iMONO took the simple USB hub a small step further by adding an individual sliding switch which turns on and off each of the 4 USB ports separately. It also has LED status indicators for each port and for the source cable so you can see what’s on and what’s not at a glance. At first this might not seem like too handy of a feature but you’ll be thanking me when the person on the other end of your Availabot can’t seem to maintain a connection or you get tired of plugging in your eye massager every day. It also could help save some electricity by conveniently turning off those peripherals when your not using them.

What could be better then launching objects via your USB port? It doesn’t always have to be foam darts aimed at your co-workers either. This rocket is made by Estes, the famous makers of model rockets for the last 50 years or so and it comes ready to fly. What you get is a view of the rocket’s liftoff and flight from the rocket’s point of view. That’s because it has an impact-resistant digital camera in the nose cone.

It can reach as high as 300 feet and the onboard camera can record a 12-second video at 640 x 480 pixel resolution. The other option is to take up to three pictures per flight.(It can store 15). Just connect it to your PC with the USB cable to download the flight video.

Finally, a USB drive for geeks who want to put some religion into their USB port and their lives. Normally it’s only after you’ve lost your important data that you would pray to Holy Mary, Mother Of God. Now you can do it at your leisure and hopefully she will listen and keep your data safe.

It will act as a good reminder to geeks to keep some religion in their lives. When she is hooked up, her red LED heart will beat, indicating how the Holy Mother watches over your computer’s innards. (If only she sang “Turn On Your Heartlight, huh?) Her halo is engraved with the prayer “Oh Maria, keep my data safe!”. So, it must work.

If, for some reason, your laptop doesn’t have an 802.11 wireless card installed or you find yourself still banging around with 802.11b, you might want to consider this gadget from Asus. This computer gear manufacturer is has announced the Asus WL-160N, a wireless USB-based solution with 802.11n functionality.

The Asus WL-160N connects to a PC through a USB 2.0 connection to offer its host the latest 802.11n draft 2.0 specifications as well as being backwards compatible with 802.11b/g speeds. It’s described as the world’s smallest 802.11n USB 2.0 card, making it fairly portable inside a laptop bag. It uses MIMO technology to get a throughput of over 100Mbps.

How do you spruce up your office space around the holidays? Is there a Christmas tree in the lobby of your building? Christmas lights hung down the corridors with care? Are there paper cut-outs of snowflakes adorning the windows? Screw that. You want to show off your holiday flair the 21st century way using your knowledge of all things tech, right? And if you want to be the envy of your department then the easiest way to do it is by getting your own USB Christmas tree.

This 6-inch tall clear plastic sign of merriment plugs into your computer’s USB port via its 40-inch cord. Upon feeding it power the tree will instantly light up and begin to cycle through an array of festive colors, instantly brightening up a corner of your desk with its cascading glow. Best of all it’s easy to put away when the holidays have gone; disassembly time is roughly 10 seconds or less.

Because of all the attention gained by the HDD Stage Rack which gives users a convenient “dock” for their hard drives, Logitec has answered with a version of their own. The eSata HDD Cradle from Logitec seems to work very similarly to the Stage Rack supporting 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard drives, but no IDE. This model also looks a little bit more stylish and additionally houses a 4-port USB hub through it’s existing USB connection, making it a little more useful.

GeekStuff4U has the Logitec hard drive cradle available for pre-order now priced at $72.31 and will start shipping at the end of December, but unfortunately without support for IDE it doesn’t look like it adds much more value for it’s significantly higher price.

I’ve seen alot of cool robot toys and desk accessories over the years. I have to admit, I have never seen the combination of robot and snowman. It pleases me.

Not only is this robot bent on taking over the human race, it apparently has the winter season in mind for it’s objective. It’s got articulated arms and an eye scanner like a cylon from Battlestar Galactica, which can change color. You can also control the speed of the scanner with a knob. They say that it also has Authentic Snowbot Sound.

I’m not sure what the fascination with putting fish(fake or real) into strange devices lately is all about, but combining fish with gadgetry is getting a little out of hand. The other day I told you about the Fish In Space aquarium. Now I bring you the aquarium mouse, complete with fake fish.

Apparently, you can order a mouse aquarium with fish OR one with a little rubber ducky. I suppose if you really love fish and have a fish themed life, like sea-life wallpaper and a cabinet full of fish figurines, you might want to point and click with a liquid mouse.

Maybe this company just likes making speakers shaped like fruit or maybe they’re taking a more welcome route of latching onto the Apple popularity as apposed to throwing the letter “i” in front of their product name, but either way these speakers look kinda’ cool.

When put together the two channel, 1W speakers are held in place by magnets and they are in fact shaped like an Apple and have no affiliation to Apple the company. The speakers are powered by a USB connection from your computer and connect sound through a standard 3.5mm audio jack from your computer or just about any mp3 player. They come on colors of red or green and measure, well, about the size of an apple at 112×104x56mm each. The Apple Design speaker set runs about 25 Euros, (~$36 USD) on Ebay.de.

Personally I love all things robot. When I saw this little guy, I knew that my life was not yet complete somehow. He has a great, ultra-cute design and would definitely add some coolness to your computer area as well as making the life of a blog writer a little less lonely. I think he and I could be good friends.

He has 350k pixels, which means his maximum resolution is 640×480. The LED eyes actually illuminate at night, plus he has a microphone so you can speak to others while video-conferencing. The mic is an essential element here, after all I will be telling people how cool my little robot buddy is. So what if they get creeped out. It’s just me and my BFF robot.

Today hField technologies announced the release of a new version of their Wi-Fire long range USB Wi-Fi adapter that is now compatible with Windows Vista. The Wi-Fire adapter works with any 802.11 b/g and provides a high gain directional antenna so you can pick up Wi-Fi signals from a lot further away than most adapters and often get faster transfer speeds.

According to hField, the adapter can pick up Wi-Fi signals from as far as 1,000 feet away, which is about 3 times the distance most other standard adapters. The device is fairly small measuring only 3×4 inches and can stand alone or be mounted on the top of your notebook. It can also be folded up to store easily in your notebook case.

Take a look at this Visuals analog USB gauge used to monitor the power supply unit on your computer. The gauge has a dial and looks like something you’d find in an automotive shop but can be a very handy tool for anyone building and/or overclocking their computer.

The Visuals USB gauge has three buttons, one of which needs to be pressed in order to see one of three monitoring parameters. The gauge will monitor the wattage, temperature and fan speed of your power supply and is as simple as plugging it into your USB port. Unfortunately you can’t use it to monitor just any power supply unit, though. The analog gauge is only compatible with GIGAYBTE’s ODIN GT series of power supplies. The gauges retail for a little over $60, that is if you can find one.

If you’re like many people that spend any amount of time online, you’ve probably had concerns or problems with probably the most common issues people have with surfing the net lately; security. For many, more and more interactions and transactions are taking place online, and everywhere you go you have to enter a user ID and a password. You can’t complain since security for the most part is a good thing, but it’s hard to remember the login credentials for every site you go to, and with all of the online identity theft scams going on these days many people are leery of entering their financial information online at all.

GuardID has a product called the ID Vault which we recently had the opportunity to review that goes a long way to help thwart online scams and gives you a single point to store login information. As a software engineer that has been developing hosted applications for years I’ve always trusted my own ability to identify phishing scams and unsecured sites, and I had never used a product like this before as I’ve always been hesitant to put all my information into one point of access. Although I still feel I do a good job of watching out for scams on my own I do have to admit that after spending some time with ID Vault product I’ve changed my tune and am pretty impressed with the secure environment this product creates.

We’re often surprised here at the ‘Brick by the different types of things that companies come up with which are powered by a USB connection. Most do seem to make a lot of sense though; people are spending more and more time at their computers and most of these devices don’t require a lot of juice to power them. This far infrared heating pad is a good example, offering the benefits of infrared heat through the convenience of a USB connection.

This funny little USB peripheral called the Availabot is designed to work in conjunction with the instant messenger on your computer. It stands on a little marshmallow looking stand that connects via USB to your computer and gives you a physical representation of the availability of your friends on your IM application, laying flaccid when the contact is gone, and quickly standing upright when the contact is available.

The idea is pretty interesting (and funny) and the Availabots are completely customizable in the profile they store and in how they look. You can use as many of them at a time as you would like to dedicate a USB port for. The puppets currently work with iChat on Mac OS X 10.4 but the company has plans to extend them to other IM programs on the Mac and eventually Windows.