For years now there have been good skateboard video games out there (the Skate series by Electronic Arts being our favorite among them). But there’s something ultimately unsatisfying about controlling a virtual skateboarder by way of a joystick. Even Skate, which is a truly fun game, is really just glorified driving game with a skateboard on the screen instead of a car or motorcycle or whatever.

The new Tony Hawk: Ride offers to change that—the game for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 comes with a physical skateboard controller.

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Nikon doesn’t make it easy for consumers to decide which of their cameras to buy. The company produces many different models of SLRs with overlapping feature sets. And the model numbers doesn’t have a logical progression to them. What camera novice would guess that the Nikon D200 would be a more advanced camera than the D60 but less advanced than the lower-numbered D3?

To help sort through the options we took a close look at the three most popular Nikon SLR camera models on the market today: the D80, D90 and D300. Which one is best for you? Read on . . .

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In tough economic times there’s a special need for gifts that come at a cheap price but that feel expensive. So here are 10 items with a low cost and high WOW factor. As with our other gift guides, friends and family of Spot Cool Stuff are advised to read no further lest you ruin the surprise of your gift this holiday season. The rest of you, carry on . . .

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Browsing through the items on Light In The Box might not be quite the adventure and bargain offered by markets in China. But it isn't far off.

If you’ve traveled to China and been to an electronics or fashion market there chances are you’ve been struck by two facts:

1) How cheap the prices are (relative to North America and Europe); and

2) How many products are available there that aren’t in your home country.

To take advantage of these facts you could travel to China with extra room in your suitcase. Or, you could shop at what might be Spot Cool Stuff’s single favorite online store: Light In The Box.

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Looking for something to wear to your next costume party? If you have a car battery, spare 42-inch LCD TV—and a whole lot of time—you could go as an oversized working Apple iPhone.

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Spot Cool Stuff does not understand why most of the world’s alarm clocks wake their owners with a jarring buzz or annoying beep. We can imagine some worse ways to be awoken—eg. via cobra bite, bucket of cold water or missile attack—but not many.

Imagine instead being woken by the sound of birds chirping, wind chiming, jungles jungling (or by the radio playing or whatever tune you wish from your iPod) as a soft bedside light gradually brightens over a period of several minutes. That’s how one starts one’s day with the Philips HF3490 iPod clock radio.

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Regular readers of the Spot Cool Stuff Tech blog know what huge fans we are of the Kindle. They also know that our Kindle enthusiasm comes despite harboring a few gripes about Amazon’s e-book reader.

Well, today that list of gripes grew shorter by one: The Amazon Kindle is now available in an international version.

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We were very skeptical that the Looj would be able to get our gutters anything close to clean. Household robotic machines, after all, are best at routine tasks like making your coffee or grinding your beans to put into the coffee maker. Cleaning gutters is anything but predictable. There aren’t only loose leaves up there but packed pine needles, twigs, rodents (both alive and not), sticks, mud, Frisbees and an old set of our car keys.

Enter the Looj from iRobot.

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