The Gadgets Page

Several companies were demonstrating analog watches that incorporate flash memory and MP3 players. While I prefer digital watches, I suppose there’s some appeal in a watch that looks classy and businesslike but still plays your tunes. Here’s a roundup of three companies’ MP3 watches.

XONIX MP3 Watches

China’s XONIX had a selection of USB storage and MP3 watches. They range from plastic to classy metallic. Some of the plastic ones have a fold-out USB cable, while the metal ones use a connector.

They also offer a digital model that looks nice, although I’m not sure about the sideways display.

KJB Security Solutions

KJB Security Solutions also offered an analog MP3 watch, the MP1700, although they mostly focus on other products. It has 256 MB of memory.

eClipse (NTREN Technologies)

Last but not least, nTren Technologies offered a variety of styles of watches, all analog. Unlike the others, these come in a decent flash memory size—512 MB and 1 GB. They charge through the USB interface or an AC adapter, and last about 10 hours on a charge. Windows and Mac OS are supported.

Conclusion

These are all relatively low-tech watches with MP3 players tucked inside, but they’re sure an improvement over the giant Casio MP3 player watches that were available a few years ago. A watch probably isn’t the best place for an MP3 player—imagine your watch connected to your ears—but I guess it might work for some people. Regardless, it’s great to see MP3 player technology becoming so tiny it can fit in a normal-sized watch.

At your typical electronics or department store it’s easy to find all kinds of headphones—in-the-ear types, tiny earbuds, and various strange shapes that don’t fit anyone’s ears. (Are you listening, Nike?) It’s becoming harder to find cheap headphones that are shaped like plain old headphones, but fortunately Sony still makes some nice ones.

Sony’s MDR-V750 headphones are a low-end “studio” model, which means they’re not really pocket-sized. They’re still small and portable compared to my MDR-7506 studio monitor headphones, and much cheaper ($30).

Design and Fit

These are shaped like a smaller version of the larger studio phones, but still fit my ears nicely. The vinyl cushions are circular, with a hole in the middle, which prevents them from being too warm, although they’re still warmer on the ears than lightweight models.

The V250 headphones won’t be winning any design awards, since they’re the same shape as HAM radio operators were using 50 years ago, but it’s a tried and true design that works. The headband is wide and sturdy, and adjusts in size for a good fit.

The earpads can fold 180 degrees away from your ear, which is nice for temporarily opening an ear to listen to what’s going on. Unfortunately, unlike the larger 7506’s, the headphones don’t fold into a more portable shape.

Sound Quality

They may not be as portable as some, or look great with your tiny iPod, but these headphones do sound great. The bass response is very good, and with the closed design, ambient sounds are blocked very well. The high end also sounds great, and there’s none of the mushy midrange tones I associate with cheap headphones. It’s very easy to isolate different parts of complex music.

I’m not an expert nor have I hooked them up to a spectrum analyzer, but the frequency response curve sounds realistic and pretty close to neutral—nothing exaggerated, which is important when you’re using them to monitor music you’re producing yourself.

Features

These headphones have a nice bonus feature: a built-in volume control. Unlike many inline controls, it seems quite sturdy, and the sound is great both at low and high volume. There’s also a stereo/mono switch, which comes in handy when you’re mastering your own music and want to test different listening conditions. It’s also a fun toy to fiddle with while you’re listening to music with a strong stereo separation.

The supplied cord is not detachable, as is standard for cheap headphones, but it is long and unusually thick, and looks like it can take a beating. A 1/8″ standard headphone plug is attached, and a 1/4″ adapter is supplied for plugging into non-portable equipment.

Conclusion

Sony’s MDR-V250 is a great set of low-priced headphones for studio use or casual music listening. The volume control is a nice feature, the sound quality is about the best I’ve heard on headphones under $100, and you can’t beat the price.

The beginning of the year is always a good time to look back at the past year. Since I haven’t found any interesting lists of gadgets released in 2005, here’s a PC World article that looks back a bit further:

• PC World: The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

While the obvious iPods and RAZR phones are there, the list also includes some classic gadgets you may remember—or your parents may—like the first Sony Walkman portable stereo, the PalmPilot 1000 PDA, and the first mass-produced transistor radio, pictured at right. And don’t forget the TRS-80 Model 100, the laptop computer I spent my teenage years dreaming of owning.

As with all “top 50″ lists, it’s open to second-guessing—I for one think there are too many gadgets from the last decade on the list, and what’s the silly robot dog doing there?—but it’s fun to take a look back at the gadgets that were so exciting when they first appeared.

Live from CES… Filed under: Site News — Michael Moncur @ 6:00 am

Laura and I will be attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, and posting daily items of interest here and at Starling Fitness. CES posts will begin on Wednesday, January 4th.

CES is where many companies announce their latest gadgets, or show off concepts for future products. As usual, we’ll try to stick to “real world” gadgets that you’ll actually see on the shelves soon, but we might cover some of the pie-in-the-sky gadgets too.

You shouldn’t expect total coverage of CES here, of course—it’s a gigantic show, and we’re covering it with a staff of two people. What you can expect is our perspective: each day we’ll post about a few new gadgets that we found the most innovative or interesting.

Enjoy the CES coverage! Comments (0)

We bought The Lodge Pro Grill over a year ago. It’s a cast iron grill that fits nicely over two burners on your stove. More importantly, it stores in the same space as a cookie sheet. The smooth side is great for making pancakes and eggs. If you flip it over, there is a ridge grill side that is great for grilling meat. Just like to George Foreman grill, the fat drips down and stays away from the meat.

This holiday, we found a new use for it. Since we keep it on our stove at all times, we noticed that it would be ideal for cooling cookies. We’ve never had a cooling rack for cookies and we have always thought that we really “should” have a cooling rack instead of putting the cookies on paper towels on the countertop. The ridged edge of the grill works perfectly with cookies and they cooled nicely. I love it when I find a new use for a gadget I already own!

Additionally, Mike and I take this grill with us when we go camping. It fits right over the two propane burners of our camping stove and is a huge space for cooking those early morning pancakes when you can still see your breath in the air. The surface heats pretty evenly. It’s warmer where the burners (either electric or propane) are touching it, but the difference between the warm areas and cooler areas aren’t enough to cause any problems cooking. We’ve never tried using it over an open fire, so I can’t recommend using it for that.

This has been a great grill and I’m so glad that we have found yet another use for it.

I was really excited about these Nike Sport Audio Headphones when I bought them. I have been running and riding my bike for a long time and my sweat can eat through that soft spongy stuff, leaving it in disgusting tatters. I love the behind the neck form factor and have trashed two sets of Sony headphones with my acidic sweat. I thought these Nike headphones would be great because they don’t come with any of that spongy stuff. I was looking forward to many workouts with those headphones.

Unfortunately, headphones are a product that can only be tested after you buy them. Most of the time, they come blister-packed, so you can’t try them out at the store. Other times, you might be able to try them at the store, but the true test is after an hour of sweaty running. The only way to really test headphones is to shell out the money for them. Don’t bother with these ones.

They felt alright when I first put them on, but after five minutes, they were pinching the tops of my ears. They are on a pivot, so I thought they would move out, but they bounce back, squeezing my ears in the process. By the end of my first workout, these headphones were relegated to the “Rejects” box. They sounded great, but they hurt me. I’m not subjecting myself to pain just for good sound.

Mike took them out of the “Rejects” box and tried them for his workouts:

Mike Moncur’s Additional Review: These headphones sound great with particularly good bass. After an hour or so of wear, they started to hurt my ears and they never really felt comfortable.

Since I’ve been riding my bike regularly on an indoor bicycle trainer, I have thought a lot about bicycle energy. If my trainer had a generator attached to the back instead of a resistance module, I could be charging an automobile battery or maybe even powering my television. It feels like a bunch of wasted motion.

Mike and I have talked about it a lot and he is the electrical expert of the house. He says that the energy I generate on a workout isn’t enough to power a 15 watt light bulb for an hour. I would do better for the environment if I just unscrewed one bulb in the living room chandelier.

I found this website that took a bicycle trainer and attached a generator to it, measuring the output while his friend rode the bike:

• Bicycle Powered Generator

Based on his findings, Mike is right. The best I could hope for is to keep a car battery charged. If I could run my computer off a car battery, then I might be able to be a little bit more self sufficient. Trying to do anything else would be difficult. When he tried to test the power with a circular saw, the tool ground to a halt when they tried to cut through a 2X4. I could do better with a hand saw.

This website has detailed instructions on how to build a bicycle generator out of an old exercise bike, including part numbers and places to order things like the generator:

• Science Shareware: Bike/Bicycle Generator Using Exercise Bike

I know that I could generate enough electricity to charge a car battery every day. I’m attracted to the idea of self-sufficiency, but I’m not about to hack my brand new bike trainer just to try it out. For now, I think I’ll just ride away and enjoy myself.

I had a reader on Starling Fitness ask me what kind of heart rate monitor I would buy if I needed to buy one right now. Here’s my best answer:

• Starling Fitness » Ask Laura: What Heart Rate Monitor Would I Buy?

I have come to depend on my heart rate monitor as much as my treadmill. I need it to tell me when I’m working too hard, since I tend to over-do exercising. Since I love the one that I have right now so much, I would probably buy the same thing all over again.

I got the Emjoi Optima Epilator about a year and a half ago and I have been happy with how it works. An epilator is a machine that pulls out hair from the root.

The first epilator that I ever used, The Epilady, was something my mom purchased when I was in high school. It had a large coil at the top of the machine that rotated and pulled out the hairs. It was painful to use at first. I remember after the first time I used it, my legs swelled and were a blotchy red. That’s how it was the first few times I used the Epilady, but my skin got used to having its hairs ripped out and I never have that swelling anymore, even if I shave instead of epilate for a couple of months.

The Emjoi Optima Epilator is much better than the Epilady that I had as a teen. Instead of a coil, it has 36 tiny tweezers that are highly effective at pulling out the hair. I can do my legs in half the time with this epilator. Of course, that means that it’s pulling out twice as many hairs at a time as other epilators, so if you’re new at this, it WILL be painful the first couple of times you use it.

It will be worth it, though. When you epilate (instead of shaving) the hair that grows back is fine and much softer than the hairs you pulled out. You only need to use the epilator once a week or so instead of shaving every day. It takes time for your body to grow back hair from scratch, which gives you more days of hair-free legs.

Depending on your tolerance for physical pain, the Optima can be used on the underarms and bikini area. Try it slowly at first, only doing a small patch at a time until you can handle epilating the entire area. Once you do it a few times, the pain is far less intense.

I’ve enjoyed the Optima and I’m glad that I bought it instead of some of the other epilators out there. It has the most tweezers of any of the other brands, so it only takes a few minutes to do my legs. Considering that I’ve had it for a year and a half with no problems, I think I made a good choice.

I love DDR. It has been a fun game for me to play for a long time. For a while, Xbox only had one DDR game available and it was too hard for me to play as a beginner. There was only one or two songs that I could play and not get kicked out. DDR Ultramix 1 was the most frustrating experience for me.

StepMania is a dance simulation game that is open source and works on Window, Mac and Linux. I downloaded it when my frustration level became too high with DDR-UM1. I bought a USB-to-PlayStation 2 adapter from Red Octane that worked really well. I was finally able to play without getting kicked out of the songs.

It took some work to get StepMania working on my PC. Mike found an article on DDR-UK that really helped us get it working:

• DDRUK: An Introduction To StepMania BGA’s

My only problem was that I didn’t want to download songs that officially belonged to Konami. I didn’t want to feel like a criminal and original songs were hard to find. Now, however, there are tons of original songs available for download on StepMania’s offical website:

• StepMania: Download Songs

Not only that, there is software available that will take any song and add step patterns to it so you can play with it on StepMania:

• Dancing Monkeys – Wiki – monket.net

I haven’t tried any of these new original songs and I haven’t played with Dancing Monkeys, but it looks like StepMania is a lot more workable on a PC than it was a couple of years ago when I downloaded version 1.0. Right now, I’m happy with DDR-UM2 and UM3, so I don’t really need to search the Internet for more songs, but I’m glad to know that there is a ton of stuff out there that is legal.

If you have been wanting to try out dancing simulation games, but you don’t have a gaming console, this is probably the best thing that you can try inexpensively to see if you would like it.