Gadgets

This adorable butterfly webcam is great to brighten up any boring laptop. Besides looking so darn cute, it's USB 2.0 compliant and has lights that can be adjusted for brightness on its front. The bendy neck is great for centering yourself perfectly in the broadcast.

It's available over at USB Geek (as well as any other thing you could possibly want USB-ified) for just 20 bucks. Take your pick of either green or blue.

It's a fact that a lot of women (including me) are embarrassed to use public bathrooms for fear of sounds that go hand-in-hand with bathroom use. There's nothing like my bathroom at home where I can go without fear holding me back. So when I saw the Sound Princess from Japan, I thought it was genius. It seems that Japanese women tend to actually flush the toilet to hide their sounds so this gadget was invented to conserve water by creating artificial flushing noises. I don't hear a lot of extra flushes here in the US, but I'm sure a lot of ladies' digestive systems would be really grateful to see these things pop up in public restrooms.

I'm not the biggest cat lover in the world, and I might go so far as to say that I'm afraid of them. So this alarm clock is probably not for me, but a lot of cat lovers out there might dig it. (Having those evil cat eyes staring at me all night is not my idea of a good night's sleep.)  read more »

A new gadget from DuoFertility, a group of folks at Cambridge, allows women to monitor their ovulation with a heat-sensitive skin patch and a futuristic receiver. Just put the receiver by the patch, and it presents the data to you. When your ultra-important basal temperature (BBT) indicates ovulation, the contraption lights up, bells go off, and a voice firmly instructs you to "Have sex now". No, just kidding, but that's how it should work.  read more »

Speech bubbles are all the rage in our Web 2.0 world. Now they could be coming to your home in the form of speakers. Only a concept now, but when these are finally manufactured, I might be adding them to my JBL Encounter alien speaker setup...just to make those little martians a little more expressive.

It's not KITT, but it is a GPS teddy bear that points you in the right direction (literally), shouts "Watch" if you're driving erratically and makes you feel guilty by asking you, “You haven’t been drinking, have you?” after smelling alcohol on your breath. It's just in the prototype phase now, but watch out for these strangely creepy creatures to hit the market (probably in Japan) sometime next year by iXs Research Corp.