Here’s wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas and I hope you get all the gadgets you deserve and don’t suffer the head I did last year :).

Merry Christmas one and all.

We have already covered two different USB mouses that have a special dedicated feature of warming the users hands, more exactly there was one from Thanko and another one from USBGeek.

While the last one had more features and looked like the perfect peripheral to keep the hands-not-cold during the winter, there is a new thing on the market that with the help of one of the previous mouses can really keep your hands warm forever – it is the USB Warming Mouse Pad.

It is made of wool and cotton and as the name suggests it works with USB, just plug the mouse pad on a USB port and you’re good to go. The 120cm of cable length will probably be enough to reach the desired USB port on your computer or laptop, if not you can buy a USB adapter and make a 2-in-1 connection if you know what I mean…

For security reasons there is a maximum temperature which is 42 degrees, I’m guessing that after reaching that level the warmer shuts itself down just like it happens with some electrical blankets. For each 5 minutes passed there is a temperature rise of 15 degrees, so in 10 minutes you can go from really cold to really warm – perfect for people that live in Antarctica.

The product image might not be the best one (advice to check other images) but the way to use it is simple - insert the mouse and your hand inside the mouse pad. One of the bad things is that it might become a bit difficult to control the mouse movement on those conditions…

PS1 - it costs $22 and comes with blue fish design/shape.

PS2 - I would love to have one of these mouse pads right now, it is extremely cold in Portugal!

The USB Rechargeable Shaver is probably one of those rare gadgets that combine personal hygiene and USB technology, in this case it doesn’t matter if the read/writing speed is good, the USB version (1.1 or 2.0) isn’t important either.

As it always happens with USB related products, there is a LED light to indicate if the shaver is being recharged or not, there is also a smart USB plug that can rotate to make the device more compact in size and format.

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Ok, so the brain boys over where the M meets the IT (MIT) The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Where really

smart kids go to school to find out they’re only mediocre compared to the really REALLY smart kids.

This bunch is at the top. They’ve created a device that, oh, has the capacity to save hundreds of thousands of lives and many more than that in the future!

The future you say! Well, yes, you do, because I’ve put those words in your mouthes.

The device they’ve developed sends out focused acoustic beams that, when they hit a buried land mine (maybe it’s yours, I don’t know) then the dirt above the mine up and a localized radar unit detects the dirts movement and identifies the location of the mine.

It’s novel, it’s ingenious, and it will provide a meaningful, straightforward to begin removing mines from all over the world where men with complexes fought other men with complexes with weapons that were designed to kill kids and people hunting for firewood years after the conflict was over.

Maybe they’ll attach it to a neat little rover the kids over at Johns Hopkins made and make a bomb detecting and removal robot with the help of the folks at iRobot. Why not?! They all work in the same area, and the likelyhood that they all know each other is pretty good! Heck, while they’re at it, why don’t they just make it an open source project so that people all over the world can just build the darn things and get rid of mines killing people where they just want to farm.

It’s just a suggestion.
Everyone has mentioned this already Cnet-crave, Sciencedaily, Digg, and Gizmodo.

Many people believe that in the future optical computers will substitute traditional electronic-based ones. The biggest challenge for manufacturing optical microchips, however, is to be able to control light within the little devices. IBM recently announced that some of its scientists managed to slow down the speed at which light is traveling inside the microchips.

They basically forced light to travel inside ring-shaped structures made out of silicon. The longest delay was achieved using 56 consecutive rings, and it added 0,5 nanoseconds to the time light would need to pass through the microchip. That increase of 0,5 nanoseconds translates into 10 bits of optical information, which could be considered a break-trough considered current standards. Read the rest of this entry »

So your neighbor thinks he’s cool and all after snagging a spanking new 60GB PlayStation 3, but hardcore gamers know that when it comes to a full-fledged gaming system, nothing comes quite close to the PC, not even Gears of War on the Xbox 360. With that in mind, why not spite the Joneses by picking up the SDXi gaming rig from Shuttle’s XPC 1337 range? You can be sure that you will have the fastest machine around the neighborhood, giving you an edge over your opponents who constantly roam the virtual worlds of World of Warcraft, Counter Strike, Battlefield, and countless others.

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It is no secret that every single person here at Coolest Gadgets enjoy knocking back a pint or two after a hard day’s work. As we all know, the natural evolution of man will eventually turn him into a couch potato, fully equipped with an extremely large and rotund beer belly. Of course, all this is made possible only if there is a continuous supply of ice cool beer, but getting the nectar of the gods in the right temperature can be a tricky process. Thankfully, we have the Beer Caddy that will definitely come in handy this holiday season.

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Here are the cold hard facts - did you know that repetitive strain injuries constitute of the nation’s most common and costly occupational health problem? It is by far and large the fastest growing category of work-related illness, and more than 66% of all reported occupational illnesses resulted from prolonged exposure to repeated trauma on the upper body, and the dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome ranks high on that list. We could all go out on a limb and complain about how hardware manufacturers have long neglected users by providing a more ergonomic experience, but being the great nation that we are, there is always something we can do on our part to help ourselves. This is where the Wristease comes in handy.

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