This is an entry from our 2006 Holiday Gift Guide. Check it out for suggestions on what to buy your loved, liked, and hated ones this holiday season!

After being featured on 30 Rock, many were wondering if this thing was the real deal. Turns out, it is. The Black & Decker Infrawave Speed Oven is smaller than your average microwave, but also packs a lot more power. The Infrawave Oven uses infrared light to cook food, using two heating elements that cycle on and off. The cycling uses various wavelengths, allowing it to roast, broil, or bake in just about half the time it would take to do it in your traditional gas or electric oven. Sure, it can toast your bread and heat your frozen pizza - but the Infrawave Oven can even cook bone-in meats. Oh, and unlike your microwave, it heats everything in your food, not just the water. That spells out juicy, evenly-heated grub.

Price: $129

Gallery: 2006 Holiday Gift Guide: Black & Decker Infrawave Speed Oven

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We dig telling you about the latest gadgets for adults, and even occasionally dabble in those for kids, but this one takes babysitting to a whole ‘nother level. It was bad enough when diaper companies discovered the means that would allow you not to have to change your baby for hours at a time.  The Cencio Intellicot makes it possible for you not to have to attend the little nippers for even longer. The gadget rocks your baby, has a video camera for surveillance, a built-in lift system, and circulates air. It even has a convenient window for your tot to watch you watching her/him. Called a “labour of love” by Britain’s Coventry University, we call it a glorified ant farm and a terrible replacement for a couple of hugs and a good old-fashioned rocking chair.

Read More | Intellicot

Gallery: Intellicot Replaces Parental Chores

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Artist Amy Youngs has created a digestive table that recycles your uneaten food with an ecosystem that consists of worms, sowbugs, and bacteria. Simply toss your scraps into the top portal and the critters below start breaking it down into compost. You then feed it to your plants to complete the cycle. You can even watch them working on an infrared security camera (because worms are sensitive to white light) connected to an LCD screen built into the table. While we applaud Ms. Youngs’ idea, she may have to deal with our dog Spot, who believes that he gets first crack at the leftovers.

Read More | Amy Youngs

Gallery: Digestive Table Recycles Leftovers

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You know not to drink the water in a pool because of the chlorine or other “additives,” but in Japan last weekend it was actually encouraged. At the Hakone Kowakien Yunessun hot spring resort southwest of Tokyo, the owners added 12 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau wine daily to their pool to celebrate this year’s bottle release from France. The wine has become a seasonal fad in Japan and last year 11 million bottles were sold.

“We installed the wine spa last year, and conducted the Beaujolais Nouveau celebration. It was a great success,” said Seiji Sanada, an official at Yunessun. He added, ”Wine smooths [sic] the skin and its aroma relaxes the mind.”

We’re thinking that it might be a good idea for the winery to donate 12 bottles to those of us lucky enough to acquire portable saunas this year.

 

Read More | Taipei Times

Gallery: Japan Celebrates the Holidays in Wine Spa

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This is an entry from our Holiday Gift Guide. We will be updating it daily through the holidays, so be sure to check it often for some great gadget gift tips!

Read More | Gear Live Holiday Gift Guide

Gallery: From Our 2006 Holiday Gift Guide: Remington Titanium 5500

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This is an entry from our 2006 Holiday Gift Guide. Check it out for suggestions on what to buy your loved, liked, and hated ones this holiday season!

Most foil shavers that we have tried aren’t that successful at shaving off longer facial hair. Not so with the Remington Titanium 5500. This shaver have a slide-out beard trimmer that cuts overgrown hair, which is followed by three foil blades. The third minifoil slides up, allowing it to be used as a mustache or jawline trimmer. This one is certainly recommended, as it is the best we have seen for cutting hair - and that’s what these things are all about, right?

Price: $100

Read More | Remington

Gallery: 2006 Holiday Gift Guide: Remington Titanium 5500

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Oregon Scientific’s Special Edition Interactive SmartGlobe takes you all over the planet without leaving home. Its 9.6-inch diameter and 15.35-inch height comes with a wireless pen and 3D barcode technology. It keeps up with the latest geological information, current events, and even election results through audio file downloads. Updatable for free until 2008, the SmartGlobe is available online at WorldGlobes for $119.99 in 9 languages and 3 versions of English. Do you suppose that one of those versions is politically correct?

 

Read More | Oregon Scientific

Gallery: Interactive SmartGlobe Covers Elections

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Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - MPEG-4

Read More | The Bleeding Edge

Gallery: Bleeding Edge 058: iGo Everywhere 8 Review

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Imagine waking up to your favorite midi or MP3 instead of a screaming shock jock. The WidgetStation has two screens and an amazing amount of capabilities such as playing music, receiving stock market and weather reports, RSS feeds, Internet radio, podcasts, PhotoShow, and message notification. Made by Emtrace, it has alarm clock synchronization within 1 ms, a stopwatch, countdown timer, and even world time by country.

It’s easy to see why WidgetStation has already received 2007 CES Design & Engineering Showcase Honors. Available early next year, contact Emtrace for specs, price, and availability.

Read More | Emtrace

Gallery: WidgetStation Keeps You in Touch

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SALIX doesn’t exactly qualify for our bot category, but it comes fairly close. Displayed at the recent ArtBots 2006 Regional Show in NYC, these willow trees interact by means of motor prosthetics embedded in the root system. It sends numerical data messages via small GPS accelerometers implanted in the ends of the branches. Next thing you know, it is speaking to humans with a computerized voice. Creator John Lathram claims that his inspiration “came out of an attempt to record the movement of the wind as it moves through willow branches.” Check out his demo to see SALIX in action.

Read More | John Lathram via Wired

Gallery: SALIX Responds to Environment

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