The DLink DCS-1130 security / web camera is motorised for pan/tilt adjustment, wireless and can be controlled via a web browser. It can store the video on a PC or send it out to the web but I like the third option of viewing it on a 3G phone so you can monitor the builders / burglers / cheating spouses live in realtime.

(Photo courtesy of Engadget)

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The XLink BT allows you to make and receive calls from your usual land-line phone over your mobile network. Once set-up you simply need to leave your cell phone within Bluetooth range of the XLink box and then any calls to your cell will ring and be answerable around the house and calls made from your regular phone will be redirected over your cell.

One of the advantages of the XLink is it allows you to ditch your land-line and make the most of the free calls that you get with most cellphone contracts. It can be used with 3 cellphones simultaneously, with each cell generating a different ring tone on the other phones (when calling out you specify which cell to use by a numeric prefix).

XLink retails for $80 and is available from My XLink though you may want to wait for the next version as that willinclude Skype functionality.

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If you don’t want to start from scratch they have a range of template designs on the website which you can personalise with your own text but for complete flexibility you can upload designs created in modelling packages like Google Sketchup.

You have a choice of materials and pricing is directly related to the type and amount of material needed to create your design (but not the complexity; it’s the same amount of work to produce a straight cube or a complicated mechanism). The small models start down in the $10 range going up to $100+ for larger objects.

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There’s a multitude of netbooks on the market at the moment, so I nearly walked straight past the new one from EMTREC, the Gdium mobile netbook. The unique selling point of the Gdium is that it has no storage and must be booted from a USB drive, known as the G-Key.

The G-Key contains the OS (Linux), applications and user data and slots undeneath the front of the machine. The idea behind it is that each user will have their own G-Key so one Gdium netbook could be shared between multiple users with no risk at all to others’ data. It’s an interesting idea, though with the relative cheap price of netbooks I’m not sure if sharing one is really needed though if you could also use the G-Key in other machines it would make carrying a PC in your pocket a something of a reality.

Further info and machine specs can be found on the Emtec site.

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The latest update to the TruPhone VOIP/IM software brings the iPod touch into the community of supported devices and adds Skype compatibility.

Similar to Skype, Truphone allows users to contact other Truphone users for free and landlines around the world for not a lot.

Unlike Skype, Truphone also allows you to talk or chat to your contacts on other services including gTalk and Skype making it a complete communications solution. Plus it works on the touch (you’ll need a separate headset to provide the mic though).

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I like simple. Strange thing to say for a geek but to paraphrase Honda, sometimes it’s nice when things just work.

That’s what I find appealing about the Pogoplug. Plug a USB hard drive in to it. Plug it into your router. See your hard drive on the internet. That’s it – no config, no networking to set up, no monthly fee. It just… works!

Or at least that’s the promise. To be fair we’ll need to get our paws on one before we can confirm the claim (it’s in preproduction at the moment) but it looks easy enough.

You can access your data through a web interface but they’ve also created drivers for Windows and OSX that make the Pogoplug appear as a drive letter so you can just use the drive without worrying about where it is.

(And yes, all the transfers between you and your hard drive are encrypted.)

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