The coolest and most useful gift I got this year was a set of personal walkie talkies that uses the PMR446 standard The PMRs have a max range of 5 km which is good enough for most uses. I saw someone using a pair on the ferry to Corsica this summer. Mobile phones were useless in the middle of the sea but it allowed the families traveling together to stay in touch on the boat. They should be perfect for going skiing as well since the local ski resort has lousy GSM reception but it is small enough to be covered by the PMRs. (P.S. I posted this a week late due to spammers)

The Clinica Mobile is a non-profit organization which relies upon sponsorship and donations to ensure specialist medical support not only for all competitors, but also all personnel associated with the championships at every Grand Prix and World Superbike round. Loris Capirossi and Max Biaggi have donated their autographed helmets to the Clinica Mobile which are selling them on eBay. The auction winners will get a collector’s item and help support the Clinica Mobile's great work. The autographed helmet of Loris Capirossi has already reached 1.260 euro (ends 20-December-05 08:47:37 CET) The autographed helmet of Max Biaggi is a lot cheaper at 632 euro (ends ...

U2.Communication is a free 2 CD set given to fans who takes out a subscription to U2.Com. The CDs are not be available for sales anywhere and contain: 8 live tracks. Several are from the U2 Vertigo concert in Milano, including I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Miss Sarajevo. a live video performance of Vertigo a collection of unique wallpapers and screen savers created for the Vertigo tour; 'heart', 'dove' and 'DNA' animations a collection of wallpapers for your computer from the artbook the band designed for 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb'. The CDs started shipping last week so I should receive my copy soon! U2 taped the concert in Milan, so ...

I am changing telco provider this week so my site and mail will go offline for a (hopefully) short time.

The latest Scott eVests 4.0 are the perfect match for the Hidden Cargo Pants you (wish you) got last Christmas. The all-weather SeV Tactical 4.0 has 40 pockets and compartments, patented Personal Area Network, Detachable Cargo Cache+, Magnetic Closures, side seam zippers and more: You can make a great jacket even better by adding optionals like a Volume Control and Solar Panel. The solar panel charges a battery pack that can charge any device compatible with Universal Serial Bus (USB) chargers, including cell phones, PDAs, Game Boys, MP3 players, and other mobile devices. Cool Or What? The SeV Milan leather jacket is more anonymous but it packs impressive features; ...

Not sure if the lingerie will look nice on your lady? Spellbound in Maine may have found the answer: Live lingerie models: "Women will come in and say they're here because they saw a girl in the window and liked what she was wearing or their husband saw an outfit and really liked it," Spellbound owner Felicia Stockford said. I think it is a cool idea but I am sure that not everybody appreciates the concept. The articles I came across on CNN and The Boston Channel only refer to female models but the concept should work just as well for male models.

The Fight AIDS At Home project lets you fight AIDS using the spare CPU cycles on your PC like Seti At Home lets you search for aliens. The project is powered by United Devices which hosts several services in their Grid system. Download Fight AIDS At Home here and create your own AIDS fighting group or join one of the existing ones. You have full control of when it runs; it can run in the background while you work or you can configure it to only run as a screen saver I should have posted this on the World AIDS Day day but I was too busy working on the latest release of vodafone live. Via Cuzzle

I used to get my daily Dilbert dose via the free Comic Basic e-mail subscription but it does not include the Sunday Dilbert comics :-( The Unofficial Dilbert RSS feed, on the other hand, includes all the stripes so I don't have to remember to check the Sunday comics at regular intervals. You can subscribe with FeedBlitz to get the Dilbert comic via mail if you don't want to use a RSS reader. Please let me know if you find RSS feeds for Monty and Unfit. Thanks for the tip Ale!

The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset contains all the 45 episodes of Flying Circus and makes a perfect Christmas gift for a Monty Python fan (hint, hint). A lot of great sketches and utterly silly stuff like "the silly walk" and Terry Jones playing naked at the piano. Say no more!The 2005 edition adds 2 Monty Python Live! Disk