I used to have a VFX-1 back in the day. In fact I still have it somewhere, despite the fact that it won’t physically connect to any PC made after about 1985. The VFX1, for those of you who weren’t into gadgets back then, was a virtual reality headset. It was basically a motorcycle helmet with little monitors beaming images into your eyes, headphones and a motion tracker. It was supported by a handful of games and the sense of immersion was breathtaking (although whether that sense of immersion was worth the money, time and pain of setting the thing up was another question)

Why am I bringing this up now? Because technology marches on and ExtremeTech are reviewing a modern 3D headset which looks more like sunglasses than a motorcyle helmet. Is proper, immersive, stereoscopic 3D gaming set to make a comeback? Get the lowdown here

We’ve got a bit of a special today, an interview with Alek Komarnitsky, who’s famous for his interactive Halloween and Christmas light displays. As tonight is witching night it only seemed appropriate to publish this interview today. So without further ado let’s hear what Alek had to say.

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Guess where we’re going

After enjoying the Ideal Home show last month I was delighted to find another much more gadget orientated show is opening this Friday. The Best of Stuff is an annual show where various companies showing off their latest gadgets (just before Christmas coincidentally) .

This year promises to be something special with stands from the vendors like Archos, Creative, Gizmondo, I-Deck, JVC, Sharp Electronics, Q-Be, Nokia, Siemens Mobile, Philips, Sky, iriver and more.

You can get tickets from the Best of Stuff site and included in the price are free tickets to the What Hi-Fi Show

For those who can’t attend you can be confident that we will be reporting on all the best stuff we find here on CG.

If you have any type of valuables that you want to keep safe from harm, the best place to hide them is not in the cookie jar, everyone looks there first. Hide them away in the Peanut Butter Safe.

Everyone has an old jar of peanut butter back in his or her pantry somewhere and most people especially would be burglars would not think to look in there for anything unless they were hungry.
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There’s a first for everything and this is probably the first time we’ve reported on a piece of gadget clothing. It’s known as a PAN (Personal Area Network).

So what makes this vest better than all the other (much cheaper) vests available from any department store. Well for starters it’s got a version number (how ’sad’/cool is that) and is up to version 4.0 which means all early bugs should now be ironed out and it boosts 29 hidden pockets to lose your keys in (my favourite cargo pants have 12 pockest and I thought that was impressive).

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How many times do those small pesky insects bite you or someone in your household during the spring, summer and autumn months? I bet, several times. In addition, if you are like most people you get real tired of running into the house and getting some over the counter medication for the itching that causes your children to become drowsy and some adults to become cranky. Are you ready for an itch cure that really works fast without any type of side effects? If you are then you need the ItchZapper.

The ItchZapper works on the external treatment of mosquito bites, flea bites, gnat bites and horseflies bites. It is very compact so you can carry it with you everywhere you go and always have it on hand.
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Powered by IBM processor, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 finally revealed its secret that engineered its huge data-crunching processing speed. Earlier last Tuesday, attendees at the In-Stat Fall Processor Forum obtained a sneak preview of what made up next generation Microsoft Corporation’s Xbox 360 game console.

Where in today’s computing desktops, Intel and AMD are looking at dual core CPU. As for Xbox 360, the interior comprises of state-of-the-art THREE PowerPC cores 64-bit CPU, each running at 3.2GHz, the highest core speed achievable, claimed IBM’s chief engineer for Microsoft CPU Project, Jeff Brown. The triple core CPU has utmost capability to handle two threads simultaneously, and at the same time, designed to support high sustained bandwidth, required by the game console. A maximum bandwidth of 21.6Gbps is possible with the current design, especially so much processing power is needed for any intended intensive high-definition graphics games.

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With Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) taking up at least 90% of the market, Mozilla’s Firefox as the next contender to compete with Microsoft, there are also other handful of website browsers, such as Opera, Netscape, as well as Mozilla’s own browser. This time, Flock Developer has released a cutting edge Firefox-based Web browser dubbed ‘Flock’, which integrates next-generation Web technologies such as RSS content feeds, blogs and bookmark and photo sharing. Flock is completely independent from Mozilla but Flock is based on the open source Mozilla code base. In addition to Firefox, the Seamonkey, Camino, Netscape, Epipheny, Galeon and K-Melon browsers are also built on Mozilla project codebase.

According to Flock, the current code is available under GPL license, and that the code is planned to be open-sourced. Flock has added some of the most popular tools from social networking sites, i.e.bookmark tagging system; integration with del.icio.us, a service for storing and sharing Web bookmarks; integration with Flickr, Yahoo’s photo management and sharing service. Furthermore, users can install additional services. Flock also has a built-in RSS reader, which appears to work perfectly well. As most users today are starting to become professional “blog-writers”, Flock has introduced a Blog-publishing tools to allow users the ease of publishing blogs and works to websites easily. It compatible with some of todays’ blogging tools, i.e. WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. I have personally tried it with WordPress, and it’s an excellent way to publish your blogs.

Available in Windows, Mac OSX and Linux platform, both the binaries and source codes are available for the public. The latest version is 0.5 preview both lightweight and powerful. It is one of the prospective browsing engine to compete with Microsoft’s IE dominance in the market. Download the latest version for a trial today.

Click here for a screenshot of Flock.