You don’t generally see improvements in camping lanterns. For the most part they’ve remained the same for years, but this one has a pretty clever design that’s sure to make camping more enjoyable. How about a light powerful enough to be seen from a mile away? The lights are mounted on trays so you can swivel them where you need to see.

There’s also a jack and speakers so you can plug in your mp3 player and have some fireside tunes. If that’s not enough to get you in the great outdoors, there’s also a digital clock and an AM/FM radio with local weatherbands. Having these features all in one unit will lighten your load a bit. Uses 6 C batteries. AC and DC adaptors included.

Although it’s likely to lead to some sort of trouble, this snowball making and throwing toy could make a normal kid rival that of Buddy the Elf. We’ve seen plenty of salad tong-looking devices that will make snowballs but not many of them will help you make them and launch them. The extended arm gives more reach to increase your throwing speed and distance, but not necessarily your accuracy.

The Snow Chuck has a scoop on the end that helps you scoop up some snow, pack it into a ball and then throw it, all without getting your hands in it. The plastic snow thrower retails for just under $10. Imagine the threat a person could be with one in each hand.

Alot of people practice their golf swing in their yard and end up wacking their lawn due to a horrible swing. Whether you are Arnold Palmer or just some backyard hopeful, why not actually trim your lawn while practicing that swing. You know, on purpose and neatly.

The Big Daddy Driver looks like a large golf club, but it’s really a working weed wacker. It will fit inside your golf bag, so surprise your friends when your ball lands in the rough, by clearing the area and taking a swing. Runs on 6AA batteries.(Not sure how much weedwacking can be done with 6 AA’s, but I guess you’ll find out)

The Green Machine 2 looks like a Big Wheel on steroids. It sure doesn’t resemble that old Big Wheel that I rode around in as a kid. It’s got a sleek design and can be controlled with dual joysticks. It even has rear wheel steering and a 20″ front tire, along with a front wheel hand brake.

Of course just like it’s ancestors, this one is completely dependant on kid pedal power. I wish mine had been this cool. Mine certainly didn’t have a High tension steel frame, or a real rubber front tire. I guess as long as you can still peel out on these things it’s all good.

With the Cyber-Rain XCI, you can water your lawn the “Green” way. It will save you money and conserve water at the same time, by giving you control of your sprinkler system across eight zones. Through a wireless connection with your PC, it will make adjustments to it’s watering schedule, using weather data.

If it looks like it is going to rain, it will put a hold on it’s watering duties. It will even adapt it’s schedule as seasons change. Another bit of good news is that it is very affordable. You can add it to an existing irrigation system for only $295. At that price the system will pay for itself in no time. This is the kind of environment conscious technology we like to see. The Earth will thank you.

Lawnmowers are one of those manly tools that have not really undergone much change over the years. The reason for this is simple. Depending on how you dress it up, you can either look really cool mowing the lawn with your concept mower, or you can look like a total tool. I think they got it right here.

You have to keep it looking like a powerful object after all. The F1 is obviously inspired by the F1 racer. It’s a concept design from Kadeg Boucher. And it’s not just a shell put over the engine. They went all out. It features a full race suspension, rear view mirrors, vintage John Player Special-style livery and a steering wheel with an LCD gauge display. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see geeks racing these things in the near future.

Let’s face the facts – you’re lost deep in the woods after going out on a hike to get photos of the elusive Bigfoot. You can’t find your way out and that big bear staring at you and salivating isn’t helping matters. As you rapidly climb a tree, you remember you can summon help with SPOT, the self-described world’s first satellite messenger. This aid to the lost hiker is priced at around $170 plus service fees.

The SPOT takes the form of a portable device which is designed to be waterproof as well as to withstand the outdoors in general. It’s reportedly relatively easy to use by pressing one of several buttons to, for example, transmit a user’s exact location and message to a 9-1-1 emergency call center in times of need. You can also send standard messages to family or others to request help or just let others track you via a Web service which uses GPS coordinates and Google Maps technology.

Sportsmen and adventurers love tech. Especially fishermen, when they haven’t had a nibble or bite all day. It can mean the difference between being bored to tears and catching that fish of legendary size. The Guide Pro series of watches from Origo can help. They use temperature and pressure sensors to read and analyze atmospheric data, so that you know when it’s the best time to fish or hunt. That way you are more productive and can spend more time doing other things.

Of course, it can also forecast weather using these functions. That’s not all it can do. The watch has an altimeter too, which has an accuracy of about 12 inches. It can graph your ascent or descent over 8 hours. But wait, there’s more. How about a compass? Yes, it has a compass, as well as other typical watch functions. No pricing available yet.

Looking like a great big over-stuffed snowmobile suit, the Lippi Selk’bag is a “sleep wear system” solution to the restrictions of conventional sleeping bags. Named from the Chilean nomads, the Selk’nam, who had a great resilience for the cold the Selk’bag has a hood, arms and legs giving you the ability to move around freely while staying warm inside your bag. On those cold mornings of camping simply standing up without getting out of your bag is hard enough not to mention trying to shuffle or hop around.

The Selk’bag is made with a Nylon shell and a Polyester hollow fiber bonded filling giving it an “extreme temp” rating of -8.4 degrees celcius. It also appears to have zippers to close up at the end of the arms and vent your legs and sides if you get too hot. But, unlike our full-body underwear we’re not seeing an opening to let us pee without taking it all off, which is the primary reason we’re usually getting up when it’s still cold outside in the first place.

This potentially devious lawn sprinkler is configured with an inline valve that has a motion sensitive trigger which goes off and sends a quick stream of water without warning whenever it sees movement in its 105 degree field of view. It comes with a stake to mount it in the ground and can connect to a standard garden hose, running off a single 9-volt battery which gives it from four to six months of water-armed sentry activity.

The supposed purpose of the motion activated sprinkler is to chase off pesky rodents and birds from the area scaring them with a sudden spray of water. It would also work well to keep unwanted wandering pets out of your yard, but my first thought with this was the fun you could have with neighborhood kids passing by.

This is for the gadget lover that enjoys food a little too much. It resembles a cloth lunchbox, but don’t let that fool you. This foldable new “easy bake oven” is perfect for the outdoorsman who absolutely must bake a small cake while enjoying nature.

Your culinary camping experience will be made possible by researchers with the Taiwan Textile Institute, who developed a cloth that can withstand high temperatures. They turned their discovery into this foldable oven, great for military use as well as other outdoor catering activities. They claim it can reach 300 degree temperatures.

While it may be more impractical than useful there is something very appealing about being able to own your own moon and have the power to switch it on or off whenever you feel like it. Russian designers have come up with a concept they call a “Personal Moon”, a crescent-shaped light box that provides a brilliant while glow for your immediate vicinity. The artificial moon is bright enough to stand out from quite a distance away and it seems to radiate a lot of lumens (specifics weren’t available on the designers’ official website and neither was a price.)

The uses for such a cool toy are only limited by your imagination and the amount of storage space you have. Something like this hanging from a tree could be fantastic for lighting up your yard at night or for placing on top of your house to make life easier for those delivery drivers. Now what about making it change colors?

Designer Alex Suvajac apparently thinks so. Obviously frogs inspire him. The result is a sleek concept track bike that looks a lot like an aerodynamic racing amphibian on two wheels. It is as much a work of art as it is a bike, blending space age and technological looks with nature.

I’m not sure about leaning that far forward to hold onto the handlebars. Then again, this beauty is obviously built for speed and since “being one with nature” is obviously the theme, why not lean into it and merge with the frame. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean swallowing a bug or two along the way. As cool as this bike is, it remains just a concept for the moment. It is however, proof that nature has a lot to offer when combined with technology. Especially aesthetically.

This past June we wrote about Casio’s tough G’zOne Type-S mobile phone when it was released and we recently got a chance to get our hands on one to see just how tough this thing really was and what “water resistant” really meant. What we found is that the G’zOne Type-S lives up to its hype on standing against the elements and also had some nice surprises we were not expecting.

While we’re pretty sure we’ve seen bicycle speakers before, including ones for the iPod, cy-fi is a new product designed to dock your iPod and the first we’ve seen to provide wireless speakers mounted on your bike to “ride louder” according to the company.

The idea comes from bike riders who wear headphones to listen to music and are unable to adequately hear traffic around them. The cy-fi system lets them bring their music along in a compact package without the ambient sound restrictions by most headphones.