Could we really not come up with a better way to violate these animals via USB? Apparently not, and I have no better suggestions to offer as far as the placement of their uh, receptacle. Poor guys get no respect at all. Just living out USB life day after horrible day, like a having perpetual proctology exam as time slides toward infinity.

You can thank Japanese company Marubeni InfoTech. This is their line of wooden USB drives. Each features a 1GB storage capacity and you get five animals to choose from: dog, pig, elephant, hippopotamus and a swan, available in maple or walnut. They’ll cost you $73. Is there an organization for the ethical treatment of wood animals?

For audiophiles that want the very best, Navison has merged digital technology with vacuum tube design with the Reference 228 Tube Compact Disc Player. It has a refreshing retro look that makes you stop and stare, complete with signature Barian Kingwood, gold plating and textured black finish.

The Reference 228 is designed to capture the whole of your music, so you can hear every little detail, not just the gist of what the artist is going for. Some other features are Jensen & Auricap capacitors, Mundorf filter capacitors, Tantalum & Riken resistors and Cardas Gold rhodium RCA input jacks. Even the remote is luxurious in copper and wood.

Wood classes up almost any gadget. Even simple USB drives. But when you give the Wii a woodgrain makeover, the result is simply awesome. It’s as if the the old Atari woodgrain consoles merged with the Wii. Much better then boring Wii white. For now it’s just a concept design by Joe D, which is a shame. Nintendo would sell a ton of product.

Joe’s concept apparently has a layer of woodgrain veneer on the Wii-Mote, Nunchuk, even the Classic Controller and Nyko Perfect Shot. That’s sweet enough, but he also gave the controllers get some bright white backlit buttons and black paint to bring out the wood. Once you see design like this it’s hard to come back to reality and pick up your white wiimote.

Elecom has some new wooden speakers that are fairly clean looking and cheap. Which I guess is appropriate, since they look like everyone’s cheap prefab entertainment centers etc. They Measure 80mm × 110mm × 130mm and weigh just 1.15Kgs. The new MS-130 amplifier speakers also have an output of 3 W × 2ch with a frequency of 20 Hz to 20kHz. Some other features are a stereo mini input, microphone input and output for headphones. The Elecom MS-130 should be available in Japan later this month for the price of $45.

Nets2go has a new set of 9 custom-made wood blinds, but they’re not the kind you find in home decor stores. They feature Web 2.0 logos. You can get them in Google flavor, Firefox, YouTube, Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, even Wordpress. Just be warned, being this geeky could cost you your marriage.

In fact, these blinds have an interesting story. Net2go manufactured the entire set for a customer who separated from his wife a couple of weeks after installing these blinds, because “She doesn’t understand the intense geek in me”. Maybe he should have added match.com into the mix.

There are tons of ways to protect your iPhone. But hippies and Ewoks are going to want something different. That something is wood. Why not go all natural with your iPhone 3G? Miniot’s form-fitting iWood cases are all natural hardwoods like oak, cherry, mahogany, walnut and something called padouk.

One downside to adding natural beauty to your iPhone is the price tag. At $125 each, they’ll cost almost as much as the iPhone 3G itself. If the price is a bit steep for ya, you can always try your hand at whittling your own, but I shudder to think what the end product will look like.

Think you’ve seen it all in iPod docks? Think again. This thing packs a ton of WW2 nostalgia in a wood case, while also letting your iPod in on some 1940’s action. It blends the old with the new pretty nicely. It looks a bit more modern on top, while the bottom half resembles a period airplane cockpit.

It’s from the folks over at spiritofstlouis.co.uk, where you can find many such nostalgic radios with today’s technology inside. In addition to holding your iPod, this radio is a 3 Band radio with CD Player that can be powered by batteries or electric. Being a fairly unique item, it sells for £299.99.

Whether it’s marriage by shotgun or just a pat on the back, you can’t do much better then getting this beautiful steampunk clock as a gift. It beats the hell out of a toaster or a blender. The father spent weeks working on the clock, which is walnut with brass and other metals.

He did a pretty good job considering that the son only recently introduced him to the whole steampunk thing. Plus the guy is grade A crazy in a good way like Doc Emmett Brown. He wanted to wear a steam-punk suit to the wedding, but his wife wouldn’t let him. It’s made by Diversified Artistic Designs (D.A.D.).

I’m not going to make any wood jokes. No jokes about having your tubes tied either. I promise. We have a soft spot for these wood Nixie clocks. They just blend the modern with the old so nicely, you can’t help but fall in love with them. They just have style and they fit in anywhere you can think to put one.

You have to buy it as a kit and put it together yourself, but hey, that just gives you something to brag and be proud about when it’s finished. If you aren’t that handy and don’t think you can handle putting together it’s 115 parts, I guess you’ll just have to admire it from afar.

The Enlighten PC from Suissa Computers has a bit of an odd design. It looks more like a great bit of art deco furniture or a retro speaker. We first told you about it here. It’s a custom wood, metal and glass case that has separated components that helps to boost cooling. It’s not just a crap computer inside either. You get a choice of Intel Quad core CPU or AMD X2 6400+ processors, with 4GB of RAM and 1TB of storage standard. You get a DVD burner and a choice of NVIDIA 8800GTX or ATI Radeon HD2900XT video cards.

Interestingly, the system is designed so that you don’t need many fans. It’s all about the engineering and where they placed the components, with the aluminum and air venting keeping it all cool. It’s a limited edition of only ten machines, so if you want one you better hurry up. No word on pricing. All I know is it looks damn cool and damn retro. That makes me want it.

The picture might fool you into thinking that this device is some weird mis-shaped wood Gilligan’s Island phone, but it’s not. This is the HeartBeans coffee-grinder. A grinder for those who are slightly insane and intimately attached to their coffee. It operates according to the user’s heart-beats.

It’s made from quality mahogany, and has a built-in motor that is controlled by an apparatus that measures the pace of the beating heart. Included are some peripherals that bring the whole experience together and make it work. The design requires you to hold the grinder as if you are about to lovingly tongue your slab of wood. Since it operates on the heart-beats, it produces a different taste with each use, but never fear you WILL look like an idiot every time.

While many Funeral Directors would try to sell you the most expensive hermetically sealed casket to bury your loved one in, it’s actually a natural process that our bodies return to the Earth and decompose.

Why not choose a biodegradable casket from Ecoffins. Sure, it looks like something that Ewoks built. Kinda looks like wicker too. But looks aren’t everything. It’s all about a healthy respect for the environment. These are built from renewable natural woods like bamboo and willow, with no toxic glues and metal fittings, and many Ecoffins are made in a fair trade factory in China. They even pack them inside of each other with different sizes to reduce the environmental effects of shipping. Ecoffin also makes environmentally friendly pet sized caskets too.

This is Fujitsu’s idea of what a laptop should look like in the forest. Otherwise known as “We need to get on board with this whole environmental green thing. We’re missing out on a ton of hippie money, guys. We can charge more for it too.”

To me it is a bit too reminiscent of the old wood school desks and chairs. I look at this thing and I’m immediately wondering if I have any #2 pencils and if the substitute is going to be a hot babe today. I can’t see many people buying this. I’m not anti-wood, there’s just something strange about it. I suppose if the Amish suddenly start buying laptops and trading in their buggys for segways, I’ll be proven wrong. Until then, I don’t see much excitement about this concept.

Everyone loves Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but let’s face it, the out of the box instruments they give you won’t make you feel like a Rock God. Here’s your chance to get a beautifully handpainted guitar worthy of a real rocker. These limited edition art guitars are individually painted with familiar logos and imagery from several popular rock bands.

Make no mistake, these aren’t just cheap paint jobs, the images are embedded under a protective coating, so you won’t scratch them off while playing Barracuda for the 1000th time. Which is probably why it will cost you $399. ArtGuitar takes a real wood Peavey AG RiffMaster controller, then adds the rock art from various artists like KISS, Lynyrd Skynrd, Ozzy Osbourne and Pantera. At the moment, the controllers are only available for the PS2, but hopefully they’ll get around to Xbox 360 and PS3 versions soon.

Zana is hopping on the “tech with wood on the outside” bandwagon and so they will be selling wood-engraved USB flash drives that feature silver as well as “precious stones” for about $59. That will get you about 1GB of storage.

If you want a name or some other personal message engraved on it, you’ll probably have to pay more. I guess this is for the stylish geek who wants to make an impression, but frankly I’m not all that impressed. I would think they would get dented and dinged pretty easily. Then there’s termites too.