MAKE Magazine has made its way to Japan!
Piezo vibration sensors are a great way to measure physical movements (flex, touch, vibration and shock).
This is an extremely simple to use barcode scanner. Plug it into USB and it enumerates as a HID, like your keyboard. No drivers needed.
These are quality 28 and 40 pin ZIF sockets that make connecting to DIP ICs super easy. We use these extensively for batch programming of DIP ICs.
Check out some of our new hardware for your PCBs and our wide assortment of pogo pins. 
Thanks to Pete, our in house test bed master and proprietor of the "sneaky footprint", we use pogo pins for our test beds in production.
Also, keep an eye on the current sensor category, we are adding new Powerline Modems and accessories quite often.
hi! what an image do you have as a thumbnail for this post???
Use the Piezo Vibration sensor for Self Charging Electronics.
http://thefutureofthings.com/pod/6766/self-charging-electronics.html
Awesome! Good link. But this comment pique my interest:
"[T]he sound of songs or audiobooks playing on an MP3 player could power the player."
Free energy anyone? Silly reporters.
My plan is to power my car with its own vibrations!
I don't see any problem with this plan, so long as I drive over a lot of potholes.