Weekly Roundup – weekend gadget version

First, happy weekend and a quick look at 4 nifty gadgets I stumbled upon this week:

1. Alessi “no hands” watch. Available at Buy.com and other retailers, the Alessi AI3002 features a slick, “handsfree” design: the current hour and minute appear in two distinct openings that rotate around the face of the watch, revealing only a small part of the art work at a time. The watch sells for between $70 and $98, so shop around a bit; here’s a link to it @ Buy.com

2. USB “Robot” 4 port hub. Only $12, this hub features 4 ports which can be rotated 270° for greater flexibility; link to it at gadget4all.com

3. For all you summertime party animals out there, I came across an indoor/outdoor “Party Fridge” by Soleus that’d be just the ticket for entertaining on your patio or deck. It holds 72-12 oz. cans, 48 beer bottles, or up to 36 wine bottles and also features a couple of small fold-out shelves and two wire wine caddies. Other features include a digital temperature controller and a tempered glass cover so your guests can see what beverages are inside. Drinks will stay cold for up to 10 hours after the unit is unplugged. All this goodness comes in a 20″ diameter by 32″ high package and costs ~$349. Available at a number of retailers; click on this link for the listing at amazon.com Party on!

4. Finally, a neat and extremely simple way to display photos that’s perfect for a dorm room, cubicle at work, or perhaps in a family or rec room: the “magnetic photo rope.” The 43″ long thin steel cable comes with 8 very strong neodymium magnets with which you can attach your photos. Its simplicity encourages changing the photos frequently, and you can hang it just about anywhere. It’s $12 + shipping (or 2 for $20, 3 for $28) @ photojojo… check it out – it’d make a great gift for just about anyone on your list.

Finally, an eclectic collection of links from this week…

1. 4 Hour Work Week guru Tim Ferriss’s blog featured a guest post yesterday by Dr. Michael Eades regarding the remarkable health benefits of krill oil. Like fish oil, krill contains both of the omega-3 fats, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexanoic acid (DHA), but they are hooked together in a manner that mirrors the structure of the fats in our own cell walls. The result is that these healthy fats are much more absorbable than is the case with fish oil. In addition, Dr. Eades writes of krill oil’s antioxiant and anti-inflammatory qualities. Follow this link to the article. Amazon.com carries krill oil, by the way, – I had a gift certificate on hand and ordered a bottle on Thursday. If I have anything remarkable to report about it,- e.g., I develop gills, etc., you’ll see it here.

2. A post over by Tage Aaker at Glimmerick focuses on 4 tips for remembering names. Good advice if you’ve ever struggled to recall acquaintances’ or coworkers’ names.

3. Darren Rowse @ the superb ProBlogger blog offers up some excellent suggestions for Twitter newbies in his post, “Twitter for Beginners – 5 Things to Do as a New Twitter User.”

4. Finally, and this definitely falls under the category of internet time wasters, there’s Wordle, featured at makeuseof.com this morning. In their words, “Wordle is a unique web application that lets you specify a RSS feed or a specific block of text. Wordle then uses that information to create a word cloud.” Here are links to Wordle, and the post at makeuseof.com And here’s the word cloud Wordle generated for this blog… it works!:

Have a great weekend!

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