In the pipleline

No-hassle fish feeding

In many families' lives, pet fish play no more vital a role than wallpaper, and are just about as easy to forget.

Penn-Plax must have had such families in mind when it designed the Daily Double II. The automatic fish-feeder is a transparent drum about the size of a yo-yo.

The device, attached to a battery-powered clock motor, rotates. As it does, gravity causes fish food inside to fall into a tiny tube, which eventually drops the food into the tank.

The drum can be set to revolve twice a day and hold enough food to feed a few fish for about a month. It can be clamped to the side of the tank or stand on the aquarium's lid.

Suggested price: $20

For more information: www.pennplax.com

Boiling, broiling, grilling, microwaving - no standard option for cooking hot dogs seems to balance convenience with quality.

But ardent hot-dog eaters have a new option: the Pop-Up Hotdog Cooker.

From gadget-vendor Hammacher Schlemmer, the toasterlike device lets users cook two dogs and their buns in just a few minutes.

The user can drop two wieners into separate slots in the cooker's center basket. The buns can be placed in toasting baskets on either side of the hot dogs.

The cooker's 660-watt heating coil has four controllable heat settings, so the user can cook each dog and bun to their desired level.

Suggested price: $50

For more information: www.hammacher.com

As Americans begin storing more personal financial information on discs instead of paper, the issue of disposal is becoming more complex.

Enter the DVD/CD Shredder from Alera Technologies. Rather than break a disc in half or simply throw it into the trash, users can simply insert the disc into the device, which quickly destroys its data layer.

The Shredder can destroy information on up to 30 discs per minute.

Suggested price: $60

For more information: www.buyaleratec.com