Being a parent isn’t easy. You have to be a jack of all trades. One of those trades is Taxi Driver. Can you drive me here and pick me up at 10? And it never ends until the kid is old enough to drive. That’s where the Dad’s Cab novelty taxi meter comes in handy. Dad’s Cab is a novelty taxi meter that comes with a bunch of cards that dad can give out to their kids as a bill. Payments include such things as ‘tidy your room’ and ‘make dad a cup of tea’.

In other words, no more free rides. With the included adhesive strips, you can secure the taxi meter to the dashboard of your car. Turn it on every time your kid uses you as a taxi service and the meter will go up. Also doubles as an alarm clock and is powered by 4 LR44 batteries at £9.95. It teaches kids that nothing is free and your time is valuable.

Now here is the ultimate manly tool box. This baby from Kobalt is nearly four and a half feet tall with LED lighting, it’s own Pioneer sound system, a mini-fridge for your beers and a four-plug powerstrip built in.

It basically allows you to live in your garage. At 53-inches, it has enough trays and drawers for all your needs. In fact it will hold up to 4,000 pounds of weight. The 3-way Pioneer sound system is on top so it can radiate everywhere, the fridge is in the bottom left. After you get this thing in the garage, the only left to do is hang up some nude pics and invite some friends over. It will cost you $1,600.

Sony is now offering up a new line of professional notebook computers powered by the new Intel Centrino 2 processor. It is called the Sony VAIO BZ Series and you’ll find pricing starting around $1,000.

The Sony VAIO BZ Series offers up a 15.4-inch widescreen display and full-size keyboard while weighing less than six pounds. It sports a magnesium alloy casing to help protect against bumping. Also noteworthy for day to day work is the shock protection on the hard drive and spill-resistant keyboard.

Who would have thought that the makers of power strips would get so creative? They’re not just long slabs of white anymore. This e-Ball power strip design from Mashallah design is sure to please D & D fans by looking like a many sided die.

It also kinda resembles old spaceships from vintage Sci-Fi. It’s a concept at the moment, but I’m sure it will be made real by someone. Paint a face on it, plug in all of your plugs and you’ve got an electrical headed Medusa.

Aromatherapy isn’t a new concept. USB-powered diffusers have been around for awhile. But the Aroma USB makes no bones about the fact that it knows something funky is going on in your immediate area, and like a glade plug in, it wants to help.

Maybe it’s that moldy half-eaten bag of cheetos you call a mousepad. More likely it’s your own BO, mixed with a subtle hint of Hot Pockets. The device has a scented fragrance strip that doles out pleasant smelling air when the air around you gets so bad that it threatens to attract the affections of Pepe LePew. A refill will last up to about a week. The noses around you will thank you.

With all of the various devices that we have plugged in, it can feel a bit overwhelming. Containership powersupplies can help keep your fleet of powerstrips in order like a well oiled Navy.

I guess the general idea here is to hold your power adapters in a cute and clever way, having a bit of fun with some organization. According to the company, it’s neat because the cord is in the Containership’s wake. I’m not sure what they’re smoking, but the whole effect is ruined the minute you put a few adapters in it, making it look like your wires are about to pull the whole thing under…your carpet. File this one under good concept, bad follow-through.

There certainly seems to be no shortage of power strip products lately as just about everyone seems to have found a way to build a better set of outlets. The Eject Powerstrip is designed to conserve electricity by making it easier for people to unplug their unused devices and lessen the electricity “leakage” when they are not being used.

The powerstrip has a foot pedal next to each outlet that will eject the electrical cord plug when pressed with your foot. According to the designers of the Eject Powerstrip, they’ve eliminated some of the biggest excuses why people don’t unplug their unused devices. Laziness, inconvenient access and open outlets accessible to small children topped the list. This “green” powerstrip would not only make it easy and convenient to unplug, but when the pedal is pressed it also cuts off access to the electricity through the outlet so that the little tikes can’t get hurt.

Turns out that the power strip isn’t all played out after all, and can still surprise us. Take this Belkin Mini Surge Protector for instance. It has three grounded three-prong power outlets and two USB ports, and plugs directly into the wall socket, so there’s no dangling cord. A green LED lets you know that the connected devices are safe from surges. Belkin even backs it up with a $75,000 warranty.

Belkin even throws in a mini-USB cable, which will work with many brands of cellphones. It is supposed to be priced under $25, so this is truly a worthwhile purchase when it becomes available at the end of April.

You might think this is the next step in the evolution of the Nintendo Wiimote, but it’s really a “smart” wand designed to replace that long stick that the visually impaired have been stuck with for decades. It was created by Jin Woo Han and uses a sensor on the front to detect nearby objects by providing feedback about how far away those objects are, through varying levels of vibration.

The wand even includes a tactile strip in the area where you place your thumb that will go so far as to indicate the position of objects around you. Both feedback methods beat the hell out of using audio cues, which can be unreliable if there is too much background noise. The Tactile Wand is just a concept at the moment, and we probably will not see it for a long time, but when we do see it, it will be a powerful tool for the sight impaired. I just hope it can also detect the lack of objects, like open man-holes and the like.

APC is out today with news of a new power strip it says “provides home computer systems guaranteed protection from damaging surges and spikes, while saving electricity.” It is called the Power-Saving SurgeArrest and it prices around $35.

The APC Power-Saving SurgeArrest has built into it master/controlled outlets which automatically shut down power to unused peripherals, such as printers, scanners and speakers when the computer is in sleep mode. It does this by sensing the power draw of connected equipment and realizing that when an attached computer on the master goes into standby, hibernation or is turned off, the controlled outlets are automatically powered off to prevent connected peripherals from continuing to draw power.

You’ve got lots of wires coming off of your computer station as you read this. They each have a different size AC plug, providing no end of headaches to your standard white power strip. One possible solution to this issue is Tributaries Cable’s new T12 power strip with rotating outlets.

JVC offered up earlier this week for consumer consumption some new high definition hard disk camcorders which deliver 1920×1080 recording. These are the JVC GZ-HD6 and GZ-HD5, priced at around $1,400 and $1,200 respectively.

The JVC GZ-HD6 and GZ-HD5 can record up to 10 hours or 5 hours respectively of “full HD 1920 x 1080 MPEG2 Transport Stream video with MPEG 1 Layer 2 audio.” They use three 1/5-inch CCDs to accomplish this, also featuring an F1.8-F1.9 10x zoom lens and 1080 progressive 60fps HDMI output.

JVC said both camcorders will be available in March. You can get the full details after the jump.

G-Technology is showcasing at MacWorld a 1TB external hard drive which offers RAID 0 configuration. It is called the G-Tech G-RAID mini and it should be available in March.

G-Technology said the G-Tech G-RAID mini is a full sized RAID 0 solution set into a portable solution. It features a triple FireWire 400/800/USB 2.0 interface and is designed to work right out of the box with Mac OS X systems.

Get more details on the new G-Tech G-RAID mini after the jump.

Sharp towed to CES this week its usual interesting line up of cutting edge consumer electronics. A shining example of this is its AQUOS SE94 series flat panels which, among other features, are Internet-enabled. This particular family of Sharp televisions ranges in size from 46 to 65 inches and is priced between around $3,200 and $11,000.

The Sharp AQUOS SE94 series can, when connected to an Ethernet port, let you access a Sharp service which provides “customized Web-based content as well as real-time customer support directly on the AQUOS television.” The company, working with Web based content providers, says you’ll be able to configure widgets which let you get information like the local weather forecast as well as enjoy your favorite comic strip via your remote control.

For more details on these new Sharp televisions, check out the full press release after the jump.

Tributaries, a developer of audio-video accessories, announced recently a rather innovative new AC power strip which makes it easier to support bulky plugs. The Tributaries PWRS-T10 is priced around $80.

The Tributaries PWRS-T10 comes equipped with 10 outlets. Five of these outlets swivel, allowing one to plug in those big AC plugs which might otherwise spill over to cover other plugs. It offers also “surge suppression and noise filtering for AC power, and signal-line protection for telecomm (RJ-11), network (RJ-45), and cable, antenna, and satellite (F-connector) signals.”