The Gadgets Page

The advertisement is hard to miss. It’s splashed all over the Wal-Mart website, store and even stuffed into your mailbox. “College Happens. Tech It Out,” it screams at me.

I’m all for technology in the classroom, but the top thing on the Wal-Mart advertisement isn’t something that would help with school, it’s an MP3 player. Not even the second item is a school related product. They’ve got a TV for $6K instead.

Back to school shopping consisted of clothes and paper when I was a teenager. When I went to college, necessity exchanged clothing for books. I can understand needing a computer for college now, but an MP3 player? What is the matter with Wal-Mart?

Using a strobe light, Nate True was able to make a fountain that appears to slow time or even reverse it. Watch this video to see a demonstration.

Nate explains The Time Fountain here:

• cre.ations.net – Creation: The Time Fountain

It always seems like these sorts of things start with two guys just talking together about cool things:

“It all started when my friend Jesse told me that if you get a strobe light fast enough, you can make it look like dripping water is going in slow motion or even backwards. This phenomenon happens because strobe lights can ‘capture’ an instant in time and allow your eyes to see it as lasting longer than an instant.”

Nate has built a few of these Time Fountains and is selling them on Ebay:

• eBay: Time Fountain by Nate True (cre.ations.net) (item 320015869886 end time Aug-16-06 23:03:00 PDT)

Via: Rocketboom – August 9, 2006

I find it strange that this would make a headline at Yahoo! News. It’s amazing! Women like gadgets?! This is something I’ve known about for a long time.

• Study: Women like tech toys more than shoes – Yahoo! News

If given the choice, I would definitely choose a new iPod over a little black dress and a cool cell-phone over designer shoes. A cell-phone isn’t going to give me pain if I use it for more than two hours.

“TRU for Oxygen surveyed 1,400 women and 700 men 15 to 49 years old to compare tech attitudes among the sexes.”

“In the Oxygen survey, 59% of women agreed with the statement ‘Women are much more tech savvy than they give themselves credit for.’ Among the men, just 38% agreed.”

“More than three out of four women said they’d choose the TV over a diamond solitaire necklace. Women preferred a top-of-the-line cellphone to designer shoes by a similar margin. And a little white iPod narrowly trumped a little black dress.”

I’m glad that so many women answered positively on the phrase, “most of the time people rely on me for technology help.” I was always the girl that people came to when the computer wouldn’t print or the copier was jammed. I like to see more girls who aren’t scared of figuring out what’s going wrong with the gadgets in the office.

Next time you’re thinking that you just can’t figure out all this technology stuff, stop yourself. We are ALL smart enough to figure this stuff out. Don’t let a gadget intimidate you, no matter who you are.

Gorillas certainly outweigh Ducks, especially in the tape category. I am intrigued by Gorilla Tape and I want to get myself a roll as soon as possible to check it out. It claims to be the toughest tape on earth.

This picture says that it’s “tape so tough it can hold up a brick.” I don’t know that holding up a brick is the true test of a tape, but the picture makes me want to buy a roll. I want to be able to hold up a brick with some tape.

As a teenager, I used Duck Tape and a plastic bag to cover my leaking sunroof on my 1968 Beetle. Every week, I needed to apply a new plastic bag to the roof of my car because the Duck Tape would peel off in the blistering heat of the Utah sun. I wonder if Gorilla Tape would have lasted longer.

My question: is it harder to rip than Duck Tape? If it is, it would make a roll of Gorilla Tape nearly useless for me. I guess I’ll have to try it out and get back to you.

Via: Cool Tool: Gorilla Tape

Over on Starling Fitness, I do an extensive review of the Nike+iPod. It is a sport kit for your iPod that tracks your distance and speed using a sensor that fits into the special Nike+ shoes. You can use it with ANY shoe, however, using the Shoe Wallet (pictured here).

• Starling Fitness » First Glance: Nike+iPod

The most surprising thing to me is that I really enjoy the software online that tracks your runs. It allows you to set goals and earn trophies with your best runs. It turns running into a video game for me.

A lot of people have complained that there is no way to download the data to a spreadsheet or other method of downloading, but that doesn’t bother me. The Nike.com website has free registration. If I REALLY wanted that data, it’s still on my iPod and I can type it into a spreadsheet if I want to. For now, I’m really happy with the positive feedback that the Nike website gives me. I haven’t figured out a way to do that with a spreadsheet yet.

Since Apple isn’t integrating their enormously popular iPod with every household item, the world is dreaming about what it would be like if they did. Peter Burns has imagined this iPod watch that would work with Bluetooth headphones to play your tunes:

• coroflot.com – portfolio details for Peter Burns

The only problem with this design is that the battery life wouldn’t be long enough to last a day. You would have to charge your watch every evening (or maybe every couple hours of listening). Fossil learned the hard way with the Palm watch and the MSN watch that long battery life is essential for usability. We aren’t going to see a iPod watch for a long time. Apple learns very well from the failures of others.

On another note, MAKE magazine has posted this iPod phone.

It’s a Pocket PC phone with an illicit application that works like an iPod. Unlike the iPod watch, this is actually possible to achieve if you are able to get your hands on a copy of pPod, the software running on the Pocket PC phone.

If you have a Treo (or any Palm OS unit), this software from PalmGear looks like it’s pretty useable also: mOcean – PalmGear.com

iPod Watch Via: Concepts We Want Made | productdose.com

iPod Phone Via: MAKE: Blog: The iPod phone – Pocket PC to iPod

It’s hard to remember that everything that exists didn’t used to exist. Take spiral bound notebooks, for example. They are everywhere. I remember wanting one when I was about six years old because I wanted to pretend I was Columbo. They have always existed, right? Nope…

This is a link to a Popular Science article about spiral notebooks. They were a new and innovative thing back in 1934:

• Modern Mechanix » First Spiral Notebook

The spiral notebook revolutionized notetaking. With its advent, we were able to tuck paper into our jacket, purse or even pants pocket. It opened easily and folded back on itself. It’s a design that is still popular today. It’s hard for me to believe that it has only existed for 72 years.

Via: Boing Boing: First spiral notebooks, article from 1934

We have a cat with irritating litter box habits, so I am always looking for something that will keep the pee off the carpet and wall.

• Clevercat® Innovations – Top Entry Kitty Litter Box

Freakgirl did a review of it here:

• Top-Entry Litterbox » freakgirl.com

This box also looks like it might solve the kitty litter all over the carpet problem. Maybe more of it will stay in the box. The only problem I could forsee is if the cats have trouble with the smell in the box. Most covered kitty litter boxes end in my cat avoiding them altogether unless we take off the lid.

The Clevercat litter box costs $29.99 plus $9.99 for shipping for a total of 40 bucks. For only 14 bucks, you could buy one of these Iris file boxes from Amazon.com and cut a hole in the top yourself. Plus, this box is transparent, so you can see if your cat is inside and notice when it needs to be cleaned a little easier. The dimensions are slightly smaller, so this might be an option if you’re willing to “hack” your own kitty litter box.

This website is a funny advertisement for a television show on the SciFi Channel.

• Made in Eureka

I love the description and warning on the website:

“Bringing you amazing gadgets that are beyond cutting edge, Made in Eureka is the only place you can find revolutionary products with the potential to dramatically change your life.”

“Warning: some devices may use technologies still in experimental development. Use at your own risk.”

My favorite is this xMac Rollup Personal Computer. I love it! “Best of all, it runs completely on spam, so you never have to recharge!”

This ingenius website actually makes me interested in a television show on a channel that my cable provider doesn’t have. I guess I’ll have to see if it’s available on DVD yet…

This month’s Wired Magazine has a “Found Artifacts from the future” that I can’t wait to exist. Imagine contacts that will give you all the information you need right in front of your eyes.

Click here to see the full size image:

• Wired Magazine’s Found July 2006 – by Sean Hamilton Alexander

Someday, we will be able to easily access all the information we want. I don’t know how it will happen. Maybe it will be on our cell phones. Maybe it will be in a chip in our head. Maybe it will flash before our eyes on our contacts. I’m excited for the future to come.