Who hasn’t looked at their iPod and wished they could play games with it. Well, now you can. Not Super Mario or Metroid kind of games, mind you, but your iPod just got a little more fun. The iNo Interactive Game System for iPod turns the device into a game of music trivia that plays off your own music library.

Simply listen to the music, buzz your remote control when you think you know the answer and guess the name of the artist, the song or the album. Rack up the points and win. But wait…there may be one slight hitch here, before you rush out and spend $79.99 of your hard earned money. Doesn’t the iPod owner know his/her songs by heart? I would think they would be the winner every time. Oh well, for $80 you will just have to be content to sit out the game and let your friends play, wondering why the experience cost you $80.

Geeks have Christmas trees too not just because we enjoy the holidays but it also helps us get more presents to be placed underneath the holiday tree. You may want to share some of your passions with guests by having unusual Christmas ornaments adorned on your tree. Maybe you have a Star Trek ornament, or maybe there is an Elvis Presley ornament that rocks when you switch it on. In any case there is more ways to display your hobbies and likes than ever before during this holiday season.

One of the cooler things that the Brick has spotted this year is a LED ornament called Season’s Readings. The idea is pretty simple, it’s a Christmas ornament that has a LED band around its mid-section where words scroll along. You can select 8 different holiday themed messages such as “Merry Christmas”, “Happy New Year”, “Feliz Navidad”, “Joy to the World”, “Peace on Earth”, “Seasons Greeting”, “Home For Xmas” and the non-denomic “Happy Holidays”. All it requires are 4 AA batteries and $14.95 of your hard earned cash.

The marketing research firm NPD has turned in their analysis of what the top video game titles and consoles were last month and the news is very good for the industry as a whole. Leading the top in sales of new software was Activision’s “Call of Duty 4″ for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which sold an impressive 1.57 million copies. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Galaxy” came in second place and if you combine the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sales for “Assassin’s Creed” it would actually take the silver medal. Not coincidentally Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” has emerged as the best-selling new IP for games in recent years.

Nintendo’s handheld DS gaming device sold an amazing 1.53 million units in November which was enough to give it the top of the chart for hardware sales. In second place was Nintendo’s Wii gaming console with 981,000 Wiis sold followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in third spot with 770,000 units finding homes. Sony moved 577,000 PlayStation Portable to give it fourth place and the price drop in the PS3 convinced 466,000 consumers to go out and buy one of the consoles last month.

Earlier this year Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of the world’s most popular MMO game “World of Warcraft”, sent their fans into overdrive by announcing that a new game project would be revealed at a Korean “Starcraft” gaming convention. This lead to much speculation that the game would be a new MMO, possibly even a “Starcraft” themed massive multiplayer game. Job postings by Blizzard looking for programmers for a next gen MMO only helped to fuel the fire but when the day arrived the mystery game in question turned out to simply be “Starcraft II”.

Now that several months have slipped by and the hype has dissipated it appears that a Blizzard representative has confirmed that there is a secret MMO game in development at the company. In a discussion thread on the Blizzard forums about the merger between Activision and Vivendi (which owns Blizzard) a Blizzard rep let loose the first official comment about the rumored MMO by saying “It is an unannounced next-gen MMO and that doesn’t mean an expansion for World of Warcraft either.”

Firmware upgrades for the Sony PSP usually don’t have changes that are incredibly drastic but for some reason I still get pretty excited any time they come out. It’s almost like getting a slightly new gadget each time, even though I still have the older, fat PSP. Anytime I hear of any upgrade on the way I’ll check for it using the utility on the PSP daily, since most of the time I can get it there before it’s officially released.

Version 3.80 however does promise to bring something pretty cool – streaming internet radio. The update will allow the PSP to pick up streams of online radio broadcasts in the same format that it supports such as Shoutcast MP3 streams. The upgrade will also expand its feed-reading capabilities the ability to pick up “photocasts” from RSS feeds. It will also allow users to import OPML feed lists from other feed readers to import the same feeds on the handheld console.

Samsung recently unveiled a new monochrome laser printer for the SOHO market. The new Samsung ML-2851ND is priced at around $330.

The Samsung ML-2851ND has the ability to print 30 monochrome pages per minute. Estimated first page out speed, according to Samsung, is 8.5 seconds. Memory on this printer can be expanded to 160MB for larger printing jobs. DPI output is noted to be 1200 x 1200.

What’s more annoying than an alarm clock? How about an alarm clock with a robot head on it? That’s right – for around $80 you can introduce Mr. Clock Radio into your life.

This creepy looking clock radio has a robotic head set atop it like some kind of statue. You can wake up to some 30 different ways, ranging from a gentle voice to a screaming maniac beside your bed. You can also get it to tell you your fortune, wink as you undress and more! It will apparently even play music from your iPod.

Attention all you Halo 3 lovers – you can now carry your game pride around on your shoulder as you haul around your laptop day to day. Master Chief says to outfit yourself with this new Halo 3 Messenger Bag, priced at around $40.

The Halo 3 Messenger Bag, when not busy hold your plasma grenades, has enough room to store a 15-inch laptop. There are six zippered compartments and velcroed interior compartments – plenty of space to store extra ammo or your iPod.

NEC introduced recently some very secure laptops designed to meet the security needs of small and medium sized businesses. The Versa M370, P570 and S970 should all be available now.

NEC’s new laptops go triple play for security protection – a hardware based security chip, encrypting disk drive and client management software. Specific security technologies include a Seagate 2.5-inch, 5400-rpm hard drive with native government-grade AES encryption and software which focuses on multi-factor authentication, data protection and ID/password management.

ZVUE, a maker of low cost portable media and digital audio players, today unveiled a thumb-drive style player which uses flash memory. The new ZVUE ZP3 is available in a 512 MB configuration.

The ZVUE ZP3 is capable of holding upwards of 125 songs in MP3 format. It comes preloaded with 30 top music hits of the year and is also capable of playing WMA music, including DRM subscription music. It is loaded through Windows Media Player and connects to a computer via USB.

No doubt Walmart has seen its share of last minute guy-shoppers desperately looking for a gift for their significant others, moms, etc. I know because I’ve been there on Christmas eve, and I was not alone. In effort to make your search a little less stressful and hopefully thwart some last-minute visits to the store Wal-Mart has a website that can help narrow your gift search for “her”.

The HelpAGuyBuy site takes you through steps to choose a recipient and then a series of 10 short questions to help narrow down some great gift ideas tailored specifically to the likes of the person you have in mind. Thanks to this site my wife will get a decent gift that will arrive before Christmas this time, and she just might even like it.

Wireless provider Verizon and designer Paul Frank are teaming to provide wireless users stylish new cases for their mobile devices. These new Paul Frank designed cases and pouches are priced at around $25 and $15 respectively.

Three products are specific to this Paul Frank inspired line up. One is a PDA case which fits almost any Verizon PDA. It has a belt clip, removable wrist strip and comes screen- printed in the Skurvy pattern. The other case is for mobile phones. Verizon says this case, printed in the Julius pattern, is versatile and fits most phones. It includes a carabineer clip and removable wrist strap.

Buffalo has announced the release of a new flash memory stick that can hold up to an impressive 32GB of data. Your first thought might be to wonder just how long it takes to transfer 32GB of data to the drive through USB. Although it still might not be real quick Buffalo is assuring us that their TurboUSB technology will get the data onboard 20% faster than a standard USB drive.

Since the value of the data stored on a drive usually increases with the amount of data the company has added a little clip to give a little help against losing it and also has a manual “lock” switch to protect the data from being overwritten. The drive will work with just about any OS but Windows users can take advantage of software that will automate backups and provide a password-secured portion of the drive for storing private info.

Sang Hoon Lee has designed a new portable hard disk drive that truly looks good enough to eat. Mmmmm Chocolate. The chocolate bar hard drive is non-edible and comprised of modular flash drives, and the central hub features a built in touchscreen. The touchscreen can be used to view and organize all of your various files.

The idea here is that files could be organized any way you want and you can take the sections with you in your pocket, to use on another computer. That’s nothing we can’t do already, but it’s the design that’s cool. It’s a fun and unique concept. Whether it is worth using in the real world remains to be seen, but it sure makes me hungry.

The makers of the Safe Type Ergonomic Keyboard are rolling out what they call a Vertical Mouse designed to relieve some of the strain you place on your hand, arm and neck muscles while scrolling and clicking. It may look like a joystick but the Vertical Mouse lets you do the same things that you can do using a traditional mouse. The scroll wheel is positioned at the top of the unit allowing your thumb to do your web browsing needs. Nestled on the side grip are the right and left buttons. Unfortunately for all you lefties out there and customers of Ned Flanders’ Leftorium it only comes in a right-hand model.

With a one-year warranty and compatibility with all USB computers (including Mac but sorry, no Windows 95 or NT support), the SafeType Mouse goes for $74.