The sun's shining, everyone's packing up their manual phone-chargers, dongles, tent-lights and envisaging holidays filled with sun, grass, music and summer gadgets.
But - sorry to lower the tone - have you remembered your tick remover? And yes by ticks we mean those ugly little creatures that bite you. And by tick remover we mean a cunning device that extracts the afore-mentioned tick from your poor skin without it regurgitating its stomach into you.
More after the jump...


Pioneer has developed an enthusiastically multitasking navigation and entertainment system that will allow voice control of iPods and Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones.
It seems green gadgets are definitely the new, erm, piano black finish (yes, yes, barrell scrape-y), because this definitely isn't the first wind-up lantern I've seen this year.
The family of phones that started with the popular
Bladerunner has moved the GPS child tracker on by working with Asset Monitoring Solutions on a rechargeable unit designed to fit snugly in a pouch sewn into its jackets. The device has a 15 hour battery, and tracks wearers to within 43 square feet. Alerts on your child's wearabouts are delivered by email or SMS according to your customisation, with GPS data updated every 10 seconds.
I'm not sure why I'm giving this particular gadget a write-up; possibly because it's so unspeakably grim that it's car crash fascinating. The Bumper Dumper is a camping portaloo (or "potty" if you're North American) that is designed to hook on to the back of your car and help you, erm, evacuate in comfort.
KoolTrax is a downloadable, relatively cheap service that can turn any GPS phone into a tracker. The company behind in,
You know, as much as I don't agree with parents leaving young children unattended there comes a time to let go. I was one of those nice (okay, dull) children who pretty much told my parents where I'd be and when I'd get back and more or less stuck to it, so maybe that's why I'm not fussed about gluing tracers to the kids I might one day have.
From: The feminist reading of a perfectly harmless memory device