Neat, huh?

Now, onto the actual review.

Power
Yes, I know – it’s a USB gadget, therefore it is USB powered. But there is more to this than that. Look at the picture.

The socket on the base is designed for a rather common power connector. So, in theory, you can use it with any 5V universal adaptor as long as it has the right connector. This thing makes for a really cool bedside lamp. (Mind you, you risk frying the plasma ball if you use any power source that isn’t the default (USB) one.).

Build quality
Not much to say on this one. The base is plastic, not top class, but certainly doesn’t feel cheap. Other than getting some dust on it, the base doesn’t get scratched too easily. The rubber sealant (between the base and the sphere looks sort of shabby, but most people probably won’t ever see it anyway. Overall, everything is okay.

Ease of use
Nothing to say here really. Plug it into your USB port, push the power switch to “ON”, and you’re done. Then play around by putting things like your fingers on the sphere, and marvel at it. See? - easy.

Brightness
At daytime, all you will be able to see will be thin blue lines with red tips.

More than enough for playing around, but the true beauty of this little gadget can only be seen in the dark. Feast your eyes on these pictures (additional gear was used in some of them).

And, finally, a video of how it actually looks in action.

The USB Plasma Ball is really a great toy, and everyone seems to love it (especially my kid sister ). So for 19€, it’s worth it

One of those is General Electric Ecomagination Smart Grid Augmented Reality (hmm…too much capital letters). Let me tell you what it’s about. You go to their website and print out a pdf file. The result is a sheet of paper with a black silhouette. What you do then is launch their flash applet and give it access to your webcam, while holding the silhouette you’ve printed out in front of the webcam.

There are two applets for you to try out, Wind Turbine and Solar Energy. The silhouette works for both of them. Tip: the Wind Turbine reacts to wind noises (blow some air into a microphone).

Here’s a video of the applets in action for those who do not posses a webcam, or are too impatient, or simply too lazy to try. Those who do not fit in any of these categories, simply ignore the video and click on the link below it to try this out yourselves – you won’t be disappointed.

Click here to try it out yourself.
Enjoy!

I’ve ran out of review gadgets, company’s policies are against me promoting other gadget shops, and I’m not much of a gamer (that WoW stuff wasn’t written by me). What’s there left to do? (Depression, alcoholism and drugs are NOT good options). The boss from above (no, not that guy…the guy who lives in Sweden and is one of the people running Bytelove) said I could write about this…(I live south of Sweden

Jean-Michel André Jarre (born 24 August 1948, Lyon) is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music, and to this day has sold an estimate of 80 million albums and singles.

He has been performing and releasing albums starting with the album “Deserted Palace” (1972). His last album is titled “Oxygene: New Master Recording” (2007), and currently he is on a tour across Europe, even coming to my country (the advertisements in our country state in a booming voice “Like 30 years ago…” :))

Jarre has received quite a few awards in his career (look him up on Wikipedia if you want to know more), most notable of which (in my opinion) are the four(!) entries into the Guinness Book of world Records for the biggest concert ever – in 1979, 1987, 1990 and the latest one on 1997 - new Guinness Book of Records entry for the biggest concert ever with 3.5 million watching at Moscow’s 850th anniversary – and I believe that he still holds that record (some people claim that it was a concert by David Bowie – 3.5 million people in 1994, but not all of those 3.5 millions were there actually for the concert, so Bowie’s concert does not count as the biggest ever). For those who have trouble imagining what an amount of bodies 3.5 million is, my country (Lithuania) has about that many people (well, give or take a hundred thousands). Look it up on the map.

For more info, look him up on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Michel_Jarre

Or his website:
http://www.jeanmicheljarre.com/
(I’ll remind you that he is currently touring Europe. Maybe you are interested in attending a concert :))

(The background music on his websites from the “Oxygene” album)

It’s here! Wrath of the Lich King! So, of course, you want to explore the new world! Well, the new zones were were created for levels 68+…so, if you haven’t reached that, then you better get movin’!  My friends have been hearing me talk about this game and how excited I was for the expansion! They are just not getting into the game and asked what a fast way would be to level up so we could all play. The answer was easy…Quest! So, for my friends, and all other n00bs out there, here is what I do to level up!

First things first! Download some add-ons! Get a coordinate application, as well as a quest helper add on. These two add-ons will help you get to where you need to be…fast! some quest helper add-ons will actually point you in the right direction and will change as you get closer or farther from a quest. Very helpful!

No matter if you are Horde or Alliance, quests are everywhere. Take all the quests you can…even the boring ones! In questing, there really is no need to group. You gain all kill xp, plus you get all the l00t to sell for money! The only time I would suggest grouping, would be if there was an elite mob you can’t beat on your PWN, and of course, when its time to get your Epic set!

As you level, the quests will guide you to knew areas, new mobs, new towns. Explore it all! You get xp for exploring! No matter how small, any xp is better than no xp at all! I could go into every single area and tell you their levels…but why? Depending on your play style and what class you choose to play, will depend on the mobs you will be able to fight. One more thing to remember, its so minor, but not a lot of people do this…always try to log or go AFK at an Inn or in a major city. Your xp will be higher when you hunt/quest. So get to exploring and get to questing! PWN!

Blizzard Entertainment keeps coming up with great interesting ways to keep its paying customers happy and entertained in the World of Warcraft. The new additions to the game will keep you so entertained, not even the spirit healer can save you! With its second expansion being released in just 3 days, content patches have been released giving us little bits and pieces of what is to come in Wrath of the Lich King.

One of the newly added features are the Achievements. I can say that I have become an Achievement whore, and have spent countless hours trying to get those achievements done! Currently, I am on the exploration achievements and have been working on Kalimdor! I am five zones away from total completion of exploring Kalimdor. No word yet on what the reward points from completeing achievements will be, but with all the time that needs to be spent on some of them, the rewards better be worth it! Exploration I think, besides raiding and dungeons, will be the most popular. It gives the other side a chance to head into enemy territory and finding ways to get through the areas with little or no detection and they wont get PWND!.

Besides exploring, there are a number of other ways to gain achievements: Questing, PvP, Dungeons and Raids, Professions, Reputation, World Events, and Feats of Strength. Feats of Strength are interesting in that you really do not know what they are until you actually get one.

Blizzard announced that only some achievements would be considered to be retroactive. After the release, I had several achievements completed, however, the PvP ones, that I had completed on various occasions in the months prior to the release were not included.

These achievements will likely keep players that are in small guilds or not in guilds at all busy by exploring and by taking up a profession if they don’t already have one. Achievements will give players something else to do! Not all players are all about raiding and PvP…some players actually love the content! This added feature will bring fun and excitement back for many players and Blizzard will continue to roll out to goodies! See you in-game!

Rheality
Silver Hand
For the Horde!

As much as I liked reviewing Bytelove gadgets, I am afraid I’m out of them for the time being, though someone (look up the word “subtle” - not him) hints about some more being sent.

However, I did get the permission to review various junk lying around in my house. So, for today, a cheap, stylish (maybe) and practical (sort of) gadget – a USB powered LED light show fan.

The idea of this fan is pretty simple – you plug it into your USB cord, adjust/twist it’s neck, and press the red button (really original). Of course, USB sockets were never meant to power anything powerful, and coupled with the small size of the fan it becomes clear that it won’t succeed in creating any hurricanes. Yet, it is strong enough to provide a nice cool breeze, to the point where eyes start becoming dry due to constant wind (and my eyes are perfectly healthy in this regard, and do NOT get dry due to a little wind).

And, lastly, the most visually appealing feature – the light shows. On one of it’s wings the fan has 5 color LEDs. When the fan spins, these LEDs change their flashing patterns, making magnificent color shows. Recommended for nighttime. The light show will be fairly disturbing when you try to work on anything, but you will soon get used to it (the mechanism of the light shows is very low-tech, and disabling it would create the risk of irreparably damaging it).

Found on Amazon for 4$.

Continuing with the duckies’ theme, I introduce the Duckie Eraser, the little brother to the Pirate Duckie and the Ninja Duckie. It’s flame red color and the little black devil horns leave no doubts about it’s lineage (well, that and the fact that the same brand name is printed on their packaging).

Let’s take a closer luck, shall we?

(For some reason in half of the pictures the Duckie Eraser turned out orange-yellow)

Unlike bath toys, erasers come in all shapes, forms and colors. So while The Evil Duo of bath Duckies tend to stand out, the Eraser Duckie will most likely only draw amused looks. Sure, it does look nice and original, and it does get called “cute” (exclusively by females), but there are simply too many various erasers on the market.

However, I haven’t seen any eraser that has been called “cute” before :).

Of course, being the hardworking (err…yeah) reviewer that I am (well, no, not really) I just had to test it’s erasing capabilities. The edges of the eraser are a bit hard, but you can wear them out in a few swipes with some pressure applied (that is, if you actually plan to use it for erasing). Other than that, it’s a fairly good eraser – soft enough not to damage the paper and hard enough not to fall apart (please understand that my ‘expertise’ of erasers limits me to rating this either “good” or “bad”). After erasing you are left with dark red dust – very little of it, actually, and it’s really fine dust – as far as I know, these traits are usually desired by artists in an eraser (one of the more useful things I learnt during art classes). Actually, I was surprised myself at how well this eraser performs.

The Devil Duckie Eraser costs €2.50.
(I know for a fact that an artist’s eraser of this quality costs slightly more)

The old as the Internet debate of Pirates vs. Ninjas is being brought to your bathtub!(Despite today being a strange and peculiar day for me, this still sounds utterly ridiculous :D) Now you have a way to force-feed geek culture to your kids/younger siblings whenever they are taking a bath.

To begin with, I’d like to say that taking pictures for this review was unbelievably difficult (in a hot bathroom full of steam the lens of the camera gets foggy. Go figure…). The picture that you see at the top was taken a day after my initial attempt. The picture below, however, was my best attempt of getting a picture of the duckies IN the bath during the initial shoot:

I’d say this is pretty good – you can actually see the duckies (I am really not much of a photographer).

The duckies are, well, stylish/original. A truly improved version, unless you’re a purist (can one be a rubber duckie purist?). The Pirate/Ninja attributes draw attention and various proclamations of their cuteness to them (who knew people could get that crazy over a toy).

They do, of course, serve their primary purpose (a toy), and do it quite well. To test the build quality of the duckies, I entrusted them to the Ultimate Tool of Destruction, i.e. I gave them to my little sister to play with in the bath. The rubber that the duckies are made from seems fairly soft, but prolonged manhandling and immersion in ridiculously hot water for more than a hour didn’t seem to have any effects on the duckies. Therefore I am certain that these duckies can handle whatever challenges life (and you) will dish out.

Like any decent rubber duckies, these are hard (read: nearly impossible) to sink. Here is a video I tried to shoot of the duckies in a massage bathtub (tried, until the lens got covered in so much steam that everything turned white):

(The currents in that bathtub are strong…nearly painful if you are too close to the apertures. So yeah, the duckies handled that pretty well.)

As strange as it sounds, these duckies would make a nice present. People who have nothing/very little to do with geek culture/gadgets/etc. have proclaimed these duckies “cute”. Then again, all of these people happened to be females, so think before you do buy these as a present.

The duckies are available for 10€ each.
Pirate Devil Duckie
Ninja Devil Duckie