Armatix, a German firm, has introduced a new gun with an electronic safety. It is wirelessly connected to a custom wrist watch and unless the gun is near the watch, it will not fire. It is only when the watch sends a signal to the gun giving it a real ‘green’ LED light to fire.

At €7,000 this piece is expensive. As a safety mechanism and a hi-tech one at that, the watch seems to be a great idea. There are both pros and cons to this kind of gun. One of the pros is that if you are keeping it at home, nobody can accidentally use it without the watch. Another one is that if a criminal (or anyone) is trying to wrest it from you and is successful, he still cannot fire it. So the wristwatch makes it a smart gun.

However, suppose you keep the gun at hand, but do not wear the wristwatch constantly, you cannot fire it. Of course, an intruder or criminal may not know that and may get intimidated all the same. Or if you change the gun to the other hand, again you will not be able to fire it. If you are not at home and your wife wants to use it, again she will not be able to without the watch.

If you do have a break-in, you need to be able to access a usable gun immediately, without having to put on a watch. If you are a law enforcement officer, and you get injured in the gun holding hand, you will not be able to fire the gun with the other hand either, and nobody else will be able to use it – say a partner who either does not have a gun or has run out of bullets. And what happens if the phone’s battery dies out? Again the gun becomes unusable.

If you are just in the next room or outside a door, you can now listen in to whatever is going on in the room supposedly with absolute clarity with this spy eavesdropping device. While earlier you may have put your ear to the door and listened as hard as possible, this is a sensitive device that picks up on conversation or sounds emanating from it and can be heard clearly.

This sophisticated listening device comes with attached ear phones, a volume control feature, and a rechargeable battery charger. It amplifies the sounds that it picks up, so you can hear clearly.

Perhaps you want to hear gossip among your friends or try to listen into a conversation your superiors may be having about you behind closed doors, whatever the motive, this could do the job, theoretically at least. Though its very difficult to say how good the product may be without actually trying it, such spy devices coming out of China are not always of the highest quality, but that is not to say they are all bad. I have tested products sent to me by spy stores based in China and some have been very good but others not so.

As we regularly remind our readers, spy devices like this one may not be legal with out authorisation so you need to be careful when using it.

Trust the Japanese to come out with something technologically new and yet old-fashioned in style. The Japanese hand-held fan is a typically Japanese invention with a fan made of bamboo, cloth and wood, cleverly hiding a 16 GB USB drive inside.

Probably more suited to female covert operatives under certain conditions, perhaps at a formal ball or opera and with the right kind of dress as well, this drive can be used to transfer secret information from one place to the other or install tracking software into a computer or laptop. Of course you do need a cable to do this, but otherwise it looks and works like a normal hand-held fan.

With a price tag of around $300, the fan USB drive does not come cheap, and then you have to figure out how and where you can use it (in Japan?) without being too obvious and standing out in a crowd!

Mobile phones are a great means of communicating on the go and are helpful to keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues. However, unlike the old landline phones they also store a great deal of data with the SIM cards having more memory now and added SD cards for even more space.

As such if you want to keep on top of things, if you want to feel safe and secure and want to keep an eye on your spouse, your children, your boss or employees, particularly if they have kindled your suspicions for some reason, then you could invest in the SIM car spy elite editions.

Though you can always pick up the phone and actually see the messages, numbers called, calls received and other data, this can take a fair bit of time, especially if the phone’s memory is large. With the SIM Card Spy Elite you can just put the SIM card into the card reader, plug it into the USB port of your computer and transfer all the data to see at your leisure.

It can also recover messages and calls which have ostensibly been deleted unless they have been overwritten by other messages or calls. You can use this to back up your phone’s data, including numbers, address books, business cards and messages and you can transfer the data from one SIM to another.

This device is being used by private investigators and law enforcement agencies for deep forensic cell phone analysis. This SIM card spy elite is much more expensive (at $199.95) than other models which can read SIM card data because it can also read smart cards which increase the memory of the phone.

Just remember that these devices only work with phones which actually use SIM cards and will not work with CDMA phones, Verizon phones, smartphones, some Nextel and Sprint two way phones and some prepaid phones.

As the title suggests this is a wireless stun gun and comes under the category of Less Lethal Weapons, so it can stun and paralyze but not cause hurt or kill the person like bullets can. Effective at a range of 26 metres, this gun was unveiled at the Global Security Asia 2009 show.

It works by wirelessly throwing a jolt at the person it is aimed at and since it can penetrate clothing and transmit electric impulses, it will presumably ‘shock’ and paralyze the victim into immobility. After that you can either call the law or tie up the person or both. In either case both the perpetrator and the victim are safe. It seems like a great option for law enforcement agencies and even in hostage situations because when you have caught a criminal without hurting him, you can get more easily to question them.

Imagine having your own personal lie detector. Imagine it residing as software on your computer. Imagine not having to wire a person to monitor whether he is telling you the truth or not. Imagine being able to use it whenever you want. Now don’t imagine – Truster, your personal lie detector software is here, easy for you to install and use.

This software can analyse all kinds of conversations and not necessarily only those made via the computer. You can check live phone conversations, taped conversations, and any kind of recorded conversations by using this software.

It works just like a lie detector, analysing voice patterns, speech flow, intonations, emotional levels and stress levels. It provides a computerised analysis of the verbal recordings so that you can interpret whether a person is lying or telling the truth.

This software works without the person being aware that he or she is being subjected to any test. However, the interpretation of the results is up to you. There are some people who can lie very convincingly because at times they believe they are telling the truth and there are honest people, who even when they are telling the truth, can get confused and stressed.

A sound card is obviously necessary and if you are doing any direct recording then a microphone, too, will be required. You can save recordings and analyse them at your convenience as well.

This is a nice change from the typical consumer lie detectors which tend to be gadgets and therefore allows for much greater analysis, but like all lie detectors, there is no 100% certainty it can verify whether someone is telling the truth or otherwise.

The shoe phone is not a phone shaped like a shoe, but a small mopbile phone embedded under the shoe. Can it be used for covert operations? Probably not for any high end surveillance, but the possibility always exists. If you are in situation where you have to completely visible and not carrying a cell phone, and there is little or no chance that your shoes are not going to be checked, then you can probably find a use for it.

Paul Gardner-Stephen, an Aussie, made the gadget as a prop for a theatre production in the beginning, but then later decided to make it for real. The heels of the shoes were hollowed and the phone was put into one heel and the Bluetooth headset into the other. The heels click back into place, making them look like ordinary shoes.

He has posted instructions on how to make the shoe phone on the internet and may just start manufacturing and selling them himself. Apart from any covert use, the shoe phone may well find a market among the elderly once it can be embedded with sensors to detect if a person has had a fall and in that case the phone in the show would automatically call up medical practitioner and go on speaker phone if the person can talk. This way it could find a market in hospitals and homes for the aged.

However, I really cannot see these being used in public places because it would simply be too awkward for anyone speaking into their shoes and looking like an idiot.

It can be incredibly frustrating when you get calls on your mobile phone that are blocked or restricted by the person that made the call so you cannot find the number the call was made from. Now, there is a new invention that goes by the name of TrapCall that promises to do just that i.e. tell you exactly who made the call (at least their number).

It works simply by rerouting any blocked or restricted calls to the TrapCall server which will then identify the number and then have it sent to your mobile or cell phone.

This can be very useful for anyone receiving calls from marketing companies, perhaps someone trying to harass, or anyone that wants their identities hidden for any reason whatsoever.

Something like this can be ideal for security and vulnerable people. If anyone, for example, is being harassed with the caller keeping their number hidden, the number can be identified using TrapCall’s service and then forwarded to law enforcemment.

They even have a free ongoing trial with various packages on offfer.

TrapCall also allows the recording of incoming calls, meaning the conversation of the entire call can be recorded. This, according to TrapCall, is a first for mobile phones.

There must have been many times that you wished you could have recorded something, a conversation, a sight, a rough negotiation, whether it was innocent or incriminating. And you probably hoped for some little thing that would make it possible to do so. This is an answer to those occasions when you wanted to make an a-v recording, but did not have something that would serve the purpose.

It looks like an innocuous pen and it actually writes just like an ordinary pen. But it is much more than that. It is in some ways the ultimate spy gadget because of the various different functions it has; it works as a flash drive, a web cam, an audio recorder and a video recorder. This totally amazing gadget is a must-have if you want to record evidence of any kind.

You can record 60 minutes of full colour video on it with sound. It works on a single Lithium-ion battery which is rechargeable. The pen can also be charged via USB on the computer or you can use an ac power adaptor if it runs out of juice; you can even use the emergency portable charger which comes with it. If you put it on the stand it comes with, you can use it as a web cam as well.

Since it also works as a flash drive, you can use it store your content which can then be uploaded into your computer. It comes with a 2 GB drive which can you can upgrade to a 4 GB one if you require more memory.

This pocket audio and colour video recorder masquerading as a writing pen is a must-have gadget for all wannabe spies or covert operatives. The whole package contains the pen, the USB cable, the camera bracket, the power adaptor and the portable charger and an instruction manual. Click for more on this pen

The PC Forensic Tool is a USB device that, when plugged into a computer, searches and then swipes images that are located on the hard drive in any type of file, on to the USB drive. It can be used to locate adult content, for example.

It uses, according to the manufacturer, a smart technology to do this without going into what this technology actually involves. It may be ideal at work place to monitor employees who you suspect may be using their work time to view adult material. It can also be used by anyone suspicious their other half may be using their computer to view adult content.

The device simply swipes the computer for images which are then uploaded and a report created based on, and I am assuming this, by the criteria you set to include in the report. More on the device