I don’t review cars often. I have a little Peugeot 206 that I drive like a go-kart and it gets me from A to B.  It’s nice but…well, lacking in gadgets and not exactly eco-friendly.

While I’m quite content with my little run-around, I’m still keen to keep an eye out for something a little better.

And if it can be eco-friendly as well, all the better!

So with rather excellent timing, the PR people at Ford got in touch with a new car they wanted Dork Adore to try out. In fact, they wanted us to drive it all the way down to eco hotel The Scarlet in Cornwall.

The Ford Fiesta ECOnetic is part of Ford’s eco-friendly range of cars that have “ULTRA LOW CO2 output without sacrificing power and performance.”

So, does eco-friendly mean you scrimp on the fun? 

In a word, no.

The Ford Fiesta Econetic is packed full of those gadgets I hanker for, including an eco-mode to help drivers achieve better fuel economy and Auto-Start-Stop which turns off the vehicle when it’s idle (say, at traffic lights).

Sadly our car didn’t have the rear camera that some of the other tester cars had, but the general consensus was that it was a handy tool (especially if you’re a nervous reverse parker).

We did have the Gear Shift Indicator, which lets you know when you need to change up a gear. This works with the ECOnetic system to get the most out of your car: you produce more power, but with less fuel.

There are all sorts of other eco-friendly tools too, but most of them work away with very little input from me.

Final thoughts

If you’ve driven a Ford Fiesta before, the actual driving experience won’t be hugely different. It’s just as good to drive on the country roads as it is to speed up the motorway (and it really can speed). But the gadgets enhance the driving experience, and it would be foolish to not consider an eco-friendly car when your transport needs an upgrade.

Prices start at £15,845.00 on the road for a 3-door Ford Fiesta Titanium Econetic.

PS. What about The Scarlet eco hotel?

Visiting The Scarlet eco-friendly hotel in Cornwall was definitely an added bonus to trying out the Ford Fiesta Econetic. The building itself is beautiful, with outside pools, balconies in all the rooms and scented fires that help you relax straight away.

The bedrooms are slightly odd….I think I’m a little too reserved for a bath tub in the middle of a shared room and a wet room shower that leaves the toilet soaking. That said, the rest of the room was luxurious, proving that being conscientious needn’t mean going basic.

A word of warning though, you’ll get very little wi-fi signal here. You can use the hotel’s, but I think they like to encourage you to disconnect. It goes in with the whole ‘retreat’ atmosphere I guess!

Ford Fiesta ECOnetic official website.

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With 2012 about to sit squarely on top of 2011 and flatten it to memory, we can be comfortable in the knowledge that children’s book apps are now coming into their own.

The industry that started out with a nice (if limited) Alice in Wonderland, has evolved into a beautiful medium, rich with invention. Stories are no longer there just to be read. They are to be lived!

So which ones are the best?

Kid’s stories on the iPad: A roundup

The team at Nosy Crow are going great guns, pushing lovely illustration into the interactive digital world.

Bizzy Bear, The Three Little Pigs and Cinderella, all combine great visuals and an engaging level of interactive design.

Firmly rooted in storytelling, they complement Nosy Crow’s printed output perfectly. My young, two-year-old tester approves, as do I. These apps really are very good.

Another treat is Hugless Douglas, a great example of a picture book transformed into an app.

Best described as a super-enhanced audio book, with Alan Davies providing the wonderful narration, it turns David Melling’s book into an app worth having.

Peppa Pig’s a winner

Other apps out there, pushing picture books into the future are Hide Run Growl, narrated by a CBeebies presenter.

I found it a bit simplistic compared to Hugless Douglas. My iPad-loving toddler enjoyed all the growling, but was soon disappointed that it didn’t do more, especially after playing with more interactive appery. So young to be so jaded.

Representing children’s TV, you’ve got Peppa Pig’s Party Time (a real hit with my young tester, particularly in the section where you mix the birthday cake. Highly recommended), Postman Pat, and – just like the show itself – a quirky, slightly clunky, charming Ivor the Engine app.

Who wouldn’t want to be Jones Steam?!

Pixar and co

It’s no surprise that an ex-Pixar designer is behind the much talked about The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore – it looks beautiful. But while it’s a nice (if bitty) diversion, the short film does it much better.

Perhaps my two-year-old is a bit young to appreciate the more interactive elements, but some magic was missing for me too.

Another option is the free read-along Toy Story app from Pixar, which is simple but good fun.

And there’s also the lovely Nursery Rhymes app (Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime review on Dork Adore), worth getting for the chance to chop the tails off the Three Blind Nice (and reattach them) over and again – though my daughter would love it even more if it sang instead of said the songs.

Children’s apps have really matured over 2011. Next year’s going to be great.

Let us know which children’s apps your kids are loving at the moment – we’d love to try them!

Alex Milway is a children’s author and illustrator. His latest book, The Magma Conspiracy is out now with Walker Books. For more news, pictures and random gubbins read Alex Milway’s blog .

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I’m a huge fan of the home-made gift at Christmas. For Christmasses past I’ve received hand-knitted mittens, homemade plum chutney and wallets with Manga characters stitched on.

Meanwhile, I’ve inflicted on loved ones gifts such as garishly striped scarves, a tie – covered in sequins and the word “DAD” in felt appliqué – and C90s with painstakingly detailed inlays.

As the last order-in-time-for-Christmas dates approach in shopping sites, I’d much rather spend a day cosy indoors hand-making presents for the geeks in my life than face the horror of Christmas shopping on a real-life high street.

New book The State Of Craft (edited by Victoria Woodcock, Cicada Books) offers plenty of inspiration for presents.

The book is a mix of crafting tutorials (knitting, French knitting, sewing, cross-stitch and crochet), interviews with professional British crafters, and craft projects.

The tutorials are probably a bit too brief for someone with no previous experience, but they’re a good reminder if you know the basics. Of the actual projects, there are some seriously geeky treats amongst the sixty-plus illustrated instructions and patterns.

Water Pistol lights

Maris Schiess contributes a tutorial on making festive decorations using fairy lights and cheap water pistols. Quick, colourful, and Christmassy.

Dazzling 3-D Tee

Next up, something to wear on Christmas day. Mr Wingate has provided a tutorial on making a brilliantly eye boggling, screen-printed t-shirt. It’s a little unclear from the tutorial whether it’s actually 3-D, but certainly the layering of yellow, pink and blue prints make for a striking geometric print.

It also requires more specialist materials than some of the other projects – a proper silkscreen is required – but it seems like a good intro to printing your own graphic t-shirts. Which seems like an eminently useful skill to me.

Mini Protest Banner

Cross-stitch, cross-stitch! Something about the combination of embroidery and pixellation makes this seem like the geekiest of the crafts.

Craftivist Collective are producers of handmade mini banners for non-violent activisim, and for this book have provided a brilliant pattern for a Superman cross-stitch, with the words “Good planets are hard to find & I can’t f*@king save you this time”.

Again, this looks like a quick project to whip up in the evenings leading up to Christmas – if you can’t face any more drunken office parties.

Always useful to know how to embroider an “@” symbol, too.

Invaders Tote Bag

My absolute favourite piece from the book has to be Urban Cross Stitch’s Invaders Tote Bag featuring – you guessed it – an embroidered Space Invaders screen shot, complete with high score, credits, and laser beam.

The project also features water-soluble cross-stitch canvas, which I’d never heard of before but am now dying to get my hands on.

The finished bag looks brilliant in the photos, but it also inspired me to think of what else could be improved by the addition of hand-stitched aliens. There’s a whole world of fabrics looking mightily in need of some boxy alien spacecraft to me now…

State Of Craft is a fun, easy-on-the-eye craft book with plenty of nerdish treats between its covers.

But, to be honest, if the handmade present idea seems a bit too much like hard work this Christmas, there’s still time to go to Amazon – or a lovely local bookshop – and just give the book itself to any craft fans in your life.

State Of Craft is out now (£14.95, Cicada Books)

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Apparently, rapper Wretch 32 recently lost all his lyrics for his new album when he dropped his phone in the bath.

‘I now know to back up my phone regularly’ he said.

I have another option for him in the form of this smart phone waterproof case from Gizoo.

The Aqua phone case protects your iPhone or Blackberry from water, whilst you carry on using it as normal. Gizoo suggests this is useful for taking photos underwater, or when you’re at the pool on holiday. However, I was excited for the much more mundane reason that it meant I could play Words with Friends in the bath.

Gizoo kindly sent me over a case to test out. You can see how I got on after the jump.

Waterproof or washout?

Initially, I was terrified. Put my beloved phone in the bath? Deliberately? Even with the case it seemed a bit wrong. I was very apprehensive, so I approached the situation with a several stage experiment, like the scientist I am.

Firstly, I tested the case on its own. A piece of absorbent paper is included in the case for this very purpose and after opening & closing the case once to make sure I was doing it right, I threw the case in the bath.

On removing the case, no water had leaked through into the paper. So far so good. Now it was time to get brave. I put my phone in, checked the seals and ran the tap over the case.

Praying fervently that my beloved iPhone would be ok, I dried off the case to avoid any water transfer and opened it up. Hurrah, it worked! Now more confident in the cases abilities, I decided to get really brave. I submerged my iPhone into the sink full of water.

Heart racing, I took it out, dried it off and opened it up. It was bone dry, much to my relief. I tested the functionality of the touch pad underwater and this was fine too which means that you can use your phone as a handy underwater camera if wanted. The case fits pretty much all smart phones out there right now.

It’s available at £19.95 from Gizoo.

It might go against all your instincts to expose such expensive pieces of technology to water but trust me on this one, it works.

In the interests of honesty this case was provided to me free of charge by the good people of Gizoo, but the opinions remain all my own.

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It seems only recently that “contactless” payment technology has received airtime, so I was surprised to discover it has been going for several years. It’s just that retailers are only now getting into it.

The premise is simple, you get a card which you can top up online (it’s not linked to a bank account so you can feel secure there) and you can then use that card to pay  where you see the contactless payment symbol. All you have to do is tap it on the reader.

My main worry with it was the ease of which I lose cards. Without a pin number I’d feel insecure about someone else getting hold of it and spending my hard earned cash, although spending limits do apply to avoid any disasters.

So I was excited when Dork Adore was offered the chance to try out the brand new contactless payment watches from watch 2 pay. It’s a lot harder to lose something that’s attached to your wrist and, like any self respecting geek, I love a good multifunctional gadget.

But how did I get on with this bit of hi-tech?

Fashionable contactless watches

The watch is a collaboration between Mastercard and watch manufacturer LAKS. It comes along with a prepaid card to use as well.

On a superficial level the watch looks great and not at all ‘gimmicky’, which was a worry for me (I am the fashion dork, after all). Even without the payment function I’d be more than happy to wear it on a daily basis and have had quite a few compliments on the style; fairly important is you’re going to invest in one and use it.

Setting up the watch is very simple and it comes with easy to follow instructions; just pop the sim card into the side of the watch, register your card online in a few steps and you’re off!

A lot of retailers are utilising contactless payment in their stores now. I decided to go to Pret-a-Manger to try out the watch by buying some lunch. In all honestly I felt very self-conscious as I waited for the cashier to add up my total, realising that asking to pay by using my watch was going to make me look a bit mad.

I needn’t have worried.

Scanning the watch took a manner of seconds but the difficult part was trying to get out of the shop after the cashiers realised what I’d done. ‘Are you going to fly off in your spaceship now?’ one asked.

It really did feel like I was in the future, and I had to show it off to various staff and customers before I could leave the shop. Disregarding the delay this caused, with a queue of hungry workers behind me and a limited lunch break the benefits of paying in such a short amount of time are pretty obvious, and it was the same when I tried a different store a few days later. I’d guess that the total time for me to pay was a couple of seconds, with no scrabbling to find my purse or waiting for the card machine.

Watch the pennies

In short, this piece of technology is highly impressive and actually genuinely useful, something a lot of gadgets can’t really claim. Not being linked to a bank account provides security, but it also allows you budget effectively since you can load it with only what you’re allowed to spend.

For example, you could pop your lunch money for the week on there and avoid the pitfalls of getting a tenner a day out and somehow frittering away the rest!

The watch is available in eight colours £99 from watch2pay.co.uk.

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Smartphones have become almost ubiquitous over the last couple of years. Even my mother has a touch screen phone, although she hasn’t quite grasped typing on it: she still sends me messages saying things like ‘Crime home soon’.

I think then that I can speak with confidence when I say that we’ve nearly all of us experienced the pain of cold hands whilst trying to type a message at a bus stop or walking to walk in the winter; touch screens just don’t work with your fingers covered.

But worry not! There’s a solution to this problem in the form of these Smart Gloves for Smart Phone from Gizoo. I gave them a test drive for the benefit of you lucky Dork Adore readers.

Listen carefully, here comes the science bit.

You see, the way a smart phone knows what you want it do is via the electrical current travelling from your fingers to the screen. A layer of capacitive material under the screen monitors the change in charge depending on where your finger is touching the phone.

But when you’re wearing gloves they act as an insulator, effectively blocking the electrical current and stopping the phone responding to your touch. The Smart Gloves get over this hurdle using conductive material woven into the tips of of your main screen-surfing fingers so that the current can still pass through and allow the touch screen to function.

I was initially worried about this conductive yarn, assuming it would be irritating to the fingers or scratchy like wire wool, but I was happily proven wrong. The gloves are comfortable and warm. I was genuinely excited when I tried them out with my iPhone and realised that they worked as well as my bare hands, even when it came to typing a text (though unfortunately they did nothing to help my terrible spelling).

It’s no exaggeration when I say that owning these gloves is going to change my life. I get horribly cold hands and I’m also horribly addicted to Twitter, but now I can stand at a bus stop and tell the internet all about it! I’ve already wowed colleagues and family with them; I can definitely see them popping up in a few people’s Christmas stockings. The gloves are compatible with all smart phone and are available at Gizoo for £7.99.

In the interests of honesty these gloves were provided to me free of charge by the good people of Gizoo, but the opinions remain all my own.

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There’s a constant war of attrition going on between me and my extensive range of body hair.

If I’m not epilating, waxing or shaving, I’m probably just leaving it all to lie fallow in the hope that a sudden gust of wind won’t reveal the thermal layer of leg hair hidden under my maxi dress.

But could it be that the E>One from E-Swin holds the key to near-constant leg loveliness?

Yes, it could — though you might need to take out a mortgage to acquire one…

E>One that I want

Using the wonders of IPL lasers, the E>One sends a flash of hair-quelling light straight onto your follicles. The hair doesn’t return for a good few weeks, after which it is cowed and craven and more than happy to rethink its decision to sprout in inconvenient locations all over your body.

I had the E>One for quite a few weeks, but I only got round to testing it out once. I was really impressed with the results even after that initial use. The hair returned reluctantly, and in smaller numbers; I wouldn’t be surprised to see it moving on for good if I had that opportunity to give it a few more sessions.

So why did I only test it once in all the time I had it?

Well, hair removal is never a barrel of giggles at the best of times, but at least I can usually distract myself with something on TV. Because the light is not safe for human eyeballs, you have to wear special goggles while doing it. That means you’d also have to make everyone in the room with you wear special goggles. So TV isn’t really an option (and anyway, everything will look yellow through your sexy plastic lab specs).

There’s also a fair amount of mess to be made. You’ll need to squeeze gel all over your leg — the same sort of gel you get doused in when having an ultrasound — and you’ll also need ample space for the fairly large unit. Oh, and if you’ve got moles, you’ll be spending some time covering them over with the stickers provided.

That said, there’s still considerably less paraphernalia than you need for waxing.

There’s also a whole lot less pain.

Although the light flashes can prickle (and get increasingly close to feeling like electric shocks as you turn up the intensity), they’re a walk in the park if you’re used to waxing or epilating.

You can alter the settings for skin colour and hair thickness (unlike most other units, it works on tanned and brown skin, but it’s not suitable for black skin types). It’s not a particularly easy set up, with a thick book of instructions to plough through before you can unleash the light.

Once you’ve got it set how you need it, however, it’s plain sailing from there on. In fact, all you need to do is make your way around your (freshly shaven) hairy areas and wait a few days for the growing hair falls out.  until the hair makes its patchy recovery (around five weeks if your hair is feisty like mine, up to nine weeks if you’ve got bashful follicles).

Skip to the end

The E>One is a lot faster to use than units like the iPulse Smooth Skin because its light panel is about twice the size. The strength of the laser means it’s also the only unit available that promises near-permanent hair removal after around 10 uses (after that, you’ll need to use it a couple of times a year).

I would love to give this system an unequivocal thumbs up. I really wasn’t expecting to be so impressed, but it really did feel like the solution to all my hair-related problems.

However.

It costs £1499!

That is A LOT of money. And since E-Swin reckons you’ll only need to use it about ten times before you’re body-bald for life, the cost-per-use isn’t great either. You can’t even make it sound all that reasonable if you add up the money you might spend over a lifetime on self-waxing (although it will save money in the long run if you pay for waxing).

The only solution to this problem is group purchase. Club together with friends, buy yourself a unit, share it round and once you’ve all done your ten sessions, start renting it out to any hirsute acquaintances.

You can buy the E>One direct from E-Swin, (payment options let you pay by instalment).

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Apparently, it’s summer and nothing goes with hot weather quite like ice cream (and if you’ve not had any sunshine, ice cream will help cheer you up!) Throw a game of catch into the equation and you’ve got the perfect park-based pastime.

Step in, the Ice Cream Ball from Firebox.

The Ice Cream Ball, £26.49, allows you to make your own ice cream without the need for any power sockets, so you could use it on camping trips or at festivals.  Put your ingredients in one end of the ball, ice and rock salt in the other, and then start tossing!

Not too violently though, nobody wants a smashed up gadget and mess all over your carpet.

Twenty minutes of this gets you a pint of ice cream. If the texture/consistency isn’t to your liking you can simply roll it around a bit more. It seems like magic but it’s even better: it’s science.

Here comes the science bit!

The ingenious device uses the rock salt (don’t worry, this doesn’t go into your ice cream!) and ice to produce a substance with a freezing point below that of water (just ice would make the process too slow and reach an equilibrium before it completed). Therefore, the ice/salt mixture must draw heat from it’s surroundings to melt and therefore lower the temperature of your ice cream mixture quickly to freeze it into a delicious treat.

Who knew the Second Law of Thermodynamics could be so fun?

I’ve wanted to make home-made ice cream for ages but am frankly just too lazy, so this gadget offers quite the creative solution. It also gives you a chance to play around with ice cream flavours; it’s basically an experiment and you owe it to science to do it.

That’s an order.

Ice Cream Ball

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So, I’m a bit late to the Roomba party. They’ve been around for a good few years (and have led to the creation of this genius kitten video) but I’ve only recently got my hands on one.

I got the opportunity last week to try out the latest model and being terribly lazy, I greeted the offer of a cleaning droid with an enthusiastic yes.

Here’s how I got on.

iRobot Roomba Review

If you’re not already familiar with the concept of the Roomba, it’s basically a flat, round vacuum cleaner that cleans your carpet without any input from you.

You can schedule it to start cleaning at a certain time (say 11am when you’re at work), or just hit the clean button, and it’ll scoot around your room in a (apparently) haphazard fashion.

It’s a complementary product, so it won’t replace your standard vacuum. It’s sort of a maintenance product, to keep you going for a few weeks between proper cleaning days. iRobot, the bods behind the Roomba, claim it’s like a microwave, designed to work alongside, but not replace, your oven.

Wins points for:

• Hoovering. It’s pretty efficient at picking up most of the bits around your carpet, particularly dog and human hair. And all those clever little sensors inside it mean it can navigate around, and occasionally under, the nooks and crannies of your room. Ooh, and it has a ‘dirt detection’ sensor, so if it finds a really dusty patch it spends a little longer on it.
• When it’s finished, or it’s low on battery, it finds its way back to its charging dock. Marvellous.
• Scheduling. I love this function, and can see it being brilliant for those who want to come home to a clean home.

Loses points for:

Four alternative uses for the Roomba

Roomba aren’t just for cleaning y’know….

• Play Roomba Buckaroo. See who can pile the most on the top, without it all falling off.
• Save vital energy by getting the Roomba to transport your dinner/remote controller/Sex on The Beach cocktail across the room. It might take a while, and the majority of its cargo might be redistributed across your newly cleaned carpet, but it’s easier than actually getting up.
• Amusing the dog for half an hour. Also, small children.
• Recreate Pac-Man.

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