The iPod nano is sleek, cool, light and more, but one thing it's not is cheap.

There're lots of clones with a more attractive price-point, but not from such a reputed manufacturer.

Capitalizing on this market gap, Creative introduces the ZEN Stone. Looks may not be as good as those of the iPod wannabes, but it's very nice, small and costs a lot less.

If you ever had an iPod in your shopping list, you can start thinking about an affordable alternative from a known brand. Among its features, you will find: 1Gb, 10 hours rechargeable battery and six colours to choose from. Ogg suppoters will have to skip it, though. But even in MP3 format you can store about 250 songs @128kbps. For only $69 or €39 you can't honestly complain.

 

 

 

Meade, one of the leading companies involved in the development of astronomy equipment for both industrial and consumer use, announced an innovative and very exciting device that can literally change the way you'll look at the night sky. 

Known as mySKY™, the Meade mySKY sky navigator is a fun, interactive, multi-media, hand-held guide to the universe. mySKY locates and identifies celestial objects in the night sky using the latest in electronic technology. Featuring a full-color LCD screen and the added ability to control a Meade computerized telescope, the Meade mySKY is clearly unlike anything else on the market.

Meade mySKY is the ultimate in simplicity and ease of use. No prior knowledge of the night sky is needed due to the fact that Meade mySKY aligns itself without any input from the user. Turn it on, point it at a celestial object, and pull the trigger to identify planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies and much more. The Meade mySKY has a database of over 30,000 objects, many which include color images and audio descriptions.Exploration of the night sky starts with a simple video introduction of how to use mySKY. From there, real-time, color SkyMaps guide you to the objects you want to locate. Once an object is located, full-color presentations will blow you away with stunning astrophotography, entertaining audio descriptions, color videos, astronomical mythology, folklore, scientific fun facts and much more! Sandy Wood, the familiar voice of the popular StarDate, a syndicated daily radio program, provides you with audio descriptions of the objects you have found. The Meade mySKY also takes you on guided tours of the best objects in your sky, tailored perfectly to your time, date and location.

The Meade mySKY features the latest technology to perform an automatic alignment, allowing customers of any experience level to find objects within the first minutes of using the mySKY. mySKY technology includes a 12-channel GPS receiver to automatically find your exact location, date and time, a magnetic compass to accurately find north, and electronic accelerometers to determine pointing location. In a nutshell this means that the Meade mySKY will do all of the hard work for you, allowing you to enjoy the wonders of the night sky!

One of the most highly anticipated features of the Meade mySKY is the ability to connect with a Meade computerized telescope for advanced telescope functionality. Simply connect the mySKY to a Meade telescope, point the mySKY at an object you wish to observe, pull the mySKY trigger and the telescope will automatically go to the selected object. The Meade mySKY will also add GPS functionality to non-GPS telescopes from Meade Instruments.

Scheduled to begin shipping in late April or early May. The price for this innovative product is $399 and can be found at leading Meade dealers throughout the universe (ahhh, world).

For additional information, check out www.meade.com

 

If you live, eat and dream emoticons, this is the gadget to give you true geek status. The driving LED emoticon let's you give other motorists all your favourite smiley faces from the comfort of the driving seat. Of course they probably won't have a clue what they mean.

The device is battery powered and features a message panel that can be attached to a window with a handy suction cup. A remote control allows the unit to be controlled wirelessly and can activate preset messages at the touch of a button. Unfortunately, only one of five messages cna be displayed - Thanks, back off, idiot, frowning face and smiling face. At only $29.99, it's a must have for geeks

It's just a pity you can't use it for insults too.

 

2007 promises to be a bumper year for the gadget enthusiast. Here's a look at some of the most anticipated gadgets of 2007.

Apple iPhone

 

The must have mobile phone of 2007 is predicted to be the greatest gadget ever invented. Dubbed the Jesus phone, it's sexy looks are only rivaled by it's feature list. The iPhone's 3.5 inch widescreen with a resolution of 480 x 320 makes it an ideal candidate for watching videos on the go. The screen has the ability to flip from potrait mode to landscape and there's even an ambilight sensor that adjusts brightness depending on lighting conditions. With Apple iTunes upping the video content ready for the launch, a good choice of movies and TV shows will make it a stellar movie machine.

The touchscreen interface makes the iPhone suitably snazzy. Apple have spent over two years working on the touchscreen to make it skin friendly and robust enough to withstand sticky fingers.

Communication is particular impressive with an innovative voicemail system that lets you scan through messages and listen to the ones you want much like scanning through your email. The iPhone runs a cutdown OS X operating system as found on the Apple computers. While you can't use Mac applications, it does have the Safari browser and Apple's widget mini applications. It even supports multi-tasking. The iPhone connects at high speed thanks to WiFi and bluetooth 2.0. Steve Jobs has suggested it will be 3G enabled by the time it is launched in the UK.

 

We love a bit of Muff at MaXit and this set of headphones from the Sennheiser stable looks nice and juicy. The 435's caught our eye with their stylish design and low price.

The Sennheiser HD 435 dynamic stereo headphones boast outstanding sound characteristics with  a detachable, single-sided cable and integrated volume control. They look and feel solid and the sporty trim adds a bit of muff magic to the appearance. You can use them at home with a mini/compact hi-fi system, a PC or even with portable players in the street if you want to look funky - just don't expect them to stay on your ears for long if you live in hoody land. Sennheiser claims to have the highest wearing comfort of any headphones so you need not worry about deforming your tabs while listening to Take That on full blast - don't worry your secrets safe with us. At around £30 with a 2-year warranty you'd be raving mad pal not to give them a test drive.

With all the recent excitement about Apple TV, we thought we bring you the latest development from HANNSapple. 

Know for their wacky technology designs, this latest ones a real peach or should we say apple? Looking like a GM mutation, the 9.6" screen is housed in an apple moulding complete with leaves, stems and a door.  It's the weirdest idea we have seen but we can't help being drawn to it. It's also available it green and looks good enought to eat - well if you like plastic moulding that is.

Only a couple of days after being shipped, the Apple TV is already being modified in a variety of ways. A thread at Something Awful discusses installing VLC, and a dedicated site, AppleTVHacks.net, has appeared and is cataloging hacks including a hard-drive upgrade tutorial. Did Apple intend for the Apple TV to be so easy to upgrade and hack?

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The new Killer NIC K1 is the successor to the much debated original Killer NIC card that offers the same features at a lower price: this time for about $170 or so. Not cheap, that's for sure. But in this review at PC Perspective, not only is the new card tested under the drastically updated Vista networking stack with improved results, but the free BitTorrent client that runs on the Killer NIC is reviewed as well; with it you should be able to download torrents without affecting online gaming performance. Enough to warrant a $175 network card?

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Another oh-so-cutsy Hello Kitty, this time from Sanrio. It's house trained, likes to play with pink rubber toys, eats raw fish, purrs when sleeping and loves to sit on your lap while you watch TV. The air freshners pretty good too.

The question is would you really want one on the back seat of your car? With a bow like that and a cute yellow nose, how could you resist!

Reports are coming in around the net that Apples latest living room gadget is hitting the shelves. Inboxes are filling up with messages from Apple that the unit is now ready and pre-orders are being filled.

It's time to light the incense, setup your prayer mat and get ready to perform the ritual unwrapping ceremony at the Alter of Apple.