cheap price.
- Antivir is a powerful anti-virus software that’s lightweight and uses very little resources. The Personal Edition is free, and comparison studies have shown Antivir to perform better than AVG and Avast! in terms of virus detection.
- ImgBurn is the answer to people who find Nero to be a little too overwhelming. Fast and lightweight, this is a great free program for burning CDs/DVDs.
- VLC Player is incredible because it can play almost any video formats that you throw at it, out-of-the-box! It supports subtitles and screenshotting, and also can play files with multiple sound streams.
If I’m looking for a software that doesn’t have a freeware version, I usually check out online software download sites that offer a list of commercial software.
Tags: best software free, free applications, free downloads, free software, top freeware, top freeware downloadsRelated posts
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Five tips to save time and increase productivity
I always get the feeling that there’s just not enough hours in a day, so I’m big on time management and productivity boosters. Here’re 5 tips to save time and increase your productivity.
1. Do certain things fewer times
Things that can be done less or things that can be done once instead of twice are those things that will help us save a lot of time. Clean your house once every ten days instead of every 7 days – you can do that, it’s normal and the house won’t get dirty in those three extra days.
Make a work report every six week not every four weeks if possible.
Keep meetings to inform yourself on ongoing projects twice a month not every week. And the list of things that can be done fewer times can go on forever.
2. Compete with yourself!
Watch the clock and settle to finish an activity by a certain hour. Focus, get rod of anything that could distract you and work more efficiently.
3. Ask more out of 15 minutes.
Can you find 15 minutes a day that you could use more efficiently? Is there lost time in your activities? Or maybe a less important activity you can give up on? If you manage to save 15 minutes every day, you will win in fact 91 hours every year!
4. Do a list of little activities that don’t take you more than a couple of minutes.
Of course, we usually want to deal with the important problems first. But when we feel tired, stressed, in a bad mood, we find it hard to concentrate and we lose our time forcing ourselves. A list of simple activities will help you finalize something and push up your productivity. And obviously it is always better to know you did something, even is it is small, than to realize you haven’t even started anything.
5. Work on a certain project over a certain period of time.
Rather than to try and finalize an activity at once, it is better to tell yourself: “ I will work on this for 15 minutes and see how much I can get done during this interval”. Focus and try to do all you can during those 15 minutes. This is an excellent advice to solve problems or projects you avoided lately.
Tags: boost productivity, increase productivity, productivity tips, time management, time savers, time saving tips, top time saving tipsRelated posts
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Cool Looking Electric Single Seater Car Inventions
Wow! I saw a really cute looking three-wheeled single-seater car today and immediately went to look for information about it online. Turns out that it’s the creatively-named, Electric One-Person Car!
It’s produced by Hammacher, and has a top speed of 70mph. The amazing thing about this car is that it can travel up to 30 miles per charge, it operates with zero emissions and uses less than half the energy of todays most efficient hybrid vehicles! How’s that for cool!
The only problem is its price. At $24,899.95, the Electric One-Person Car isn’t exactly very affordable — given the sacrifices that you have to make in terms of space. Imagine trying to put your grocery shopping in that car!
Good news though, my poking around also led me to a seemingly technologically more advanced car called the VentureOne, produced by VentureVehicles.
This car is simply fantastic! Just check out the videos on Carver on the VentureOne website. The car looks absolutely fun to drive because of its unique tilt mechanism.
And with 100mpg, what price is too high for this car? I’d imagine the cost savings that you’ll gain from petrol will make up for the car’s purchase price — and think of the fun! I can’t wait for this to appear in Singapore. With its high manoeuvrability, low maintenance costs, low emissions, I think this could potentially revolutionise the automobile industry. I know I’d want one! 
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About AlvinMy blog covers areas covering mainly IT, technology, and public speaking. My posts are usually about any useful things that I think are worth sharing, and of my research that I do. |
