Stuck for a gift for your ex-wife? Divorce is tough enough without having to struggle with helping the kids pick out something “special” for your ex’s birthday or holiday gift list. After all - you probably already are providing enough money so she can buy her own gifts. Instead, why not focus on something memorable yet not too expensive. This is possibly the world’s most perfect “The Kids Picked It Out” gift which while not totally useless will be fun to imagine her using with the kids around (to show them how much mommy loved their gift).

Slim-leg Slippers - $20

Pandora radio is a streaming music service that’s widely available for free via the Internet. There’s also a very well received free iPhone and iPod Touch application. As you listen to Pandora and rate songs it learns your preferences and plays similar sounding songs. Recently they’ve started to display advertising on the iPhone/Touch as a way to recoup some of their costs. What’s amazing is that this service remains completely free to AT&T iPhone users while users of other types of phones pay a monthly subscription fee. Now it’s available for Samsung Instinct users on Sprint. This application is going to set Instinct users back $2.99 per month billed through Sprint. To download Pandora Instinct owners should navigate to their Digital Lounge and open their wallets.

Pandora via Sprintusers

In his career Michael Jackson reportedly earned over half a billion dollars. He’s one of the few artists to be indicted inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, won 13 Grammy Awards and captured 13 number one singles. Now you can have a piece of the record that arguably started it all. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album is on sale for $2.99 in DRM free MP3 format. Please ignore the fact that Michael no longer looks anything like the album cover and is apparently in a fortune-pissing-away contest with Mike Tyson.

Michael Jackson Thriller - $ 2.99

Newegg has this Crucial brand 8 GB SD Flash card for $9.99 with free shipping. The sale starts tomorrow (10/10/08) at 8:00am PDT and lasts until the item is sold out. The price of $9.99 is 50% off Newegg’s regular price and lower than any I could spot on Amazon. Set your alarm for tomorrow’s sale because I’m sure these will sell out quickly.

Newegg - Crucial 8GB SD - $ 9.99 shipped

Last week Mike Cane attended the Sony Reader PRS-700 unveil in New York; while there he saw Dave Farrow, the world renowned speed reader who is also a Guinness World Record holder. Mike had the opportunity to get some face time with a few of the very Sony people he has criticized in his past blog posts.

Before I mention Mike’s impressions of the PRS-700, I have to tell you about one of the brief meetings he had with the Sony execs, because it was epic:

Then someone entered our proximity and was told it was Me. And that person was none other than Steve Haber, He Who Is Now eBooks At Sony:

Haber made it a point to tell me he had read the post in which I called for his firing(!). I stood my ground. He stood his. Malcolm summoned Security to eject me.

I can honestly say that I laughed out loud while reading that. You have to understand that not very many people even know what Mike looks like; he is more secretive than a secret agent! That these Sony guys saw Mike - and lived to tell about it - means he must have liked them - or at least the product they were introducing, which turns out to be exactly what happened.

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Robert’s at it again; today he has information on Mr. Personality, WowWee’s new omni-directional entertainment robot. Why might you want one? Read on…

Hello Judie,

Reminiscent of one of the robots at the robot carnival in the movie A.I., Mr. Personality is a unique interactive robot companion that talks up a storm. He’s a natural joke teller, a fortune teller, and will even give you whimsical answers about your future. Instead of a featureless face Mr. Personality has an animated face which is displayed via a head mounted full color LCD.

Features

* Can move in all directions using a unique three wheeled mobile base
* Tells stories, jokes, and fortunes and will talk to you too
* Full color head mounted LCD screen display an animated face with synchronized facial expressions and sounds
* Has several distinct play modes including: Bits, Crystal Ball, Fortune Cookies, Demo and others.
* Detects and avoids obstacles and will let you know if he has fallen over or if his batteries are getting low on juice

Official WowWee YouTube video:

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Toshiba and Best Buy are collaborating on a new Laptop - the E105 - to be sold exclusively at Best Buy stores nationwide. The selling features are slimmer, lighter (< 5 lbs), longer battery life (5.5 hours) and full configuration (4GB memory / 300 GB hard disk). Look for this laptop to sport Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium along with 4GB or RAM and an INtel Core 2 mobile processor. Pricing will start at $1,249 though hopefully we'll see Best Buy discount this model a little more. Check out some more photos on the next page or view more details at www.explore.toshiba.com/E105

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A new release of the Eye-Fi manager has added several amazing features to this handy gadget. If you haven’t read about the Eye-Fi, it’s an SD memory card that has an embedded Wi-Fi connection. So instead of having to remove it from your device (typically a camera) you can connect and upload pictures wirelessly. Their Eye-Fi manager now supports Twitter integration and RSS feeds. After you’ve taken a picture you can now notify all your Twitter buddies. Also new are features such as Geotagging, MobileMe integration and Webshare (uploading to your favorite photo site).

PS - Add geardiarysite to your twitter friends and you’ll receive a “Tweet” every time we post an article.

Eye-Fi Manager Via Boing Boing Gadgets

Gear Diary and Grinding Gears first introduced you to this revolutionary new technology here.

Today, General Motors (GM) and OnStar officially launch Stolen Vehicle Slowdown on more than 1 million model year 2009 GM vehicles in the U.S. and Canada.

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The pictures have been floating around for the last month or so and now the Q11 is finally official. Motorola’s latest Q factor phone running Windows Mobile 6.1 looks like the other Q9 and as if it could have some relations to HP’s 910C offerings. This phone unfortunately only sports EDGE but you can link up to faster connections via the included Wi-Fi and there is a GPS as well as Bluetooth Class 1 v2.1. The camera is 3 MP with the ability to shoot 15 fps video. Under the hood expect 128 MB of flash memory and a slot for MicroSD memory enhancement (up to 32 GB). Talk time is rated to be 450 minutes. The phone is Quad Band GSM which means this is destined for import, AT&T or T-Mobile in the USA. Expect availability by the end of the year.

Motorola Q11