You know, it’s kind of funny that I just did a post on Madden NFL a while ago, because one of John Madden’s signature lines keeps coming to me as I look at this particular new product:  BOOM!
In the never-ending office wars, sometimes you have to blow off a little steam.  One of my favorite memories of my management days was when it was time for performance reviews and deciding who got the highest ratings, and my director brought into the staff meeting a bunch of multi-shot rubber-band guns.  What a great boss!  (Hi, Roger!)

Dream Cheeky, the guys who make lots of insane stuff like that, have come up… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

A week before Griffin announced their new Help TC iOS remote-controlled helicopter, I saw the iHelicopter being advertised. For $59 I figured I would order one. It came yesterday and… well… it is fun.

As the product page explains,

The iHelicopter makes it possible to use your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch as a remote control for a RC Helicopter! Plug the transmitter in the audio jack, download the free controller App and you are ready to fly!

The gyro in the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch can be used to control the tilt

I have to admit that many items I review do not receive much thought after I post their story, but after spending a short time with this new FishEyes Rod and Reel With Underwater Video Camera I realized here was an item with much broader usage.
Sure, this is a unique product that every father needs to bring along on a fishing trip with the kids to enhance their experience while you do your best Bill Dance or Jimmy Houston impression, but I began seeing other opportunities for FishEyes.

While it really only looks in one direction (down) as I lowered the camera into the water I thought to myself this would be a great device… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

July is a month for camping trips and summer camps, and I’ve found an item that you might want to consider packing the next time you send the young ones off — a set of Glow-in-the-Dark Playing Cards from Useful Things. Think about the uses that your kids will find for a set of playing cards that are both glow-in-the-dark, and waterproof. Imagine your child playing cards with his or her cabin mates well after lights-out, and you’ll begin to see the usefulness of such an item; you’re providing a means for them to bond with their fellow campers! Or at least a means to make extra snack money, if they are any… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

With Father’s Day right around the corner and fuel prices causing many to think perhaps of a “staycation” this summer, those looking for a different sort of gift should check out Swann and their new line of RC Indoor Helicopters.

Many ask themselves, “Aren’t remote control helicopters difficult to fly?” Yes they are, or were.

Swann, a company mostly dedicated to security devices, offers a break from the routine with this new line of rechargeable RC Indoor Helicopters. Within minutes of making my tester “flight ready” I was buzzing around the den and terrorizing the cat.

Fun is had in 8-minute chunks — as that is the limit of the onboard… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Nanodots are fun all by themselves.  I love playing with these.  It’s almost relaxing.  It’s hard to believe that they have figured out yet another way to make them fun with a new product that makes it more fun to build with Nanodots.  The Nanopad with FeWeave technology is a nice pad to use when you are building with Nanodots that also let’s you play a game with your Nanodots.  Available in 16 inch for $19.99 and 26 inch for $29.99.  For more on the Nanopad, head over to the product page on thenanodots.com.  They are expected to show up in specialty stores any day now… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Oh, this is so totally cool! Think Geek is now offering the first of 52 “Geek of the Week” trading cards! The cards are broken into sets of eight — I guess because doing sets of seven didn’t look symmetrical enough(?), but anyway!

Seriously! How can you resist Veronica Belmont dressed as a warrior princess?

In 2010, illustrator Len Peralta set upon a challenge: interview 52 members of the geek-elite, and use that newfound familiarity to create likenesses of them. Each geek would be depicted in iconic representations that best reflected their style and personality. His medium of choice: trading cards, naturally.

Each geek is a leader in their respective industries

We’re way beyond the Rubik’s cube now, people.

Shapeways is an online community and marketplace for personalized products, and every once in a while, they get one that is such a doozy, they like to let people know about it.  Such is the case with a twisty puzzle created by a gent named Oskar van Deventer–he decided that the other Rubik’s cube enhancers were a bunch of pikers (“Ha!  5x5x5?  I scorn you!), and so came up with this incredible 17x17x17 model.  Maybe you’ll find it amazing; maybe you’ll find it absurd; I think it has a certain mathematical beauty to it, whether it’s solvable in a finite amount of time or not.  (And I… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

If the malls around you are anything like they are around here, you would probably have seen a gadget just like this, zooming around in the atrium area (or any other central location with a high-enough ceiling).  Little, itty-bitty radio-controlled helicopter.  They look cool, and the first thing my son Joseph (12) said when he saw it was, “Can we get one?”  (Answer:  No!)

But this one is a little different.  Instead of some big, bulky, battery-powered thingamajig to steer, this baby steers with an app.  (Yeah, yeah; “there’s an app for that;” I know.)  Which I think is quite cool, since one of the things I dislike about radio-controlled anythings is that they all… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Arctic has developed into a company who primarily made cooling solutions for computers to a company who releases high quality products of everything from speakers and keyboards to now hobby items. I have reviewed many items from Arctic and have yet to find something that was not high quality while staying affordable. Their newest line of RC toys.  As you can see in a post here, the first offerings were all service related vehicles.  They are now announcing a new line of Land Riders for those with faster tastes.  Take a look at the full release and product line.  These look awesome!

The Christmas season brings out the kid in most of us.  Luckily I have two little boys to cover my excuse to check out all of the cool toys.  One of my long time favorite toys are remote-controlled vehicles.  My whole life I have been a sucker for cars, trucks, planes, boats, virtually anything that can be controlled with a remote control.  A few Christmas’s ago, I was accused of buying a remote control car for my young sons just because I wanted to play with it.  I will admit the boys were a bit young for the toy so they had to have help driving it.  Other than that, I am pleading the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Over at Milo.com’s Daily Bark, they are featuring a subjective list of the ‘best gifts ever’! It is interesting because it is focused on someone who would have been born in 1980, therefore turning 30 this year. The infograph looks back at what the hot gifts would have been for boys and girls over time.

Personally I am too old and my kids are too young to have wanted the kid-centric stuff, but the later stuff … well, who said you ever really had to grow up?!?

As I look back over time it is hard for me to peg things by year, but I remember Big Jim and GI Joe action figures… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Show me a person who could watch the Pixar movie Wall-E without getting a little bit misty, and I’ll show you a person with a heart of stone. The premise was that Earth, long inhabited by wasteful humans was eventually rendered unusable, and there was a mass exodus to a fleet of spaceships provided for by the Buy N Large corporation, which the company that had sold the products which helped contribute to all of the waste on Earth in the first place. Are you with me? So Buy N Large tells the Earthlings that they will only be on the spaceships for as long as it takes to clean the Earth, a task… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Solar power has been a promise since I was my son’s age.  In the future. we were all supposed to have roofs covered in solar cells and not having to use ugly power lines to power our lives.  We were barely able to get to the point of powering calculators.  Fast forward 20 years and while there have been advances, we still don’t drive solar cars and we still have to have power lines run to our homes.  Thankfully, there are more things run by solar cells than back when I was 11 and some of them are fun too.  That’s where EFO’s solar toys come in.

The first 2 EFO sent me are solar powered bugs… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It seemed only recently that I was posting about Erno Rubik’s birthday, and talking about his well-known inventions.

Oh, wait; it was recently!

In any event, Rubik’s ideas keep on keepin’ on.  The latest is the Rubik’s Slide, by Techno Source (note: there’s audio on the site’s home page).  Yet another variation on the famous Cube, the Rubik’s Slide will be available this weekend at an MSRP of $17.64 “as part of QVC’s Christmas in July Sale this Saturday, July 24th at 10 a.m. ET and Sunday, July 25th at 12: a.m. ET.”

Techno Source’s Rubik’s Slide™, the new addictive electronic puzzle game everyone can play and no one can