To those of you who heard the “Best Tech Gifts for Dad” segment on The Pete Wilson Show today, thank you for coming by and checking out The Geek Beat. We hope you’ll find some useful info here, and will visit us again for more.

We’re finalizing reviews of the products that were covered on today’s show, and will be posting them over the next few days. However, we know some of you need access to these products now. Rather than have you wait, we’ve included a complete list of those products (with links) below:

The Helio Ocean
Pure Digital’s Flip Video Pocket Camcorder
The Chargepod by Callpod
One True Media
OSIM iSqueeze Calf and Foot Massager
Brookstone 5-Day Wireless Weather Forecaster
I-Tech Virtual Laser Keyboard
Brookstone Super-Sized Remote
Logitech Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote

Thanks again for dropping by. Don’t be afraid to leave a comment if you have a question or just have a thought you’d like to share.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And if there is a downside to being a tech geek, besides the whole not-being-able-to-get-a-date thing, it’s that this is an almost impossibly high standard for most technology to reach. Nothing is magical to us, because we know how it works.

Except for I-Tech’s Virtual Laser Keyboard (VLK). (more…)

There’s not much in life dad can lay claim to; unless, of course, you count taking out the trash. By the time your kids reach adulthood, just about everything Dad considered to be his and his alone has been borrowed, broken, beaten-up or just plain co-opted by others in the house.

Except the remote.

The last vestige of alpha maleness remaining in our PC world (the other PC), many “enlightened” men still reserve exclusive control of the TV remote like some treasured weapon of war from a bygone era. Even the most sensitive philosopher will viciously smack any hand that dare reach for this treasured icon of masculine domination, and grunt, “remote mine!” like some irritated Neanderthal.

We at The Geek Beat say celebrate this last crumb of Dad exclusivity by giving your pop a shiny new remote for Father’s Day. We offer the following two reviews for your consideration:

Logitech’s line of programmable remotes have long been the king of multi-device controllers, allowing users not just to control a device, but to cluster device operations into tasks that make it easy to run even the most complex home entertainment set-ups.

With the Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote, Logitech has severed its last tie to the traditional remote by eliminating 90 percent of the buttons. Instead, most of the remote (which isn’t even remote-shaped anymore), is a big touchscreen that configures itself automatically with the controls necessary for the task at hand, and that task alone. This makes the 1000 capable of controlling a plethora of devices while at the same time operating like a single-device remote. (more…)

With everything electronic these days getting smaller, it’s nice once in a while to see something getting big – really big. Big enough for those of us with poor vision and big, clumsy fingers to still hit the right button every time.

That seems to be the idea behind Brookstone’s new Super-Sized Remote, which is a gigantic slab-sized universal remote control measuring 5″ x 11″ x 1″. In all other respects this is a fairly basic 6-in-1 remote control offering one-button selection for TV, VCR, DVD, satellite, cable box and an auxiliary device (and codes for 296 of the most popular A/V equipment). The buttons are correspondingly huge and glow-in-the-dark, meaning if you ever lose the remote again you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. (more…)