Amazon is absolutley breathless over the latest addition to its massive stockpiles; the 16-gig iPod Touch. And just in time for the holiday shopping feeding frenzy, too! If you don’t mind $400 per prezzie, you can completely avoid shopping in a bricks-n-mortar store this year, just buy one of these for everybody. How convenient! It’s much more expensive than the new Britney Spears album, but unlike the Spears CD, this won’t end up in a landfill in mass quantities anytime soon.

Buy for $399

The pocket-sized Sony Cybershot T200 features 8.1 megapixel picture quality and 5x optical zoom. The lens does not extend from the camera, so this camera is always flat as a deck of cards and not much wider than your platinum Visa. The 3.5-inch LCD display has a crisp 920 x 240 display, and the presets for the T100 are getting rave reviews. Take it out of the box, pop in an memory stick and take up to 8 gigs worth of pics (with the right memory stick)! There’s a quirky little feature in this one called “Smile Recognition,” which may sound like some kind of bizarre Orwellian Homeland Security game, but could make your next photo session much more amusing.

Buy for $439.95

Japan-based Astro Research is responsible for this crazy tennis robot. The days of the automated ball server are numbered if this catches on, since it swats the balls at you with a real tennis racket instead of just shooting one out at you like an assault rifle. On the other hand, what’s the dif? What this is really good for is a bit of coffee break fun watching the oddball promotional video, which opens up looking like some kind of Haliburton R&D promo for a space weapon, complete with a stately intro shot of the earth. As in, the planet really needed this. Astro Research spent a huge amount of money creating the Swing Shot, but couldn’t scrape together the Yen to hire a real tennis player to test out the machine? These tennis dorks would get better results if they were hitting the balls on a golf course.

[From Astro Research]

Your kitchen is starting to look a little dated… That fridge is a litte tired, your fixtures are a little too “Brady Bunch”. And why does your microwave run on an analog clock? Time for a major upgrade to the second-most important room in the house. Don’t worry, GearCrave’s got you covered. Check out our top 7 groundbreaking kitchen gadgets, starting after the break!

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This wood-based, DIY Hacoa keyboard looks more like a carve-it-yourself scrabble set, but it really is a wood-based design for Internet junkies tired of plastic. People are poking fun at this innovation, saying “they’re killing trees!” but you really can’t win an argument like that either way. Keyboards made out of wood DO kill trees, whereas keyboards made from plastic make such beautiful landfills, RIGHT? Does plastic EVER biodegrade? This is a nice little project set from Japan-based designers monoDO, and if we could ever get five minutes to ourselves to actually put one together, we’d be tempted.

Check out more wooden workstation wonders after the break… Continue Reading

If you’re buried under a mound-o-’motes like us GearCravers, this just might be your ticket to sanity. The touchscreen-enabled Logitech Harmony 1000 can control your TV, DVR, DVD player, media computer, music… and even your home lighting. Using Logitech’s online database, you can locate and control over 150,000 devices across 4,500 brands with one device. Harmony, indeed.

Buy on sale for $299.  (down from $500)

Stephen King adapted Kingdom Hospital from Lars Von Trier’s original Danish TV series The Kingdom, and for those who got the bug, this was one creepy (and funny) 15 hour chunk of television. It owes a big debt to David Lynch while colliding with ER, but in the right hands that’s never a bad thing. It wouldn’t be autumn without some Stephen King action, 1408 made us think about other creepy haunted places with King’s name on ‘em. Want to see some of the creepiest TV this side of American Idol? This is just as scary, but much more entertaining.

Buy for 39.99

This one-of-a-kind messenger bag by Fuchs may look soft, but don’t let its baby face disguise its rough and rugged ways.  This water-repellent wool felt messenger bag packs quite a punch when it comes to storage.  Beyond its standard bag space, this hand-crafted messenger bag comes apart to be re-assembled as a unique bag to fit your larger fare.  We feel the design of this bag speaks for itself…  save for the fact that the little “f” Fuchs logo has been hand-branded on the wool felt.  Just like your own personal steer.

Buy for $330.