Awesome Gadgets

Designed to address the Amazon Kindle 2’s lack of a backlight, the Periscope Light Folio is a combination case and retractable twin LED reading light; it’ll run for 40 hours on 3 AAAs.

Fresh from Brando, this Tiny Trackball Keyboard isn’t the first compact wireless keyboard we’ve seen, but it still manages to be somewhat pocketable with a trackball and 29 hotkeys.

Their first Android cellphone, Samsung’s i7500 features a 3.2″ AMOLED touchscreen, 3G, a 5MP camera, Wi-Fi, 8GB storage and Bluetooth; it launches in June with Germany’s O2.

Available 5/11, Hyperkin’s FC Mobile II allows you to play NES games on a portable console with a 2.5″ LCD; this new version includes two wireless controllers and a light gun.

Like some mutant horror flick, all the Chinese knockoffs merge together into the HiPhone Nano N3+; it’s best described as a clamshell iPod Nano phone with rotating 2.8″ touchscreen.

Going hand-in-hand with the Sony VAIO P’s own stylistic inclinations, Vaja’s leather ivolution Suits may be pricey, but they’re hand-crafted cases whose colors you can customize.

If you missed out on owning one 10 years ago, ThinkGeek is offering new-in-box Sega Dreamcasts; no games, but you’ll get a controller and one of them new-fangled 56k dial-up modems.

Available today, Samsung’s Trance is a mid-range sliderphone with a 2.1″ display and touchpad navigation; however, it boasts serious music playback with Bang & Olufsen speakers.

Redrock Micro’s DSLR 2.0 Hybrid Cinema Rigs are a modular, cheaper alternative to their Cinematizing Kit; allowing you to choose attachments to focus and stabilize your filming.

Designed for police and first responders, TASER’s AXON is a three piece system with a HeadCam, Com Hub and Linux-powered 4.3″ touchscreen ATC that can playback videos.

Aliph’s much lusted-after Jawbone Bluetooth headset gets a refresh with the Jawbone PRIME; other than a tweaked pattern, the main changes are improved call quality and noise reduction.

HP’s Pavilion dv3t is now available: it features a 13.3″ 16:9 HD (1280×800) screen, HDMI out, Altec Lansing speakers, up to 8GB RAM and a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce G 105M.

It’s just begging to get vacuumed up or otherwise misplaced, but EagleTec’s USB Nano Flash Drive is pretty sweet: this tiny drive packs plenty of storage, with 4GB and 8GB versions.

Pilotfish’s Ondo is a concept music editing phone: its spine can be twisted to edit music while three detachable OLED sticks not only form the main display but can act as standalone mics.

Dell’s updated Studio 15 laptop is available and all about the options: choose from a 720p, 900p or 1080p 15.6″ LED display, up to a 512MB Radeon HD4570 and optional BDRW drive.

If you thought yesterday’s 3D camcorder was cool, Silicon Imaging’s 3D Rig is portable enough to be strapped to a cameraman’s head, shown above in use for Human Flight 3D.

Sharp’s Mebius PC-NJ70A 10.1″ metbook is the first to walk the talk with a 4″ LCD touchscreen trackpad; it features 854×480 happy pixels that’ll accept both fingers and styluses.

At present a concept, Panasonic’s 3D Full HD Camcorder records 3D 1080p with a twin lens system and writes it to P2 cards; it essentially combines two cameras into one.

While the idea is not new, Seon-Keun Park’s Braille E-Book concept is beautifully executed; it would use electro-active polymers to dynamically raise and lower dots on the reader.

For our ugly mugs, hopefully beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder: the SmartFaucet uses facial recognition to adjust temperature and flow; it also sports a touchscreen and LEDs.

Able to record 1080p at 24fps, Panasonic’s AG-HMC40 is a tempting proposition for budget-minded prosumers; it can also shoot 10.6 MP stills and features 12x optical zoom.

The successor to the original Viewty, LG’s Viewty Smart is the world’s slimmest 8MP camera at 12.4mm thin; it also features a 3″ WVGA screen, 3G speeds, A-GPS and Wi-Fi.

The most disturbing use of augmented reality we’ve seen, a Belgian SQLUG member takes a t-shirt and spews file types and glowing orbs from his chest; better than aliens, we guess.