Stuff Geeks Want

Portable solar power devices are finally getting a blast of style and the people at Regen are on the cutting edge of that trend. Case in point is the ReNu portable solar tablet.

This 9-inch-by-9-inch tablet is essentially a portable slab of energy, designed to deliver solar power to apartment-dwellers who can’t put an array on the roof.

The ReNu can be hung in a window with a suction cup, attached to a window frame, or placed on a table. It’s battery recharges in four hours and will drive an iPod for about six hours.

The ReNu isn’t shipping until February of 2010.

Buy for $199 from Regen

We featured a few weeks back a Nikon digital camera with built-in pico projector. Here we go again, but this time one that works with thr Apple iPod.

It’s the PK101 Pico Pocket Projector from Optoma. Smaller than any iPod and weighing only 4 ounces, this little baby displays images as large as 60 inches up to 10 feet from your iPod.

At 4.1 x 2.0 x 0.6 inches, it is not much bigger than the remote control bundled with many larger projectors, yet it’s able to accommodate not only a DLP imaging engine and an LED lamp but also a rechargeable battery capable of powering the device for 1.5 hours—and even a tiny speaker.

We were very impressed with the image quality and ease of use. We were able to get images up to about 8 feet diagonally from about 12 feet away. Color was good, but the better the resolution of your images or video the better the projection quality will be.

Based upon the latest LED illumination advances and DLP imaging technology, it’ll give you two hours of viewing time. it’s got a built-in, re-chargeable battery that you hook up via USB or with the included AC power adapter.

Buy for $219 from Amazon

This handy pistol-like NightVision digital video camera lets you record 640×480 VGA video or shoot 1.3 megapixel still images in complete darkness and store it on the built-in 32 megabyte memory or a 2 gigabyte SD card.

You’ll get about two minutes of recorded video on the built-in flash RAM and about 75 minutes with the SD card. The camera works in regular light and automatically switches to night mode with the sun goes down. A ring of infra-red LEDs around the lens will illuminate your subject no matter the level of darkness.

It’s got a 2-inch LCD display on its back side and is powered by four double-A batteries. You hook it up via its USB connection. It’s got a trigger-type record button and a full set of display control buttons at the rear. Downside: a fixed focus lens.

Buy for $80 from Amazon

Peek Inc., the New York-based maker of handheld devices, has introduced the TwitterPeek, touted as the world’s first dedicated Twitter device. it’s a Twitter-only handset, so you can read Tweets, send Tweets, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and download followers.

When you receive Tweets, the TwittertPeek vibrates or makes a tweeting sound, and lights up a blue light. The TwitterPeek features a 2.5-inch LCD display, a full QWERTY keyboard, a trackwheel on the side, and a battery that gives you about three days of life before re-charging.

You can get it with lifetime service or six months of free service. After that service will run you $8 a month. Downside: No camera to upload your own pics.

Buy with lifetime service for $200 from Amazon

Buy with six months of service for $100 from Amazon

Turn your Mac Desktop icons into real, plush pillow add-ons with the Icon Pillow Collection from Throwboy.com.

These half dozen throw pillows resemble Mac OS X icons, including the Finder, iPhoto, Itunes, Dashboard, iMovie, and iChat. They measure roughly 11 inches by 9 inches with polyester fiber filling and 100 percent fleece outer fabric.

Cuddly-comfort no Mac can give.

Buy collection set of six for $149 from Throwboy.com

Who says the work place has to be all spreadsheets and time cards? The Executive Elite Marshmallow Blaster from Marshmallow Fun Company shoots tons of fun with not even a mark.

It’s a pump-action, single shot device that fires standard marshmallows up to 40 feet. Made out of carbon fiber, it’s got it’s own briefcase so you look the part (but we’re not sure which part that is).

Buy for $35 from Marshmallow Fun Company

If the weight of your iPhone isn’t an issue and protecting it from the most brutal elements is, then you want an EXOVault.

It’s machined aluminum or brass in two pieces that screw together. The aluminum is anodized and is very hard to scratch, the manufacturers tell us. While it makes the iPhone substantially squarer, it add just 1.5 ounces to its weight.

Yes, it’s certainly different from the oh hum plastic and rubber iPhone cases we see everywhere. Just think of it as the ultimate and impenetrable condom for your iPhone.

Buy for $95 from EXOVault

So here comes Barnes & Noble to the e-reader market just in time for the holidays but just as estimates come out that 10 million electronic book readers will be sold worldwide in 2010.

The Nook eBook reader is actually Plastic Logic’s QUE eBook reader to compete with rival Amazon’s Kindle line. The device, which has a six-inch display, is the same size and price as the standard version of Amazon’s Kindle and will ship in November. You can pre-order now.

Specs: 8.5 x 11 inches, less than a third of an inch thick, weighes 11.2 ounces, a 3.5 inch color touchscreen LCD at the bottom of the display to browse through book covers, 2GB of storage (about 1,500 eBooks), and battery life of up to ten days without recharging with wireless off. You can also use it as an MP3 player to listen to audio books or music. The nook holds about 26 hours of audio and a has a built-in mono speaker as well as a stereo headphone jack.

As for availability of book titles to buy and download (via WiFi and through AT&Ts 3G network), B&N plans on offer out of the gate more than one million e-books for sale when the Nook is released. Amazon has roughly a third of the inventory of B&N (so, take that).

But in one of the stupidest moves we’ve seen in some time, B&N has decided not to sell the Nook through it’s more than 700 brick-and-mortar stores. You’ll be able to play with a demo unit but not actually buy one to take home. Booksellers will order a device for in-store customers from the BN.com website to be shipped to their home. For whatever reason – small stock, security, whatever – it defeats the purpose of having a demo unit customers can play with and end the experience with no instant gratification. Dumb beyond belief!

Buy for $259 from Barnes & Noble

Like sticking a pencil in your eye, nothing is more excruciating than having to watch other people’s holiday photos. But if you’re forced into doing it, it might as well be fun and easy. That’s where the Nikon S1000pj comes in. It’s the first compact camera to come with a built-in pico projector.

Hit the button and it’ll beam the pics and hi-definition video held within onto a wall at a size as small as five inches and as large as 40 inches, and it will project from about six feet away with 10 lumens brightness. Nikon says the camera’s projector will work for an hour before its battery runs out. I can think of hundreds of situations where something like this could come in real handy like a bar where there’s a bunch of people and you’ve got a blank wall or on the back of an airplane seat to show a small crowd.

As for its basic digital camera capabilities, it can capture photos with over 12-megapixel resolution, it’s got a 5x wide-angle zoom lens, a 2.7-inch LCD screen, accepts SecureDigital (SD) memory cards, has built-in automatic scene-detecting capability, and it lets you edit images directly on the camera like brightening an image or rotating a photo.

You’re going to see a lot more of these type of cameras with built-in projection in 2010. For now, it’s the first.

Buy for $429 from Amazon

We get a lot of press releases here at StuffGeeksWant. So many of them are written like a product brochure and it’s our tough job to break them down into easy-to-understand language for you, our loyal readers. Case in point…the much talked about Tech 21 iBand iPhone case.

It’s made with d30, “a specially engineered material made with intelligent molecules.” (Translation…it’s spongy silicon rubber that becomes strong as steel when it’s impacted.) “They flow with the product but upon shock, lock together to absorb the impact energy.” (Translation…your iPhone ‘takes a licking and keeps on ringing’.)

It fits only the iPhone 3G and 3GS models, but we can attest to the unique toughness of this case. It wraps around the edges of the iPhone, and doesn’t cover the back or front, so it won’t protect from scratches. Its raised edges might help by elevating the phone off surfaces slightly.

It’s got a “unique slimline design that complements your iPhone 3G.” (Translation: It looks good to the Ladies.)

Well worth the investment compared to many so-called ‘tough iPhone cases’.

Buy for $29 from Amazon