The Gadgets Page

Here is a great video from Ryan and Jay at Ryan is Hungry. Greg Rose gives an indepth look at his veggie oil car. He gets used vegetable oil from a local Asian restaurant and powers his car with it.

Greg makes this conversion look so simple until I realize that half the year, I would have to run on straight diesel fuel because it’s so cold in Utah that veggie oil can’t be heated enough to actually work as auto fuel. There are so many ideas on how to make cars that are fuel-efficient and even liberated from fossil fuels, but unless they can work in places like Utah and Canada, they won’t catch on in the mainstream.

There are some places where you can get Bio-Diesel mixed fuels for colder climates. Here is a link to find a distributor in the U.S.

• Biodiesel.org – BioDiesel Distributor Map

You’d have to have a pretty fuel-efficient car to get from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas without a fill-up. That means packing your fuel with you or risking frozen fuel in your lines in Cedar City if you buy a big bottle of Wesson Oil at Costco. Veggie cars aren’t quite ready for primetime. The biggest problems are the climate issues and the availability.

Can’t wait until it’s easier to drive my car without making a dent in our environment!

For all of you who are worried about the Apocalypse or just like to go camping without your car, I bring you Freeplay Energy.

You are looking at Freecharge. It is a hand crank that can power anything with a cigarette adapter. For all of us who worry about the end of the world or anyone who has ever read The Stand, knowing that we can still charge our computers, is a comforting thought. I was raised in a religion that planned for Armageddon and my inner child clings to anything that lets me generate electricity with my own abilities. Freeplay has made a huge array of items that can do just that.

• ..:: Freeplay Energy Plc. Best in the World – Best for the World ::..

I thought that my obsession with hand cranked power was just because of my borderline-cult upbringing, but it seems that everyone likes the idea of not depending on batteries. Whether you’re camping, planning for power outages or just crazy like me, Freeplay Energy has many products to fulfill your needs.

If you have ever tried to take a picture in the rain, you know how difficult it is. You have maybe five to ten seconds before you have raindrops on the lens. That can make for an interesting effect, but not everyone is a fan of “interesting effects.” This gadgets locks into your tripod connector attaching a small umbrella to your camera.

• Popabrella: Protect Your Camera

The umbrella is fully articulated, so you can position it to protect your camera no matter which way the wind is blowing. It is also good for avoiding lens flares from sunlight. It’s such a simple item that can dramatically alter your photographs. If you regularly take pictures outside, an investment of less than thirty bucks is worth it.

You can find them at Amazon.com here:

• Popabrella Sun/Rain Blocker for Camcorders and Digital Cameras (small)

• Probrella Sun/Rain/Snow Blocker for Camcorders/Digital Cameras (large)

On another note, this product was demonstrated by an energetic woman who truly believed in it. She was able to display all the different positions for the umbrella and eagerly removed the popabrella to show how easy it was to attach. Sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.

Wil Wheaton was at CES this year and has written his evaluation of the show:

• WWdN: In Exile: 2007 CES: Day One

• WWdN: In Exile: 2007 CES Day Two

It’s strange how two people can encounter the same visual and auditory input and come up with two different experiences. Here is his description of my favorite part of the show:

The best part of CES is the International area, where there are gigantic signs in Engrish that say things like “Digital your new life! Smart Power Saving Socket! Eliminate the energy consumption of the equipments which are off work.” But my absolute favorite, which made me laugh so hard I almost vanished into the land of Wind and Ghosts, is “With the concept of FOUR ASPECTS & EIGHT HARMONY communicate with all over the world by music!” (The bold text is, in fact, in the original.) Seriously. Awesome.

He’s right. The International area is my absolute FAVORITE part of CES, but for me, it’s not about the massacre of my native tongue, although that is entertaining. I am shocked at how innovative and divergent so many companies are. Things that are interesting and unique that might never make it to the U.S. because they lack the ability to jump through our hoops.

Additionally, you get to talk to the inventors of the product instead of marketing drones like you do at the Microsoft and Intel booths. I know engineers aren’t that personable and sometimes they will fall over their words, but I’d rather talk to an inarticulate engineer than an actor. I can ask the engineer questions. The marketing drone will just fake their way through my questions and I hate that most of all. I’d even prefer an engineer who barely speaks English to an eloquent marketing employee.

I love the International area of CES because I have more access to the Steve Wozniaks of the world, not the Steve Balmers.

I have heard only a little bit about the One Laptop per Child initiative. It was started by some folks at MIT. Their goal was to create a laptop computer that could be inexpensive, wind-up powered, and easily useable for third world children. You can learn more about it here:

• One Laptop per Child

In the Pepper booth at CES, we actually got to play with a prototype for the $100 Laptop. Sadly, the windup power was not featured in this product. It is run on standard electricity, so for third world countries where electricity is a luxury, not a right, these computers are a lot less useful.

They are computers made for children, so the keyboard is SMALL and almost untypeable for an adult. I was unable to get a full sentence typed without several errors because the keys are so close together. I didn’t have a 75 wpm child-typist around to see if it would work just fine for children, but I suspect that it’s more than adequate.

If you are thinking of buying a $100 Laptop for your children, however, it’s not really an option. They sell the computers in lots of thousands to third world countries. When we asked at the booth, the minimum number that they would sell was so high that it didn’t seem worthwhile in our market. For countries wanting to create a technology aware population, they are perfect.

For more information about this particular unit, here is a link to the wiki:

• BTest-1 Release Notes – OLPCWiki

It looked so small and the screen was so very tiltable that I was sure it was a Tablet PC, but it isn’t. It runs Windows XP with no problems. It’s one of a large list of Ultra-Mobile PCs that were unveiled at CES. This tiny computer is made by Kohjinsha, a Korean company. They have teamed up with AMD to create a computer that is too big for your pocket, but the perfect size to tuck away in your purse. A Google search of the word Kohjinsha just brings up all the fan-boy reviews of this product until you scan to the second page to find the company’s website. Sadly, you won’t be able to buy this from Amazon.com yet. Although it looks like older versions of this product are available through GeekStuff:

• GeekStuff4U.com – Kohjinsha SA1-A

This computer does not use Intel technology. Its motherboard chip is an AMD Geode. Considering that until recently AMD was seriously kicking Intel’s butt on speed and reliability, that is not an issue, but if you’re married to the idea of having an Intel Core Duo Processor, then you might be selling yourself short.

Unlike the crippled thumb keyboard of the Sony UMPC, this is a keyboard that I could actually type on. The crowd around this machine was so thick that my hands are probably splashed all over the Internet on other sites. I just wanted to test my typing ability on a keyboard so small. Unlike the $100 computers that I found at CES, this keyboard was very typeable.

The American market seems to enjoy notebook computers that require muscles to cart around, but I’m not one of those people. I have been waiting for the tiny computers to come to the States. Here’s a taste of what my next laptop computer might be like.

The thought never once occurred to me, not even when I was staying in San Francisco and parking was so burdensome that I just left my Beetle in the one good spot I could find the entire time I stayed in the city. Why own a car when you live in San Francisco, New York or other towns with amazing public transportation? Well, sometimes you need to buy pillows and taking them home on the bus is just an exercise in futility. Sometimes you have a last minute appointment and you need to be there NOW, not 45 minutes from now. Sometimes you need to actually LEAVE the city.

Those are all rare occurrences, though. What if you could share a car? These few companies are actually making that idea a reality:

• Zipcar – Car sharing, cars by the hour or day

• Flexcar

• City CarShare – San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, CA USA

I heard about this concept from Tara Hunt on her weblog, HorsePigCow:

• HorsePigCow marketing uncommon: Why I heart Zipcar

She lives in San Francisco and she has been using Zipcar for awhile. She has a list of what she loves about them, but my favorite reason is here:

“It’s a ‘community shared’ car. This means when you join Zipcar, you are part of a community of people. I was walking down the street in NYC, chatting Zipcar up to my friend and a very stylish guy walked by us, turned around and said, ‘You are right, honey, Zipcar is da bomb!’ winked at me and gave me a big grin. I was on the bus and mentioned Zipcar to my son and a couple smiled at me and said, ‘We love Zipcar.’ People can connect through these things.”

In cities like Salt Lake City, Utah, reliquishing my car would limit my life to five square miles. Our public transportation is merely adequate in the city and pathetic in the suburbs. I could get rid of my car, but my access would shrink to the area available to my bicycle. I wouldn’t even be able to visit my mom without an hour-long bus ride (not including transfers). In larger cities where these car sharing services are available, however, it actually makes sense. I wonder if it will spread to the inner reaches of the country and if it does, how long it will take…

I talked about the WidgetStation previously. It’s one of a new category of ambient displays—devices that will sit next to your computer (or on a desk with no computer) and provide a display of useful information, avoiding taking up space on your screen.

While WidgetStation is neat in theory, it’s not available yet, and it will be expensive. If you just need a simple display to tell you the latest headlines or stock quotes, there’s an alternative. Mister Tipster, from FeedVision, is a text-based display that works with Windows to display anything in the RSS syndication format. This means you can have a display of headlines, stock quotes, or posts from your favorite weblog.

This unit hooks to any PC (Windows XP or Vista certified) with a USB cable. It provides a basic display—just 4 lines of text—but Mister Tipster does one job and does it well. It’s available now, and starts at $99. It even comes in three colors, and a “Pro” version includes alert lights that can let you know when keywords you define appear in the RSS feed.

The included software is easy to use, and lets you choose one or more RSS feeds from a database. Headlines are displayed as they appear from any of the feeds. You can also define keywords that light up one of the indicators in the Pro version or blink the display in the basic version. If you see an interesting headline on the Tipster display, a couple of clicks on the software’s icon will bring up the full article.

For system administrators and hackers, their use of the open RSS format makes it very easy to use this display for just about any text.

FeedVision even offers customized Tipsters for businesses to give away to clients. A device with a custom faceplate advertising your company can sit on the client’s desk and display your company’s stock price or special offers. While it’s expensive for a giveaway item, companies with valuable clients might find it worthwhile.

While I’m sure there will be tons of super-colorful information displays available in the coming years, Mister Tipster is here now and immediately useful. I’m tempted to cover my desk with them…

Some people can never have enough screen space – for example, gamers and system administrators. With more and more applications (such as watching videos) using a computer’s full screen, various devices are beginning to appear designed to give you a bit of extra space for a list of incoming email, IM alerts, server status messages, or the latest stock quotes or sports scores.

One of the nicest we’ve seen so far at CES is WidgetStation from Emtrace Technologies. WidgetStation is a clock with two LCD screens, each of which can display different “widgets” such as clocks, email lists, weather reports, or calendars.

Widgetstation is scriptable by advanced users and they plan to have a wide variety of widgets available online. The nice thing about this unit is that it is an independent low-power computer itself, with a WiFi connection – it can sit on your desk displaying your calendar and stock prices even if your computer is turned off.

Now the bad news: Like many of the products at CES, it isn’t available yet. According to Emtrace, the product will be available in the second quarter of 2007, with a price of about $250. I hope they make the deadline because I would find this product very useful, although the price would have to go down before it became practical for people who aren’t information crazy like myself.

Microsoft was showcasing their XBox 360 with various games. Guitar Hero I and Guitar Hero II have been available for a while for the Playstation 2, but soon it will be available for XBox 360. We played with it for a few minutes at the Microsoft booth. They didn’t take a picture of me when I rocked the house, but I took a picture of Matt Strebe when he tried it out.

The gameplay was exactly the same as the Playstation 2 version. The graphics were a little crisper, but when I was playing, all I cared about was the big red, yellow, and green buttons flying by on the screen. The XBox 360 version adds nothing compared to the less expensive console version. It’s nice to see that XBox has one game that isn’t a first person shooter or racing game, but PS2 had them beat by months. Sadly, I have still yet to find a reason to plunk down the big bucks for the XBox 360 console.