Gizmine puts a little 'kawaii' in Christmas

The proprietors of Dynamism have spun off the Asian-pop-tech's lower-end gadgets and baubles into their own site, Gizmine. As the Japanese girls coo, cuuuuuuute!

Kawaii ("cute") certainly seems to be the byword for the new shop, which eschews Dynamism's cutting-edge mini-notebooks in favor of blinged-out earbuds, inexplicable but fun USB gadgetry (Dynamism veterans, this is where your rubber-duckie USB drive lives now), and all those watches that are so fashionable you can't read the time on them.

Shopping, for those of you averse to the process, is relatively painless. In addition to the usual shopping categories (price, type of item, price range, new/popular), Gizmine offers suggestions by theme and, for the painfully over-styled, by color. You can also search specifically for kawaii/cute items. (Hello Kitty is included; emergency insulin is not.)

We saw plenty of charming items for under $15, and if BetaNews had Secret Santas for the holidays, one of this reviewer's co-workers would be getting the $9 electronic bubble wrap -- endless stress-relieving popping on a tiny cellphone charm. The most expensive item on the site is a $12,780 USB stick (18-carat gold, one-carat diamond, 8 GB), which makes the ridiculously beautiful Sony Soutina NSA-PF1 unidirectional speaker a bargain at $12,000, and the programmable Optimus Maximus keyboard practically a necessity at $1,600.

For the most part, though, think Archie McPhee or Pylones, not the Apple Store or Sony Style -- skulls, cute virtual pets, peculiar electronic toys, and good-looking computer peripherals made of wood. The focus on gear you can't get in the US remains intact, with the Nintendo DSi available now and pre-orders accepted for the GP2x Wiz; the elegant Tomy xiao digital camera/printer is here too, along with the special paper it requires to produce its Polaroid-style snapshots. The site warns when documentation is available only in Japanese and promises to help buyers who get confused.

Fresh toys are rarely cheap toys, and neither Dynamism nor Gizmine will ever meet mainstream prices on most gadgetry. But then again, no one's dropping by Gizmine for "most gadgetry." If you need yet another disposable, unremarkable USB drive, your local office-supply store will do; if you need one that'll stop a meeting when you get it out of your briefcase, your imported-goods ship has come in.