Gadgets: making travel easier

Skullcandy Fix Ear Buds
In the festive aftermath, there's an understandable tendency to start making all sorts of well-intentioned, if unlikely plans to do more exercise. Cue a shopping opportunity: you'll need ear buds that won't fall out when you imagine yourself pounding the pavement to your latest Spotify playlist. Most ear buds won't stick the pace. Skullcandy have the Fix. Designed to be as ensconced in your ears as you are on the sofa - old you, that is, new you is thinking Boston marathon - the sounds are good for mid market earphones, with decent bass certainly.
€50 from skullcandy.com

Columbia Omni-Heat Slippers
Great to be able to pull out a pair of these when you're snowbound as they're perfect for chalet lounging after a day's clumping about in plastic boots. They're lined with tiny silver dots that reflect your body heat back onto your tootsies, boosting the cosy-factor. Columbia call it Omni-Heat technology. And although they're slippers, you can easily use them outdoors as well, thanks to robust baffle stitched nylon uppers and grippy rubberised soles. Just don't go out there in your jimmy-jams too.
€43 from 53degreesnorth.ie

Satechi Smart Travel Router/Adapter
Satechi's Travel Router takes the idea of a multi-standard travel adapter up a notch by combining it with a simple wireless router. It can fit virtually any of the regular sockets you'll find worldwide and lets you power your gadgets by AC or the ubiquitous USB, so it's good for most phones and cameras. The router can either extend the range of existing wifi or you can canjure up your own local network if there's an ethernet port (can't you?). It handles 802.11n/g/b up to 150Mbps, so hardly lightning to stream hungry HD, but perfectly respectable given it all slides away to leave a neat, packable cube.
$45 from satechi.net