This is a different way to get you up in the morning. The Hanging Alarm Clock is different because, well, it hangs from the ceiling. Costing just under £20 this is definitely a novel way to wake up.

The Hanging Alarm Clock as I said gets hung from the ceiling and has a rather unique way of rousing you from your sleep. You see when the alarm goes off in the morning, the Hanging Alarm Clock will climb up the string forcing you to get up to press the snooze button. When you do press the snooze button, the Hanging Alarm Clock will fall back down and the process will start again until you stop it.

I can see this being a great little alarm clock for so many people. I for one have difficulty getting up in the mornings and can see this as a novel way of getting me up. I use a mobile phone with vibrate turned on stuck under my pillow at the moment and that certainly shocks me awake in the morning. Sometimes thought I do press stop instead of snooze which causes me no end of stress when I realise I have 15 minutes to get myself ready.

So the Hanging Alarm Clock is a new and novel way of getting people up in the mornings and it would make an ideal gift for those who love their beds a little too much in the mornings.

You might have read about a few companies bringing out 7″ and 8″ USB displays recently. I don’t know if there is a desperate need for these displays to be honest. I mean, why would you want to pay the same amount for a 7″ display if you could get a 19″ display? It seems a bit silly to me.

I’m sure that a lot of you will find uses for these displays, but personally I can’t see a use for them. They can be rotated to be viewed in either landscape or portrait, which is a bonus, but for me the size is just too small to be of any use. Obviously I may be biased because I’ve just had a 22″ TV/Monitor delivered. I mean, would you want to do 3D work on 7″ / 8″ worth of screen real estate? Or even editing a word document would be bothersome. The screens do boast resolutions of 800 x 600 pixels, which is pretty good.

I keep thinking of the screens you get in the back of cars to watch DVDs whilst travelling and I find it difficult to watch a movie on them to be honest. I can’t be totally negative about them though because they do provide a simple way of expanding your screens by using USB. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of a new age in screens being connected via USB because I’d love to have a couple of 22″ displays that were as easy to connect. I’d definitely purchase them if they were available.

Its early days for this technology and I do hope that it grows in to a must have gadget of the future. Watch this space.

These have been around for a while haven’t they; I mean they’re not brand new technology. But there are so many of these Digital Photo Frames available that it’s difficult to know which one to get. They vary in price from under £10 to hundreds of pounds.

The ones that cost hundreds of pounds have some extra features that the lesser ones do not have such as wireless capabilities and remote controls; they can also stream videos over the air.

That doesn’t mean the cheaper ones aren’t packed with great features. They are after all just screens that display images. Having the ability to show images that are loaded on to digital media cards is always a bonus. In my opinion, a Digital Photo Frame that has to be moved to a computer to have the images changed isn’t as good as one that can have a little card placed in it.

Digital Photo Frames are a great way to display your treasured memories and images, plus they have the added bonus of having the ability to display more than one of these images. Your Digital Photo Frame will bring a dull wall or cupboard to life with ever changing images. They truly are a wondrous device to have.

They also make great gifts for family and friends, so why not get your hands on a Digital Photo Frame today?

I recently bought a Sweex Wireless Broadband Router for a friend who wanted to go wireless. They’d been using a wired network, but decided it would be a good time to get themselves in to the 21st century. There was also the fact that they’d bought a laptop and had an iPod touch, both of which have wireless capabilities.

The reason I decided on the Sweex Wireless Broadband Router was simple; price. For under £20 you get a whole lot of router. Some of the specs are:

• Supports: IEEE 803.3 and IEEE 803.3u
• Supports: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
• Maximum wireless data transfer speed: 54Mbps
• Supports: DHCP (dynamic IP), PPTP, Static IP, PPPoE, L2TP
• 1 x WAN, 4 x LAN RJ-45 UTP ports
• Supports: WEP/WPA./WPA2/802.1X data encryption
• Built-in Firewall and Port Forwarding
• Removable reverse SMA Antenna 5 dBi
• 2 to 3 x Extended Range
• Supports: VPN pass through
• Web-based configuration

All of which make the Sweex Wireless Broadband Router ideal for a first time entrant into the wireless world. As always, there are other routers available, but as I said, you won’t get a much better entry level router for this price. All they wanted the router for was to connect wirelessly and easily to the internet, nothing fancy. The Sweex Wireless Broadband Router does the job perfectly for them.

Some of you may remember that I posted about buying a new 22″ LG LCD Television at the beginning of the year. Well, that TV had to go back because it had a fault with it. It kept getting white lines across the screen, and would become un watchable. So the 22″ LG LCD Television had to be sent back for a replacement. I arranged for the courier to pick it up on Monday, and today I got an email saying that a replacement 22″ LG LCD Television was on its way to me and would be with me by tomorrow.

I do really like the 22″ LG LCD Television when it works. The picture quality is crisp and bright, and it works well as a monitor for the computer. I’ve not been able to test the Freeview out on it yet though as it isn’t available in my area. That will happen in November according to the Freeview website. I’ve not been able to test the HD quality out on it either, as I don’t have anything that outputs a HD signal yet. I am hoping to get a Sony Blu Ray player soon though. Once I do get it, I’ll write about it here first.

Anyway the company I bought the 22″ LG LCD Television from were very quick with their assistance and support; the turnaround time is amazingly fast. Quite a few other companies could learn a lot from the customer support that eBuyer provide. It is an A1 service, and I will be recommending them to others in future. I have purchased quite a few items from them because of their highly recommended after sales care. From the reviews I’ve read people only have praise for them and I will be adding to that shortly.

So fingers crossed that my new 22″ LG LCD Television replacement works properly this time. Although I know that if anything is wrong, I’ll be in good hands if it needs returning.

Everyone wants to be able to store their files safely and securely don’t they? In addition to this, I would like to be able to access my files from wherever I am. Sure, I could get a portable HDD or even a USB Memory Stick, but sometimes they’re not viable options.

The LaCie Internet Space is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive that will allow you to remotely access all the files stored on it. The LaCie Internet Space looks good enough to be placed in almost any room in the house. With 500Gb of storage space you’ll definitely be able to put all your movies, pictures and music on it.

If you’re looking for a stylish way to share your files then the LaCie Internet Space should definitely be on your list of options. There aren’t many NAS drives that look this good. It’s always good to be able to share pictures with other members of your family without the need to use a dedicated website or service. Storing them at your own home also gives you the peace of mind that they are safely stored.

There are alternatives of course, but the LaCie Internet Space is stylish and affordable, plus it’s easy to use with it’s built in personal web portal. You can’t really go wrong with the LaCie Internet Space.

When I first read about this over at Engadget, I did more than get a little excited. I mean, a light bulb and speaker in one unit… it’s just too good to be true. And that’s where my bubble was burst because it is, in fact, too good to be true. The Soundbulb is just an idea at the moment, but it seems quite feasible that it could be a gadget of the future.

I would certainly buy these if they were available; I mean, think of the possibilities. It’s like killing two birds with one stone isn’t it, a speaker and light in one unit.

So how do they work? Well, they would have a small wireless receiver module in them that would allow them to receive music that was streamed from a transmitter or even a computer.

I do like that fact that they are “normal” looking bulbs though because this means you wouldn’t have to change your current light fittings. A concern that I have is with them being energy efficient, but I’ve read that they’ll be using LEDs.

As I said, these are only theoretical at the moment so for now, you’ll have to kit out your home with energy efficient light bulbs, which in itself is a good thing not only for you, but the environment too. As always PriceGrabber has some great prices available for energy efficient light bulbs.

I saw this recently and thought that I didn’t really have a food processor. Sure, there’s one in the house but it’s bulky and takes forever to put together so that I can use it.

The Kenwood Food Processor is great because it has a compact design which to me means that I can leave it out. It also has a powerful 900 watt motor and a 3 litre bowl, as well as a 1.5 litre liquidiser. Great for any kitchen in my mind.

A food processor makes it so much easier to get food prepared in a busy kitchen and this Kenwood is no different to bigger sized ones. I love the fact that you can get egg whites and cream whipped in seconds rather than minutes. The liquidiser can be used to make those modern smoothies that everyone seems to be drinking these days.

In these cold winter months there’s nothing better than homemade soup but the soup I make, which is a delicious carrot and lentil, is not as nice when it has big chunks of carrots and celery in it. So the best solution is to put it in a food processor. And that is why the Kenwood Food Processor caught my eye.

I’ll hopefully get my hands on it soon.

The teddy bear has been a favourite toy for children all over the world for many, many years, me included. It’s even given as a gift on Valentine’s Day between lovers. It is one of the best gifts you can give, or even receive, and they stay as a loved gift for decades.

I still have a few teddy bears that I received as a small child in my possession. Granted I don’t really play or look at them these days, but they’re still in good shape.

Now there’s a new kind of teddy available - The iTeddy. The iTeddy is a great gift to give any child. It incorporates a Personal Media Player in its belly which has support for MP3, WMA, MPEG4, SMV, WMV and JPEG. The iTeddy has a 1.8″ colour screen too.

The iTeddy has a standard memory of 512Mb, but this can be upgraded by using an SD Card of higher capacity. Getting media files in to the iTeddy is easy enough to do too with the supplied cable. There’s a socket on the iTeddy for this USB cable, but it also doubles as the power socket, so that you can keep the iTeddy charged up.

A great gift to give any child in this media savvy age, I wish there were toys like this available when I was a child.

The 20th of January 2009 will go down in history for one reason, and one reason alone and that reason is this man right here, Barack Obama. Yesterday he became the first ever African-American president in the history of the United States.

Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States and with that he brings great hope for the citizens of that country. And maybe not so obvious are the facts that he’s the first Hawaiian president and the first not born on mainland USA. I watched the inauguration ceremony live on the television and was moved by the speech he gave once he had been sworn in.

Barack Obama definitely made an impact on the people of America with his meteoric rise to become the most powerful leader in the world from his humble beginnings as a junior senator back in 2005. His slogan “yes we can” has quickly become a catchphrase amongst his fellow Americans.

So what can we hope to see from Barack Obama in the future? In his speech he gave some pretty strong hints as to how he plans on running the United States, for instance he pledged to “transform the schools and colleges to meet the demand of a new age”. Interestingly, Barack Obama also made a pledge “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” - It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Barack Obama looks set to become one of the greatest presidents that the United Stated of America has ever seen and I for one am glad that he is the president. Hopefully some, if not all of his pledges can become a reality and that some of his passion and willingness to push things forward can rub off on other nations. It would be great to have peace in our time.