A handful of companies have been working on bags with built-in batteries capable of charging gadgets on-the-go. Most of those efforts have relied on slow and fussy solar panels to charge the bag. A few others are either very expensive or don’t work well. One very promising battery bag from Quirky, a cool online store of crowdsourced products, spent a year available for pre-order but never went into production.

So Spot Cool Stuff is thrilled that there’s one company getting it right: Powerbag.

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You needn’t be an international banker, royal family member or Scarlett Johansson to want to keep your private files private. Basic digital security is something everyone should (do but few people actually do) practice.

One easy step you can take: When you save your files to an external disk drive, especially one you are likely to travel around with, make it a biometric drive. Like the LaCie Rugged All-Terrain Fingerprint-Secured External Hard Drive.

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Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Sony and other big tech companies have been working hard to create all-in-one gadgets with multiple functionality. But a funny thing happened as they designed gadgets that do more—consumers bought more gadgets. Between smart phones, portable gaming devices, tablet computers, digital cameras, Bluetooth headsets, GPS navigation systems and the like, lots of people now travel with more electronics than ever before.

And that means they travel with more gadgets that need charging than ever before.

To the rescue comes the Chargepod, a mobile charging and plug adapter system that can charge up to six devices at once.

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Online super seller Amazon announced today a completely revised line-up of their Kindle family of eBook readers and tablet computers. The announcement included good news for nearly everyone (except perhaps Apple—we’ll get to that in a bit).

For the thrifty, there’s the new entry-level Kindle that can be had for a mere US$79. For the tech savvy and lovers of iPads, the colorful Kindle Fire holds out the promise of being a full fledged tablet computer. For fans of the current Kindles, you get a more powerful model called the Kindle Touch that will be available with 3G or without 3G.

Our overview of each:

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In a previous post we reviewed the Spot (no relation to Spot Cool Stuff), a portable GPS tracker and SOS satellite messenger. In addition to keeping a catrographical record of your travels, the Spot let you send out SOS messages to emergency responders.

Send out—but not receive. And even then you could only send one of three messages: OK, Help and 911.

The upcoming DeLorme inReach is a satellite messenger that not only let’s you send customized SOS text messages but receive them too.

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The Italian company hi-Fun specializes in adding speakers to items that aren’t necessarily improved by their addition. (They also seem expert at added a “hi-” prefix to their product names). The company makes the hi-Sleep, which is a pillow with built-in speakers. There’s the hi-Head, a hat with built-in speakers. And the hi-George is a teddy bear that can both hug an iPod and blast tunes out of its feet.

The hi-product that most caught our attention? The hi-Sun—a beach towel with built-in speakers.

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RIP, Flip camcorder. Today your parent company, Cisco, announced it is will be ceasing your production.

Cisco’s announcement puzzles Spot Cool Stuff at bit. Flip was a trusted brand with strong sales—at the time of writing its products ranked 3rd, 7th, 8th and 10th on Amazon’s list of top selling camcorders. Perhaps with camcorders being incorporated into an increasing variety of products—netbooks, tablets, smartphones, ultra-compact cameras, and so on—Cisco felt the Flip couldn’t keep up.

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Amazon offers two “current” versions of its popular e-book reader: the Kindle 2 and, as of July 2010, the Kindle Graphite DX.

Both Kindles are among Spot Cool Stuff’s favorite gadgets, especially for traveling. But why? And what’s the difference between the two Kindle models? And which one is better?

For the answers, Dear Reader, continue on . . .

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