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Free energy is always attractive but at what price? In this case the price is wearing a pretty ugly looking solar jacket that charges your electronic devices on the go (and we thought that the spy jacket by Paul Coudamy was bad).

The Solar Jacket, designed by the think-bods at North Carolina State University uses a method called digital textile printing in order to integrate solar cells into clothing by matching the printing pattern to that of solar panels.

You can safely charge your devices using the clothes or bags on which the solar panel is printed on without getting an electric shock. However, could you safely walk down the street without getting ridiculed? Debatable….

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Out of the million-and-one gadgets out there it’s difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and find out which of them are really worth their circuitry in gold and which are just flavour of the month gimmicks. To help you wade through the throng of gadgets, GadgetHeat is starting a mini-series on must-have gadgets. Kicking us off we take a look at three of those battery-powered gizmo’s that no man should be without…
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• First up is the ubiquitous iPhone. Yes yes we know, obvious choice but here us out before you start calling us sheep. Pound for pound, the iPhone is worth about five gadgets. Phone, media player, web browser, Sat-Nav and application platform all rolled into one. We hate the hype as much as you do but we have to admit the Apple pulled the stops out when they made the iPhone. The 2 mega-pixel camera is nothing to write home about and 3G was considered standard an all other competitor phone for the last 2 years but all in all when it comes to a usefulness in a gadget-sized package, the iPhone has things locked down.

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• Next on our list are high definition televisions. HDTV is not the future it’s the present. If you don’t have one yet you’re going to miss out on a whole heap of high-definition goodness coming our way in the next few years. All the major broadcasters and movie studios are switching to HDTV making it the only way to go for anyone with a TV. The best of the current crop is the SONY Bravia KDL32S3000. Economical at under $800 and sporting the cutting edge Bravia technology makes the  KDL32S3000 the thinking man’s choice when it comes to HDTV’s.

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• Last but not least is a GPS unit. Men hate asking direction as the saying goes and with GPS, we never have to!! Since the GPS revolution approximately 4 – 5 years ago things have reached the point where the majority of car owners think that they need one for their very survival. GadgetHeat loves satellite navigation systems and out current favourites included the Knight Rider GPS and the CDT PMP which is more of a media player with GPS capability than a GPS with media player capability if you get our drift ;).

So there you have it. GadgetHeat’s top three gadgets for the average male technophile. Next in the series is going to be our top gadgets for women because we all know that women like to play with toys that need batteries too….

Things have been a little quiet here lately (well for a day anyway ^^) and you may be wondering why. Well wonder no more my fellow technophiles because GadgetHeat has been busy compiling a list of the 100 greatest tech blogs.
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Yes we know there are such contraptions such as Blog Top Sites and the like (of which we are a proud member of I hasten to add ^^) but GadgetHeat’s 100 greatest Tech blogs is different in that there is no voting, the ranking is just based on cold, hard, numbers.
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Why? Well as the saying goes, Men lie, Women lie, numbers don’t. Simple as that really. SO for more information check out the 100 Greatest Tech Blogs list and if you have a tech or gadget blog, keep an eye on it as you may make the list someday soon…
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Click the button below to get the full list

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The Force Is Strong

We’ve been going a bit Star Wars crazy these last few weeks and we thought we would start this week the same way (well really we saw this and we thought it was cool and that’s all there is to it). The Darth Vader bobble head computer sitter does just that, sits on your computer.
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Now some may think what’s the point and normally we would agree but but Darth Vader is just bad-ass enough to pull it off. Sitting around and doing nothing at all, bobbing his big ol’ head and he still looks too cool for Luke to handle.
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As far as bobble heads go is much the same as any other except with it being Darth, the question begs to be asked, where’s, R2D2, Hans Solo, Luke and a storm trooper? You can pick up the Darth Vader bobble head computer sitter for $7.99 from September.

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When you say the word ‘Alien‘ to most gadget freaks they immediately assume you mean ‘Alienware’ the hardcore gaming specialist (an rightly so as no other aliens are worth talking about). For a change we’ve lent the word to that other famous Alien of Sigourney Weaver and Ridly Scott fame in the form of these Alien sculpture tables.

They are ugly beasts and if you had one of these bad-boys in your front room it would definitely be a conversation starter along the line of ‘er….nice….table?’. Each table is an individual piece of [art] made from recycled metals including car and bike parts. They retail for between $300 and $4,450 depending on the sculpture.

You can get your hands on an Alien table (to scare animals and small children) from yesican

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aiptek-projector v10

We hate fiddling with projectors at GadgetHeat meetings as it’s bad enough having to carry the bulky things around all day never mind setting them up. This little gadget we’ve found looks set to save our day.

Aiptek have released their pocket-sized projector, the Aiptek PocketCinema V10. The Aiptek V10 is capable of projecting a 50 inch screen and has a 3-in-1 AV jack as well as support for AVI and MPEG-4 video formats. As the title of the projector suggests (PocketCinema), Aiptek made it pretty darn small.

The Aiptek PocketCinema V10 is built upon 3M’s miniature projection technology allowing the V10 to be drastically cut down in size into something that would find into your pocket just as easily as 3G iPhone…


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Apart from working as a projector, other functions of the PocketCinema V10 include 1GB of internal memory as well as a multi-card reader function for reading SD, MMC and MS Pro cards.

Make sure you have a good look at a few offers as price is yet to be confirmed but the track records of Aiptek suggests that it wont be burning a hole in your pocket so if you’ve had enough of bulky projectors, the PocketCinema V10 could be what you’ve been waiting for.

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Gadgets are getting tinier and tinier and the PC looks like it’s getting left behind with Dell still churning out their well built sturdy brick machines. Sotec is having none of that however and has released the slimline PC Station DS7010. On the face of it it looks like a slightly bigger Nintendo Wii put underneath the glossy exterior (always wanted to say that) is a fully functioning PC.

The Sotec PC Station DS7010 is equipped with a digital TV tuner, Intel Pentium Dual Core processor (2Ghz and 2.4Ghz versions) and a NVIDIA GeForce 7100. What really stands out apart from the design, is the fact that the PC is only 78mm and even though there are slimmer desktops, 78mm is pretty svelte for a non-laptop PC.

The added HDMI interface hints at true HD television on your desktop which in the current climate of everything HD, is a definite step in the right direction. The Sotec PC Station DS7010 is expected to retail for between 370€ and 553€ depending on the specification.

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We love a combination of the retro and modern so when we saw this Spirit of St. Louis iPod Boombox we just had to bring it to you. It is essentially an i-Pod dock with extensive retro styling making it look like it is straight out of WW II and is in-fact designed to look just like the ones they used on the battlefield in those gory days.

The Spirit of St. Louis iPod Boombox has an aviation style design radio, alarm clock, CD player and iPod dock looks like an antique classic with all the modern functionality you could want. it has a solid wood exterior exterior and metal finish on the handles and hinges making it look like it would not be out of place on a CEO’s (or an army officer’s) desk.

You can pick up the Spirit of St. Louis i-Pod Boombox from spiritofstlouis.co.uk for about $600 (£299.99).

Oregon Scientific has long been a producer of useful gadgets for the outdoor types amongst us (stuck behind a PC all day that’s definitely no-one ay GadgetHeat). The cool think about gadgets though is that you can find all kinds of uses for them and the DP200 by Oregon Scientific is as cool indoors as it is outdoors.

The Daylight Projection Clock with Outdoor Temperature is the bigger brother of the DP100 which some of you may have seen in lesser gadget blogs (ahem). The difference between the two I hear you say? The DP200 also has the ability to let the users know the temperature of whatever environment they are in, indoors or out.


The clock projects the time and temperature into the air or any surface you point it to displaying an LCD image of the time and temperature. You can even set your alarm and when it pops up turn it off or activate the snooze by waving your arm over the infrared motion sensor (beats scrabbling for the the snooze button when you’re half asleep).

Even in bright daylight or a well lit room the projected time image is strong with the Daylight Projection Clock beaming a progressively stronger image to accommodate for the stronger light. You can get your mitts on one for about $160 - £80 depending on where you look.

We love all things USB here at GadgetHeat. They are just so easy to use, plug-n-play all day baby. Everything should had a USB port and be USB compatible it just makes so much sense that we get apoplectic with rage when we come across a gadget that doesn’t have one (well that’s overstating things a bit but if it doesn’t have a USB port, we automatically deduct 5 points from our great GadgetHeat book of Gadgets).

Having said all that we’ve just come across a device that must be a contradiction in terms, the USB Moody Star 4-Port Hub by the prolific USB.Brando .com.hk. For anybody into mood lighting and all that jazz isn’t it all part and parcel of positive energies et all? Having a PC or laptop sucking up resources and adding to your carbon footprint doesn’t seem to be setting quite the right tone to us. Added to this you then go and plug in 4 extra USB devices just turn up the temperature a little bit more….

If you don’t know what a USB hub is it’s simple a device that lets you plug in multiple USB devices at the same time from a single point. They come in all shapes and funky sizes and like the USB Moody Star 4-Port Hub retail for about $12.00.

The USB Moody Star 4-Port Hub glows in various colours whilst plugged into your PC or Laptop, giving you a feeling of calm and relaxation whilst you happily burn up the planet…

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