Nextlink, whose older "AX" model was the only Bluetooth headset I could be arsed to keep in my pocket (until I gave it away), has announced the "Invisio G5," purported to be the world's smallest. Whether it is or not, it's a just a wisp of a thing, weighing less than six grams. It's not much bigger than an actual tooth—or much smaller, depending on your species.

Of course battery life will be affected by the fact that there's little space to stash a capacious one, but the G5 looks to do alright, with four hours of talk time and 150 hours of standby. As long as you remember to charge it as often as you do your phone you'll probably be alright.

I like the look, too. In fact, were it not available only in Europe at the moment, I might consider taking the leap to Bluetooth again, even though I currently have a perfectly functional headphones/mic combination at the moment.

The G5 is about $160 in U.S. monies.

Product Page [Nextlink.to via Gizmodo]

Jeremy Clarkson, host of perhaps my favorite television show Top Gear, took out a modified BMW 3-series on last week's show. The car was driven around the track once by a human, recording telemetry, and then played back the course using a combination of that data and military-grade GPS data at speeds of up to 100 MPH.

We're getting closer and closer to pilotless cars!

(Hey, what's the name of that short story, probably several decades old, about the family that gets trapped in the car that won't stop driving and refueling, causing them to eventually die? I remember the story, but nothing about its name or author.)

[via Oh Gizmo]

Danger Room's Noah Shachtman took a FujiFilm S6000 DSLR-alike with him on his last trip to Iraq. The photos came out fine—when he could keep the batteries in the camera.

For example, one day in Fallujah, I jumped out of a Humvee, to snap a couple of shots of a food run that wasn't exactly playing out according to plan. The batteries all spilled to the floor of the truck. So I spent a couple of minutes scooping up Duracells, instead of documenting what went down. The same thing happened over and over again, during my month in Iraq: any time I really wanted a picture, the batteries would come flying out of the camera. Not even a heavy application of duct tape could keep this alkaline equivalent of projectile vomiting from happening. It's like the camera was South Park's Stan, and there was always a cute girl on the playground.

My Puke-on-Command Camera [Danger Room]

The "Flash-Matic" was the first wireless television remote control, develop by Zenith.

From Zenith's remote history page:

Zenith engineer Eugene Polley invented the "Flashmatic," which represented the industry's first wireless TV remote. Introduced in 1955, Flashmatic operated by means of four photo cells, one in each corner of the TV screen. The viewer used a highly directional flashlight to activate the four control functions, which turned the picture and sound on and off and changed channels by turning the tuner dial clockwise and counter-clockwise.

While it pioneered the concept of wireless TV remote control, the Flashmatic had some limitations. It was a simple device that had no protection circuits and, if the TV sat in an area in which the sun shone directly on it, the tuner might start rotating.

Flash-Matic Tuning [J-Walkblog] (Thanks, John!)

From darkest Amazon, a selection of essential items with which the holiday stay with your family may be enjoyed with little-to-no emotional, social, or evidential trace.

Three-Hole Ski Mask

Expose only the minimum amount of flesh to your family at dinner, cooly slipping one centimeter lengths of candy cane into your mouth at constant rate, the resonant crunch drowning out their insipid prattle. Small holes in the side will allow the addition of sunglasses, further protecting you from eye contact.

$5

Sclerotome Pain Chart

Great as a conversation starter—and ender—this handy Sclerotome Pain Chart shows embryological sclerotome pain pathways, the better to pinpoint sclerotogenous pain from spinal levels C-1 through S-3. Ball peen not included.

$55

SVAT Imitation Security Dome

While the temporary nature of your stay may prevent the installation of proper security features, the SVAT ISC302 Outdoor Imitation Dome Security Camera with Blinking LED will keep them guessing while you install what meager protections you can muster. Perfect for the bathroom, or directly over the piles of presents.

$20

Hornady 7mm RemMag 139Gr IB Hvy Mag/20

Hornady's proprietary bonding process keeps the core and jacket together no matter where the bullet may penetrate, maintaining 90% of its mass even through "tough hides and bone." The InterBond, with its premium polymer tip, delivers "deep penetration and a destructive wound channel."

A classic stocking stuffer.

$46

An Historic Photo Print

Liven up your kid sister's room with a tranquil historic print. We suggest this rustic scene depicting the garroting of a prisoner at Bilibid Prison in the Philippines. Also available printed on a pack of 20 greeting cards, perfect for sending out holiday wishes for those too far to touch in person.

$30

Anti-Riot Tactical Helmet

It's the part of the holidays no one wants to discuss, but we know in our crystalline cores to be true. Someone is going to fuck the mashed potatoes. Be ready.

$60

Lock Jaw Door Security Device

Sure, the deadbolt you installed last year is still in place, but anyone with a bump key and a thirst for blood can pop the lock while you recharge. Add this additional security to the door, where its high-grade alloy and titanium brass plating will prevent anyone from entering without your permission—even if they have the key.

Even if they made you make a second key.

They made you.

$20

Ancient Art Of Strangulation (Paperback) by Haha Lung

The holidays are no time for serious mental edification, so kick back with a little light reading. Dr. Lung takes a spirited romp through the history of the Thuggee, the murderous cult who took strangulation out of Borscht Belt clubs into the national spotlight.

$15

Relaxman Relaxation Capsule

Preprogrammed music and lights lull you into a somber catatonia of reflection, priming the brain for subconscious tactical planning. A rested mind is a scheming mind!

The Relaxman is completely heat and light proof, so be sure to keep your immediate location as secure and tango-free as possible.

$40,000

Squeeze – Greatest Hits

The holidays aren't just for old traditions. Make a few new ones! Make gathering in a circle around a single flame in the darkness listening to hit songs from U.K. new wave band Squeeze—"Another Nail In My Heart"; "Trust Me To Open My Mouth"; "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)"; "Tempted"; "Annie Get Your Gun"; "No Place Like Home"—a new tradition to be passed on through the generations.

$10

Fresh Whole Rabbit

Rabbit meat is one of nature's secret power sources, made entirely from rabbits. These whole carcasses from Cloverdale keep for weeks at room temperature, suffer no documented cases Tularemia (rabbit fever), and can even be cooked.

(Don't neglect to view the "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought" selections.)

$39

This fantastic cake is a tribute to the Roland SH-101 synthesizer, with Kit-Kat black keys, Rollo knobs, and sliders made from Andes mints. Adorable.

at long last! [Livejournal.com/synth_widows via Music Thing]

The "IceDozer Plus" purports to be more than just a flimsy ice scraper, capable of removing tenacious ice with a minimum of effort. Its main gimmick are "carbide style Tenderizers™" on one side of the scraper, which when smashed down into the ice, crack the ice without scratching your windows. The loosened ice scrapes apart more easily using the traditional blade on the other side. There's even a mini "Pocket Dozer" that slides out from the IceDozer Plus that can be used for mirrors or any other oddly-shaped bits of glass.

I haven't scraped ice off a car window in over half a decade, but I used to loathe it. Dropping a $20 on IceDozer Plus—if it works—still intrigues me. I mean, it's yellow. Everybody knows yellow things are tough.

My worst ice scraping experience? I had this old Ford minivan that my mom gave me, the ones that looked vaguely like shuttlecraft. Aerostar, I think. It had ridges along the top, presumably to better sluice rain off the back while driving.

We had a big ice storm one year. A sheet of ice, probably four inches thick, had built up on the top of the van. Enough that I was worried about it coming off when I was driving down the highway to work. It could have killed someone.

I hammered the top of the ice with my fists for a few minutes, when it finally cracked in two. It was then I realized I was parked on a slope. The ridges on the top of the van, now ice-filled, guided the sheet off the roof and down the windshield, shearing off the entire wiper assembly.

From then on, every time it rained, I had to pull over. Preferably under an overpass watching the rain as semis blew past. I loved that van.

Product Page [InnovationFactory.com via Toolmonger]

These subtle little Matryoshka nesting dolls are based on the Pantone color scheme, each one embossed with the corresponding catalog number. Designed by Yar Rassadin, they appear to be just a one-off project, not a for-sale product.

These cabbage vases, however, hand made in South Africa, are for sale at Anthropolgie. The two slender vases are $200, while the set of four are sold for $250.

They'd all look quite fetching together on a shelf, dolls fading into cabbage. Until someone gets out the flesh-colored spray paint, at least.

Pantone Matroyshka [Rassadin.com via Josh Spear]
Cabbge Vases [Apartment Therapy]

• 70% off all Leap Frog books that are $4 or more. [Bargainist]

• Refurbished Macbook (Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz) for $800, shipped. [Dealnews]

• M-Audio MobilePre Portable USB Audio Interface for $106, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Simple personal sewing kit for $7, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Today's Woot! is a Woot-off!

• Sock It Koizumi – Chris Kohler's fantastic sit-down with Super Mario Galaxy director Yoshiaki Koizumi. [Game|Life]

• God Bless Us, Every One – "Recalls Are A Headache For Toy Drive Organizers." Check if your toys are safe at HealthyToys.org. [Consumerist]

• Bounty Punters – Neuros and DVRUpgrade offer a bounty for making the OSD and TiVo interoperate. [DVRUpgrade]

• Pod People – Earth2Tech has a short piece with Aptera founder Steve Fambro about his electric car company, including plans to produce a car that doesn't look like a space suppository. [Earth2Tech]

• 10. Coated in Your Own Filth – "9 Alternative Ways To Search Amazon" [Consumerist]

I don't quite understand how it works from just looking at the picture, but according to Trends in Japan, this special-edition cigarette pack in Japan "opens and closes automatically when you push from the bottom." Looks like it's all mechanical to me, not electrical. Still, I love new ways to continue to die.

Lark Artist Pack series: Japanese cigarette branding [Kilian-Nakamura.com]

The Glucoboy is a blood glucose meter built into Game Boy Advance cartridge. The more a child tests his blood sugar, the more points he earns, unlocking mini-games.

Perhaps it will be incentive enough if it's the only cartridge they own, but obviously nothing is stopping the kids from popping in another game instead of sticking themselves with a pin. Still, can't hurt, right?

The Glucoboy is available down under for $260 down under dollars.

Product Page [Glucoboy.com via Oh Gizmo via Joystiq via Next-Gen.biz via Game|Life via Hippocratech.org]

My cable modem is on the fritz, so I'm watching this video in a coffee shop with the sound turned off. That makes it much easier to imagine this set to a variety of musical soundtracks. At the moment, these men are riding these tractors Into the Danger Zone.

[via Jalopnik]

Apartment Therapy spotted this lovely light fixture in the Michelle Varian boutique in Manhattan. It's knitted! (And apparently mega-starched.)

Look!: More Knit Lighting at Michelle Varian [ApartmentTherapy.com]

Om Malik, responding to an all-sugar, no-coke story about AT&T's new network "openness" in USA Today:

I think the bigger issue here is that we really need to get companies to define what they mean by OPEN. Open handsets, open networks, open applications, open operating systems — some combination of those, or all of them? Otherwise, I might have to start translating OPEN into "We're Scared of Google."

Sorry about that. We had some tech bloops this morning that delayed the posting of some stories and added a login prompt once they did go live. Should be groovy gravy now, but I apologize for the hassle.

Perhaps the ultimate accessory for the gilded wealthy: the ostentatiously obvious gold-plated safe. Traum manufacturers a variety of custom-built safes with modern designs, constructred from high-end materials including exotic woods. Perhaps the company would be better named "Taunt," every safe topped with a golden fist with a middle finger upturned to thieves.

If you can consider purchasing one, you aren't concerned with the price.

Company Page [TraumSafe.com via Cool Hunting]

In 2001, before we all realized that the animated Final Fantasy movie was going to be garbage, Seiko announced two watch designs based on the one worn by the movie's heroine, Dr. Aki. Rather, they announced one watch, but showed a picture with a second view that looked quite a bit like a second design.

The face of the watch looks relatively pedestrian for a "futurey" watch these days, but at the time it was shockingly fresh, especially when imagined to be part of a hefty metal cuff with thick buttons. The watch that Seiko ended up releasing, including a limited run here in the U.S., looked basically the same as the design on the left.

If you look at the released watch, you can see that it has a pretty standard plastic band along the back. (Someone is selling one on eBay for $750, a $550 premium over its original cost here in the States. Their auction has lots of pictures, including one that shows the back.)

Anyone know if the second cuff was actually released in Japan? Or was it simply a mock-up which Seiko decided was too much trouble or too expensive to produce? I've asked Seiko about it, but I doubt answering questions about a seven-year-old limited-edition watch is going to be a top priority for them.

We're all suckers for something. I've weaned myself off of expensive things, for the most part. (I did just spend a few hundred bucks on LEGO, but at least it was a good deal. Or so I tell myself.) But a few lusts linger.

Numeric keypads, though. Boy. Maybe it's from years spent playing first-person shooters that required all nine keys and the halo of operators before we collectively realized that WASD gave even more options*. Or perhaps the time I scored the office record at the temporary agency on the ten-key test. Whatever it is, I find them irresistible, despite that I have a perfectly functional one on the very keyboard from which I am now inputing.

I'll resist this AKP-170 mouse from Adesso, which hides a ten-key with oh-so-luxurious backspace key, pined after by data entry professionals everywhere. Not without shedding a single metallic tear, mind you. Because not only is this thing available for sale, but it can be purchased by the case.

Product Page [Adesso via CrunchGear]

* Thanks, Tribes! VAV!

Typically, product concepts that include brand names are improbable junk. How often have you seen a concept imagined to be from Apple or Sony that has real appeal? Rarely!

This one, though. This one does alright. Designer Jason Roebuck conflated two tenants of the common coffee table into one: television remotes and a bowl of fruit.

Sure, it's not practical. Controlling your television with a Wii-like wave of a wand might be a chore. And the need for a remote for each member of the family seems wasteful. But as far as designs that exist only as rendered concepts go, it's has a pull that few manage: I want to know what those remotes would feel like in my hand.

Apple Remote But Not By Apple [Yanko Design]

Consumer Reports mulls counterfeit merchandise, now moved beyond the occasional knock-off purse or iPod into things that could actually harm you. And not because they're filled with lead or anything—because they may cause your car to go careening out of control.

Fakes include truly unsafe merchandise. Investigators have seized brake pads made of kitty litter, sawdust, and dried grass; power strips, extension cords, and smoke alarms with phony Underwriters Laboratories (UL) marks; medical test kits that give faulty readings; toothpaste made with a chemical found in antifreeze; and cell-phone batteries that could explode. Online drugstores claiming to operate from Canada but actually based in other countries have peddled "Lipitor" and "Celebrex" pills stored under uncontrolled conditions and containing the wrong active ingredients.

That's just for starters. Among the counterfeit merchandise is some you would suspect: handbags, clothes, watches, and amusingly renamed colognes such as Essey Miyami instead of Issey Miyake. But there are also surprising fakes: golf balls, oil filters, and baby formula, for example. With some, the low price is a giveaway (a $2,000 Prada purse for $35?). Others are priced close to retail to fool you.

I think most gadgets should be more expensive to better absorb the true cost of their global impact, yet also think people should stop buying brand-name products that don't offer any value beyond cachet. As always, I remain confused.

Real or fake? [ConsumerReports.org via Consumerist]

• Lots of cheap toys at Amazon. Free shipping on orders over $25. Feel the consumption. [Slickdeals]

• Transformers Beatmix Bumblebee Dancing Speaker for $12, also at Amazon. [Slickdeals]

• Gen Sound GT-USB USB Turnable for $80, after $30 rebate. Not a super deal; just thought it was kind of nifty. [Dealnews]

• Cambridge SoundWorks Radio 705, $60 shipped. [Dealnews]

• Today's Woot!: a Micro Remote Control Helicopter for $15, shipped. Best toy ever and a fair price. Seriously. Buy one right now.

Combining two of our favorite pastimes—misappropriation of athletic equipment and electrocution—the "Zap-A-Bug" electric racquet sends an indeterminate amount of voltage through a mesh screen, the better to both knock flying pests out of a the sky and cook them before they hit the ground. With a child-safety switch and a rubberized non-stick handle, the Zap-A-Bug racquet is both fun and safe. And it's only $25, shipped, giving it a cost-per-hours-of-fun factor orders of magnitude beyond most tennis equipment.

As This Old House's "Hardware Aisle" aptly notes: "Advantage: Humans."

Product Page [Firestore.com via Harwdare Aisle]

Gadget Lab's Rob Beschizza has spotted an especially onerous proviso in the FAQ page for this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the dreadful orgy of electronics held each January in Las Vegas: show goers, of which there are literally tens of thousands, will not be allowed to photograph products shown in booths without the express permission of the exhibitors.

From the FAQ:

Under no circumstance will anyone be permitted to take pictures of an exhibitor's product without the permission of the exhibitor. Many products on display at CES are unique, innovative, one-of-a-kind or prototype items. Exhibitors have the right to report to security any instance of inappropriate photographing of company products or displays.

In addition, media will be required to have their camera equipment authorized and stickered by CES staff.

Bullshit.

CES exists for two primary reasons: showing new products to retail buyers who are looking to plan inventory purchases to fill up stores cleaned out by holiday shopping and to promote the latest new products to consumers via the coverage provided by enthusiast and mainstream media. Anyone who has covered CES in the past has had a forceful sales drone literally throw themselves between cameras and their products, chiding for attempting to show their products to the world outside of their carefully orchestrated marketing. This against our primary role as media and the show's raison d'etre: to show new products to potential customers.

The show is held primarily in the Las Vegas Convention Center, a facility managed and operated by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), a self-described "quasi-governmental agency," established by state law and funded by a county room tax. Having been constructed in 1959 from public tax money and expanded several times, including once in 1972 by funds generated through the sale of bonds by Clark County, the convention center is "publicly owned and operated," according to the man I spoke to this morning at the LCVCA's Research Department.

Because room taxes provide the majority of the funding, the "Convention Center and Cashman Center are not intended to be self-supporting but to generate convention, tourism, and business activity within Clark County," according to the LVCCA's 2006 SEC disclosure report.

I am still waiting for a response from the LVCVA (it's still fairly early out there), but CES is not the only trade show to ban or restrict photography on the floor. The International Council of Shopping Centers, for instance, bans photography entirely.

The point remains. CES is a trade show designed to promote new products to not only the thousands of attendees, but millions of consumer electronics enthusiasts. If exhibitors want to protect their products from being photographed, they should rent a private hotel or conference room. This is exactly how most large companies already protect their prototypes and "secret" products from leaks.

Update: A spokesperson for the LVCVA called me this morning and said that, while not comfortable giving a final proclamation, that the Convention Center is a public facility, but can be rented for private events. When I asked him if the fact that the Convention Center is a public-owned space might affect the rights of show-goers to take pictures, he said "That's a good question!" and referred us to the LVCVA's legal counsel.

In addition, Gizmodo's Adrian Covert was kind enough to pass on this interaction he had this morning with CES's press office that suggests the unofficial CES policy runs counter to the one stated in their FAQ.

From the the CE.org email to Adrian:

Thanks for your inquiry. I don't believe you need special credentials to shoot digital or video cameras on the show floor. We used to require all press to have security stickers that we gave out in the press room on all their equipment but we stopped doing that last year or the year before. Having a press/blogger badge helps, but I don't think it's required. In other words, general attendees can shoot floor footage as well as press.

That's good—if counter to the policy as stated in their FAQ—but it doesn't address the primary issue: that exhibitors can prohibit the photography of gadgets that are on public display.

The Zigview S2 Digital Viewfinder clips onto the optical viewfinder of your DSLR, adding a swiveling live 2.5-inch LCD display that can not only be extended on a cable as a remote, but can also automatically trigger the camera when it detects motion. That makes it possible to mount your camera in odd places or to snap photos of wildlife that might otherwise be sketched out by the presence of a human.

It's only £230, too, which seems fairly reasonable for the amount of flexibility it would add to your rig. The S2 works on a variety of DSLRs from various brands, including Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, and Fuji. (But not, for some reason, on the entry-level Canon Rebel series, which is what I own.)

While you're waiting behind a blind to capture your latest snapshot, you could occupy your time by trying to identify bird songs with this Birdsong Scanning Wand, which plays one of 206 bird song sound files when scanned over the corresponding picture the included booklet. It's $100.

Z2 Catalog Page [Speedgraphic.co.uk via Red Ferret]

Previously: Wingscapes Birdcam Review (Verdict: Sort of Awesome!) [BBG]

Sometimes I wonder: When did American consumer culture reach the point of no return? (Most commonly I wonder this while nibbling a single chip from a family-sized bag of Doritos, tossing the remainder into an incinerator, since I only fill my bodily temple with the most unsullied "chosen" chips.)

I now have an answer: sometime in the '70s, when the Wonder Sauna Hot Pants were first offered to the public.

(Thanks, Burgletime!)

• LEGO Furniture Sale: 80% off remaining items at the LEGO store. [Dealnews]

• Sanyo Xacti HD700 HD Camcorder for $300 at Amazon. [Dealnews]

• Sony Bravia 46" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV + home theater system for $2,000, in-store pick-up at Sears only. [Dealnews]

• Sennheiser RS100 Wireless Headphones for $56, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Today's Woot! is a Altec Lansing M604 Powered Audio System for Zune for $45, shipped.

Who knows how effective this tiny metal-detecting R/C car might really be, but it certainly makes holding the sensor just above the ground very simple, even as it limits the amount of places you might be able to use it. But even if you were just running it through the grass at a local park picking up loose change and used needles it would be more fun than a traditional metal-detecting wand.

It's £50 and includes real "gold coin replicas."

I have a feeling my father's slight preoccupation with South Florida treasure hunting may result in something similar as he enters his later years, bombing down the beaches in a metal-detecting wheelchair.

Catalog Page [DrinkStuff.com via 7Gadgets]

What I know about drumming I've learned from a few weeks of Rock Band, so I leave it to actual drummers to test Alchemy Traps Drums' claim that their "Traps E400" set of electronic drums really are the "first portable electronic kit to feel like a regular drum kit." The nearly full-sized heads are certainly closer to real than the small plastic pads I recall from music videos in the '80s, but since the feel is only half the battle—they've got to sound good, too—I have no idea if these are a decent replacement for a real kit or just a £450 gimmick.

Any clue, drummers?

Catalog Page [DV247.com via Red Ferret]

The strange Gamespot/CNET/Jeff Gerstmann/Kane & Lynch/Eidos saga, which I haven't really gotten into here at all, has now included me in a peripheral way. (In short, CNET execs. fired Jeff Gerstmann, former editor of Gamespot, for the "tone" of his review of the game Kane & Lynch, presumably because of pressure from the publisher Eidos who pulled future advertising from Gamespot because of the low review Gerstmann had given the game. Basically all the negative things you hear about payola in videogame reviews seem to be true at Gamespot—or would have been soon, if the internet hadn't gotten up in arms about Gerstmann's firing.)

Anyway! I took a preview tour of Kane & Lynch at E3 earlier this year. I was actually impressed with the game at the time, despite myself. The characters looked possibly interesting—two despicable anti-heroes against a bunch of other hard-boiled criminals—they were referencing modern classics like Heat and Ronin, and the team responsible for development made a small game that never got much attention but that I rather enjoyed: Freedom Fighters. My preview was positive.

Now it turns out that on the German version of the Kane & Lynch site, a pull-quote from my preview has been put up next to a five-star rating. I just want to make it clear: Yes, I did give Kane & Lynch, a game I have yet to play, five stars in my "pre-review," or "review" for short. However, it must be noted that my scale goes far past five, up into the bushels, and stars rarely rate in my metric, ranking far below "plum tomatoes" and infinitely below the craved-after "waxy turnip."

If Eidos is not happy with my five-star rating, they know where to send a check. (Could you also include a copy of the game? Thanks.)

Did We Give Kane & Lynch 5 Stars? [Kotaku]