… would anyone EVER even CONCEIVE of this? (Sorry, I just had to post this one.)
I’m not sure how I found this – I guess that’s why the “web” is called the “web” – you can get anywhere at all starting from anywhere else. It’s nuts. It’s like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon (omg, that was a complete accident – PRICELESS!).
I wonder what the free toy is? Kid-friendly bacon press? Plush piggy? Maybe a wet nap.
This is incredibly technical, and I have to admit I don’t really understand how it all works, but it looks pretty sweet. The link is thanks to Ian A. Walker, who explains, “Apple puts a 3D motion sensor in its laptop hard drives, so it can lock them to protect from damage in falls, jerks, hits, and vibration. People have found all sorts of interesting “unofficial” uses for that sensor including…a seismograph, a light saber sound generator, and a Marble Madness game that you play with tilt control.”
I spend about 12-16 hours a day connected/online. That time is spent doing email, surfing the Web, researching various topics for work, browsing products, blogging, and the rare game of Hearts or Spades (okay, very rare). I’ve spent 4 of the last 7 days totally off the grid, and it’s an interesting dichotomy with my regular life.
Normally I get frustrated when I can’t use my PPC-6700 to get an EVDO connection and am stuck at 1x. I had no signal of any kind at either Lake Sonoma (loved it) or Costanoa (nice time, but it was very windy and totally overpriced).
I tend to check email at worst every 10 or so minutes (and that’s without owning a blackberry, which I refuse to use when in North America). I came home to hundreds of emails to read through. Been 2 days, still deleting the ones I don’t need to respond to.
While traveling, I always use my Slingbox to watch something (recently lots of World Cup soccer), typically from my DVR, before going to bed. I watched no TV whatsoever, even though Costanoa actually had wifi access in their main cabin, but I didn’t even have the laptop with me! Funny thing was the Costanoa camping areas even offered power outlets at each ‘site’. I’m proud to say I didn’t use em.
I used exactly three gadgets this week:
Bottom line: get yourself off the grid for a few days this summer, it’s a good feeling. No matter how many emails you have to sort through when you are done.
This is what mice say according to about 74% of Swiss people who speak German. They make some cool ones. Mice. Swiss people make them…for computers. Ok! Bad pun ended!
Really, though, go check out Pat Says Now. They make some really funky mice, and if those aren’t good enough for you, they do customs as well. I particularly like the duck; it’s just a thing I have. I love seeing more companies who let your personality shine through your gear!
Thanks to 3Yen for pointing out the Koi mouse.
As you are all aware, today is a very special day as it is America’s birthday (or something like that). July 4th is one of those days that really epitomizes the summer season. When I think of July 4th, I think of many things; baseball, hotdogs, but one thing that really symbolizes this time of year is ice cream, more specifically ice cream cones. One problem I have alway had with ice cream cones is the fact that it takes way too much effort to eat an entire cone. Well…not anymore. Now,thanks to the motorized ice cream cone , now the only effort you have to make is scooping the ice cream in and sticking your toungue out (wow,that just doesn’t sound right).
Seriously, this invention has so many positive aspects, I don’t even know where to begin. First off, no one eats the cone anyways, I’ve scavanged through many a garbage cans and I can’t tell you how many half eaten cones I have come upon. Think of the fact that there will be considerably less garbage which will in turn help the environment. Plus, we can send all the cones to third world countries to help feed the needy. No one would eat a half eaten cone, but now with this clever invention, those less fortunate can dine on complete, uneaten cones. Secondly, the clever colours reminds all those using this ingenious product that they are indeed eating a product that originated from inside a cow. So in other words, this product, feed the needy, saves the environment, and teaches children about the nature of food. How many products can do that?I’ll save you the time to look it up…none.
Look at the complexity of this! It’s mind-boggling! In addition to the above helpful uses, by not having to actually turn the cone around to lick, the energy you save could perhaps be the difference between rescuing a cat from a tree or a baby from a burning building. Think about it, how tired do you usually get eating an entire ice cream cone? I know i’m both mentally and physically exhausted to the point where I can barely keep my eyes open. Not anymore…
Coming to you with another wacky and useless product, this is Merv.
After a hideous amount of soul-searching, I buckled and got Palm’s Lifedrive. I needed a palmtop for when the laptop of doom couldn’t come, because my ability to keep written notes crumbles under my tremendously bad handwriting. After a few months of beating the tar out of it, I’m as pleased with it compared to a “standard” PDA as I am with my Mac laptop as opposed to a Windows laptop.
It’s stunning for work, in particular it’s voice recorder. The pic-up mic is clear and catches everything that gets dropped within a space up to a decent boardroom, and the storage capacity of the drive pays for itself in being able to keep just about every interview, voice memo, or bootleg I need both on my PC and on the Drive. Sometimes, I just have to remember what someone said when I’m on the bus — getting home is too late!
The video playback, predictably, isn’t worth a tick’s fart. It’s cute that I can move my Samurai Champloo grabs onto it, but there’s no real built-in tools to manage or view video the way I want to. Mp3 playback isn’t a problem, and playing the voice memo audio files in their native format is cake, but the machine puts them out as .wavs naturally — which means that if I take a voice mail from the palmtop to the desktop and back, I have to change it into an Mp3 midstep.
Media functions, so, blah. It’s nice there’s software built in to let me do something other than just put voice memos onto that 4 gig drive, but the media functions just aren’t up to snuff. Although ease of transfer is light-years ahead of the PSP, the PSP looks at least that much better.
But, for someone who needs all the basic Palm functions and would be carrying a voice recorder anyways, this is a fantastic machine. Essentially unlimited storage for voice, with plenty of space leftover to make it a decent back up disk for essential docs, and the default handiness of a Palm have come together better than I’d hoped for when I got it.
Other than my glee at a device not just being for fun, where I’m going is deliberate. The PSP and the Lifedrive are both hyper-designed; a ridiculous amount of money and research went into making each one a solid multi-media platform with a core functionality. PSP’s is games; Lifedrive’s is organization. But neither product actually benefits from the periphery abilities except for very specific users, such as myself. Isn’t the lesson here clear enough that Sony would realize that foisting blu-ray onto the console war is going to hurt them — that insuring a clean, core gameplay accesability is more important than what are essentially expensive widgets for everyone but a few teritiary market members?
On that note, I’m going to go borrow a DS for the trip into Berkeley. Sorry if the spellings off today; this was a quick one before ribs. And ribs, we can all agree, come before perfect spelling.
I must fess up an say I don’t really listen to podcasts. I know they are supposed to be great and all, but I just listen to too much music. I have a Pioneer in-dash receiver capable of playing WMA files, so about 10 CDs keeps me fresh with about 60 discs worth of music. I have Sonos at home with a Maxtor NAS, giving me access to the 800 or so CDs I ripped a couple of years ago. I generally listen to Rhapsody or now Pandora when at work. Leaves me very little podcasting time.
But, it’s fun to be in a podcast! Matt Whitlock at TechLore (if you don’t know Techlore.com, they are a great resource to check out if you want to learn how to maximize the use of your consumer electronics gear) did a great roundup of portable television, and you’ll find me there around the 11 minute mark. I do sound like I am using a cell phone from 1987 and inside a wind tunnel somewhere near a train station, but there I am in full digital glory.
About a week ago I received the newly designed SeV Performance T-Shirt by Scottevest Incorporated. The shirt is part of their “Technology Enabled Clothing (TEC)” line. This t-shirt is for the avid technologist who is constantly on the go.
Fitting into the shirt and installing your portable devices is a bit tricky. Once I put the shirt on, it did not make it clear where exactly the wires and devices fit. It took more than a few minutes to “figure out” how exactly the devices fit.
When I first tried out the shirt, I could tell that it was light weight, but with an iPod and digital camera it made the shirt feel incredibly off-centered. When using the shirt on a hot day, the fabric did not “soak up” the sun; the shirt did not get that hot. After the first use, this shirt is not designed for the average iPodder.
The shirt is designed out of 100% Polyester 3M Quick Dry fabric – the same materials that athletic clothing is made out of. This type of Polyester is designed to repel moisture from your body, which in turn means the shirt dries faster and the user is not left with a “soaked” shirt after a good workout.
The shirt comes equipped with a patented Weight Management System; in essence, the shirt has extra fabric in the shoulders in which it evenly distributes the weight.
The shirt comes equipped with the patented “Personal Area Network” in which wires are run in the lining of the jacket. All of the pockets have a little hole in the pocket, in which it allows you to connect all of your devices. For example, if you wanted to connect your phone to your Pocket PC you could do this without having any wires showing. The shirt also has a hidden compartment to store a pair of ipod sized earbuds.
After having used the shirt off and on for a little over a week, it has proven to be a great shirt for the outdoor businessman. Having tested the shirt with a Motorola RAZR, Video iPod, and Digital Camera, the shirt held up to all of its claims. The Personal Area Network was very difficult to set up, and was not that much of a help.
Pro’s
Cons
I would recommend this product to those who are constantly on the go and care about having people see your “cords” or “earbuds.” For $34.99 (Plus Tax and S&H), it is a nice luxury, but certainly not a shirt you could wear everyday.
For more information and to purchase the product directly from the manufacturer, please visit Scottevest Online Store. The shirt comes in sizes Medium thru XX Large and is available in both short or long sleeve designs.
Courtesy // Scottevest
This is a diagram of the various components of the shirt.
Courtesy // Scottevest
This is an “inside out” view of the shirt.
Courtesy // Scottevest
This is the shirt as it will first appear once you open the packaging.
For a video demonstration of the Personal Area Network feature see Personal Area Network (PAN)*
… and for the Weight Management System feature see Weight Management System Demo*
* Windows Media Player Required
I first saw the Logitech Harmony remote back when they were a small Canadian company, demonstrating it at a trade show a couple of years ago. Their initial demos focused on giving EPG functionality to a LCD screen on the remote, but thankfully they made a switch into offering what I will have to call the best damn remote control on Earth. Then Logitech bought them, and 2 years later they’ve managed to not screw it up! Is the Harmony 880 perfect? Nope, but it’s as close as I’ve seen.
In my mess of living room devices are the following:
I have a lot of remotes – 6 of them to be precise. I’ve connected the video for the Moviebeam, DVD player, and DVR to the Gefen switch, which is connected to the LCD. All audio runs directly through the Sony receiver. Changing inputs requires 2 remotes, and then I need the actual device remote. As of about 2 hours ago, I only need one remote now, the Harmony 880.
The Harmony is shipped in Logitech’s signature green packaging (with a nice bubble exposure to show the actual unit), although I almost lost a finger trying to open the thing. it comes with a docking station, a rechargable battery, a USB cable, a quick start guide, and the setup software. After the initial charge was complete, I moved right into setup.
First step was to download and install the Harmony software (easy, but I’d rather not have had to register just to do it). A few minutes later I followed the very intuitive step-by-step setup wizard, and within about 10 minutes everything other than the Gefen switch and Moviebeam were in my devices list. You may be wondering why I was using my laptop to configure my remote control, but trust me when I say it’s worth it. I’ve tried many many different programmable remotes over the years, and they are all awful (yes, especially including the horrific Pronto from Philips). Whether its entering bizarre 4-digit codes or worse yet, pointing two remotes at each other and pushing buttons in odd sequences to ‘learn’ functions, the experience is always bad. Enter Harmony and the PC.
In the PC setup wizard, you simply identify the devices you own by category: TV, DVD player, DVR, etc. All you need to know is the make and model, they have it in their database (although I’ll explain later what happens if they don’t – but don’t worry, they do). The software then uses USB to automatically program the appropriate infrared signals into the Harmony for you. Done. Game over!
And that’s when Harmony starts getting cool. They also have the concept of ‘activities’. An activity is “watch TV”. When I push the “watch TV activity” on the screen of the remote, it automatically performs a macro (a series of commands) to turn on my TV (if its off), switch it to the right input, turn on my Sony receiver, switch it to the right input, and turn on my cable box. Automatically. Best part is this: at the end of the macro, the remote asks you if it worked properly, and if it doesn’t, it helps you get it working right! The on-screen instructions take you question by question to identify the problem (which can happen if you don’t leave the remote pointed in the right direction long enough, something I did a few times while getting used to it). The screens below reflect the key steps in an activity:
Also nice in the system is the ability to rename devices, create channel shortcuts, and have discrete volume control (when I push volume up or mute, it affects the Sony receiver, not the Comcast cable box). Altogether a great experience.
With all of the glowing remarks above, I will say it’s not without it’s faults. While I didn’t have the same problems as Steven did, I found the PC software has a lot of clunkiness to it. When setting up the ‘activity’ to control Moviebeam, for example, I couldn’t get it to accept the concept that my Samsung DVD player doesn’t need to do anything for Moviebeam to work (I did eventually find a manual override, but it was buried deep within the user interface). Also, integrating the Gefen 4×1 HDMI switch was much harder work than it should have been (not due to Gefen, but because Harmony doesn’t have the concept of separate audio and video switching). Finally, the software requires a lot more confirmations and clicking ‘next’ a lot than I think is really needed – I would like to see an ‘advanced users’ version that gives you more direct control over the system (obviously this should be an optional mode, but it should be there somewhere).
There are also a few snags in the physical design of the 880. For example, the playback controls are not distinct in shape, size, or layout, so until you learn that ‘play’ is the upper right button, you’ll never go there instinctively (but the backlight ‘glow’ effect of the remote almost makes up for this). Also the volume and channel change buttons are a little tricky to get comfortable with. Finally, there’s no ‘cancel’ button to exit out of the help or other interactive screens.
But these complaints are really just minor nuisances. If you own 3 or more living room gadgets, grab a Harmony. Think I’m the only one who likes it? Check out Bombippy, Keith, and DigitalGrabber for some other reviews (nope, don’t know any of em). Without any further hesitation, I’m declaring the Logitech Harmony 880 absolutely LD Approved!
World of Warcraft. Even if you’re not interested in gaming, consider that it’s roughly six million people, paying a minimum of 12 dollars a month to play the game, and climbing. There’s estimates that it’s fifty percent of the Massive market. Blizzard actually will give their players a free month if they get someone else to sign up.
But have they gone a step too far?
The game has had technical issues since launch, in part because they grossly underestimated how many players they’d get. Fair enough — everyone did. One of those issues has related to servers being under- or over-loaded, with extremely limited character transfer services. Now, players can pay to move their characters from one server to another. It’s a microtransaction model that Blizzard has been talking about for some time. But…
They haven’t really fixed the problems with their free, limited transfers. The list of servers you can go to is still very, very limited. And, the biggie issue, is that it’s a 25 dollar fee.
Forget about any other fears about microtransactions, or people paying ten bucks to get a cooler sword. 25 bucks — per character transfer, not for access to the ability to transfer — is the better part of a whole ‘nother video game, a DVD and some coffee, or a pretty decent lunch in downtown SF. With Blizzard putting forward this relationship between fee and service, they’re setting a standard — a gold standard — that will only accelerate the cost of games for a consumer base that’s already tired of coughing up blood trying to find the cash to upgrade their systems, pay for the games, and finding the time to play.
In other words, it’s a great time for one of the MMO second-stringers to step up and simply by offering their service at a nominally reasonable price, look better than WoW.
Here is something interesting I discovered quite on accident this afternoon while browsing. It caught my attention because I have a friend who has been trying to come up with a way that people can chat together while surfing his web page. The service is Gabbly, and it’s amazingly simple. All one has to do is stick “gabbly.com/” before any URL (in a compatible browser) and it will open not only the URL you typed, but a window to chat in. I’ve tried several of my favorite places (including this blog right here) and, sadly, have been the only “Gabber” around.
One quite interesting detail is that when you leave a website, your conversation doesn’t; it stays for whoever shows up next. In fact, I have seen many previous conversations on exactly that topic, past gabbers chatting about past gabbers. There seems to be lots of potential here. You could leave notes to people about what content is good, or post links to relevant items. Of course, there are also those who just spam the heck out of any chat they can get their handle into.
Another chat I came across seemed to be one fellow initiating his friend into the Gabbly-ness. They started out at Kotaku and then, following the first’s suggestion (in the chat window,) headed over to Engadget. Friends can surf together! Of course, there is nothing preventing people from going to Engadget together in any instant messenger program they choose, but they aren’t going to meet up with anyone else when they get there. Is this just goofy, or will it really catch on? I have no idea, but it’s definitely worth taking for a spin.
Once again it is time to look at another pointless electronic product available to you, the technology junky. This particular product is geared more towards pet owners. More specifically, dog lovers. Even more specific, dog lovers with a dirty mouth and no limit of shame.
The product to be looked at today is the “X-rated Talking Dog Collar”
Now there is finally a way to make those big loud german sheppards or pitbulls even more aggressive and those Chihuahuas even more yappier – by mixing in rude and obnoxious phrases such as “Tricks! You wanna see tricks? Get yourself a hooker!”
Doesn’t the dog look more loyal and obedient with the talking collar? You would never have to worry about anyone kidnapping your beloved rex so long as it spews out such classic lines like “Hey, ever eat your own s**t? I have!”. If you ask this guy, there are absolute no drawbacks for putting this product on your dog.
If you want to purchase this product, please go here .
Coming to you with another wacky and useless product, this is Merv.