The Gadgets Page

After a winter of freezing while working in the garage, Daniel Strohl was struck with the idea of creating his own solar panel garage heater. Fifty cans of Sprite later, he concocted a heater that was easily able to add 15 degrees of heat to the air. Too bad it’s summer now and he won’t need a heater for another six months.

• Hemmings Auto Blogs » Blog Archive » almost free garage heat – just drink a lot of soda

He had a lot of ideas on how he could have done better next time around:

Were I to do this again, I’d first make the furnace larger. As I recall, Dad’s measured something like four feet on each side. Obviously, the more surface area, the more heat you’ll pick up. Second, as mentioned above, I’d relocate the inlet to the back of the box to direct all the air through the cans. Or at least I’d cut a piece of aluminum to act as a baffle and prevent the air from rising straight up. Third, I might use those small soda cans I’ve seen in the grocery stores lately, just to get more surface area.

Sounds like a great idea for a project to work on this summer so that you can add a little free heat to your home or garage next year. Get drinking that Red Bull because those cans are probably the best.

Via: Cynical-C Blog – » Soda Can Solar Panel

If you have some important gadgets floating around in your pockets, you might do some good by protecting them. This company, ShieldZone, has prepared a video that describes the process for you.

Via: Scratch-Proof Your Gadgets – Ash Buckles – Blog A special thank you to Ash for suggesting this! He asked why I haven’t reviewed products like these before and I am ashamed to say that it’s because I’m a slob and just let my gadgets get scratched.

Update: Actually we have previously posted a review of Invisible Shield products last year. Check it out.

I’d like to say that I don’t really care about my bras, but to be honest, they are damn expensive. I hate to wash them by hand, but the washing machine messes them up. The little hooks on the back catch on other articles of clothing. Garment washing bags are even worse and end up in a tangled heap with the hooks. That’s where the BraBABY Bra Washing Holder is supposed to save my day.

The only problem is: I suspect that if I’m too lazy to wash my bras by hand, I’ll probably be too lazy to put the bra in this caged protector. Sure, the Brababy is really inexpensive (a 2-pack for 17 bucks), but it just doesn’t look like something I am willing to use for the rest of my life. I guess I’ll just keep forking over my cash to the lingerie store instead of bothering to take care of my undergarments. Buying new frilly things is fun, right?

Right?

Via: Shiny Shiny: Look after your bras with BraBaby

This house holds a family of five, but its footprint is a mere 320 square feet. Ever since Mike and I moved from a 3500 square-foot house in the suburbs to a 820 square-foot house in a different suburb, I have been obsessed with making things work in a small space. Here is an article about how it is done in Japan:

• Japan: Micro-Homes in the Big City

Sadly, the article concentrates on how much the homes cost to build instead of how you can cram five people into such a small space and still make it work. Is it enforced simplicity? Is it ultra-efficiency? How do they do it? That’s what I want to know. I wanted to see floor plans and pictures of their storage areas, not their staircases.

This article is more helpful:

• Living in a Small Space by Maria Palma: The Sideroad

I still would like to see pictures and specific storage ideas.

Via: random($foo)

This is the perfect doormat to welcome or scare away your guests. It changes with your mood!

• SUCK UK – “Come in” / “Go away” Doormat

• SUCK UK – Do Not Disturb… with a twist.

It’s not available yet, but as soon as it is, bipolar sufferers every where will snatch them up!

Via: Popgadget: Come in, or is that Go Away?

So many of those year-end articles sound really dated when you give them a couple of months to ferment. How did this New York Times article age over the last two months?

• 10 Greatest Gadget Ideas of the Year – New York Times

Here’s what they gave a good rating for 2005:

• The SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus card: It’s an SD card with a USB jack built right in. For those of you with computers without card readers, this is a great choice, but is it worth the extra cost? Since this 512MB card costs as much as a normal 2GB card, I doubt it. Card readers are cheap and easily add into your computer tower or plug into a USB port. This one is a cool idea, but not worth the extra bucks.

• The Palm Treo 700W cellphone: For those of you too absentminded to remember which number deletes the voicemail and which number saves it, Palm created an on-screen voicemail with buttons that are like a VCR. Just a warning, this is a Windows Mobile Palm device, so if you already have a Palm, none of your software will work on this cellphone.

• Hewlett-Packard’s latest microdisplay (rear projection) TV: Instead of attaching all your gadgets to your television at the back, HP has created an illuminated panel at the front. The article is unclear about how the cords are hidden or if they just sit there, out in the open. I like to imagine that in the future, there will be one gadget that records your television shows, plays your DVDs and entertains you with games, so that the connection to the television is one, simple cord. Why they didn’t choose the HP Media PC instead of the HP TV with the “cord monitor” is beyond me.

• Canon Powershot S80 8MP Digital Camera: They made a good choice with this one. They liked this camera because it can shoot video at 1024 x 768 pixels (instead of 640 by 480 pixels, like most cameras that have video built in). This means you can crop a single frame from your video and use it as a really good photo. The only problem with this is that it’s NOT a video camera, so you don’t have the control like you would with real video and your storage media can fill up mighty fast at 1024 x 768 pixels. I would have chosen the anti-shake technology in the Panasonic digital cameras because it opens up photography to a large group of people and occasions (such as trying to take a picture on a vibrating motor boat).

• The Video iPod: To be able to watch your favorite television shows whenever you want and wherever you want is a great freedom. Apple and their video iPod brought that to the world in 2005 and the New York Times was right, it is a great idea. The video iPod would have been useless if Apple hadn’t set up the ability to download television to it, however. Kudos to Apple for waiting to add the video playback ability to their iPods until they were able to support it properly.

• The outer button on flip phones: This one is the most confusing of them all. I had an outer button on my StarTac flip phone from Motorola where I could answer or dismiss a call without opening the flip all the way back in 2000. I didn’t have a cool LCD screen on the front to see who was calling, but this “new” idea of 2005 isn’t even new. Bad call, New York Times…

So, what do you think? Two months after they first posted this list, do these ideas really seem all that great? Some of them are. I would have chosen differently on others. Of course, you can get twenty people together and you would have twenty different lists for the greatest gadget ideas of the year. What would you choose?

Parabolic microphones have been the tools of spy novels, private detectives and paranoids, but they have been appropriated by a quieter class of people: birdwatchers:

• 10,000 Birds — Birding, blogging, bombast

“Birdwatchers have long headed into the woods with little more equipment than binoculars and a notebook. But when Laura Erickson sets out on a birding trip, she now brings along two digital cameras, a Palm device with a bird-species database and an iPod loaded with bird songs.”

Instead of that bulky Audobon book in your pocket EVERY bird on the planet can fit in your Treo. Instead of a sketch pad and waterproof ink, a camera can capture the bird far better. Instead of memory and stealth, you can listen to the bird calls from far away.

Sounds like birdwatching has gotten a whole lot more interesting…

You are looking at the Zenith Space Command Remote Control. Even though I am only 37 years old, I actually have fond memories of this remote control. We inherited a TV from my mom’s friend that was a Zenith. We were so happy, but mostly because it was a color TV that turned on in less than forty-five minutes. Our previous TV had a bit of a problem with its tube.

The inventor of this beautiful piece of machinery died last Thursday. He was ninety-three years old.

• Inventor of the TV remote dies – Technology – BostonHerald.com

Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

I remember the loud clicking noise that pushing the buttons on that remote made. To this day, I have no idea how it worked. There were no batteries in that remote control. When we received it, it was already 20 years old, but it still worked like a dream. Eventually, the Channel Up button stopped working, but we just pushed Channel Down through the seven stations that we had (we were too d*mn poor to buy the 8-Track tapes… err… cable). I used to wonder if the loud clicking was some sort of magnet that gave the remote power to change the channel.

Our old Zenith was eventually replaced by a “real” TV when my mom got a better job and we felt like we were rolling in money. It had a “real” remote that took batteries. Robert Alder was an inventor and held over 180 patents. Unlike the old Zenith, he was an irreplaceable member of the human race and he will be missed.

For more information about Robert Alder:

• Inventor of the Week: Archive

Food storage is highly recommended by the LDS church, so it is a common thing in Utah for families to have a two year supply of food in their basements. Being raised Jehovah Witness, I am always worried about the Apocalypse, so the idea of hoarding a two year supply of canned food sounds really good to me as well. I saw an advertisement for this company that specializes in making racks for food storage:

• Shelf Reliance: Food Storage Racks | Food Rotation Systems | 72 Hour Kits

The cool thing about their racks is that they are front loading, which means when you need a can of green beans, you go downstairs and take a can from the shelf. The rest of the cans roll into place when you remove that can of beans. When you buy a new can of green beans, you put it in the front loading slot and it rolls around to the back of the line. That way, your food storage never sits in your basement and rots. It just rotates as you eat food normally.

Now, storing a two year supply of food in the basement can be considered a little weird, but the truth is, I’ve personally known many people who have been saved by their food storage. In one case, a friend had been laid off at his job. He couldn’t find work for almost a year. Food was never an issue for them because they had their food storage. In the other case, a friend’s husband became very sick and ended up losing his job because of it. Once again, they were able to make their house payment because they didn’t have to worry about how they were going to feed their family. Sure, disasters, terrorism and Teamster Unions could bring our country to its knees, but having a backup plan when personal tragedy hits is something that can make or break you.

This looks like an interesting conversation piece to have in your living room. It holds approximately six to seven books (or DVDs, CDs or VHS Tapes) on the wall with no visible means of support.

• magicalSHELF! by Linky & Dinky

There was a lot of speculation about how this was accomplished. Based on the clues on the Linky & Dinky site and the Museum of Hoaxes site, we think we know how they do it. It’s an entertaining experiment in logic and we had a lot of fun trying to figure it out.

Via: Museum of Hoaxes – MagicSHELF