Snow sport season is here and there are several gadgets out there that will enhance your ski and snowboard experience. If you’re looking for a single gadget that combines the ability to track your runs, listen to music and keep in touch with friends on the slopes, take a look at the Recon Mod Live goggles. The goggles use a Micro-Optic Display (or MOD) to project real-time information on a dashboard located on the lens of the goggles. A GPS chip updates your distance, speed, altitude and vertical drop on the dashboard display. The display also shows time, temperature and location and provides a Bluetooth connection to Android smartphones so you can see text messages and listen to music.

Recon Mod is available for about $400 at REI and Sport Chalet. Read a full review of the Recon Mod Live goggles on CNET.

iHome’s iP4 is an iPhone or iPod speaker that has retro style based on a boombox of the past.  The iP4 Boombox also has an FM radio, 4-inch carbon composite woofer and aux line-in jack.  For true boombox portability it runs on 6 D batteries or it can be used with an AC adaptor.

The iHome iP4 Stereo Boombox comes in either black or pink and sells for about $200.  Find out more about the iP4 on the iHome website.

The throwable panoramic camera allows users to take 360 degree pictures by simply tossing it in the air.  Developed by the Computer Graphics Group in Berlin, this ball contains 36 mobile phone cameras all set to take a picture at the same time when the ball’s accelerometer senses that it’s falling from the high point of a toss.  Each camera’s picture is stored in memory and can be used later with a custom application to put together amazing images.

The camera ball is currently only in its development stages, but the chances seem good that someone will turn this handy invention into a product.  As they say, one picture (or 36 in this case) is worth a thousand words.  See the camera ball in action in this YouTube video.

There are plenty of fitness gadgets out there as well as apps that turn any smartphone into a fitness gadget.  The Striiv fitness pedometer offers the unique ability to determine what your activity is.  Using TruMotion technology based on an accelerometer and gyroscope, the Striiv figures out whether you’re jogging, climbing stairs, dancing or doing some other type of exercise. 

As you move around doing your everyday activities, Striiv keeps track and uses your motion to award you points which can be used for charity donations at no cost to you.  You can also play games that are powered by your movement.

Striiv retails for $99 on the official Striiv website.

A Japanese company named REAL-f has come up with the technology to create what they call 3DPFs (“3 Dimension Photo Forms”). The process begins with a series of face photos taken from various angles. A composite image is created and imprinted on vinyl chloride resin that has been stretched over a mold. According to REAL-f, even details like the iris of the eye are accurately replicated.

Find out more about these amazing masks in this TechCrunch article.

Doctors and chiropractors report increasing numbers of people complaining of neck strain, shoulder pain and headaches that can be traced to hunching over mobile gadgets. Many are warning that bending over a small screen to text, watch videos and play games could cause a lifetime worth of debilitating pain. Dean L. Fishman, a chiropractor in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has renamed his practice the Text Neck Institute because the majority of his patients were visiting him with the same complaint.

Americans send more than 100 billion text message each month, so the text neck problem is bound to increase. To find out what you can due to avoid the consequences of too much texting, read this article on MSNBC.

Now that Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire, the inevitable questions about how it stacks up against the iPad are being raised. The Fire costs about $300 less, but has these disadvantages compared to the iPad:

• Smaller screen (7 inches compared to the iPad’s 10 inches)
• No camera or microphone
• No creative or business apps
• Limited onboard memory

The bottom line is that you want a tablet to watch movies or read books and find the iPad to be too expensive and too large to be truly portable, the Kindle Fire could be you’re best bet. If you want to edit photos, manage a spreadsheet or perform some other functional task, the iPad is probably the better choice.

Read more analysis of the iPad vs. Kindle Fire question on the MSNBC GadgetBox blog.

Windows 8, which will features a new interface called Metro, is due for release in late 2012. It will offer a new Windows paradigm for running, switching and working inside apps. Apps are represented as tiles rather than icons. When an app is running, it occupies the full screen with no menu buttons showing until you right-click your mouse (or swipe your finger on a touchscreen device). Many tech experts are predicting that Windows 8 will be an excellent OS for non-Apple tablets.

Read more details about Windows 8 in this Fast Company article. You can also see it a demo from the BUILD conference in this YouTube video.

Did you know that some gadgets and appliances continue to draw power even when turned off? This waste of energy is sometimes referred to as “vampire power.” Now there are devices that help you monitor and control this energy drain. One of these is ThinkEco’s Modlet, a wall plug that continuously monitors the energy usage of any device plugged into it.

Using an interface installed on your computer, you can shut off devices connect via Modlet or set a schedule for turning them off and on. Modlet communicates with the computer through a wireless connect or USB dongle.

ThinkEco claims that the Modlet can reduce overall energy usage by a household by 6 to 10 percent. It retails for about $45. You can find out more about Modlet on the official ThinkEco website.

The IFA Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin has just wrapped up (that’s show icon Miss IFA pictured above). This year, visitors to the huge expo had the chance to see a variety of iPad competitors, state-of-the-art television sets (some with 3D displays and touchpens), smartphones, kitchen appliances and hundreds of other useful and not-so-useful gadgets and gizmos.

Check out a summary of some of the best gadgets on the Huffington Post website.  You can also find out more on the official IFA website.