The Red Ferret Journal

We’re going a bit specialised here on Red Ferret today, but I think you’ll cope. These are SmartBolts, they tell you when they’ve been tightened sufficiently and when they haven’t. The little coloured dot on the head changes colour as the bolt is tightened, red for undone, black for correctly tightened. The visualiser works by compressing a small compartment filled with fluid so there are no moving parts and the bolts will last +20 years.

There’s also a high resolution version will show you when the bolt has been over tightened and bolts can be manufactured in M10 to M32 sizes. Great idea.

No wires, instruments, complex procedures or electronic black boxes. The only instrument needed is the eye. The indication is based on the most accurate known principle for fastener tension measurement - actual fastener elongation under load.

Tags: smartbolts, building+gadget

The Vortex TVH 600 is supposed to be the world’s smartest heater, on account of the fact that it features a wirelessly connected thermostatic remote control. Oh and it also comes with automatic climate control and auto tip-over protection. OK, so fair enough. Admittedly I was hoping for something more along the lines of R2D2 and a nice hot cup of tea but you can’t have everything can you? $199.99.

SIM Unlock for T-Mobile G1, Google Phone and HTC Dream 100. Didn’t take long did it? Now you can unlock your brand new state of the art handset using nothing more than a bit of plastic and some careful positioning. You do realise that you can then use the phone on any network your like? Yeah? Good. $19.99. Oh and they’re also offering a no-cut iPhone version.

So I got to play with the Nokia N97 for a while in Barcelona last Tuesday, and left the encounter with somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand disappointment - at the lack of an 8 megapixel camera, at the relatively narrow screen, at the rather complicated user interface. This is not an iPhone killer – whatever that means – in any way, and in fact may end up looking decidedly pedestrian should Apple upgrade their product significantly in the time before the N97 hits the shelves in the first half of next year.

But on the other hand there are some significant indications from this product launch and the company’s announcement today at the Capital Markets Day event, that this handset could be the harbinger of a new era in mobile phone technology that focuses on consumer usefulness rather than mere fashionable lifestyle glitz. We may be about to hit the Minority Report era faster than we thought.

(more…)

The good folk at Core88, sorry77, have brought out a Core77 Gift Guide of nicely designed products which would be suitable to give away over the festive season. Awww…isn’t that thoughtful? What’s more they’re priced at under $77.00 (so is that the magic cheapness level now then?)

Take a look-see, you never know you might find something nice. Me like Shuriken magnets…arf!

YWriter is a free word processor designed specifically for novelists and authors in general. It won’t write the thing for you, but it does help you chop your opus up into chunks to make it easier to manage. The program also provides tools to manage characters, scenes, goals and timelines, which are the bits which often get in the way of your creativity.

The Australian software developer, Simon Haynes,  is also a published author of space opera, so if you want to help support his work, go download a free ebook version of the original title in his Hal Spacejock series from Penguin.

Google has just released a searchable archive of millions of Life magazine photographs, which span more than one hundred years of American history. Amazing stuff. [via Metafilter]

Do you or someone you know have a cellphone that needs analysing? Then you need the CSI Stick. The CSI stick is a covert-ish cellphone information grabber capable of downloading everything off a cellphone just by plugging it in.

Attach one end of the CSI stick into the rechargeable power supply and the other end into the phone to be analysed, select which type of data you want and wait for the lights to blink. So far the stick only does Samsung and Motorola phones but that will change I’m sure.

To read the data off the CSI stick you’ll need grab a copy of the DS Lite software ($US99) but still it might be just what you need for your budding private eye business for playing tricks on your friends, if they have a Samsung or Motorola phone. $US199.

Paraben’s CSI Stick is THE portable cell phone forensic and data gathering tool. Paraben’s CSI Stick opens the world of digital forensics to anyone needing to gather forensic grade data from cell phones. The process is simple:Select the colored cell phone tip for the cell phone model to be acquired / Plug the CSI Stick into the cell phone / Plug the portable power adapter into the USB end of the CSI Stick / Select the data you wish to extract

Tags: csi+stick, cellphone+forensics, gadget

The Sonic Nausea device is designed to be surreptitiously placed in a target location at which point it will start broadcasting a combination of ultra-high frequency signals guaranteed to make people nearby feel sick and queasy. We’re trying to think of a nice use for this product which doesn’t involve angry courtroom exchanges and lengthy depositions, but we’re kinda failing. $29.00.

This Traffic Light USB Hub Recorder has us intrigued. The 4 port USB hub we can understand, and even in a way the in-built 10 second voice recorder. But the card holder and traffic light doesn’t make so much sense. What’s the deal, you visit someone’s cubicle, leave your calling card, a memory stick containing the coroner’s report and a 10 second message announcing the purpose of your visit and switch the traffic light to the correct colour for the tone of the upcoming meeting? Or are we reading too much into this? $18.00.

It looks as though the market for consumer RFID products is starting to take off, at least if we’re to believe the marketing people. We already covered Violet’s Mir:ror product last month, and now we see that the Tikitag ecosystem is available on both the Amazon and Firebox retailer sites. The idea is you stick RFID tokens onto ordinary products like photos, umbrellas and the like, and can then trigger computer and web applications by touching the token to the reader. We still think this is very much a technology looking for an application, but we’ll be the first to clap when and if something essential comes out of the labs.

PrestaShop is an open source e-commerce shopping cart for website owners and wannabe web tycoons. The devs claim it’s all Ajaxified and lightweight (which means your buyers should have an easier and faster experience at the checkout on your site) but as with all these things it’s really a matter of trying it out first to see whether it fits your needs better than a hosted solution. One good sign is the busy forums which indicate a lot of users, enthusiasm which is essential for an open source project to flourish. Worth a bookmark if you’re thinking of opening up an online store sometime soon.

The Mobile Freedom service offers to unlock most of the popular cell phone handsets over the Web. Simply call the premium rate number (UK only at the moment apparently), give the service your phone make, model and IMEI number and receive the unlock code there and then (or via SMS in a few seconds). Enter the code into your handset and voila, unlocked. Calls charged at £1.50 per minute, average call length 4.5 minutes.

Keep dust, dirt and small furry animals out of your computer with a Dirt Bag. Designed to fit loosely over your computer the Dirtbag is made from a special breathable material that allows clean air to be drawn in via the computer’s fan. All the dust and dirt which normally ends up residing on your heatsinks is collected on the outside of the bag.

The bags last about 12 months, they have special access holes for your optical drives and only increase the operating temperature of the video card by about 1° (not sure if that’s C or F). They can also be purchased for monitors or printers and cost $US17.50 for a PC minitower version. Very popular in the Middle East apparently.

The PC Dirt Bag uses patented technology to protect your computer! The Dirt Bag is a totally encasing computer dust cover. It is designed to fit all standard desktop computers and is an effective solution for protecting industrial PC’s from the ravages of airborne dust, dirt and grime.

Tags: dirtbag, computer+dust+filter

This Telephone Ring Amplifier boosts your phone’s ring quite a lot. Well actually that’s a bit of an understatement. We’re talking receiving a 75dB ringtone from your phone, which is kinda rock music loud. Put it this way, one of these and an early morning wake up operator call should just about do it for ya. £2.66.

The Huawei D100 Router is a WiFi router with a difference. Instead of plugging it into your landline broadband connection, you slot a standard 3G USB dongle into the top, at which point it shares out the 3G broadband with any device in the area. This is perfect if you’re travelling and need to give the family their own WiFi connection in a hotel or holiday let.

The 3 site claims the router is only compatible with their dongle, which is interesting, but I’m guessing they’ve just been given a head start in the market, after which the D100 will appear for every service provider. Anyhoo, it’s a cool product indeed. The company is pricing it at £69.99 plus a 3 mobile broadband plan.