Cute Little Taser for Ugly Times

Diana Forbes

LOS ANGELES -- On the road, if ever you are given the option to fight or flight, here's a little help in your defense. It's a tiny pink taser that packs a mean punch. It should stun aggressors long enough of you to flee. Next, Gadget Grrl has found a mouse that she likes for its "intuitive feel." The MX-Air works in mid-air. It's cool not needing a mousepad or desk to use it.

Pink Taser $16.42 strapya-world.com

Crowded subways and cities can lead to some uncomfortable and unwanted body contact. This little device may be the answer for many female mobile executives. It's a small, very cute-looking Pink Seal Taser from Taser (TASR).

To operate the Taser, you depress on a button located near the tail, once depressed, the tail snaps down, revealing two contact points which then emit the taser charge.

The juice on this won't bring down a normal-sized male. But the surprise and sting on this thing could provide just enough time to get out of a situation or alert a subway police.

It takes an Lr1 battery.

MX-Air Mouse $149.99 logitech.com

There are mice and then there are input devices that do far more than that. The MX-Air works in mid-air. So you don't have to use a mousepad or be confined to a desktop.

You can use the MX-Air to play media files and cruise the Internet. There is a built-in Li-ion rechargeable battery and it will operate within a 30 feet range.

I liked the intuitive feel on this mouse.

What's new here is that to adjust volume you wave the mouse to the left or right and you can switch to the next music track by a flip of the wrist.

Good news is that this will run on either a PC or Mac, so both Windows Media Player and iTunes are covered.

Site to see: Opera Mobile

If you have not tried Opera on your smartphone or mobile device, you are missing what I consider the best mobile browser out there.

Opera Mobile is available for S60 and Windows mobile handsets. It can be downloaded for $24.

If you're not sure your phone is supported, you can visit the mobile download page to verify whether your phone is supported. If Opera Mobile is not available for your phone, try fast and free cell phone browser, Opera Mini. It runs on almost any phone -- even phones that you wouldn't expect to run a full Web browser.

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