A round-up of some of the latest gadgets available with Adam Harvey
• Surely the worst part about any journey on public transport is having to listen to the likes of Lil' Wayne or Ludacris via the tinny mobile-phone speakers of some posturing 15-year-old who wishes he was from Compton, not Clontarf. Blow his music out of the top deck of the bus with your own choice, played on the 66cm-wide iPod boombox (above, €240, www.roughtrade. com). It's a formidable iPod dock with old-skool attitude: two 12-watt speakers, with ports for USB flash drives and other memory cards to play back MP3s. Those other passengers are going to wish they had noise-cancelling headphones.
• Now teenagers can appear menacing while remaining dry to the bone. This waterproof, breathable hoodie (above, €69, www.puddleducks.ie) is made for skulking in Irish weather. Youngsters can retain fashion credibility while lurking outside shopping centres in the drizzle, quietly enjoying the hoodie's waterproof and breathable qualities while still appearing to be miserable. Their friends need not know that it's from a company called Puddleducks.
• The ucube (above, €110, www.futoncompany.co.uk) is hardly for taking on holiday, but it's a travel gadget nonetheless - as the location for your child's imagination to take a trip. The cube folds out into a kid's armchair for reading, watching TV or gaming - and, if all the excitement gets too much, it extends into a bed. It measures 64cm by 64cm by 40cm as a cube or almost two metres long as a bed.
aharvey@irish-times.ie