Toys

Last Winter Dave and his son (AKA The Gadgeteer Kid) reviewed the Sphero ball, which they found fun to play with, but were not convinced that it was worth the $130 price tag. A new version of this remote controlled toy has just been announced – the Sphero 2.0. What’s different? It’s now 2x faster […]

Remember the cryptex from The Da Vinci Code book and movies – the small, but complicated vault that would destroy the contents unless opened with the proper code?  A company called 4Thought Products is offering two cryptex-like enclosures to make your friends work for their gifts.  The Vino Vault Wine Cryptex fits over a wine bottle and

If you have a lot of LEGO bricks, you know it can be a pain to keep them organized.  This LEGO Workstation from The Container Store makes it a snap to keep everything organzied and ready for play.  It stands 12.2″ x 14.6″ x 24.5″ high, and it has six cases to organize your blocks by

Remember the Pillow Tie that inflated to create your own little desktop nap oasis? Well, keep that tie in mind if you partake a little too much from the FlaskTie. Each FlaskTie™ comes equipped with a TieBladder™ holding approximately 6 fluid ounces for your drinking pleasure. Located at the end of the back slip is

‘The LEGO Build-It Book, Vol. 1: Amazing Vehicles’ is the latest how-to LEGO book by Nathanäel Kuipers from No Starch Press. Available next month (July 2013), this 136 page book offers step-by-step instructions with full-color renderings for 10 vehicles ranging from a simple go-kart to a rescue truck. The idea is to use your existing

To me, LEGO bricks represent childhood, imagination and fun. This new book from Starch Press on the other hand, does not. The 232 page BrickGun Book by Jeff Boen has step-by-step instructions for building five handgun replicas from readily available LEGO pieces. Model plans include the classic Berreta 92FS and a rubber-band-firing MAC-11. Maybe it’s

If you’ll be at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the next few weekends, you can have yourself immortalized as a 3D Stormtrooper figurine for only $99.95 (plus shipping and taxes).  The D-Tech Me experience is a 10-minute process that uses the “world’s highest-resolution, single-shot 3D face scanner created by [Disney’s] Imagineering scientists with Disney Research labs. That

Nearly everyone who’s familiar with electronic games has heard of Tetris, and ThinkGeek has capitalized on this to make a nostalgia-inspiring Tetris Stackable LED Desk Lamp. You can customize your lamp into various configurations using the seven interlocking pieces, which are of course, shaped like classic Tetris shapes. The base shape is the four-block straight

When I think of robots, I think of Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons cartoons or ASIMO, Honda’s robot. The folks at Romotive have a different idea; it’s called Romo, The Smart Phone Robot. Romo is basically a small, tracked vehicle that measure 5.6″ long x 4.5″ wide x 3″ high.  You plug either your

HBO’s popular fantasy series Game of Thrones is back tonight with episode 1 of season 3. You can get in on the fun with the Paper Flying Dragons book by Pat Murphy. This book includes fully illustrated punch out parts that will allow you to create 12 paper dragons includes: 5 foot long flyers, 5

Google has announced that they are starting a contest for non-developers to purchase Glass ahead of the retail release.  Explorers are required to submit in 50 words or less to Twitter or Goggle+ what they would do with the interactive, web-enabled glasses.  The deadline for applications is February   27th, 2013.  It is not cheap however!  If

Ever wanted to make one of your doodles come to life, just rip it right from the page? That childhood fantasy is shortly going to become a reality. The 3Doodler is up for funding on Kickstarter; it’s a 3D “printing” pen that utilizes the same base ABS plastic used in 3D printers to physically create

Adafruit , run by the 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year Limor “Ladyada” Fried, has announced the Gemma, a wearable micro-controller board with just a 1” diameter. The Gemma uses an Atmel Attiny85 and is programmable with the Arduino IDE through a micro-USB cable. It has three programmable I/O pins, one analog input, and two Pulse-Width

The Electric Imp is now out of beta and shipping developer kits. The Imp is an SD-card sized WiFi (802.11b/g/n) module with built-in antenna, 6 I/O, Arm Cortex M3 Micro-controller, and a Cloud-based infrastructure for programming and control. The I/O supports serial, I2C, SPI, A2D, D2A, and PWM interfaces. The Imp uses the Squirrel programming language,