The Gadgets Page

If you live in a desert area like we do, you can already tell why this Toilet Lid Sink is a good idea. The water used to wash your hands is recycled to flush the toilet.

• Real Goods Catalog – Toilet Lid Sink

On another note, it saves space in your bathroom. If you live in a postage-stamp apartment or house, the room saved by having the sink and toilet be a single unit is enough to fit a full size tub instead of just a shower unit.

I would like to see a more elaborate version of this that has a stopper, slightly deeper sink and both hot and cold water so it can completely replace the sink in my bathroom.

Via: Cool Tool: Toilet Lid Sink

skinnyCorp, the creators of Threadless, were interested in buying a t-shirt cannon in order to promote their t-shirts. They recorded the conversation with the company when they purchased it.

• skinnyCorp creates communities – teh Blog – skinnyCorp gets a t-shirt gun

At one point, they were talking to the engineer who designed the cannon. Here is tidbit of the conversation:

“I noticed on the Micro-Mini that there’s a tube that goes up the back. Could I change out these tubes to up the pressure?”

“No sir. Absolutely not. That cannon has a lot of fail-safes to it to keep people from modifying them. They have a lot of power in them. Tampering with them in any way, you will kill yourself and we will laugh. Okay?”

I can’t wait to see what they have planned for that t-shirt cannon.

This photo was an entry for a Photoshop contest at Worth 1000. It was part of the “Personal Protection” contest. The idea of having a stunner built into a cell phone is interesting.

I love to see mockups of different ideas for products. I know Apple fans do that sort of thing all the time, but it’s nice to see people making products that are truly unique. I would have never thought of combining a cell phone and a stunner.

To see the full size cell stunner and the other entries, click here: Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Personal Protection

Most patents don’t make it past the patent office, but that doesn’t stop Daniel Wright from making them fodder for humor.

• Patently Silly – The Humor of Invention – presented by Daniel Wright

Sometimes, Daniel doesn’t even need to say a word. All I need is to see the picture of the patent to find it incredibly funny. When we live in a world where patents from Apple are instantly noticed and fans start creating mockups to illustrate them, it’s nice to know that there are thousands of other patents out there that are being analyzed strictly for their humor value.

There have been a bunch of products jump on the market lately appealing to the germophobe traveller. Whether the person is worried about catching a cold from someone on a plane or getting lice from a headrest, there are companies joining the “Sanatize It” bandwagon.

• USATODAY.com – Making germs a no-go

The truth is, most of these gadgets provide little if any benefit.

“Medical experts say many of these products are more effective in quelling the psychological ick factor than in preventing disease. In fact, the best protection against illness is also the simplest and least costly: frequent hand washing.”

Next time you’re tempted to buy a gadget to keep yourself safe from travel germs, remember my mantras:

“It will build my immune system.”

“Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”

“Lather, Rinse, Repeat”

These will protect you far more than any face masks, headrest covers or disinfectant sprays.

Via: World Hum | Travel | Do We Really Need to Worry About Toothbrush Germs When We Travel?

When I was really little, I didn’t know how to shuffle cards yet. I remember a card shuffler in the closet in my grandma’s house in Milwaukee. The house smelled like humid moth balls and the closets were damp treasure chests filled with gadgets I had never seen before. I played with this noisy contraption for the entire week we stayed in Wisconsin. I suddenly had something I didn’t have before I went to Wisconsin: the ability to shuffle cards.

Only grownups could shuffle cards.

It was the first time a gadget brought me to a level of adulthood that I didn’t really deserve and I really think something imprinted on my mind that day. I began to believe in the mantra:

Gadgets will make me a better person.

Today, I don’t know if that mantra is true or not, but it still chants in my head sometimes. I have found myself believing that gadgets will make me smart, thin, beautiful and popular. My belief in them has made me feel all those things when I’ve purchased a new toy. The problem is, it never lasts and once the shine wears off my new toy, I need another one to make me feel smart, thin, beautiful or popular.

I eventually learned how to shuffle cards on my own without the help of a card shuffler. The mathematician in me didn’t like the systematic mixing of the card shuffler. It wasn’t random enough and hand shuffling seemed better in comparison. Card shuffling was a right of passage in our family and for a brief moment, a gadget brought me one step closer to adulthood and made an impression on me that would last for years.

This section of The NextGen Home Experience featured products from the following companies: Life|Ware, ZON Audio Router, Belden Cable, DSC ConcoursePro Cable Enclosure, Klipsch Speakers, Brizo Faucets, and Vantage Lighting.

Zone 17 – Equipment Closet

In a normal house, this room would have been the clothing closet for the master bedroom. There were no clothes or shoes in this closet. In a business building, this room would have been a mess of wires and computer racks. There would be small sculptures of animals made of telephone wires that had been made while the IT guy was stuck there overnight trying to trouble shoot the servers.

In other words, this room was an anomaly in both the home and business environments. Most homes don’t have a “equipment closet” and most businesses have an equipment closet that is a claustrophobic mess of wires. There was no demonstrator at this zone to tell us the importance of adding an equipment closet to your home.

Zone 18 – The Master Bathroom

By the time we got to the Master Bathroom, the “What Happens When The Power Goes Out” guy had moved ahead of us and taken the demonstrator in the Master Bath hostage. We heard the whole story about how that man lived in an area with spotty power coverage and how all of this technology is a waste when we can’t reliably supply electricity to the remote areas of the United States.

The demonstrator nodded awkwardly with that panicked look that my cat gets when she knows we’re going to open her mouth and make her swallow a pill. Mike and I slowly backed away from the scene so as not to disturb the hostage situation after we took a picture of yet another Life|Touch Screen on the wall. I don’t know about you, but in a house of only about 1000 square feet, you can never have too many Windows Embedded machines built into the walls.

NextGen Home Experience Wrap-Up:

I was actually pretty impressed with the NextGen Home. It was interesting to go through. Because almost everything was “Available Today” it didn’t have that Golly-Gee Factor that the House of the Future at Disneyland had. It was more reasonable and believable. I’m sure glad we took the time to go through it because it gave me a bunch of ideas of practical things I could do in my house.

This section of The NextGen Home Experience featured products from several companies: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, Hewlett Packard Computers, Life|Touch Screens, TMIO Intelligent Ovens, Brizo Pascal Faucets, GE Appliances, ZON Audio Controllers, Vantage Lighting and Microtherm SEISCO Tankless Water Heater.

They packed so many computers and gadgets into this small manufactured home, that it was really overkill, but it was still fun to see all that could be done:

Zones 1 & 2 – The Entry and Dining Room

Out on the porch, there was a network camera, so from the Life|Touch Screen, we could check to see who was at the door. The $15 spyhole has been replaced with $8000 of machinery. Of course, you can also check who’s at the door from the bedroom, so that’s what’s so cool about that. You can also open and close the blinds and curtains, choose music from your MP3 collection, show television shows that your system has recorded for you, and adjust the temperature of the house. The Life|Touch Screens aren’t just little LCD screens on your wall that connect to a Windows Media Center PC, they are a Windows Media Center PC themselves.

In the dining room, they had an HP Plasma HDTV on the wall that displayed art. Of course, it could replay television shows, play movies or music from your collection. As you can see, of all the art they showed us, Mike preferred the penguins.

Zones 3-6 – Kitchen

We had already seen a computer in the entry and a computer in the dining room. They opened the kitchen cupboard to reveal yet another HP computer. I would have put the phone book in that cabinet and walked the extra couple of feet to the home office, but that’s just me.

There were touchless faucets that turned on automatically. We happened to be touring with a man who kept asking, “What happens if the power goes out?” about EVERY product that was being demonstrated. He lived in an area that experienced brownouts and blackouts on a regular basis, so all of this “House of the Future… er… Today” stuff seemed unwise to him. The people manning the house were from Intel, so they couldn’t tell us what would happen if the power went out and you wanted to turn on the water. They couldn’t even tell us if the water would start running if the power went out.

There was another Life|Touch Screen in the kitchen. It was grimy with fingerprints and I had the vision of what it would look like in a house with three kids. After only a day of children accessing their favorite songs and looking to see who’s at the door, even if no one rang the doorbell, I could imagine a far messier touch screen. It made me unwilling to put one in my house.

By far, the coolest thing in the kitchen was the TMIO Intelligent Oven. You can put dinner in the oven before you go to work. It will refrigerate the dinner until it’s time to cook it, then turn on the oven and cook your meal.

The guy in our group asked his question, “What happens if the power goes out?” Without missing a beat, the gentleman showing the oven said that if it’s a short amount of time, the oven goes back to its routine of either refrigerating or cooking. If the power goes out for a long time, it will fail-safe to refrigeration. The cool thing is that if you’re at work and the oven had fail-safed to refrigeration, you could reset it from their website or call their system on the telephone and reset it to cook correctly.

It doesn’t need Windows Media Center to run, it has its own system and just needs to connect to the Internet with a cable or wireless connection. Hands down, it was the coolest thing I saw in the NextGen house.

Zones 7 & 8 – The Utility Room

There was no one in this area to tell us what to look at. There was a washer and dryer there from GE and some other equipment. The only thing we noticed that we thought was cool was the SEISCO Microtherm Tankless Water Heater.

We had seen one of these at the cabin in Island Park, Idaho. Instead of a water heater that heated a tank of water that could run out with six of us showering, the cabin had a tankless water heater like this one that heated the water as it ran through it. I have no idea how it works, but it worked like a dream in that cabin. I kind of wish there had been a guide in the utility room that could have explained that technology to us. As far as I know, it’s magic.

Zones 1-8 Wrapup

With so many questions from us and the people in our group, it was understandable why the wait for the tour was two hours long. It took us a full hour and a half to get through the house. In Zones 1-8, the coolest thing was the TMIO Oven. There were so many things that the demonstrator showed us, we were really impressed. The truth of the matter is, we rarely use our oven for cooking dinner and the TMIO seemed like a really impressive crockpot to me. I didn’t see anything in zones 1-8 that I would install in my house. Sadly, I might not even use them if I moved into a house with all those gadgets, except the water heater. I love the idea of being able to shower as long as I want.

The CES NextGen Home Experience had a two hour wait to go through it. Engadget felt like it wasn’t worth the wait.

• The future is not air conditioned – and we’ll take a pass – Engadget

Unlike, Engadget, we thought it was worth it to go through the “Home of the Future,” even though they kept telling us that this is NOT the home of the future. It’s the home of today and every product on demonstration is available today. This week, we’ll share all the new and coolest gadgets we saw in the Home of the Future… er… Today at CES.

There were so many fitness gadgets at CES that it has taken us this long to write all the reviews on Starling Fitness. You can check out what you missed here:

Starling Fitness » CES: Garmin GPS and Heart Rate Monitor: You can see the Garmin Forerunner 305 here compared to the Nike Imara. It’s a GPS unit and heart rate monitor that is supposed to work in “urban canyons.” Check out this review to see if it worked on the convention floor.

Starling Fitness » CES: TacX and Intel: This bicycle trainer connects to your PC and allows you to ride the famous bicycle courses of the world with real video of the roads. Check out this review to see how many miles I was able to go on the Tour de France Alps course.

Starling Fitness » CES: Tacx Videos for Your Bike Trainer: If you don’t want to connect your bicycle to your PC, you can just watch these videos while you train on your stationary bike.

Starling Fitness » CES: NavMan: This is another GPS unit that tracks your speed, distance and pace. Check out this review to find out what the NavMan booth was like.

Starling Fitness » CES: Journey to the Wild Divine: Meditation software to lower your heart rate instead of raise it. Was I able to make the pinwheel spin on the noisy convention floor? Read this review to see.

Starling Fitness » CES: FitCentric: PC software in conjunction with Intel that runs your treadmill. You can compete with other runners online. See this review to see if your treadmill will work with this software.

Going to CES was so inspiring. I can see the world of “Exergaming” growing every year. I can’t wait to see what they will come up with next year to keep my heart rate in the high intensity zone.