CANE AND ABLE

Calfee Bamboo Mountain bike frame $2,695 (£1,368) www.calfeedesign.com

Is this the ultimate green machine? The mountain bike pictured has a frame made from bamboo, inspired by a project that is producing environmentally sound bicycles for people in Ghana. Bamboo frames are about as rigid as aluminium ones and as heavy as the steel type, so they can provide a smooth ride over the rutted roads of Africa – or the potholes of London. The frame is held together by natural fibres and resin, and a basic bike can be assembled with nothing more fancy than a Swiss army knife, although you’ll have to choose components to turn the frame into a full bicycle. The only ecological downside is that you’ll have to have this handcrafted beauty shipped all the way from its Californian factory.

SPEEDY SNAPPER

Casio Exilim EX-F1 camera, about $1,000 (£507) www.exilim.co.uk 020 8450 9131

Digital cameras used to be much slower than their film counterparts, but those days are long gone. The all-digital EX-F1 is the world’s fastest consumer-level camera, capable of shooting 60 frames per second (fps) at its full 6Mp resolution, or a blistering 1200fps at a lower quality for ultra-slow-motion video clips. In fact, it’s so fast that it can even take pictures “in the past”. There’s no time machine involved, though, it can be set to record pictures constantly to a buffer memory, only saving them to its memory card if you hit the shutter-release button. The Casio is fast at night, too, and with flash is capable of snapping 20 photos in one burst, at a rate of seven images per second, without having to wait for the flash to recharge itself. It has a powerful 12x zoom lens that lets you get closer to the action, and an antishake function to keep pictures crisp. It can also record high-definition digital movies, and uses an HDMI socket for playback on modern HD televisions. However, high-speed and high-definition shooting will fill memory cards in a trice, so you should budget £10-£20 for a large 4GB card – or even buy a pair.

RADIO STAR

Nokia N78 mobile phone €350 (£260) without contract www.nokia.co.uk

The annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week saw phone makers showcasing their latest technology. Among the new devices was this 3G handset from Nokia. Like many phones, it can pick up FM radio stations and play MP3 tunes, but unlike others it can also broadcast the tunes. Take your N78 on the road, tune it to your choice of FM frequency and it can beam the tunes to your car’s radio (this type of widget struggles to work in cities, however). If concentrating on your music means you get lost, the N78 has a built-in GPS receiver and mapping software to get you back on track. It can even “tag” its 3.2Mp snaps with location data, letting you view on a map exactly where your took each photo. The N78 will be available from the summer.

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