Tech & Gadget Stream

Love spending plenty of time in the bathroom with your favorite tunes? Unless you have piped in music as in hotels and other posh places, surely you won't risk electrocuting your iPhone or iPod in there, right? With the iDuck Wireless Speaker, this problem is solved - plug the transmitter into your audio playback device, and it will automatically broadcast all your tunes to the duck. The duck is powered by a quartet of AAA batteries (will it float then?), while the eg (transmitter) runs off three AAA batteries. £24.95 is required to help you make your bathtime a whole lot more relaxing.

Talk till you drop with the Motorola T215 Bluetooth car speakerphone, where it boasts three days of talktime and was specially designed to work with other hands-free car kits.  Features include a 2W speaker with noise cancellation functionality.  While the Motorola T215 might feature the latest technology, sadly the design seems stuck in the past.  It does make us wonder whether this will ever become a classic or not, but chances are with the Motorola label on it, the answer would sadly be in the negative.

Want a speaker that offers surround sound capability? Look no further than Kenwood's very own Squeezophone 360° speaker. It is built based along similar lines as the extremely pricey Sony Soutina glass speakers, oozing out your favorite tunes in all directions with the help of acoustic technology. Apart from this inherent ability, very little else is known about the device since it is still under the prototype category. We suppose it ain't gonna come cheap when made available to the masses though.

f you are looking to drop a lot of dough on a seemingly fragile speaker system then you might want to check out the Harion. These speakers made of Heat-resistant glass are manufactured by Hario , a glass maker in Tokyo. They will cost about 16 million yen or $168,000. You get a center speaker, a sub woofer, a couple of tweeters and mid-range speakers. It sounds like a lot of the cost comes from the long and difficult development. Three years, eight months and 23 subcontractors is what it took for them to put out a finished product. Good news though, an executive from Hario says that if they get a minimum of ten orders they may be able to lower the price to around $105,000 per unit. That may be more in your price range. No word on what they sound like. I would guess (or more likely, hope...) that the sound quality should be high to match the cost!

  Here's a rather funky iPod docking station for the masses simply known as the Orb for obvious reasons. It comes with a "Made for iPod" certification, acting as a desktop docking station/speaker system that pumps out decent sound with its dedicated subwoofer.  Each purchase comes with a 10-key remote for easy adjustment of bass and treble numbers. In addition, the Orb is capable of synching with iTunes and boasts 30 watts of power that ought to be enough to rock your little world.  Choose from blue, red, pink, green, silver, black and white colors. The Orb comes with a recommended retail price of $129.95 and has already picked up the "Best New Product" title from Retail Vision.  If your iPod is a little lonely at home, the Orb sounds like a pretty good companion.

We all have our own ways to listen to music. Some of you probably love your ear buds, while others invoke a hipsters' throwback to when it was cool to carry that boom box and play it loud and proud for all to hear. On long bike rides, I do find that my ear buds slip out of my ears and their cords get in my way. On busy roads it's also hard to hear the traffic and other warning noises, but I really love my music. In search of a solution that didn't involve me mounting a boom box on my bike, I came across iHome's iH85B. This sleek-but-rugged water and impact-resistant polycarbonate case clips to your bike frame across from where you store your water bottle. Simply dock your iPod inside the case and get moving. Control your tunes by using the wireless RF remote control conveniently mounted on your handlebars, which helps you keep focus on the road. The passive speakers provide for a full, rich sound. Whatever your destination (beach, park, pool), unclamp the case and bring...

Yesterday we write about B&W Zeppelin iPod speaker . Now there's another iPod speaker, but in white color. This tub speaker system is a unique dock that will keep your iPod upright while you play music and charge it. With easy access to your playlists, two speakers, and rubber feet to keep it nice and stable, this versatile speaker offers a cylindrical shape in a world of boxy speakers. It works with any MP3 player that has an audio jack. Priced at $40. Wouldn't this sleek iPod accessory look great in a bathroom or white bedroom?

High-end speaker producer Bowers & Wilkins (known on the street as B&W) is going all Hindenburg on your iPod dock. Named after its obvious inspiration, B&W's Zeppelin is a two-foot-long black ellipsoid with a bundle of goodies hidden inside, including a 5-inch subwoofer, four speakers and an amp that can pump out 100 watts of power. It'll also handle the classic iPod dock jobs like streaming pictures and videos to a TV. For $599, the least B&W can do is guarantee that it won't burst into flames and crash land in your living room.

Video iPods are all well and good, until you actually try to watch a video on them, I find. Then, you dice with losing your eye site, headaches and other fun things, as you try to squint. As much as I bemoan the lack of feature films on the UK version of iTunes, I really couldn't sit through a whole one. Unless you've got some way of making them bigger... such as the inMotion speaker screen from Altec Lansing. Essentially, it's some top quality speakers combined with a screen on the front, which will play which ever video you've got on your iPod (I'd recommend the Take That music video 'Shine'). This system comes with a remote, and unlike several similar systems, you can navigate your way around the entire iPod menu with it, which means you can change from a song to a video, rather than just skip forward and backwards between songs. Very useful. The speakers are also top notch, with some proper bass (you really feel it if you put it on the floor!) and the fa...

Not so long ago the only way to share your music with the great outdoors was to lug a ghetto blaster around the garden or buy a really long cable for your stereo speakers and pray for dry weather. But not any more, because the nifty Wireless Solar Speaker renders the aforementioned practices obsolete. Simply plonk this discreet device on the grass or hide it in the hedge and its 5w speaker will pump out up to 70dbs of punchy music al fresco. How? Easy, because the speaker itself contains an eco-friendly solar panel to charge the onboard battery directly from the sun's rays and an accompanying mains-powered transmitter plugs into your MP3/CD player/radio and beams the music to the speaker from up to 150ft away. Brilliant! Whether you're chillin' in the garden, partying on the patio or boogie-ing round the barbecue, the Wireless Solar Speaker is bound to become an indispensable outdoor accessory. Yes, you can listen to your MP3s outside via headphones but that's no good w...