The Gadgets Page

MyVu is a strange pair of glasses that allow you watch your video iPod in a different way. Instead of trying to hold up your iPod to your face, you can see the show on the two tiny screens in the glasses. You can see a closeup of the screens here:

When we saw them at CES, the girls at the desk were pretty unwilling to talk to us. While they flirted with the guys who walked past their booth, we played with the demonstration model. It was great to see the video full screen, but it was even better that I could see Mike and the hallway around me. MyVu allows you to watch your video, but it also allows you to monitor what’s going on around you.

When Mike started clicking pictures of me wearing the My Vu and they noticed that we were press, the girls finally deigned to talk to us. Sadly, it was obvious that they couldn’t answer any technical questions.

What I want to know:

• Will they work with the iPhone?
• If they do work with the iPhone, can I read my email and browse the web with them or will they only work with videos?
• Right now, they cost 300 bucks. That pushes them over my peripheral price limit. Is there going to be a cheaper one?

I see so much at CES, that I can’t possibly report it all, especially products that aren’t available yet. I love it when they finally become available because then I can tell you what it was like to use them!

MyVu Website: myvu: Award-winning video eyewear for virtual big screen viewing

Update 08-03-07: The MyVu does not work with the iPhone because the iPhone doesn’t have a video output. Sadly, it doesn’t work with the videos or the web browsing. It does, however, work with the Video iPod and is great for working out at the gym. You don’t need a television in front of your treadmill or weight machine when it’s in front of your face.

Type class was my first introduction to ASCII art. After hours of “Type X 15, O 2, X 15…” I would end up with a Christmas Tree on my sheet of paper. There was no backspace on my mom’s old typewriter. If I screwed up, I had to start all over and the teacher could tell at a glance if I had done everything correctly.

Now, all you have to do is upload your photo to Photo2Text and they’ll do all the work for you.

• Photo2Text.com – Convert an image to Ascii Art

This is really cool, but I have yet to upload a photo yet. Maybe I’m worried that some poor school girl in India will have to do the conversion on an old IBM Selectric.

Via: Photojojo » Turn Your Photos into Gibberish — How to Convert Photos into ASCII Art

Finally, a DATE that we can see the iPhone. Apple just released three commercials for the iPhone that don’t tell us anything new about it except WHEN we can get one. All the speculation is over.

• Apple – iPhone – TV Ads

You have to watch through the whole ad to find out what you really want to know, “When can I get one?” The answer is June 29th. You have 25 days to countdown.

Via: Apple has released three new iPhone ads in advance of… (kottke.org)

It’s summer and it’s time to pull out your bike and get the gears running again. Half the fun of owning a bicycle is fixing it up, right?

Uhh, no…

If you are dreading getting your bike back in racing condition, here is a website that will help you. Sheldon Brown has an entire encyclopedia of bicycle information.

• Sheldon Brown-Bicycle Technical Information

I found this article particularly helpful:

• How To Shift Your Bicycle’s Gears

I have used the number of gears as a bragging point: “It has 21 gears!” but mostly I just use the big three with little variation on the smaller gears. I shift into low on hills and high going down hills. Other than that, I’ve left them alone. This article gives you an actual reason for the gears and how to use them to your advantage.

Just peruse the website and you’ll learn more about your bicycle than you ever thought!

Via: Cool Tool: Sheldon Brown’s Online Cycling Encyclopedia

This is an edited video of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs together on stage at D5 on Wednesday.

You can read a review of the encounter on CNET:

• Gates and Jobs share stage, friendly banter at D5 | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

I wonder why Bill agrees to this sort of thing when it’s obvious he’s so uncomfortable in these situations. I would have preferred to see a Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer meetup: more sparks and teeth, I think. Maybe a little like this:

Old skool smackdown from the Commodore 64!

Via: Nicolelee on Twitter

Palm made an announcement yesterday introducing the Foleo. It is billed as a smartphone companion, but it borders on the size of a notebook computer. It costs $499 (after $100 rebate), making it a hilariously expensive accessory or an amazingly inexpensive laptop.

• Palm, Inc. – Products – Foleo

Sadly, it looks like the Foleo is merely a hilariously expensive Treo accessory. It is a machine that runs the Linux operating system, not Windows, and connects to the Internet through your phone to bring the web and your email to full size. Unless there are some amazing features that they are hiding up their sleeves, it looks like they expect you to pay 600 bucks for a wireless keyboard.

Are they daft or do they not realize that I can already get online with my laptop and my Treo? Their crippled Bluetooth implementation doesn’t let it be wireless, but I have no problem pulling out a cord to connect my phone to my computer. With the Foleo, I can’t edit video, retouch photos or play Second Life, but with my tiny Acer notebook, I can do all that plus email for only 500 bucks. They brag about only weighing 2.5 pounds, but my Acer weighs a mere 5.3 pounds. The Foleo is too big for your pocket and most purses, so you’re going to need to carry it around in a bag anyway. Might as well carry around a REAL computer and not this crippled monstrosity they are trying to pass off on you.

Palm keeps dropping the ball. The iPhone comes out next month and they are going to have serious competition from a company that understands how people use their phones. This latest move just makes it easier and easier for people to give up their Treos and choose the iPhone.

Via: Foleo | Palm’s New Smartphone Companion | Treonauts

The sun is beating down on us every day. Why aren’t we all taking advantage of that wasted energy by installing solar cells on the top of our houses or buildings? Bob Boehm from The University of Nevada’s Center for Energy Research explains why:

• Ryan Is Hungry – Solar Las Vegas: Center for Energy Research – 03.07.2007

If you’re tempted to stop watching, fast forward to 4:36 minutes into the video. He talks about a really cool way to light your home or office using fiber optics and concentrated light from the sun. It’s far better than a skylight because it redirects the light to where you need it. Why doesn’t every office have this? I want to know specifics. How much would it cost to include this into my home?

This video is from Ryan Is Hungry, a weblog that brings green-friendly ideas to you on a regular basis. If you are interested in finding more efficient ways to live on this planet, they have enough ideas to fill your mind.

I picked up Games ‘n Music up at Walmart for about $35. It was just inexpensive enough to try out for fun. It is a game card that allows you to play videos, music and homebrew games on your Nintendo DS. It came with a 128 MB Micro SD card loaded with 25 games. The included card was enough to hold two hours worth of video, but I bought a 2 GB card and now I can play almost 11 hours of video on Nintendo.

You can see a video demonstrating Games n’ Music here:

As you can see, the video looks really good. Their software to convert video is amazingly fast. I used the lowest quality conversion and it still looks really good on the screen. Sadly, the video player leaves something to be desired. You can’t fast forward or reverse the video. If you go out of the video you’re watching and then go back in, it will restart you at the beginning of the video instead of where you were last and there is no way to fast forward to where you were before.

The MP3 player is a little better because it allows you to scan through the song. It also allows you to skip to the next song. Unfortunately, there is no good organization for the music and it doesn’t read song title from the MP3 data.

The games that come with it are utter crap. Sorry, but there is no nice way to say it. They are not worth the small storage space that they take on your card. They don’t use any of the buttons on the DS, even if the game would be better played with the button controls than a touch screen. There is no way to get out of the games without turning off your Nintendo. You can’t reset or hold down the start button to escape them.

I have been able to run some homebrew software using this card, but honestly, I haven’t been able to find anything good out there. I don’t know if this card is making them crash or if they are just substandard and crash all the time. I guess when it comes to online software available for free, you get what you pay for.

I compared the video quality of the Nintendo DS running Games n’ Music with the Video iPod and the Samsung U-740. You can see how each of them handled this Galaticast video.

The Games n’ Music conversion “squishes” wide videos to make them fit on the DS screen instead of letterboxing them like the iPod and the Samsung U-740 did. I feel like that should bother me, but honestly it doesn’t. My standards for video go way down when I’m watching it on a tiny screen. The cool thing is I can load up my card, keep my DS in my purse and pull it out to watch a video whenever I want. I could do the same thing with my Treo, but it is SO difficult and time consuming to get video to work on my Treo. It’s as easy with Games n’ Music as it is with the iPod. I just wish they would let me download a fix for the video player.

Official Website: Datel Design & Development Ltd – Games N Music

My stomach was sick when I watched him put his iPod in the blender and let the machine pulverize it.

These videos are a commercial for The Total Blender, made by BlendTec. You can see their website and the full array of videos here:

• Will It Blend? Presented by BlendTec

The premise is that if the blender will blend your iPod, then it certainly won’t have trouble with the ice cubes in your smoothie. I’m all about a good blender when I’m on a smoothie kick and then it will gather dust when I’m not. Of course, if I was using my blender to dispose of my old gadgets, then maybe it would get more use.

Apple has a couple of new ads in the PC Vs. Mac series. This one, Genius, is kinda funny.

They don’t show you standing at the counter making your appointment to see this supposed Mac Genius. They don’t show you waiting around forever just hoping that someone else will flake on their appointment so you can take it. They don’t show you arguing with the Mac employee that there is a sound problem with the iPod you JUST bought and instead of just exchanging it, he’s making you see the Mac “Genius” who insists that there is nothing wrong with the sound on your iPod and blames it on buyers’ remorse.

Sure, Macs are great, but don’t go braggin’ on your “genius” bar. I’ve found it to be less than satisfactory.