The Gadgets Page

I have heard only a little bit about the One Laptop per Child initiative. It was started by some folks at MIT. Their goal was to create a laptop computer that could be inexpensive, wind-up powered, and easily useable for third world children. You can learn more about it here:

• One Laptop per Child

In the Pepper booth at CES, we actually got to play with a prototype for the $100 Laptop. Sadly, the windup power was not featured in this product. It is run on standard electricity, so for third world countries where electricity is a luxury, not a right, these computers are a lot less useful.

They are computers made for children, so the keyboard is SMALL and almost untypeable for an adult. I was unable to get a full sentence typed without several errors because the keys are so close together. I didn’t have a 75 wpm child-typist around to see if it would work just fine for children, but I suspect that it’s more than adequate.

If you are thinking of buying a $100 Laptop for your children, however, it’s not really an option. They sell the computers in lots of thousands to third world countries. When we asked at the booth, the minimum number that they would sell was so high that it didn’t seem worthwhile in our market. For countries wanting to create a technology aware population, they are perfect.

For more information about this particular unit, here is a link to the wiki:

• BTest-1 Release Notes – OLPCWiki

It looked so small and the screen was so very tiltable that I was sure it was a Tablet PC, but it isn’t. It runs Windows XP with no problems. It’s one of a large list of Ultra-Mobile PCs that were unveiled at CES. This tiny computer is made by Kohjinsha, a Korean company. They have teamed up with AMD to create a computer that is too big for your pocket, but the perfect size to tuck away in your purse. A Google search of the word Kohjinsha just brings up all the fan-boy reviews of this product until you scan to the second page to find the company’s website. Sadly, you won’t be able to buy this from Amazon.com yet. Although it looks like older versions of this product are available through GeekStuff:

• GeekStuff4U.com – Kohjinsha SA1-A

This computer does not use Intel technology. Its motherboard chip is an AMD Geode. Considering that until recently AMD was seriously kicking Intel’s butt on speed and reliability, that is not an issue, but if you’re married to the idea of having an Intel Core Duo Processor, then you might be selling yourself short.

Unlike the crippled thumb keyboard of the Sony UMPC, this is a keyboard that I could actually type on. The crowd around this machine was so thick that my hands are probably splashed all over the Internet on other sites. I just wanted to test my typing ability on a keyboard so small. Unlike the $100 computers that I found at CES, this keyboard was very typeable.

The American market seems to enjoy notebook computers that require muscles to cart around, but I’m not one of those people. I have been waiting for the tiny computers to come to the States. Here’s a taste of what my next laptop computer might be like.

The thought never once occurred to me, not even when I was staying in San Francisco and parking was so burdensome that I just left my Beetle in the one good spot I could find the entire time I stayed in the city. Why own a car when you live in San Francisco, New York or other towns with amazing public transportation? Well, sometimes you need to buy pillows and taking them home on the bus is just an exercise in futility. Sometimes you have a last minute appointment and you need to be there NOW, not 45 minutes from now. Sometimes you need to actually LEAVE the city.

Those are all rare occurrences, though. What if you could share a car? These few companies are actually making that idea a reality:

• Zipcar – Car sharing, cars by the hour or day

• Flexcar

• City CarShare – San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, CA USA

I heard about this concept from Tara Hunt on her weblog, HorsePigCow:

• HorsePigCow marketing uncommon: Why I heart Zipcar

She lives in San Francisco and she has been using Zipcar for awhile. She has a list of what she loves about them, but my favorite reason is here:

“It’s a ‘community shared’ car. This means when you join Zipcar, you are part of a community of people. I was walking down the street in NYC, chatting Zipcar up to my friend and a very stylish guy walked by us, turned around and said, ‘You are right, honey, Zipcar is da bomb!’ winked at me and gave me a big grin. I was on the bus and mentioned Zipcar to my son and a couple smiled at me and said, ‘We love Zipcar.’ People can connect through these things.”

In cities like Salt Lake City, Utah, reliquishing my car would limit my life to five square miles. Our public transportation is merely adequate in the city and pathetic in the suburbs. I could get rid of my car, but my access would shrink to the area available to my bicycle. I wouldn’t even be able to visit my mom without an hour-long bus ride (not including transfers). In larger cities where these car sharing services are available, however, it actually makes sense. I wonder if it will spread to the inner reaches of the country and if it does, how long it will take…

I talked about the WidgetStation previously. It’s one of a new category of ambient displays—devices that will sit next to your computer (or on a desk with no computer) and provide a display of useful information, avoiding taking up space on your screen.

While WidgetStation is neat in theory, it’s not available yet, and it will be expensive. If you just need a simple display to tell you the latest headlines or stock quotes, there’s an alternative. Mister Tipster, from FeedVision, is a text-based display that works with Windows to display anything in the RSS syndication format. This means you can have a display of headlines, stock quotes, or posts from your favorite weblog.

This unit hooks to any PC (Windows XP or Vista certified) with a USB cable. It provides a basic display—just 4 lines of text—but Mister Tipster does one job and does it well. It’s available now, and starts at $99. It even comes in three colors, and a “Pro” version includes alert lights that can let you know when keywords you define appear in the RSS feed.

The included software is easy to use, and lets you choose one or more RSS feeds from a database. Headlines are displayed as they appear from any of the feeds. You can also define keywords that light up one of the indicators in the Pro version or blink the display in the basic version. If you see an interesting headline on the Tipster display, a couple of clicks on the software’s icon will bring up the full article.

For system administrators and hackers, their use of the open RSS format makes it very easy to use this display for just about any text.

FeedVision even offers customized Tipsters for businesses to give away to clients. A device with a custom faceplate advertising your company can sit on the client’s desk and display your company’s stock price or special offers. While it’s expensive for a giveaway item, companies with valuable clients might find it worthwhile.

While I’m sure there will be tons of super-colorful information displays available in the coming years, Mister Tipster is here now and immediately useful. I’m tempted to cover my desk with them…

Some people can never have enough screen space – for example, gamers and system administrators. With more and more applications (such as watching videos) using a computer’s full screen, various devices are beginning to appear designed to give you a bit of extra space for a list of incoming email, IM alerts, server status messages, or the latest stock quotes or sports scores.

One of the nicest we’ve seen so far at CES is WidgetStation from Emtrace Technologies. WidgetStation is a clock with two LCD screens, each of which can display different “widgets” such as clocks, email lists, weather reports, or calendars.

Widgetstation is scriptable by advanced users and they plan to have a wide variety of widgets available online. The nice thing about this unit is that it is an independent low-power computer itself, with a WiFi connection – it can sit on your desk displaying your calendar and stock prices even if your computer is turned off.

Now the bad news: Like many of the products at CES, it isn’t available yet. According to Emtrace, the product will be available in the second quarter of 2007, with a price of about $250. I hope they make the deadline because I would find this product very useful, although the price would have to go down before it became practical for people who aren’t information crazy like myself.

Microsoft was showcasing their XBox 360 with various games. Guitar Hero I and Guitar Hero II have been available for a while for the Playstation 2, but soon it will be available for XBox 360. We played with it for a few minutes at the Microsoft booth. They didn’t take a picture of me when I rocked the house, but I took a picture of Matt Strebe when he tried it out.

The gameplay was exactly the same as the Playstation 2 version. The graphics were a little crisper, but when I was playing, all I cared about was the big red, yellow, and green buttons flying by on the screen. The XBox 360 version adds nothing compared to the less expensive console version. It’s nice to see that XBox has one game that isn’t a first person shooter or racing game, but PS2 had them beat by months. Sadly, I have still yet to find a reason to plunk down the big bucks for the XBox 360 console.

The technology to detect brain wave states has been available for a while, but Ologic and Neurosky have created a computer controller that detects two brain waves. They’ve assigned the concepts of “attention” and “meditation” to the two brain waves. I tried to test their headset, but I have too much hair for it to work, so we had our correspondent, Matthew Strebe, try it out.

They had us in a room in the game HalfLife, navigating with the mouse. The focus of the game was to move the objects on the screen. “Attention” moves the object toward you (using the gravitation device) and “meditation” levitates the object. I was unable to to get anything to work because my hair got in the way. Matt, however, was able to move and levitate many of the objects on the screen.

I talked to Dr. KooHyoung Lee, the CTO at Neurosky. He said that they were able to test the product on a small sample of ADD children and Alzheimer’s sufferers. The ADD children showed an improvement in concentration in as little as two weeks. Most showed improvement within three months. Sadly, there was no significant improvement in the Alzheimer’s sufferers. He was quick to point out that their technology was only tested on a small sample, which made me like him even more.

This technology has been around for a while, but I like that there are companies out there trying to harness the power of our minds.

This watch is first on my list of things I want, but can’t buy. It’s a small watch from Aigo that plays MP3s, movies and even has eBook reading capability. I played with it for a few minutes before I even asked if it could tell time. Fortunately, it tells time.

The only catch? You can’t buy it yet (if ever).

It’s pretty obvious why we were clamoring for it when you see the list of features:

• Video player
• E-Book reader
• Digital voice recorder
• Photo and file browser
• Clock interface with time and date dislayed on the same screen.
• MP3 player
• Rechargeable Li-ion battery

It’s the best product that I can’t buy that I’ve seen at CES so far this year. We even asked if we could buy the displays after the show. The few displays at their booth are the only ones that exist, however. They couldn’t sell us their prototypes. This is what I love about CES: I get to play with prototypes and talk to the people who invented them.

We just got out of the Panasonic press conference. Sadly, they spent the entire time trying to convince me that plasma televisions are better than LCD televisions. They completely ignored their audio technologies and only mentioned their awesome cameras in passing.

I am the closest thing Panasonic has to a fan. I’m their one passionate user, but their press conference didn’t speak to me. It sounded like they were talking to stockholders.

Their press kit came with these earbuds. I have a particularly hard time with earbuds. After trying these ones out, I’m pretty impressed. The bass sounds great and they actually stay in my ears. I didn’t give them the jogging test yet, but for casual use, they’re perfect.

Too bad the press conference didn’t tell us anything about them…

Here is an article from CNN Money about a partnership announced between Ford and Microsoft.

• CNN Money – Microsoft, Ford reportedly set to unveil wireless pact – Jan. 1, 2007

They are talking about a system that will be in the new Ford cars that will let them wirelessly download email, MP3s and allow you to talk hands-free on your cell phone. It just shows me that Ford doesn’t get it. I don’t need my car to download MP3s.

Here is a list of five things that the tech-saavy person needs from their car:

• Several Electrical Plugs: I want to plug in whatever I need, whether it’s my laptop, cell phone charger or a DVD player. Preferrably, I would like a plug for every seat, an extra plug for the driver’s seat and two plugs in the trunk. Sure, I can use a converter, but why should I? If you want to make me happy put some REAL electrical plugs in the car instead of those nearly useless cigarette lighter units.

• Gas-Efficiency: Why are they wasting time trying to get my car to download MP3s when I’m paying almost three dollars for one gallon of gas? Being gas efficient is just as high-tech as MP3s. Wow me with a car that can get 50 MPG without plugging it into the wall. That’s the kind of gadgetry I can really get behind!

• Drink-Holders: I don’t think car companies realize how much we live in our cars. I want built-in drink holders that will hold ANY drink I want. This technology hasn’t been perfected yet and convenience stores and beverage companies are constantly trying to create containers that will work in our cars’ pathetic drink holders. If I have to commute for an hour in traffic, I don’t always want a coffee. Maybe I’ll want a Big Gulp. Maybe I’ll want a soda in a bottle. Impress me by inventing a drink holder that will work with whatever drink I might be obsessed with right now. When I’m driving from one end of the country to another, I’m going to be drinking a wide variety of drinks. Make a drink holder that works with all of them and you’ll have my heart.

• Unique Design: All the cars look the same. Right now, you can choose between sedan, van, compact and SUV. That’s it. Every car from every manufacturer falls into those categories. I want a car that looks DIFFERENT. That’s why the VW Beetle, the P.T. Cruiser and that funny box of a Scion are interesting to folks. They don’t look like all the other cars. Sure, they pigeon-holed the Beetle into the compact car category, but nothing else looks like it. Quit designing the same car over and over. Give me something completely different.

• Standardized Stereo Units: It is so difficult to change the stereo in a car that there are technicians who are hired to do that every day. A smart car company would adopt standardized stereo units that can be swapped out easily. To prevent theft, they should require a key or RFID tag of some sort, but I want to be able to just pull it out of my car like an old 8-track tape. I want to be able to swap easily between a GPS system, fully functional stereo or even a DVD player for the passenger seat. I don’t want to have to worry about whether there is a free technician to install my new GPS system. I want to be able to just pull out the old one and easily plug in the new technology. Since I expect my car to last longer than the lastest technology, I want to be able to replace the stereo without involving anyone else.

It seems like car companies are wasting their resources trying to get their cars to wirelessly download MP3s and have a person online who can unlock your car remotely when what I really need is pretty simple. Stop listening to what other companies tell you what you need and start listening to your customers. We’re here, screaming our needs to you and it feels like you never listen.