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Ow. If this is anti-violence, then I am the Pope, I have just got divorced and I live with seventeen PORGs and a double-jointed donkey called Jehosephat Spanglethong. The Anti-Violence Electrode Shock Gun (but you can call it Pain) is a multi-talented weapon that can be used with paint bullets, rubber bullets (we all know how anti-violent THEY are, don't we?), pepper spray, as well as the rather scary-sounding probe cartridges, which override the central nervous system and cause temporary incapacitation, rather like a Taser gun.

You can attach an electric baton to it so that you can prod your victim without having to get too close to him, and there's an 180 cd Xenon light to "giddy" your opponent (translation: temporarily blind him so he won't see you storm up and land your size 15s in his nuts). Apparently it makes the perfect present for customs officers, the army, police, little sisters, librarians and Donald Rumsfeld. And all of this comes at a price: I think we can guess what that is. – Ad Dugdale

Product Page [Techwisetech via Red Ferret]

Here's the new Canon PowerShot G5 IS, 8 megapixels of compact camera with an attitude, and 1:2.7-3.5 lenses with 12x optical zoom. The new camera supports video mode with stereo sound recording, as you can see from the two microphones mounted in the front.

Commanded by Canon's DIGIC III processor, this SLR Mini-Me comes loaded with optical Image Stabilizer and a 2.5-inc LCD screen that you can freely move around. The camera supports face detection for auto-focus, built-in red-eye correction and can even use extra optics for telephoto and wide-angle shots using an optional lens adapter. It also has a flash shoe and support for SDCH/SD and MMC memory cards. Weighting 15.9 oz it looks like the build is solid, although I am not convinced about the 4 alkaline batteries included in the package. We don't have a price yet, but we have a gallery with sample photos and images of the camera for *free*. – Jesus Diaz

Product page [Canon via Impress]

There's a cheap computer on the way that undercuts them all, the $99 Zonbu, due this summer in a silent-running form factor that's about the size of a paperback book. It has 4GB of flash memory on board, and automatically backs up a copy of your data online. Besides that $99 purchase price, you'll also pay $12.95 a month (for 25GB,scales up to 100GB for more money) to store its data on the Zonbu servers, giving you the ability to compute anywhere with this tiny device, or access your data from other PCs. If you don't commit to a service plan, the little PC costs $250.

Of course, you'll have to buy a keyboard, monitor and mouse for this diminutive computer, and you'll need a broadband Internet connection, too, but the company says its little Gentoo Linux-based mini PC has all of the applications most people ever need already preloaded. This sounds intriguing, but what applications are included, and can you actually get any work done with it?

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For those of you who think that toilets shouldn't even be seen, let alone heard, Californian remodelling firm Julien asked Troy Adams Design to come up with a secret loo that doubles as a "Powder Room Bench". Slide the wooden cover over the pedestal when you want it hidden away, slide it back to reveal your secret toilet in all its glory. What's the point? I mean, if you're really, truly embarrassed by bodily functions, you could just not "do" anything. And then you'd explode. And that would be nice, wouldn't it? – Ad Dugdale

Product Page [Julien via Remodelling Online]

"... Stretching sinuously, her back forming an arc that would make a viaduct engineer blush, Lisandra mewled like a kitten. 'Oh Hef,' she breathed, opening one feline eye, 'You were staggering.' The Hef smiled wolfishly and removed the pipe from where it shouldn't have been*. "I know," he said, leaning over to run his tongue up her spinal column. "I frequently am." Frissons of ecstasy fizzed through her body and she sighed with satisfaction.

There was a sudden movement in the bed and another head popped out from beneath the burgundy sateen sheets. It was Shanandra, Lisandra's identical twin sister. "Hef, you were absolutely sensational," she murmured lazily, her voice still thick with innuendo. "Now then, all that action has made me thirsty. And we want to know what you're going to do about it."

More Hot Hef action after the jump.

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Here's a nifty little product if you're a Windows user - Rebit is a pocket-sized back-up that is so easy to use that even my Mom could master it (and she still calls her computer "that TV thing"). You can even go back to older versions of saved documents, as it catalogues past copies of your files.

Simply plug in the Rebit to your USB port, click "OK" and all your files are downloaded onto the machine. No configuration and no extra cables, since it powers itself via USB. 60G is $169, 80G $189 and 120G $219. – Ad Dugdale

Product Page [Rebit via BoingBoing]

The last bit of action we saw at the Kodak stand was their new home / small office printer line, expected here in Australia in Q4. It is already on the market overseas, so this wasn't a preview model — so when the demo went a bit messy, it was hard to discount it as a pre-production flaw.

The picture is of their ink system, which comes in two parts, black and colour. These are going to be priced about 50% less than most major brand inks. The print results looked very good on 6x4 photo paper, and the printer has a smart system to make it obvious when you have the photo paper in, and when you are using normal paper.

But it is also meant to detect which you are using, and adjust to print accordingly. Yet when we got a photo out on an A4 sheet, it came out very damp, with horrible banding across the print. Eeeek! Not exactly what they hoped to show me. They've got six months to show me again before it hits the market, I guess. -Seamus Byrne

Some nice camera bag / purses for the ladies were at the show, adding a little style to what is usually nothing more than fat, dumpy and nylon.

These go beyond the functional cool from Crumpler, into some genuine fashion edge so your little camera bag looks more like a cool purse / clutch / whatever else girls call their small party night handbags.

Two more designs after the jump.

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We mentioned the Digiframe frames earlier, which were hot. These are the best of the big name frames, and have some nice extra features on board.

Their frames are 16:9 widescreen format, which is a bit strange when photos aren't really taken in wide format. But the screens do look good, and the frames are pretty good looking... though the annoying drill hole in the wooden frame is an eyesore (but they need it for infra-red control). Frames are interchangeable, and there is a whiteboard option for making notes or letting the kids go nuts (better to do that BEFORE you put it on the frame, or your LCD will soon be covered in special kid messages too).

Their 10-inch frame also as Wi-Fi (b/g) built-in. Memory is limited, just 128MB. But the prices are cheap — 7-inch $199, 8-inch $299, 10-inch $399. Expected to arrive in August.

We had a sit down with the Lexar folks at PMA to catch up on their latest offerings, and picked up a few interesting tidbits you may not have known:

• Their new 300x gear is FAST. 45MB/s fast. And Lexar was keen to point out they don't play with "up to" rubbish either. They rate their cards based on minimum sustained speed ratings.
• Their pro cards come with Image Rescue 3, so you can recover lost/deleted images (and audio and video files) from memory cards of any brand using any reader. Nice. They also come bundled with Corel Paintshop Pro 10.
• Their thumb drives are all chromed and sexy. And the Mercury has an e-Ink usage meter that shows how much capacity is left.

A few more bits on their UDMA compatible readers after the jump.

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Of all the digital frames I saw in my rounds of the small vendors, the folks at Digiframe had the ones I'd most care to have sitting on my desk.

Their 'Sovereign Series' and 'Designer Series' frames were the real winners. 10.4-inch LCDs at 640x480, what stood out is that they actually look like nice frames! So many of these digital frames are wrapped in fugly, cheap, nasty borders. The Designer line has interchangeable borders, so you can pick the frame to suit the decor, and it also has some extra features like a built-in calendar, clock and alarm, as well as 256MB built-in memory. Both ranges take MMC, SD, MS, XD, and MD cards.

They play DivX too! So you can set one up as a sneaky video screen on your desk and claim it's just a fancy frame for looking at some family photos.

By end of the month, the Sovereign Series will be $399, and the Designer Series $449.

More pics after the jump.

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The new Everio GZ-HD7 is just hitting stores here in Oz this week, and I got a chance to have a good look at it on the JVC stand. Best of all, they had some footage shot on the GZ-HD7 on a Full HD TV on their stand, and this stuff looked fucking unbelievable. Seriously, I don't care what camera you are comparing that footage to, this camera is shoots your family like you're on a soundstage... add some good lights and this knocks everything else in its class out of the park. I even gave the JVC rep a good, cold stare and asked if this REALLY was footage shot on the HD7. He didn't flinch.

And this is an STFU to Sony, who told us at a launch earlier in the year that they went the AVCHD path partly because HDV wasn't compatible with hard drive recording. It didn't make sense at the time, and makes zero sense now others have done it. Because not only does the HD7 shoot full 1920 x 1080 (in an adjusted MPEG-2 mode), it can also shoot an HDV compatible stream at 1440 x 1080.

More info, and pictures, after the jump.

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The Casio EX-V7 is the world's slimmest 7x optical zoom camera. Plus, it's the first slimline camera to include CCD-shift anti-shake technology. We were excited when it was announced back at CES, even if Casio isn't known as the best imaging company in the world (exactly who is...I'll leave for the fanboys commenters to hash out).

DPreview got their hands on a unit and put it through their extensive testing procedure. The verdict?

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If you were out pretending you have a life over the weekend—and you're only fooling yourself—then here is a quick recap of some of the stories you missed.

An outhouse doing over 100km/h, curry flames in its wake.
A spare jet engine, and idle hands, can be a dangerous thing.

Acer's new notebooks with Dolby certification.
Surround in a notebook? What? If nothing else, we're talking much better sound than most.

Night vision webcam: naturalists and pervs rejoice.
Not sure how the naturalists will get this working in remote outdoor locations, but the pervs have it easy.

Awesome monolithic tower of solar worship power.
I thought wind farms looked cool! I want one of these in my town!

Fashion meets nanotech, clothes fight smog and the flu.
It fights stains too, but that's not nearly as high-tech as smog and virus killing.

Intel Moorestown chipset could give UMPCs 24-hour battery life.
Battery life soon ready to last longer than you do.

YouTube ready to pay select vid producers.
If you have some video making talent, time to get your game on.

Do you live life in the fast lane? Do you go to bed fast, wake up fast, eat cereal fast, drive to work fast, buy a new Calvin pissing on Ford sticker fast, come home fast, let out the dog fast, eat dinner (fast food) fast and do it all over the next day as rapidly as possible?

The Car Wheel Alarm Clock is made for speed demons such as yourself. Instead of a buzzer waking you up in the morning, the tire spins, burnout in your bedroom style. A female voice says "the exorcism wool [ning]!" as you quickly wonder if there was a problem with Google translate.

Despite our sarcasm, this clock is bound to be a great gift for someone...but they probably won't be over the age of 12. Though who am I to judge? Hit the jump for a bonus picture.

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We usually don't post coding contests, but this one was too tasty to resist. Programmers, start your engine...err...USB lava lamps. DCEmu is throwing a coding contest for the Nintendo Wii and Gamecube platforms. As to exactly what you design, that much is fairly open-ended.

Entries can be Emulators, Homebrew Games, Demos or Applications that work directly on the Gamecube/Nintendo Wii.

Winners receive up to $300 in gift certificates to be used at the Gp2x (Linux embedded handheld console) store, as well as props from their geeky gaming brethren. Given a disappointing lineup of Wii titles (after the novelty of Wii Sports wears off), I really hope we see some participation and ingenuity in the contest.

Homebrewers getting organized...what is the world coming to? Next thing you know, they'll want us to pay for their work. – Mark Wilson

Coding Contest [wiinews]

Aperio Technologies has made "the world's first terapixel image". However, it actually consists of one picture copied 225 times—that of cancerous breast tissue. As a digital pathology imaging company, one could interpret the image as Aperio flexing their digital muscle while raising awareness for an (obviously) important issue.

The picture is a 144GB .tif (using JPEG compression). And you can zoom online using the link below. Without one big image to play with, the scale of one trillion pixels is still tough to grasp. Let's just call it a lot of pixel and call it a day. – Mark Wilson

Photo Page [via therawfeed]

The $64 Hidden Camera Spy Clock is not just another yuppie wooden radio from Hammacher Schlemmer Holiday 1995, but (as you may have deduced from the title) functions as a hidden spy camera as well.

Full color, 380-line, 510×492 video streams over the 2.4ghz spectrum for neighborhood viewing—so keep that in mind before you get all perverted with it and some poor mother sees your hairy buttocks on her baby monitor...or worse yet...her husband's.

Microcameras freak me out. Which is exactly why I can't change at your house anymore, dad. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via technabob]

At first glance, we thought the Portable GameCube Advance was the product of console miniaturizer Benjamin Heckendorn, who has shrunk some of our favorites into nearly portable packages.

But the Portable GameCube Advance is really the work of a random email tipster...surely not just a Photoshop rendition...but an entirely ready-to-go product complete with external OLED display and MP3 playback that will be in stores any day now.

Hit the jump for a picture of the music functions in action.

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There is a reason that you have such fond memories of playing with blocks as a youth: positive memory bias. Or, as bastardized/made up for our purposes here, what you completely forgot was all the times you cried while playing with blocks. And that Stonehenge is only impressive due to the weight of its components and your 1st grade teacher was a sarcastic witch.

Enter the $35 Automoblox, with which children can mix and match sets to build cars. Comprised of a mixture of wooden (traditional) and plastic (futuristic!) pieces, kids can finally build something that will prepare them for their bleak future in technology blogging. Especially for articles about Automoblox.

Looking over the designs, the only problem seems to be that all the kits look the same...but it's still better than yet another miniature Stonehenge. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via randomgoodstuff]

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We just told you about the $830 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra last week, otherwise known as the "world's fastest graphics card". But just how much power can $830 buy today?

Check out this technical demo by NVIDIA. The real time rendering is of actor Doug Jones, who you probably won't recognize as Pan from Pan's Labyrinth. Sure, he isn't talking or anything, but it's amazing nonetheless.

Now just to fill the background with fully rendered landscapes, populated with thousands of equally beautiful characters. Get on it, NVIDIA! This cybersex isn't going to have itself. – Mark Wilson

Where Realtime, PC Video Graphics Are Heading [dvorak uncensored]

The Aduki Ni (is Ni plural?) is a lamp shaped like a bean. Other than its similarity to certain components of chili, why are we so excited?

1. The bean is metallic. (metallic is cool.)
2. The bean is weatherproof. (perfect for cocktail parties we never throw but always intend to)
3. The bean changes colors. (yes, it's 2000 freakin' 7 and we still like things to change colors)

Glowing for 6-8 hours at a time, the rechargeable Aduki Ni is the perfect home accessory for the raver searching for the simpler life. $60

Hit the jump for a video.

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Since being bitten by radioactive spiders, the Gizmodo staff is in no way fearful of arachnids. At all. Dropping one of these remote control tarantulas into a Gizmodo party would specifically not cause anyone to wet their pants (which may or may not be housing expensive test electronics, so be careful anyway).

For $25 we recommend using Uncle Milton to pull pranks on others—like those who are pregnant and/or have heart conditions and propensity for seizures. It also helps if they are under 4 1/2 feet tall.

Hit the jump for a video we found that may or may not be of this product.

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The Laser Dance Matrix is the brainchild of Applied Sciences. It's a DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) pad matrix for getting down up, up, right, back style. But instead of relying on pressure sensitivity as most pads do, the Laser Dance Matrix senses foot position based upon breaking the proper laser beams (we're assuming in the correct places, though you might be able to cheat). Dancing occurs right on the floor.

The prototype is USB compatible, though it requires a separate power source for all those badass, entirely invisible laser beams. We wish that Xbox 360 wasn't so hard on third party manufacturers, otherwise we'd be happy to trade the Matrix for their one supported break-your-neck-plastic style pad.

Hit the link to vote on whether or not Applied Sciences should sell the unit. Click "yes" and that we want the preassembled units. Because I'm lazier than I am cheap. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via Kotaku]