The Craftiest Home Electronics and Gadgets

Japan’s Caroma Profile Smart Dual Flush Toilet is a serious step up in the conservation sense, though its design wins a few extra points of its own. The bathroom sink is situated on the back of the toilet, allowing the used sink water to be directly funneled into the toilet to be used for flushing. Though not an entirely new concept, as eco-minded plumbers have long been hooking up the pipes between the two bathroom utilities, but the Caroma Profile Smart puts the concept into the design for a leg up in the bathroom.

The M-Spector Digital Inspection Camera is sure to be a friendly tool for all at-home DIY-ers that take on that dark space between walls. The camera uses an LED lens that sits on the tip of a 3 foot bendable cable to investigate the interior of drywall and project it onto a tiny HD LCD screen on the handheld piece. This way, some of the mystery about beams and leaks can be eliminated before DIY-ers go pounding through the walls.

Though more of a leisure item, the Amazon Kindle is suiting up to simply eliminate physical books from our reality. The Kindle is a low-energy e-book reader that needs practically no charge (except when loading new pages, which only has to happen once every few thousand leaves) and has a nifty built-in antenna that uses Sprint technology to access online books from practically anywhere on the planet.

And who could forget the stunning picture quality of everyone’s favorite television monitors, the high definition screens? Sure, high definition viewing is the best when watching sports or series, but what about when you’re not tuned in to HD programming, when, for example, watching a movie? Well, with the advent of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, the two newest revelations in the world of high definition viewing, this looks to be up for a change. Both are new technology formats in HD that angle to eliminate DVDs altogether. HD gaming looks to get a boost from the high-def technology provided by HD-DVD and Blu-ray, as well.

One thing to bear in mind is that many electronics stores are not satellite TV subscribers, meaning that unless they are playing a DVD, they are probably not tapped into an HD source. And without high definition programming, the HD TV is simply worthless - it’s a television, not magic, and cannot improve picture quality just by providing a great blank canvas. Don’t forget to ask about that detail when browsing in the store.

As for the more virtual, but nonetheless fascinating, gadgets on the market, there is Microsoft’s Photosynth, a remarkable free software that can read various photographs that are all of multiple angles of the same location or image, and compile them into one 3D photo model. It’s a surefire way to snazz up those oh-so-boring vacation snapshots from the Grand Canyon last summer.

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