Micro Spy Remote

I now carry *two* multi-tools in my bag at all times. The Leatherman has been joined by Think Geek's Micro Spy Remote. You point the teeny little remote at any TV you want to control and hold down the mute button -- as soon as your target TV mutes, you let up on the button. Now the channel, volume, mute, input and power buttons are all tuned to control the TV you've hijacked.

Tired of watching soccer at your favorite pub? Switch it to Rock of Love Mystery Bus.

Vantec SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter

This thing just saved me a world of pain. Rather than try to resurrect yet another spyware infested windoze machine long enough to pull the important filez off it ... I plugged the IDE disk into this adapter, attached it to my Mac, and stuffed everything into a folder where I could burn it to a disc.

The thing handles the permutations of 2.5", 3.5" and 5.25" IDE or SATA drives, thanks to a thorough combination of power and data cables that are included.

And it was twenty-five bucks!

Wifi Autodiscovery Soap Box

Some clever attendee at sxsw set up a politically-inspired shared-device on the wifi network. (Easily done with file sharing or printer sharing settings.) When browsing the available wifi networks, their device's name appears in the menu of auto-discovered choices.