Eric@brando.com recommends this item in an email consisting of just four words: "One push to stir."

Apparently Eric owns the web site that sells the Whirlwind Cup, but regardless of his vested interest in promoting the device, it surely deserves mention as a palliative treat for all those who suffer health problems such as repetitive strain injury induced by the onerous chore of stirring hot beverages.

More to the point, gadget.brando.com.hk has a wonderfully quirky inventory of implausible yet available items, ranging from a "USB Thumb Ionizer" to a stretchable hula-hoop. Is this a sign that the Chinese are encroaching on the traditionally Japanese business of developing very small, fanatically ingenious, frivolous gadgets that no one really needs, yet are somehow irresistible?

Gadget.brando.com.hk proudly proclaims, "We deliver joys to worldwide." Sounds good to me!

They also sell a 51-LED flashlight, leading me to tomorrow's recommendation.

-- Charles Platt

Whirlwind Cup
$22
Available from Gadget.brando.com.hk

There is also a cheaper version that sells for $8 (for two cups!) from American Science & Surplus; if you own and use that one and can attest to the cup, please let us know.

This is one of those tools that I've been using for so long that it's just become a small part of my life.

For some odd reason, I often find myself in need of sounds of all sorts to plug a particular hole in a project. Just as stock photos are a great tool for designers and multimedia creators, sounds can be used to quickly set the mood or form transitions between disparate elements. Whether physical sound effects ( e.g. crickets, birds, gunshots, explosions, doorbells, everything under the sun), more creative effects (zips, zonks, beeps, and wooshes), and instrumental music of all kinds and emotions, Sounddogs is the perfect source for sounds of all kinds. Most effects are in the $3-$5 range, making it reasonable to collect sounds for multimedia projects, theater, and the ever so fun practical joke. The sounds themselves are delivered as CD-quality AIFF or WAV files right after you order; no shipping delays. You can browse through the entire catalog and listen to low-quality full-length previews of everything. It's truly addictive (and useful)!

-- Zach Lipton

[Sounddogs also offers background and mood music, and CDs by mail order. --CP]

Available from Sounddogs
Free audio browsing; cost for downloading a CD-quality clip varies from $2 to $10.

I'm finishing my basement and am in the drywall phase of this year-long solo project. After renting a 100 lb drywall lift for a weekend for $60 to get the largest ceiling panels positioned, I found Free Hands on the internet. They are simple plastic cleats which you screw into the studs or joists to provide a ledge to support an edge of the drywall while you position and screw it in place. I've been using them for all the rest of the odd-sized and half-sheet drywall panels on the ceiling and all the panels on the walls. It takes about a minute to attach and remove the two cleats each time. The smooth plastic surfaces allow me to slide the drywall up onto the cleats and move the panel around until I get a precise fit. They're sturdy and inexpensive, and I'm making good progress with them. I could have made cleats out of scrap wood, but I really doubt they would have performed nearly as well as these. They've made one-person drywalling possible for me.

-- Malcolm MacDonald

Free Hands Drywall Cleats
$20
(for a three-pack)
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Free Hands (which sells individual pairs more cheaply)

While we wait for LED table lamps to emerge from the development phase and arrive at our local Wal-Marts, Hong Kong manufacturers have started selling ultra-high-output white LEDs direct to the consumer via eBay. These are the raw components, plus resistors for wiring them to a 12-volt car system, which is a popular application to create "undercar phantom glow" and other effects which will be familiar to those who have seen episodes of "Pimp My Ride" on cable.

The singularly named Light of Victory Led Store will send you, via airmail, 100 large size LEDs (1 cm diameter, 130,000 millicandles) for thirty-five bucks, including series resistors and air-mail postage. What a deal!

Of course you will have to do a little work at your end, drilling holes to mount the LEDs in a panel, and hooking them up to a power supply. The series resistors are not necessary if you buy a 3.5 AC adapter for house voltage, available for less than $10--check Froogle. Just remember to hook the shorter wire of each LED to your negative source, and the longer wire to your positive source. Each diode draws just 20 milliwatts, making them, I think, the most efficient known form of artificial light, already finding widespread use in flashlights, tail lights, and turn signals. Soon to be used for ambient indoor lighting in an RV near you?

I expect to be writing a build-your-own-LED-reading-lamp crafts project for Make magazine later this year. Meanwhile you can have fun playing with this almost magical device.

-- Charles Platt

Super White LED Lamp Product
$35 including air mail from Hong Kong
Sold by Light of Victory Led-Store

This tool has changed how I think about glue guns. My old glue gun got used about once every two years; this one gets used almost every day. I use it so much because it warms up quickly (you can start using it in less than a minute) and is very precise. In addition, it lives in my house rather than in the garage because it is so clean. No more drips! I haven't used it for design or shop projects yet, but it's earning its keep on incidental things--like gluing up a loose part on my running shoes, gluing the end caps on stool legs, plugging a leak in my snorkel, attaching a candle to a base, etc. It's nice to just turn it on and use it without having to plug it in and wait.

-- Kevin Fine

ColdHeat Glue Gun
$40
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by ColdHeat

An engineer friend introduced me to the virtues of ABS plastic, which is extremely strong, does not splinter when you drill or saw it (unlike wood or acrylics), comes in a variety of thicknesses of 4x8 sheets (just like plywood), and usually is smooth on one side with a textured finish on the other. We use it to make everything from little brackets and shelf supports to complicated containers for transporting fragile equipment. You don't have to paint it, and its consistent texture makes it very easy to shape. If you live near any large urban area, there will be at least one plastics supplier near you that will sell it to you by the sheet.

The best part of fabricating things with plastic is that you can bend the plastic. When you work with wood, you have to join two pieces (mitering, gluing, whatever) to make a right-angle. With the FTM heating device, I can make a controlled bend within a couple of minutes. Sponge it with water and the plastic stiffens, seemingly just as strong as before. It's like large-scale origami.

Other plastic benders may be available online, but the Cool Tools Rules state that I may only recommend the tool that I have used personally. So, this is it, even though I must warn you (shock! horror!) you cannot buy this online. You can visit the manufacturer's web page and view the specifications, and then if you want to purchase your own bender, you'll have to pick up the phone and order it, with your credit card, from a human sales person.

-- Charles Platt

FTM - FS24 Free Standing Heater
$209
Manufactured and sold by
The Fabricator Source

For those who decide to venture into the world of plastic arts-and-crafts, this is the tool that is of importance second only to your plastic bender.

When you saw or drill ABS (and many other thermoplastics), you create particles that get hot enough to stick together as a result of friction. So, you need to scrape them away, and a deburring tool is the right tool for the job.

I would not have believed that this weird-looking little gizmo can produce such a smooth edge. I've watched visitors pick it up in puzzlement and then smile with fascination when they realize how easy it is to use. Of course, it works on metals, too.

The manufacturer's web site lists a veritable plethora of edge-smoothing devices.

-- Charles Platt

Vargus UV-1
$3
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Shaviv

These pull-on rubber boots are made more like a wet suit than a standard rubber boot. The bottom shoe part is semi-firm and waterproof and the high part is somewhat porous like a wet suit. If you are a scuba diver, picture the wetsuit booties with a firmer shoe part. They are really comfortable and very easy to pull on and off. If you don't go in water over your ankles, they keep your feet dry. The porous uppers mean your feet don't get clammy and stink. They make doing chores on a wet day so much better. They are so comfortable I think I could hike in them, although I have not tried it.

-- John Coate

Muck Boots Jobber Work Boot
$80
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Muck Boots

This is the best way I have found to clean paint rollers.

After squeezing and/or scraping as much paint out of the fur of the roller as possible, it only takes the Roller Washer about a minute or two to blast water deep into the roller and rinse away the remaining
paint.

I usually then give my rollers a "shampoo" with some liquid soap, and moving the roller up and down inside the Roller Washer until the soap bubbles disappear. This is followed by spinning the roller on the frame with an air compressor blow gun to remove the water and fluff the fibers.

-- Andy McConnell

Wagner Roller Washer
$7
Available from Gleempaint.com

Manufactured by Wagner

The Buddha Machine is a hardware loop player, built kind of like a little AM radio, a small device for producing ambient sounds.

My son, 12 years old, made a small flash presentation of this device just for fun :)

-- Sergey Moskalev

[Intrigued by this succinct summary, I went digging and found some oddly lyrical reviews of the Buddha Machine. Its nine variants of "soothing" electronic ambient sound--perhaps better described as ambient music--fade from one to the next. A line output allows connection to a stereo system. Supposedly Brian Eno bought eight of them. --CP]

Buddha Machine
$23
Available from Forced Exposure

Manufactured by FM3

Read a good book. Register it at BookCrossing. Label the book with its BookCrossing registration number and a short note about BookCrossing. Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on
a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.) and be notified by email each time someone records a journal entry for that book on BookCrossing.

The very first book I released was picked up the next day and is now heading for Alaska.

-- Barbara Young

[The BookCrossing web site takes pains to reassure publishers and authors that this system will not discourage people from buying new books. Some BookCrossing enthusiasts, they claim, actually buy two
copies of every book, so that they can set one free and keep the other. BookCrossing claims almost 3 million members and half-a-million books registered. --CP]

BookCrossing
Free

Finally, a really worthwhile use for cellular technology. Global Pet Finder is essentially LoJack for dogs in case they get lost. If your dog wanders out of the area, it will transmit its location every minute to your cell phone, PDA, or pager. You can also check your dog's location on their website. Alternatively, you can manually locate your dog by dialing "FOUND" from your cellphone.

One other really cool feature is a temperature sensor, which will cause the unit to transmit a warning if the air temperature gets dangerously high or low.

-- Curt Nelson

GlobalPetFinder
$350 plus $35 activation fee and $18 to $20 monthly service fee

Manufactured by and available from Global Pet Finder
Also from Amazon

Removes lids of cans by side cutting the lid leaving it available for re-covering the can - super for pet foods. Leaves no sharp edge - cans are safe to handle. Leaves plastic lined aluminum tins available for nail, screw, storage containers - won't rust - lids can be secured with a strip of electrical tape across the top for secure storage.

-- Bruce Millar

Starfrit Securimax
$20
(Canadian)
Available from Home Depot Canada

Manufactured by Starfrit

Lets you connect multiple devices, even with big power converters, to a single outlet.

-- Zimran Ahmed

PowerSquid
$14
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by PowerSquid

This is the best toy I have seen since Lego. I recently purchased a set for my 3 year old son, and we both have been having a blast with it ever since. The basic idea is simple: marbles and a track. The interesting thing is that the track is built out of individual wooden blocks with curves and channels cut into them, allowing you to create
a track of whatever shape your imagination can conceive. The marbles are moved along strictly by gravity, falling from one level to another and cutting back and forth through hidden tunnels.

The company is based in Switzerland, but sets are available from several US retailers. There are several starter sets, plus add-on kits that allow you to build more complicated structures. I started with the Cuboro Standard, and recently added the Cugolino set. Although Cuboro is a bit pricey for a toy, the manufacturing quality is
exceptional and you get what you pay for.

-- Kurt Thearling

Cuboro
$110 starter set
$153 standard set
Available from Oh! Toys

Manufactured by Cuboro

Like a lot of people, I find that the web is becoming my main source of news. Some of the sites I read are published by individuals, but I find the most informative sites are those published by groups of writers/editors/correspondents, including those put out by Main Steam Media (MSM). However for the past three months my main source of "what's new" has been a new breed of website that collaboratively votes on the best links.

This genre does not have an official name yet, but each of these sites supplies readers with pointers to news items that are ranked by other readers. None of these sites generates news; they only point to it by filtering the links to newsy items. Using different formulas they rank an ever moving list of links on the web. The velocity of their lists varies by site, but some will have a 100% turnover in a few days. I check them daily.

This new genre fits into a whitespace between already occupied niches of social web sites. In the established center are the group-produced sites such as Slashdot, BoingBoing, WorldChaning, Huffington Post, to name just four very popular ones, where a very small cast of editors (under a dozen or so) collaboratively filter and annotate the links to other sources. A daring and effective extension of this method was devised by the fantastic group at MetaFilter.Here the editors are a very smart mob of 25,000 users. One by one readers recommend the cool new stuff they find. Their filter is simply the emergent one of their collective discretion and taste; no one votes or ranks links. At the other end of the axis of collaborative filtering is the likes of Google and Yahoo News, which use the entire collaboration inherent in the web and many Googleish algorithms to programmatically generate a list of what's new based on who is linking stuff, the most "important" item at the top.No humans explicitly vote on the items.

These new uncategorized sites, which have emerged this year (and reviewed below), fall in between the positions above. They take the smart mob approach of MetaFilter and add the algorithms of search engines. So, readers themselves vote on the importance of linked items suggested by other readers; these votes are then subjected to a complex formula to produce rankings. The sites use various flavors of algorithms to balance and refine the votes and selection of smart mobs. Or they use the action of tagging or bookmarking a site as a type of vote. Each site uses a different algorithm, yielding slightly different mixes of links, and a different personality. The best sites maintain a balance between providing a sense of what everyone is reading (consensus popularity) and some novel items that not everyone is reading (yet). In the reviews below I try to capture some sense of distinctive style for each site.

How I use these consensus tools: By scanning these lists daily I get a fantastic sense of what the web is reading, and an early glimpse of what will reach the MSM in the next day or so. But most important for me is the large volume of very interesting news that will not become "news." This is the kind of material that is more interesting than random pages but which lacks an appealing hook to place it on the front page of a magazine or even a news website. Often these items are timeless; they don't make the front page because they could be run at any time. But they are more valuable than odd curiosities. Because of the voting, tagging, bookmarking process enough people find the item worthwhile that they rise to notice. What emerges for me is a delightful counter-news, or what we used to call at CoEvolution Quarterly, "news that stays news." I have encountered no other process in the world that is better at surfacing "news that stays news" and "news that will be news" better than these collaborative filtering sites.

I imagine in the near future there will be many dozens, if not hundreds, of tweaks on this scheme. Readers will gravitate to a formula that suits their own personal taste. Inevitably, there'll be some meta-operation that will seek out the overlaps among all the collab-voting sites and extract its own meta-list. Or, eventually, you'll be able to tweak your own mix of others' votes to roll your own collabvote site.

Given the rate of innovation, I'm sure I've missed some already in progress. If you find a new one at all useful, let me know about it.

-- KK

*

Digg
My first stop. I only look at their top stories page, an approach which some devotees find whimpy; true Diggers look at the real-time stream of suggested items before they have too many votes.

*

Reddit
If I had to pick only one of these I would pick Reddit. It gives me the best balance between the lesser-seen and the over-seen. Some folks don't like it because users can down-vote items which may make the list more manipulated. But I feel it brings me a little more variety than Digg. I find I click on more stories here than any other consensus site.

*

NewsVine
I have their science thread bookmarked. It's the best link for breaking science news. And their world news thread is very fine too. (I find the their top story thread to be polluted by popularity.)

*



Fantacular
A new one. Still learning its personality, but so far it delivers fairly techie posts, closer to Slashdot themes. It does not churn as fast as Slashdot or Digg and Reddit.

*

180 News
Good for getting the latest news in the last five minutes. There's no attempt to weed out duplicates, as in say Google News, so you get a raw stream of voted items, many of them the same story reported by different sources. Their technology stream resembles the mix of Fantacular and Digg, but faster. I also like their World News bookmark. It feels like Yahoo or Google news, but still faster.

*

Gather
The type of stories that rise to the top here reminds me of a cross between Reader's Digest and NPR's Weekend Edition -- light, offbeat, humorous, encouraging, sometimes odd, inspiring. If you like a collaborative group hug, this is your place. It's just not me.

*

The above websites use voting to rank links to other sites. Another set of new websites use shared bookmarks to rank links. Delicious was the first well-known shared, or social bookmarking site. As readers bookmark interesting pages they would tag (categorize) and share these bookmarks with other readers through Delicious. The original idea was that one could search bookmarks by tags to find listings of cool sites by subject. But folks discovered that by compiling a list of the most popular shared bookmarks an ever-changing ranked list of sites would also emerge. There are now at least 15 different social bookmarking sites. Some of them provide a ranking of most popularly bookmark pages of the moment. I use this ranking function without bothering with the tagging part of sites.

Del.icio.us
I look at the "popular" page on Delicious. It features 4 or 5 popular links for five sample subjects at one time. The subjects seem to change every few days. There's a lot of action, and the links are generally high quality.

*

Oishii
This is my preferred way to "read" Delicious. It polls the front page of Delicious and posts any item that is bookmarked by at least 30 people. Quick, fast, one page.

*



Blogmarks
I like Blogmarks for one great innovation: they display a thumbnail of the front page of the sites they link to. Why don't all of these sites do that?

*

Blinklist
Blinklist also displays thumbnails of listed sites but not consistently.

*



Furl
Choose the "day" mode, otherwise the list refreshes too slowly.

*



Simpy
A lot of very geeky links, with an occasional keeper.

*



Spurl
Scarce traffic keeps the change in the list slow.

[When Cool Tools subscriber James Tierney recommended an audio CD that supposedly "balances and focuses the brain," I was skeptical. My skepticism deepened when I visited the publisher's web site and found additional CDs that supposedly induce lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences. With minimal expectations, I ordered the "Concentration" CD. When I opened the package, the picture on the front of the jewel case looked like a throwback to the 1970s, and the "brain-wave maps" on the back seemed totally spurious. Still, when I played the CD the phased synthetic sound was quite pleasant. "It sounds as if we're sitting in an airplane," one of my coworkers remarked when she walked into my office. I did find that it is a highly effective mask for environmental sound, and helped me to ignore distractions in a noisy office. I asked James if he had tried any other products from the same source. --CP]

They sure have a lot, many of which sound like hokum, but "Concentration" is the one that works for me, and has been reliable over the decades. Long ago I tried their music CDs purporting to increase creativity and didn't find them helpful. Their cat-napper has been a reliable tool for me over the decades: sometimes I am low energy and just need a catnap to re-energize. Within half an hour it gets me to sleep and wakes me back up, alert and full of energy.

-- James Tierney

Concentration
$20
Available from New Mind

Manufactured by New Mind

I spend much of my time outside. Especially backpacking. And this hat always goes with me. It looks a little different, but I've come to like that. Its function is unequaled. Light weight at 2.5 oz and crushable into the pack when not in use. It blocks sun all around with a 4" front brim and a long back tail that can be velcroed up if not needed. It breathes well through side mesh panels and will even scoop water out of a stream to douse your head on a hot day.

-- Carol Corbridge

Adventure Hat
$37
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Sunday Afternoons

During a recent "upgrade" of my cellular phone I discovered Gomadic. I was uninterested in cluttering my car's interior with yet another unwieldy and obtrusive cord to charge my phone (and I abhor uni-taskers). One of Gomadic's core products is a retractable unit with a USB A (the kind that plugs in to the back of most computers) plug on one end and a 1/8 jack on the other. This configuration allows you to choose the type of device you will be charging and how you will be charging it.

First you purchase from the Gomadic web site a cable for the specific device that you want to charge. If you'd like to charge other devices you buy additional tips, which are interchangeable. Just pull the first tip off the 1/8 jack and replace it with the one appropriate for the next device .

I can now charge my phone on my laptop through the USB port and in the car with the same cable. When it comes time to change phones I can simply order a new interchangeable tip and continue to use the retractable cable. All this and it's backed up by a lifetime warranty.

-- Scott Custer

Gomadic
$18
Available from Gomadic

Manufactured by Gomadic

This is possibly quite goofy, but I got my 16 year old a Slanket for her birthday and she was thrilled. She is quite certain that our house is insignificantly above freezing in the winter, so she's always cold. Not anymore!

--Chris Noble

[The Slanket is an extra-large blanket fitted with sleeves to anchor it while you lie back on the couch.]

Slanket
$45
Available from Slanket Loungin

I would like to suggest the Dexter-Russell S496 Dough Scraper as a cool tool for the kitchen. Although designed specifically for the bread baker, this is a low-tech tool that is absolutely indispensable in the
kitchen. In addition to using it to scrape bread dough off the counter, we use ours to transport all manner of chopped food from counter to bowl, counter to skillet...

There are other dough scrapers out there, but this one, with its wide wooden handle is the best (IMHO.) Don't take my word though--I was in a local Sur la Table (kitchen store) recently and they had various bins of Dough Scrapers--the Dexter bin was empty!

-- Mark D. Esswein

Dexter-Russell Dough Scraper
$9
(S496)
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Dexter-Russell

I recently needed to remove several panels of particle board subflooring while preparing to install a hardwood floor. These panels were fastened with a gazillion ring-shanked nails, driven in by an overly enthusiastic pneumatic nail-gun operator. After much sweat and frustration with a conventional assortment of hammer claws, cat paws, and pry bars, I finally came across the magic tool. It's the Japanese manufactured SharkGrip Nail Puller. The tool very efficiently gets underneath the offending nail head and will even latch onto the nail's shank should the head shear off. It's available in various sizes and configurations.

-- Mike Pel

SharkGrip
$16
Available from Amazon
Additional sizes available from Coastal Tool

Manufactured by Shark Corp.

Outside of music, I prefer my working environment to be as quite as possible. One thing I've found which helps is a hard drive enclosure called "Smart Drive 2002".

The enclosure itself fits inside a 5 1/4" drive bay and houses a 3-1/2" drive. It is basically one big heat sink that completely encloses a hard drive with a combination of dampening foam and metal contact to reduce noise emissions as much as possible.

The hard drive inside will run a little hotter, but as long as the ambient temperature isn't too high and your machine has a base level of air flow this should not be an issue. (I've run a 150GB and a 120GB in a pair of enclosures stacked on top of each other for a year now and have had no issue with overheating.)

The enclosure comes in a standard version and a copper version, the latter providing more efficient heat transfer, marketed as being suitable for the hottest drives and possibly even lowering their operating temperature.

-- Alan W. Smith

Smart Drive 2002
$60
Available from End PC Noise