The Gadgets Page

Headphones are a crap shoot everytime I try them. The Logitech Curve Headphones have piqued my interest, however.

They are shown both with the earloops and without. I would probably need the earloops because nothing seems to stay in place for me when I’m running on the treadmill. They are supposed to be made of extremely light weight plastic so they don’t weigh heavy on your ears. Most importantly, they come in Lime Green, which is my favorite color of the decade. They also come in clear and graphite if you prefer more tasteful coloring.

I haven’t tried these, but they are next on my list on the quest for the perfect set of headphones while I’m exercising. I’ve yet to find the ultimate listening devices, but I keep searching.

Via: Shiny Shiny: Logitech Sports Headphones

I am always cold, so when I saw this heated vest listed on an advert, I clicked on it, eager to see what it had.

• Heated Vest at Hammacher Schlemmer

For 130 bucks, this vest has a rechargeable pack that provides four hours of heat. It takes five hours to charge and it comes in “Unisex” sizes, which really means they only make a men’s size. The smallest size they carry is Medium, which is shirt sizes 38-41, which would drown me. This vest won’t work for me, but if you are out there feeling cold all the time, this one might be a blessing for you.

Everyone is excited because a study suggests that video games make kids better at solving complicated problems.

• Videogame Workout: Video Games Make You Smarter Too?

• the play girlz gaming blog » Video Games Can Provide Better Living

I know that video games helped with my motor skills the day that I was able to catch something falling off the kitchen counter. My mom was amazed because I had caught it, even though it was just in the corner of my eyes. I realized that I had expanded my view of the world to encompass more than what was just in front of me and I had learned to react to things in my peripheral vision. I think I was thirteen or fourteen years old. If I had been a jock girl, I would have learned this by playing sports, but I got it from playing hours of Centipede and watching out for the spider in the corner of my eye.

Now, they say video games help children learn problem solving and I believe it. After fighting with some of these games, I’m amazed that anyone can play them at all. They are supposed to be fun, but they are huge puzzles that I need a guidebook to navigate. It’s no surprise to me that kids that are able to conquer these games alone are learning problem solving skills. That just makes me happy on some child-like level.

Kikizo Games has a very detailed article about the new Sony PlayStation 3. They got their hands on consoles that have been released to three developers and have some details here.

• Kikizo Games: News: Exclusive: Hands-On with PlayStation 3

This is a LONG and very technical article, so I’ve summarized the features that were important to me here:

• We still don’t have a final controller. They say that the controller is USB, but no information about whether our old controllers will work on the new system. I don’t want to have to buy new dance pads to play my games.

• The PS3 seems to have slightly better hardware abilities than the Xbox 360, but it’s only visible if the game developers take advantage of it.

“The overall visual difference it makes will depend a lot on the developer’s skill, and how much time and money the publisher spends on a game.”

• They didn’t test the system to see if older games will work on the new system. Sony keeps saying that they are going to be backward compatible, but these guys really dropped the ball by not bringing a couple of PS2 and PS1 games to see if they work with the new hardware.

This article keeps going on and on about framerate and 1080i and 720p. To the normal consumer, this doesn’t help us much and it all depends on the game developers whether these features will be used or not. I would have preferred a more down to earth description of the machines. The developers are still working on their games. I don’t care if hair looks realistic. I want to know if DDR will still work with the new machines. Why is it that the people with insider access don’t ask the right questions?

Via: Gear Live | Kikizo Exclusive: Hands-On with PlayStation 3

I had one of those strange moments where I thought I was in Sesame Street-Land, where poetry is meant to foil evil-doers.

• CNN.com – Apple’s ode to hackers – Feb 17, 2006

In order to dissuade hackers from using the Mac operating system on non-Apple machines, Apple Computers has resorted to… poetry?

Here is the poem that pops up when you try to hack Mac OS X:

Your karma check for today:
There once was a user that whined
His existing OS was so blind
He’d do better to pirate
An OS that ran great
But found his hardware declined.
Please don’t steal Mac OS!
Really, that’s way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc.

They’re right, stealing software is “uncool”, but is poetry really the right medium to dissuade piracy? I think of software pirates of more the conquering a difficult situation types than the sensitive blokes who would understand iambic pentameter. I would think that the poetry would just goad them on.

Maybe next time Apple will embed a good surrealistic painting that will pop up and stop them.

The first thing that I thought when I saw this bicycle is, “I don’t have seven friends to ride on this bicycle with me.”

That’s a total lie, but I believed it when I thought it.

• The Seven-Person Conference Bicycle at Hammacher Schlemmer

Dakota saw one of these in New York:

• Dakota: New York City, Installment 1

There was a group of people riding it down the street, attracting attention:

“Arriving in Times Square at 2:30 AM, due to a small traffic jam in Hartford, we were somewhat slowed on 46th Street by a bicycle of sorts – actually it was a group riding a bicycle of sorts. The group made erratic progress down the street in front of us, as well as a great deal of noise.”

This thing looks like a great novelty to rent for a party, but I don’t know that I would be willing to shell out $19K for it. For that price, I could buy an inexpensive car!

Via: Museum of Hoaxes – Seven-Person Bicycle

Kuppersbusch has a new design for built in stovetops. Instead of the usual round units that come two to a built in unit, they have honeycomb shaped units.

You have your choice of 3-6 units and they can be tesselated in a multitude of ways. The red unit is the control.

Not all shapes can be tesselated, but the honeycomb design is one that is featured in nature quite heavily because it’s the most efficient of the shapes that can be tesselated. When a bee makes a honeycomb, it uses less wax making the six-sided shape than it would a triangle or a square. An octagon uses less wax, but you can’t tesselate an octagon (it leaves a hole between the shapes). That’s your math lesson for the day.

As cool as this stove is, I am completely unwilling to pay approximately $5000 for the six unit version. I’ll stick with my cheap $200 stove because I don’t cook often enough to make something like this feasible.

Looks cool, though…

For More Information:

• Electric Cooktops by Kuppersbusch – built-in honeycomb cooktop | Trendir

• Gear Live | Kuppersbusch Built-In Electric Honeycomb Cooktop

I found Pandora through a blog of my friend, Braidwood. She was posting about how much she loved it and I had no idea what it was. It didn’t take me long to get up to speed.

Pandora is a free Internet Radio service that creates radio stations based on music you already like. You can create a radio station based on a song or an artist. Their selection of artists isn’t infinite, but their program was able to formulate a few really listenable stations based on combinations of artists I love. It took a little guiding to get them working like I want, but after that, all I have to do is log into Pandora and start playing. It even remembers which station and volume setting I was using last.

The free version has commercials (see the picture of Mozart to the right). They are NOT audio commercials, which was what finally made me stop listening to regular radio stations. Sometimes it seemed like there was more commercial air-time than music air-time on my local radio stations. Pandora is the perfect replacement for radio. It plays me good music that I have never heard before. My wish list at Amazon is very quickly filling up with new music.

I thought that I might have trouble with choppy music because it’s streaming music. I didn’t want to listen to online music if I was going to keep pausing and breaking up. I’d rather listen to the static and commercials on the radio. I haven’t had any problems with streaming speed and it only pauses when my computer is doing something incredibly busy (I tend to multi-task). It seems to run very efficiently on my computer and laptop.

What I’d Like To See Pandora Have:

• An indicator that says how far along in a song I am.

• A way to clarify WHY I don’t like a song, such as “I don’t want songs with vocals” or “Electronic only please, no guitars.” I have no idea how they would program for that, but I would really like that feature.

Via: Braidwood’s (B)log: Pandora Speaks

Nothing says I love you like a gadget, right?

No, actually, that’s wrong.

The best way to say I love you is with those little actions every day of the year. You can’t give a gift on Valentine’s Day and think that it will make up for all the times you forgot the important things all year long.

It’s too late for this year, but starting today, remember all the little ways to say I love you without expensive gifts. You probably should ask your partner what they think would tell them that you love them and then DO IT.

Sorry, no cool gadgets for you today. Just an urging to tell your loved one that you really love them in the best way possible.

After seeing what Eleksen can do, I wonder if their product has a hand in these jeans from Levi Strauss.

• Levi Strauss & Co. | News Releases – iPod Compatible Jeans – January 10, 2006

Unfortunately, no photographs of the product are available at this time, so we can’t get a glimpse of what the jeans look like. Here are the features:

• Docking cradle in pocket
• Looser design to eliminate the “iPod Bulge”
• Easy removal to see the screen
• Controls on the hip area featuring a “joystick”
• Handy wire retractor to prevent tangled earbuds.

After seeing what Eleksen can do with touch sensitive fabric, I completely believe that Levi Strauss has these jeans in the works. Now all the jeans need are some solar panels on the butt to power your iPod and they’d be the perfect jeans.

Via: gadgetgirl: ooh, technology