The Gadgets Page

Mike bought this Panasonic DMC-FX01 for himself about a month ago. I shrugged and went about my business, never thinking to give it a second glance. About a week ago, he took a small video of the cats. When he showed it to me, I commented on it,

“Man, that’s a clear video. What resolution is that?”

“I don’t know. I think you can take HDTV quality video with this. I can only get about 10 minutes on my SD card.”

“Can I borrow your camera tomorrow?”

Mike shrugged and I woke up early. I film walking videos for Starling Fitness and I wanted to see how well his little camera could do. Let me tell you, it blew the Sony DCR-DVD300 Handycam out of the water. The video on the Panasonic isn’t perfect, but it’s clearer than the Sony and it has an amazing anti-shake setting that makes taking a walking video a breeze.

Here is a 3-minute example of the video I took with the Panasonic DMC-FX01:

After playing with the Panasonic DMC-LX01, I no longer fantasize about buying a “real” video camera. His tiny camera fits in his pocket and goes with him everywhere. What’s the point of lugging around a huge video camera if you have one that’s almost as good with you wherever you go? There isn’t one.

The full-length DVD of this video is actually for sale at Starling Fitness for $5 including shipping and handling. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, you can find it here:

Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Walking Videos For Sale

Trevor Blackwell has built his own self-balancing scooter that works like a Segway.

• Building a Balancing Scooter

He insists that it’s easier than you might think to build a scooter like this, bragging that the code controlling the gyroscope is only 500 lines long.

“Although the Segway has several exotic components, mine is built from common low-tech parts like wheelchair motors and RC car batteries. The parts, even at small quantity retail prices, cost less than half of a genuine Segway.”

Of course, a Segway has been made consumer safe with all sorts of fail-safes to keep you from hurting yourself. His version may not be as safe.

“There is one very important difference between what can be built as an experiment and the commercial Segway: The commercial one has a lot of safety features, redundancy and fool-proofing. Mine has none whatsoever (Well, it does have a kill switch so it doesn’t go zooming away if I fall off, and it does shut down if it finds itself tipped more than 45 degrees.) This is pretty darn important, and you should think about it very carefully before considering building such a thing yourself. With a scooter like this, if it stops working for any reason (software crash, hardware failure, low battery) you will fall, hard, and probably on your face.“

In the end, I think a bike would be better. My bike can go way faster than a scooter and no one will stop me and ask me about it.

Over on Starling Fitness, I do an extensive review of the Nike+iPod. It is a sport kit for your iPod that tracks your distance and speed using a sensor that fits into the special Nike+ shoes. You can use it with ANY shoe, however, using the Shoe Wallet (pictured here).

• Starling Fitness » First Glance: Nike+iPod

The most surprising thing to me is that I really enjoy the software online that tracks your runs. It allows you to set goals and earn trophies with your best runs. It turns running into a video game for me.

A lot of people have complained that there is no way to download the data to a spreadsheet or other method of downloading, but that doesn’t bother me. The Nike.com website has free registration. If I REALLY wanted that data, it’s still on my iPod and I can type it into a spreadsheet if I want to. For now, I’m really happy with the positive feedback that the Nike website gives me. I haven’t figured out a way to do that with a spreadsheet yet.

I remember the electric car. Dilbert drove one in his animated sitcom. He was never able to drive it quite as well as Dogbert was able to. It was an early adopter thing that never really made it to my hometown.

This movie tells you why.

The only thing that bothers me is that electric cars get their energy from somewhere. In this case, you plug them into your home’s current and charge them up. Where does that electricity come from? It’s not free, you know. How do most local municipalities generate their electricity?

By burning coal and natural gas.

Sure, some cities generate electricity by harnessing the power of water or wind, but most cities put pollutants into the air to generate their electricity. I don’t see how an electric car is any better than a “gas-guzzling” version. The only difference is that you don’t personally see the effects of electricity generation unless you take a tour of your local electrical generation plant.

If you really care about the environment, buying an electric car, hybrid car or any other powered vehicle isn’t the answer. It might make the problem a little less bothersome, but it’s not a solution.

The solution isn’t a simple one:

• Find a job within five miles of your home or find a home within five miles of your workplace: Commuting accounts for a large percentage of driving.

• Ride a bike or walk to work: Human energy is a renewable source and it’s healthy for you.

• Shop for groceries at local stores that are also within walking or bike-riding distance: If the prices at the local stores are more expensive than the larger stores further away, it’s still worth it. We always forget to account for gasoline when we price compare.

• Consider your car to be for emergencies: If you consider your car to be used only in emergencies, then you will reduce your dependence on it. I would rather walk to the grocery store and ride my bike to work than fund this oil industry any more than I have to.

Strike a blow for independence by declaring independence from the oil industry. It seems to be more of a dictator than we realized.

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

For the second time this year, the Smart Car has shown up in a major American film.

In this case, it looks like it’s used as a comedic element because Woody Allen is frantically driving it to save Scarlett from Hugh Jackson. Suddenly, the Smart Car is a movie star. It’s the car of choice to get out of tight situations like running away from the Parisian Police in The DaVinci Code and saving the day.

Currently, the Smart Car isn’t available in the United States. There is one company, however that is converting Smart Cars to meet U.S. standards:

• ZapWorld.com – ZAP Smart Car

Not since the VW Beetle has a car been this exciting. Also, like the original Beetle, the engine is rear-mounted. It is NOT an electric car or a hybrid. It is a 60 horse power, 3-cylinder engine with 6 speed transmission (automatic or manual). Unfortunately, most of the dealerships that are selling these converted Smart Cars are charging between $22,000 and $29,900. At that price, they are no longer the economical cars that Europe has come to love. They’re pricey show cars.

Since Apple isn’t integrating their enormously popular iPod with every household item, the world is dreaming about what it would be like if they did. Peter Burns has imagined this iPod watch that would work with Bluetooth headphones to play your tunes:

• coroflot.com – portfolio details for Peter Burns

The only problem with this design is that the battery life wouldn’t be long enough to last a day. You would have to charge your watch every evening (or maybe every couple hours of listening). Fossil learned the hard way with the Palm watch and the MSN watch that long battery life is essential for usability. We aren’t going to see a iPod watch for a long time. Apple learns very well from the failures of others.

On another note, MAKE magazine has posted this iPod phone.

It’s a Pocket PC phone with an illicit application that works like an iPod. Unlike the iPod watch, this is actually possible to achieve if you are able to get your hands on a copy of pPod, the software running on the Pocket PC phone.

If you have a Treo (or any Palm OS unit), this software from PalmGear looks like it’s pretty useable also: mOcean – PalmGear.com

iPod Watch Via: Concepts We Want Made | productdose.com

iPod Phone Via: MAKE: Blog: The iPod phone – Pocket PC to iPod

It’s hard to remember that everything that exists didn’t used to exist. Take spiral bound notebooks, for example. They are everywhere. I remember wanting one when I was about six years old because I wanted to pretend I was Columbo. They have always existed, right? Nope…

This is a link to a Popular Science article about spiral notebooks. They were a new and innovative thing back in 1934:

• Modern Mechanix » First Spiral Notebook

The spiral notebook revolutionized notetaking. With its advent, we were able to tuck paper into our jacket, purse or even pants pocket. It opened easily and folded back on itself. It’s a design that is still popular today. It’s hard for me to believe that it has only existed for 72 years.

Via: Boing Boing: First spiral notebooks, article from 1934

This fun and addictive game has kept me entertained during down time. So far, the highest score that I’ve been able to get is 3000, and I feel lucky that I got it.

• Play zyrx

The object of the game is to look at the pattern of colored dots and recreate it on the screen. The pattern fades after a couple of seconds, so you have to memorize it. After you achieve a certain level, they will add a third color of dots (purple). You have to double click on the purple dots to change their color.

This doesn’t seem to be a speed game because I don’t get a higher score for completing the pattern quickly. It’s strictly an accuracy game. If you guess incorrectly five times, the game is over. You have some hints so they will show you the pattern again, but once they’re gone, you’re on your own.

I love simple games like this! I wonder when it will be available on Nintendo.

Via: Discopop Directory – Spots before your eyes

I met Josh Leo at Vloggercon this year. He has this wonderful video about mopeds:

Since gasoline prices are hovering around $3 a gallon, mopeds, scooters and motorcycles seem like an alternative to gas-guzzling cars. The only problem is in most areas, the weather makes riding these vehicles unpleasant or even dangerous. While the weather is nice, take a spin on a moped and see if you like it. You might just cut your costs for your daily commute.

This series is an excellent documentation of the history of computers. With video clips about everything from ENIAC to the Internet, it’s interesting to see the way the computers have been viewed. It includes audio and video clips from 1957 to 1996.

• Computer Invasion: A History of Automation in Canada – Science and Technology – CBC Archives

I love to see how a new technology is described from the perspective of years later. Seeing this archive reminds me of how new computers are. Only as far back as 1993, emoticons were a new thing and talking to people via mailing lists was something interesting enough for the CBC to report on it. I can’t wait to see the news reports about “blogs” in ten or fifteen years. They will be even more hilarious than they are now.

Via: kottke.org