The Gadgets Page

If you are looking for the ten best Valentine’s Day Gadgets, you’re out of luck. Valentine’s Day is about saying I love you and the best way to do it is with your ACTIONS, not your gifts.

For Valentine’s Day, ask your partner what things you could do to show him/her that you love them. Each person is different and they might not even be able to answer that question today. Listening for it is your goal. When your loved one asks you to take out the garbage, do it, and then do it again next week without being asked. When you they ask you to put your dirty clothes in the hamper, do it. It’s those small things in life that show them that you love and respect them.

Love isn’t about diamond rings and expensive gifts. It’s about the little actions that you do every day to show them that you love them.

Also, it might be a good idea to keep your eyes open for all the little things that your partner does to show you love. Are you insane about where the toothpaste should be in the medicine cabinet? Does it get put away in the “right” spot every time? Then thank them. Do the dishes that you put into the sink mysteriously get put into the dishwasher, washed and put away without your input? Then thank them. Does your towel get hung up, even though you leave it crumpled on the floor after every shower? Then thank them.

Gratitude and awareness will get you further than any fancy gift could.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

For all of you who are worried about the Apocalypse or just like to go camping without your car, I bring you Freeplay Energy.

You are looking at Freecharge. It is a hand crank that can power anything with a cigarette adapter. For all of us who worry about the end of the world or anyone who has ever read The Stand, knowing that we can still charge our computers, is a comforting thought. I was raised in a religion that planned for Armageddon and my inner child clings to anything that lets me generate electricity with my own abilities. Freeplay has made a huge array of items that can do just that.

• ..:: Freeplay Energy Plc. Best in the World – Best for the World ::..

I thought that my obsession with hand cranked power was just because of my borderline-cult upbringing, but it seems that everyone likes the idea of not depending on batteries. Whether you’re camping, planning for power outages or just crazy like me, Freeplay Energy has many products to fulfill your needs.

Wil Wheaton was at CES this year and has written his evaluation of the show:

• WWdN: In Exile: 2007 CES: Day One

• WWdN: In Exile: 2007 CES Day Two

It’s strange how two people can encounter the same visual and auditory input and come up with two different experiences. Here is his description of my favorite part of the show:

The best part of CES is the International area, where there are gigantic signs in Engrish that say things like “Digital your new life! Smart Power Saving Socket! Eliminate the energy consumption of the equipments which are off work.” But my absolute favorite, which made me laugh so hard I almost vanished into the land of Wind and Ghosts, is “With the concept of FOUR ASPECTS & EIGHT HARMONY communicate with all over the world by music!” (The bold text is, in fact, in the original.) Seriously. Awesome.

He’s right. The International area is my absolute FAVORITE part of CES, but for me, it’s not about the massacre of my native tongue, although that is entertaining. I am shocked at how innovative and divergent so many companies are. Things that are interesting and unique that might never make it to the U.S. because they lack the ability to jump through our hoops.

Additionally, you get to talk to the inventors of the product instead of marketing drones like you do at the Microsoft and Intel booths. I know engineers aren’t that personable and sometimes they will fall over their words, but I’d rather talk to an inarticulate engineer than an actor. I can ask the engineer questions. The marketing drone will just fake their way through my questions and I hate that most of all. I’d even prefer an engineer who barely speaks English to an eloquent marketing employee.

I love the International area of CES because I have more access to the Steve Wozniaks of the world, not the Steve Balmers.

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.

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.

Tech Digest has released the twenty strangest gadgets of 2006. Some of them were featured here, like the Beer Belly, but others are new to even me.

• Tech Digest: The 20 strangest gadgets of 2006

I had no idea that there were so many useless gadgets being created. I usually reserve this kind of amazement for a visit to Brookstone. My favorite of all is the luminescent clothing. Sure, it might be superficial if you’re using it at a disco, but if you could buy a glowing jacket for when you’re jogging in the dark, wouldn’t you?

Via: Meriblog: Meri Williams’ Weblog » links for 2006-12-28

I got this image in my email forwarded to me from a friend of my mother’s. It’s rare that these sort of forwarded emails make me laugh, but this one did. It was titled, “What Every Husband Wants for Christmas.” If I could buy him a remote that would instantly make my boobs bigger, I wouldn’t think twice about getting it for him.

I suspect the “Stop Winging” button was meant to be “Stop Whining,” but I like the idea of a remote that will make me stop flapping my arms like a crazy girl. Sometimes it’s hard for me to stop on my own…

So, when is JVC going to invent this thing?

I’ll never forget the year we gave everyone a paper shredder. It was about five years ago and it seemed that everyone we knew in the older generation was worried about identity theft. Mike’s parents, my parents and even my grandpa had mentioned that they were worried about identity thieves. I’m sure identity thieves do get information about people out of garbage cans, but I don’t think it’s as prevalent as the media made it sound. When we bought everyone paper shredders, you would be amazed at the positive response. My mom immediately walked into the other room and brought out a pile of papers to be shredded, “I’ve been taking these to work to shred them. Now I can do them here!”

Christmas morning was filled with the noise of shredding paper.

Even grandpa called us from Montana, “I got that paper shredder. That’s a nice machine. I spent all morning shredding papers. I even accidentally shredded something that I probably shouldn’t have.” He was able to get Merrill Lynch to send him another check and all was well with the world.

Finally, there is no joy better than shredding paper. I can attest to that. Just watch this scene from The Office. Kevin works in a crappy job with no power or respect, but they let him shred the company documents. That is really all he needs…

If you haven’t given your loved ones a super-duper shredder, this is the year to be a hero. It’s not about whether identity theft is really an issue or not. It’s about shredding papers and CDs and even credit cards. Just be careful!

I am currently keeping six small electronic devices charged. That’s six wires, adapters, or cradles that I have to make sure are plugged in, otherwise, my phone or iPod runs out of juice at inopportune times. Wouldn’t it be great if they could just sit in my house (or at a coffee shop) and draw a charge from the air? A team of physicists are working on just that.

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Physics promises wireless power

I once asked an electrical engineer why we didn’t have wireless power and he said, “Because it would cook anything in its path.” I’m interested to see how this “long-lived resonance” works. I wouldn’t be surprised if we DO have wireless power within my lifetime.

Via: Meriblog: Meri Williams’ Weblog » links for 2006-11-15