Well, my friends, it is time for me to hang my Dadget bag on the door and leave my rechargeable batteries at reception. Dadgets.info was only ever going to be a 12 month project and here we are, 12 months on.

It has been a fun time – combining my old passions of writing and gadgets with my new passion of fatherhood. Henry and I have reviewed an £8 toy car and a £1,500 pushchair. You’ve learnt about Henry’s sandy balls and his love of strip clubs. And all the while you’ve seen my little boy develop from a cheeky little boy into a grown man. Well, a grown 17 month old.

Thank you so much for your support over the year.  I would also like to pass on a very special thank you to my wife, Dawn, for being Dadgets.info’s chief photographer, and to Stefan Korn and all the folks at DIYFather.com for their continued encouragement. Please join my mailing list if you want to hear what I get up to next!

Complete archive

Reviews

X-MI X-Mini Capsule Speaker

Y-Cam Knight Video Baby Monitor

HeartString Baby’s Companion

Coleman Sundome Beach Shelter

Taga convertible bike/pushchair

Playtray clip-on tray for the Stokke Tripp Trapp highchair

Brother Max 3-in-1 Digital Thermometer

Wife approval

Tip 1 – All gadgets revolve around your children

Tip 2 – Discuss prices in foreign currency

Tip 3 – Be a woman about it

Tip 4 – Use her cycle

Tip 5 – Her illness, your opportunity

Tip 6 – Use eBay, but very carefully

Buying guides

Pocket money portable speakers

Video baby monitors

Family beach sun shelters and sun tents

Clip-on trays for the Stokke Tripp Trapp highchair

Child thermometers

Cool dadgets

Dadgets for steamy hotel rooms

Slingbox – you need one but you don’t know it yet

Prove your paternal love – buy a hard disk

Dadgets in action – Henry’s first tooth

The arousing LED Lenser P7 torch

Enjoy a bit of nipple? Try some tube seal!

Cheeky Henry defeats the Y-Cam Knight

Daddy’s Casio GW-056E-3VER watch saves the world!

Taga, the strip club facilitator

Taga is here!

Legalised baby racing

iPhone apps

iPhone Baby Apps – Pre-Conception

iPhone Baby Apps – During Conception

iPhone Baby Apps – Post-conception

iPhone Baby Apps - During labour

iPhone Baby Apps - Post-labour

Ideas

I resisted the Twitter craze for quite a while, but I recently caved in and setup my account and then began ‘following’ a mixture of famous people and friends. I’ve yet to post my very first Tweet, but stalking can be as much fun as actually writing yourself.

If you’re a Dad and into Twitter (afterall, Twitter is a pretty cool Dadget), then here are a few of my recommended links:

Twitter Dads is probably the most well-known network for Twittering Dads. Sadly their website is a bit of a dog’s breakfast and whenever I’ve viewed their Twitter feed it is crammed full of people promoting products. Surely this should be all about Dads Tweeting about fatherhood? Maybe I’ve missed something.

Odadeo are using Twitter to encourage us all to be better dads by, for example, making pledges such as “I will spend less time on Twitter and more time with my children”. Their Twitter feed has not been updated since January, which doesn’t set a good example, but their site enables you to Tweet yourself and automatically update the Odadeo site with your progress against your pledges. In truth this is a social network for dads that doesn’t fully exploit Twitter, but it’s making a good start.

My final recommendation is to follow individuals and organisations that give you their own thoughts and experiences on fatherhood. You should begin by following our good friends at DIYFather, and then branch out to follow some of the people linked here, here and here.  You can also Follow Me to see whether I ever start Tweeting myself.

£79 from Amazon.co.uk

Babies are renowned for chewing through anything that comes in their way – fingers, arms, wooden furniture, razor wire – and it can be pretty annoying when they chew through one of your favourite Dadgets. Watches are at particularly high risk when cuddling your child, so how about a solid Dadget watch that can also help with fatherhood’s other challenges – saving the environment for your offspring, and being on time wherever you go.

The snappily titled ‘Casio GW-056E-3VER Radio-Controlled Solar G-Shock’ is my Dadget watch of choice. Being of G-Shock pedigree means that it is resistant to slobber, milk-teeth, and milkshake blenders. The ‘Radio-Controlled’ aspect means that it automatically sets the time according to atomic clock transmitters through the UK and Europe. While having a child will make you late for everything, at least you’ll know exactly how late you are. Finally, the watch battery is charged by the sun courtesy of a solar panel on the watch face. So you will be doing your bit for the environment as you should never have to replace the battery.

I managed to import one of these fine watches from an eBay seller in Germany, but in the UK you’ll have to settle for the 1VER version which has a black-on-white LCD display rather than the snazzier white-on-black reverse display of the 3VER. Regardless, both watches both have the same great set of features and, in my opinion, look far more stylish than most of the chunky G-Shock watches that Casio tends to produce.

The 3VER works exactly as expected: it picks up the UK time signal with no trouble and gives me perfect timekeeping all day long; there is a charge indicator for the battery that went up to full after being worn outdoors during a couple of days of sunshine; and Henry has chewed it, spat on it, and given it dirty looks, all without any degradation in its desirable Dadget appearance. What more could a Daddy want?