The Gadgets Page

In the category of strange displays for watches, this one wins the readability prize. It looks different and cool. It displays the time, date and day of the week on the front of the watch. It has a backlight AND has a chronograph. It doesn’t have a countdown timer, but I have been using that feature less and less lately.

• NOOKA ZEN-V

I wish they made them for women. Right now, they are only in men’s sizes, which isn’t any better than the bulky watch I have now. It costs $275 for the version with a metal band and $250 for the leather band (as shown). It’s an interesting addition to the strangely unique watch category and I hope they continue to innovate.

Via: Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women – Zooka Zen V watch

We were driving home to Salt Lake City, Utah from Mount Hood, Oregon. Somewhere in Idaho, the rain hit us hard. The wind was blowing and the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain. Then it got even worse. The wind started blowing our wipers OFF the windshield. For at least ten seconds, the wipers weren’t touching the glass, yet we could still see. The Rain-X that I had put into the windshield wiper fluid had made the glass water repellent. I truly believe that in those ten seconds when the wipers were blown off the windshield, Rain-X saved our lives.

After the rain slowed down and we regain our wits about ourselves (stopped screaming like lunatics), we realized that we should have taken a video of how well the Rain-X was working for the Gadgets Page. We found a nearly empty portion of the freeway. I filmed while Mike drove. He turned off the windshield wipers so you can see how much the Rain-X was actually doing. The rain had actually calmed down a bit by the time we remembered to video this, but I think it shows how well Rain-X works.

The funny thing is that I didn’t buy Rain-X because of its wonderful water repellent properties. I had been out of windshield wiper fluid. The store where I bought some was out of the inexpensive blue stuff, so I mindlessly sprung for the more expensive brand without even looking at it. Worth every penny!

Seriously, right now. Go out and get Rain-X for your car. I can’t stress how well it works. Not even this video shows how great it is. It could actually save your life.

ZAP is a company that specializes in battery powered cars and modifying Smart Cars to be legal in the states. They have turned their powerful battery knowledge toward the iPod with astounding results.

• ZAP News: ZAP Introduces iZAP Lithium Battery Line for the iPod

According to ZAP, their lithium batteries for the iPod will extend your listening time to 60 hours. You could go on a remote camping trip and never have to charge your iPod, even if you listened for the entire trip. You might even run out of music to listen to before you ran out of battery life.

The only glitch is the $50 price tag for the battery and the six hour charging time. If you find yourself separated from places to recharge your iPod quite often, then you might be interested in this battery.

I’ve written before about the Seven-Person Tricycle from Hammacher Schlemmer. Here’s a video of it in action:

Viddy Well filmed five tourists taking a ride on the bike. I was surprised to see that most of them weren’t using the pedals, so the bike was being powered mostly by the woman in charge of the bike.

These look like a fun novelty to own if you live in a big city and can charge tourists for bike rides. Next time I find myself trapped in traffic behind a horse and carriage downtown, I’m going to take a deep breath and repeat my new mantra, “At least it’s not a 7-person bike, at least it’s not a 7-person bike…”

Wil Wheaton has finally given us his full E3 report. E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) is a video game conference that showcases the new and exciting in the video world.

• Future Shock | The A.V. Club

His sole goal for the day was to experience Guitar Hero II. Distracted by Tony Hawk skating a half-pipe and zombies, he keeps his focus on the prize.

Of course, this is Microsoft we’re talking about, and no Microsoft demo experience would be complete or authentic without lockups and rebooting, which I got to enjoy—twice.

“Okay,” I said while the 360 rebooted for the second time, “I really need to get out of here and find Guitar Hero II.”

It’s an entertaining read that gives you the idea of the craziness of this convention.

Check out this list of Top 10 Geek Watches. Sadly, they are all men’s watches. I guess they don’t believe women can be geeks. Of course, geek watches for women are difficult to find…

• productdose.com » Blog Archive » Top 10 Geek Watches

The Tag Heuer Monaco 69, with its blatantly obvious sexual innuendo for a name, is my favorite choice. It’s the only watch with a good name that can command respect AND be useful. It’s a digital watch on one side and analog on the other (hence, the sixty-nine reference).

Here is the official information from Tag Heuer:

• TAG Heuer Concept Watches > Monaco Sixty-Nine, Monaco 69 > Luxury Watchmaking, Swiss Watches

This is a concept watch and isn’t available right now. There is nothing on their website stating if or when it might be available or how much it would cost when it is. There is speculation ranging in the $7000 range, however.

Kevin Cheng was at E3 and attended the demonstration for the new game, Spore, which is like the Sims for evolution. This video shows Robin Williams playing with Spore, creating a creature of his own design for the game.

• Robin Williams Plays Spore at kev/null

I am so excited about this game. You get to design your own life form and help it evolve from protozoa on up to galactic traveler.

For more information about Spore:

• SPORE: About SPORE

• CNN.com – ‘Spore’ lets gamers evolve at E3 – May 20, 2005

• Spore for PC – Spore PC Game – Spore Computer Game

This is mounted on top of my house. It looks homemade, but the previous owner has no idea what it is. It looks like it’s trying to be a sattelite dish of some sort, but I can’t tell.

Do any of you know how I could test this thing to see what it is and if it works? It looks like a totally cool hack, but since I don’t know what it is, it’s going to end up being put in the garbage next time we go up on the roof.

Wil Wheaton was a guest speaker at E3, but he was more interested in getting his grimy hands on Guitar Hero 2. He was successful and his review is here:

• WWdN: In Exile: Primus Gives Master Track to Guitar Hero 2

He enjoyed playing the eight song demo that they had available and talked to the developers:

“It was so nice to meet developers who aren’t completely in love with themselves and appreciate geeks like me who play their games, you know?”

E3 is a Video Game Convention in California. Every year, all the best games are showcased there. Wil could have set his sites on any of the games and he went straight to the Red Octane booth to play Guitar Hero 2.

You can be a ROCK STAR!

William McKeen brags about his luddite ways and threatens that the Internet is going to ruin serendipity.

• Perspective: The endangered joy of serendipity

I realized half-way through reading his article that this fellow doesn’t use the Internet. Sure, he has logged on to CNN.com and probably gets his stock quotes online, but other than that, he hasn’t spent much time online.

He has never known the seredipitous joy of reading a weblog and finding a link to something totally weird and useful. He hasn’t even listened to the boring overplaylists that the radio has been cranking out lately. He hasn’t searched for interesting music online or known the joy of finding a good band via Pandora or iTunes. I was about to smack this luddite down until I realized that Steven Berlin Johnson had done it for me.

• stevenberlinjohnson.com: Can We Please Kill This Meme Now

Every time I see someone waxing poetic about how much better reading a newspaper was, or going to a library was, or listening to the radio was, I KNOW for a fact that said person has not learned how to use the Internet properly. Get past the “I Suck At This” phase before you go reminiscing about how much better the past was.