The Gadgets Page

This comic from Sheldon is EXACTLY why I’m not excited about the Amazon Kindle:

Sheldon: The Amazon Kindle

It reads:

Book-Lovers! Are you tired of printed books? Tired of using a battery-free data storage-and-retrieval system that works perfectly every time you pick it up?

No.

Wouldn’t you prefer to read books on a device that looks and feels like your first graphing calculator?

No.

And what if that same device could also surf the web? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Wouldn’t I just use a laptop and surf faster and easier?

The “Amazon Kindle” …the answer to the question you weren’t asking!

And of course, there was a response strip from Jeff Bezos:

• Sheldon: Jeff Bezos Kindle Response Strip

Matt Strebe reviewed the Amazon Kindle and the Sony eReader here:

• Gadgets Page » Amazon Kindle vs. Sony Reader SMACKDOWN

The ONLY advantage I can see for these gadgets is for university or high school students. Being able to carry ALL of your text books in one, slim gadget is really appealing when you’re your books for each one class weigh eight pounds apiece. Other than that, paper is really a better option.

The Sony Rolly was surrounded with so many people that it was impossible for us to get close enough to it. We could see on the LCD screen above it that it was some sort of rolling, dancing thing with lights. We heard from the people nearby that it as an MP3 player. We brushed it off as silly and moved on to other things.

Jen Cody was able to get past the crowds and interview a Sony employee about the Rolly. Here is her interview:

It was released in Japan last September, but hasn’t come here yet. Here are the features:

• 2 GB MP3 player
• Two speakers
• Ability to move to the beat of the music
• Ability to be programmed to “dance” to specific songs
• Ability to upload and download programmed “dances” to the Sony social networking site

I really don’t think Sony knows what they are doing in the portable music player world. Look at their ad for the Sony Rolly.

It just makes me tilt my head and squint my eyes. Do they really think this is cool?

This is another video showing the features of the Rolly:

The fact that Sony’s booth is ALWAYS super crowded with people didn’t indicate that the Rolly was anything that might appeal to people. Most of the people around the booth were too confused to even tell us what it was.

In the end, Sony loses another round in the battle of the MP3s.

Photos of this sail wagon were posted on the Library of Congress’ Flickr feed a couple of weeks ago.

Sail Wagon, Brooklyn (Library of Congress) by Bain News Service, publisher from Flickr

This entry from the Kansas State Historical Society has some information about them:

• Kansas State Historical Society – Wind Wagons

A novel device of the Kansas territorial period was the wind wagon, sometimes called a sailing wagon. Several were built and in 1860 the press gave them considerable attention. They were similar to an ordinary light wagon; weighed about 350 pounds; had a bed about three feet wide, eight feet long, and six inches deep; and were propelled by a sail or sails raised over the center of the front axle. When the breezes blew in the right direction the wagons were reported to skim over the prairies at about 15 miles per hour, with speeds at up to 40 miles per hour.

At least one wagon was reported to have traveled from Kansas City to Denver in a little more than 20 days. Upon the arrival of a wind wagon from Westport, Missouri, a Council Grove newspaper asked of its readers: “Who says now that the Santa Fe Trail is not a navigable stream.” The few wind wagons that were built undoubtedly traveled further in the press than they did on the prairie and horses and oxen remained the basic mode of power for a good many years.

My first thought was that they would be useless because narrow roads wouldn’t allow a wind wagon to tack like a sail boat can on the open water. I forgot that our plains were an open swath of land back then.

They were also using sail wagons in California. Here is a first hand description from 1902:

• Rosamond, California, USA: Local History – Sailing Rosamond Dry Lake

Riding on the Desert Queen was thrilling, according to Von Blon. “You go dodging, at the start, between dots of greasewood and cacti as the ‘ship’ leaves camp with the rising wind; here and there grotesque yucca trees stand like sentinels, with limbs, like long arms, outstretched to reach you; homed toads scurry away over the hot sands, and lizards dart,” Von Blon wrote. “These things you notice at first, but the wind increases and the pace grows madder. You tie a string to your hat and anchor it to your suspender; your handkerchief is whipping from your neck and goes sailing and writhing up and away out of sight almost before you realize that it is gone. This is indeed a different wind from any that ever blew in any other part of the world.”

Sail wagons were somewhat of a fad in the early twentieth century, but as a current transportation method, sadly, they would be hampered by our narrow roads. It makes me wonder what our landscape would look like now if the sail wagon had beat out the oxen wagon and eventually the car.

Sail Wagon, Brooklyn (Library of Congress) by Bain News Service, publisher from Flickr

This video shows some of the video games from 1972 to 2007.

Which games did you play? Which were your favorite? I LOVE that they included Adventure on the list. It was my favorite game on the Atari and I can still navigate those mazes, even the blind ones, by touch only.

I am surprised that they didn’t include some of the handheld games that were popular in the early years like this football game from Mattel. I played this thing so much that the letters and arrows wore off. I remember handing it to my friend to play and she had never played it before and couldn’t figure it out because all the arrows were gone. This guy and Merlin were my video games that I could take with me. I loved them and to this day I don’t know why the industry doesn’t take them as seriously as the original games from Atari and Intellivision.

Via:

• kev/null – History of Video Games 1972-2007

• Handheld Museum – Mattel Football I

There has been a flurry of activity in the running gadgets world. You can catch up on all of it at Starling Fitness.

Firstly, six patents were registered by Apple detailing a “Lifestyle Companion” that they are working on:

• Starling Fitness » iPhone: Your Lifestyle Companion

Then Nike announced the Nike+ Sportsband that bypasses the iPod altogether:

• Starling Fitness » Nike+ Sportband Rumors

Then, a tour of Nike’s secret labs by Sports Stuff revealed that the Nike+ system will work with the iPhone and the iPod Touch soon:

• Starling Fitness » Nike+ Compatibility With The iPhone… FINALLY!

Finally, Sports Stuff pit Nike+ against Samsung’s and Adidas’ mi Coach in a death match. See who emerged the winner here:

• Starling Fitness » Sport Stuff Pits Nike+ Vs. miCoach

This is a very exciting time to be a runner, so if you like your exercise with a few gadgets, then you should head on over to Starling Fitness and start reading up!

Here is a video from the Internet Archive about Comdex 1996. It was made by Computer Chronicles:

It runs about a half hour and talks about the following:

• All-in-Wonderboard from ATI
• Windows CE handhelds: Casio and Compaq
• Apple: eMate 300 and Newton
• 11″-15″ LCD screens from Sceptre
• The Flopico from Mitsubishi
• Microsoft Office 97: Added Outlook and the Office Assistant (the dreaded paperclip)
• Netscape Communicator and Constellation: A desktop management program
• Digital Cameras with 24 bit color and VGA resolution from Sony and Ricoh
• Photo Editing Software: Ixel Photo
• Video Editing Software: Trinity from Play, Inc.

Also, here is a transcript of the keynote speech from Comdex 1996 by Bill Gates:

• Bill Gates Speech Transcript – Comdex 1996

That concludes our trip down memory lane. Comdex 1996 was fun and I enjoyed it fully. All of it makes me excited to go to CES next year.

Televisions for eyes were a popular theme at Comdex 1996. There were more than a few companies who used that idea for their display.

These displays were from ATI. They were promoting the All-In-Wonderboard. It was really ahead of its time and despite all the power that we have from the DVRs of today, this product did things that you still can’t do.

• You could look at thumbnails from nine channels at once (better than picture in picture) and when you clicked on one, it would show you full video and audio.

• It would “listen” to programs using the closed captioning and if a program mentioned one of your preset keywords, it would save a .txt file of the audio from that program.

• It had a zoom feature that would let you focus on a specific part of the television screen.

This display (also from ATI) looked better than all of them. ATI are now owned by AMD and you can see them here:

• Advanced Micro Devices, AMD – Global Provider of Innovative Microprocessor, Graphics and Media Solutions

Tomorrow is our last day about Comdex 1996. Join us!

We are continuing our reminiscing about Comdex 1996.

I snapped this photo of American Megatrends booth just because it was shaped like a pyramid. American Megatrends now goes by AMI and they are still making motherboards and storage:

• AMI : American Megatrends Inc. : Home Page

Filed under the category of things that are the wrong size is this tiny LCD television screen.

I had Mike hold up his hand so we could show people how small it was. Once again, I have to apologize to the company that showcased this little screen because I have no idea who you are. When I saw this LCD screen, I imagined that we could have television on our watches. Now that it’s possible, I don’t really care anymore. It turns out that a screen that small is just too small to enjoy movies or television shows.

That was the year that LCD screens for computers were released in 11″ and 13″. Now that you can get LCD screens as big as 109″, it all seems so humble.

Tomorrow, there is more Comdex 1996.

Big Things! Comdex 1996 was filled with things that were the wrong size. My apologies to the company who had this booth. I have no idea who you are, but your displays were cool. I think it might be Compaq’s PDA, but I’m not sure. If you know, please tells us in the comments.

This is a big version of a handheld PDA. Windows CE was announced that year, so there were lots of compact PCs running Windows CE. The battle between Windows CE, the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot started that year and here we are twelve years later with no clear winner between them, although my personal favorite right now is Apple with their iPhone.

Ah, to sit down. We were all so tired that year that any place to sit down was a welcome respite. These seats looked like huge computer keys, so I snapped a photo of them. It looks like it was a booth for Fujitsu. Where are they now? They are still making notebook PCs and Tablet PCs. You can find them here:

• FUJITSU : Fujitsu Computer Systems –

Tune in next week for the continuation of Comdex 1996.

The most impressive company that had a booth at Comdex back in 1996 was Drive Savers:

They had a Museum of Disk-asters in which they showed the burnt, dropped and drown computers from which they were able to rescue data.

Disk Savers still exist today. You can see their website here:

• Data Recovery by DriveSavers | Hard Drive Data Recovery – Home

Here is a link to their Data Recovery Hall of Fame:

• Data Recovery by DriveSavers | Hard Drive Data Recovery – Hall of Fame

I remember being so impressed that they helped save an episode of The Simpsons. They are still touting that accomplishment almost twelve years later. So many companies from back then have disappeared. It’s nice to see that Disk Savers are still around.