A 1927 navigation device. Scroll the map through the viewer to guide you on any of 20 or so pre-set routes.

Yes, I know, it's a link to the Daily Mail. And from a Guardianista like me, too. Sorry...

The latest nifty tool from Flickr tools site Flagrant Disregard is just right for blog profiles or home pages. The imaginatively-named "Profile Widget" is a remotely hosted image that updates itself hourly, with pictures and statistics from your Flickr photostream. As it's a hosted image, it doesn't need any scripting support - so will work with LJ's restricted HTML set quite happily.

Here's mine!



Widgets can be horizontal, vertical, or compact, and can use any of a mix of recent and random images.

If you use Flickr, stick one in your profile now!

Now, this cool little device from Sony is a simple GPS position logger that will capture your location and time, and then sync this with the timestamp in a photo's EXIF data, adding location information. Just clip it to your camera bag when you set out on a shoot.

Using time and location recordings from Sony’s GPS-CS1 GPS device and the time stamp from a Sony digital still camera or camcorder, photo buffs can plot their digital images to a map and pinpoint exactly where they’ve been.

The 12-channel GPS unit is 3-½ inches long, weighs two ounces, and is sold with a carabineer to easily attach to a backpack or a belt loop.

[...]

To arrange your pictures geographically, import the logged data from the GPS device, using the supplied USB cable, and then download the digital images to a computer. The supplied GPS Image Tracker software synchronizes the images on your digital camera with the latitude, longitude and time readings from the GPS-CS1 device.

While Sony says it's for their cameras, I suspect it should work with any image with EXIF information...

Want!

Link from DPreview

For all you UFO fans out there, the US Navy is planning a sub-launched and recovered UAV. Unlike the combined plane/sub that was UFO's Sky:Diver combination, the Cormorant UAV is intended to be blasted out of the missile launch tubes of a converted Ohio class SSBN.

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater. The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy’s gigantic Cold War–era Ohio-class submarines. These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.

Funky stuff.

But this is still cooler...



It looks like we're slowly starting to live in a Gerry Anderson world.

A pity that it's the institutionalised paranoia of UFO, rather than the optimism of Thunderbirds...

We have a few digicams between us.

And, of course, they all have different batteries. All different shapes, sizes, colours, and voltages...

So, when we travel I usually end up having to carry a whole passle of power supplies and chargers. It's got to the point that I have a small case where I can pack all the electronic widgetry.

I was rather pleased to track down a rather useful gadget from the folks at Hama. It's a "Li-Ion Photocharger Combi", which is basically a battery chargers with interchangeable faceplates that allow it to charge pretty much every camera battery on the market. Plug-in the appropriate faceplate, decipher the slightly confusing instructions as to just how to slot in the battery, connect it all up and watch the little green light flash. It's also a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

It's working for my Canon, Casio, Ricoh and Nikon batteries. There's a fairly long list of supported types, so I think I'm covered for the moment.



Only one device for the suitcase next trip. It's even got a car charger. I'll just have to find an appropriate 12-volt AC adapter for it in the US...

Not bad for £18 or so...

After all, anything can be automated.

Even something as self-centred as egosurfing. Yes, you can now "Know Your Place", as egosurf.org's tagline so neatly puts it, at just the click of a button. No more typing your name into Google or Yahoo!, or even MSN, del.icio.us or Technorati.

Fill in your name, some appropriate URLs, and you can quickly see just what the web thinks (or doesn't think) of you.

Ever the happy guinea pig, I tried it out.

Apparently my egopoints (whatever meaningless number they are) are:

engine	ranking	ego points
google.com	1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th	7899
yahoo.com	1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th	8298
msn.com	1st, 2nd, and 3rd	2692
del.icio.us	2nd, 3rd, and 6th	2362
technorati.com	7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th	7599

A nifty tool, and quite fun watching it pop up the results - the whole thing is a fairly decent piece of AJAX code.

The Celestron Sky Scout has to be one of the coolest gadgets ever.



It's a personal planetarium. Point it at an object in the night sky, and it will tell you what you're looking at, from a database of 6,000 objects. It'll even help you find something you're looking for. Turn it on and you'll get a list of the 10 coolest things you can see right now. It uses GPS to find where you are, and then magnetic and inertial sensors to know where you're pointing... Best yet, it's updateable.

Out in March, and no prices yet.

[via Gizmodo]

Marks and Spencer are selling USB missile launchers.

Powered by your mac or pc, you'll have hours of flying fun with these USB air darts. Let the mission begin!

Now you know what to get me for Christmas!

Computer controlled too... Pity there's no targeting web cam hooked up to it, though I suspect that it wouldn't be too difficult, especially with the USB hardware controllers and drivers from the folks at Phidgets.

Reminds me of the Nerf gun wars back in my dot.com days at Scient. I kept things around my corner of the office under control when I got my Nerf gatling gun. Shoot me with a dart? Get a full salvo of 25 right back...

Innobec SideWindow

Turns your Pocket PC PDA into another (very small) monitor that's part of your Windows desktop. Just move your mouse onto it, and drag application windows across to the PDA screen. You can even use the PDA's pointer as a mouse... Quite useful for putting task lists and the like where you need them, without losing screen real estate. After, your PDA isn't doing anything else whilst it's connected to your desktop...

This is extremely nifty - a radio controlled aircraft that weighs only 3.6g.



Sure, it's $239.00, but it flies, in your living room!

It even comes with a simulator so you can learn to fly the plane on your PC without crashing it into the aspidistra, or breaking those precious knick-knacks on the mantelpiece...

...a scrolling message mug.



I'm just not sure about it saying "World's Greatest Dad". Why not the M25 version with "Variable Speed Limits In Operation", or the "LA Story" version with "There are more things in heaven and earth, Harry, than are dreamt of N your philosophy. "

[via Red Ferret]

Someone gave us some John Lewis vouchers as a wedding present. Unfortunately they did this anonymously, through the wedding list we used...

The vouchers have been sat around for a while, stuck onto the cork board on my office shelves. Meanwhile the Sky+ box under the telly has been filling with films we haven't watched - and we've recently retired the video recorder. After all, who uses VHS these days? With the disk filling up, and Sky's 6 month viewing limit rapidly approaching we decided it was time to give the vouchers some exercise, and looked into getting ourselves a DVD recorder.

We did some online research and found that John Lewis was stocking the LG DR4912, which seemed to have all the features we wanted, and then some (including support for DVD+/-RW disc formats and built in firewire!) - and at a very good price indeed. So we headed off to Peter Jones, took a quick look at their display model, made our decision and picked one up, and then staggered with the bulky package down the Kings Road.

After a bit of crawling around on the lounge floor and swearing at bulky SCART cables, it's now connected up to the TV, replacing our old DVD player. It's already allowed us to back up one film without too much fiddling around. And it's nice and shiny with not too many blue LEDs...



Many thanks to the anonymous gift giver!

The folk at Engadget are organising a virtual sandcastle competition. It's virtual in that it can occur on any beach, at any time - all you need to do is create a sand-sculpture of a gadget, take a photo and send in it to them.



Maybe not with a sand camera-phone though...

The rules are simple enough:

• No Photoshops (duh)
• Big minus points for iPods—they just too easy! (Ok, ok, you can do it well, then do it really well!)
• Bonus points go to specific devices (i.e. do a Panasonic Toughbook, and not just a generic laptop-shaped thing)
• Email your entries (try to send at least two pictures) to engadget att gmail dott com with the subject line “Summertime Sand Sculpture Contest”
• Deadline for submissions is 11:59PM, Sunday July 12. Don’t say we didn’t give you enough weekend hours!
• Grand prize winner gets their sculpture featured on the site, and a little something summery-special! Like, say, an Oakley Thump?

Pity I'm not getting to a beach in the next few days. Unless they've hidden any in the 'Dam this summer.