The Gadgets Page

This is one of the Superbowl commercials that Motorola had for their PEBL phone. The design of the phone is amazingly smooth and tactilely pleasing. They had them at the Motorola booth at CES. Some were on pedestals where you could play with them, but they had many others that were with piles of rocks under glass on the floor.

The Motorola booth was huge, but I didn’t find anything there that I really wanted. They were promoting their RAZR in pink, you know, for girls. As a girl, I’m becoming more and more sick of the color pink. I’m beginning to think that they don’t really understand women and what we want.

I was more impressed with the Motorola Ski Jackets. The MP3 player snapped into the arm of the jacket and the headphones were in the hood. Of course, I would forget to remove the MP3 player and throw the jacket into the washing machine when it started smelling too much like February snow, so it’s not really a good choice for me.

The Motorola booth was impressive, with its dance floors, music playing apparel and phones that look like rocks. I don’t know why I didn’t take any pictures…

Update: 02-08-06: I lied. I had quite a few pictures from the Motorola booth and I just found them today. Here is a quick slideshow with them:

All this writing about CES is exciting. Being there reminded me of being at Comdex. I found these old photos of Comdex 2000 and I thought I’d share them for fun.

This picture of Mike with the Ask Jeeves butler makes me smile. I am surprised that Ask Jeeves is still around today. It has been quietly tailing behind Google since that juggernaut took over the scene.

I have no idea who this crayon was trying to promote. The company is probably out of business by now. So many companies were massacred by the Dot Bomb, even if they had nothing to do with the Internet.

Netgear are still around. Obviously this huge inflatable ode to Netgear was more interesting to us than the routers they were promoting back then.

I don’t know if you remember when Microsoft added their “friendly” paper clip to the Office Suite, but I do. Everytime I would start a sentence with the word “To,” it would pop up and tell me that if I’m writing a letter, it could help me. I have NEVER started a letter with the word “To.” I wanted to personally beat up the Paperclip, but they only allowed their Help Genie beat him up. We didn’t need a better animated help feature. We needed to learn how to turn the stupid paperclip off.

This was the year I learned about Linux. Mike knew all about it, but I had never heard of it and the concept of Open Source was even more confusing to me. I found it strangely scary that so many companies were promoting something that was available for free on the Internet. Mike had a copy that he had been playing with, but all I saw were penguins.

Not only did those companies survive the Dot Bomb, they are still working on Linux solutions to this day. Here is a picture of Mike with the Penguin Computing penguin. I remember people standing in line to get Linux Penguin tatoos. I still have a hundred of them in a box downstairs from this show. I also have some bumper stickers that say, “Open Source Is Not A Crime.” I didn’t understand them back then. Now, Open Source makes more sense to me than other software programming models and I’m amazed at how short-sighted I was.

This little car is electric. It was featured at a couple of booths at the Sands convention floor. Zap! Cars was one of the sponsors for the Scientific American Innovations People’s Choice Awards. Here are a run down of the facts:

• Speeds up to 40 mph (not freeway legal)
• Range up to 40 miles (don’t go too far from home)
• Uses NO gasoline (all you do is plug it in)
• Length: 9 feet Width: 4.7 feet Height: 5 feet Weight: approximately 1500 pounds
• Seats up to four people (only if they’re short)
• You can charge it at any electric outlet
• It comes in Xebra Flash (pictured above), Ocean Blue (pictured below), Kiwi Green and Lipstick Red.

I used to own a Yugo in the Eighties and this car was very similarly equipped. I had a flashback of trying to find a window crank for the Yugo when I saw the interior of the vehicle and I immediately recoiled from the machine. Unless you live in Southern California, this car is probably not for you. When the window crank breaks, you want to be able to walk into any auto parts store to get a replacement.

I can’t find any information about how long it takes to charge a Xebra. I would hate to think that it’s only good for 40 miles of errands and then it has to charge overnight. That would make it completely useless. I might as well ride my bike.

It sure is a cute car, though. Despite the limitations, I’m attracted to it in a strange way. It reminds me of the car in the video “Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode (that car had one wheel in the back instead of two). It feels very European with its three-wheel design. I imagine driving it would be fun because I would be the only one in my city with a Xebra. Still, Salt Lake City is very spread out and 40 miles wouldn’t even get me from one end of the Salt Lake Valley to the other.

• ZapWorld.com – ZAP Xebra Electric Vehicle