The Gadgets Page

When I talk about video games from the 1980’s, I usually wax nostalgic about Adventure or Centipede. Sometimes I even rave about Arkanoid, but I never thought to look at the Educational Games. Educational Games Research, however has listed their picks for the top ten educational games of the 80’s:

• The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s « Educational Games Research

My favorite of the group was Sim City. I learned a lot about city planning from that game and clogged traffic makes me a little more calm when I imagine a city planner trying desperately to fix the problem without having to bulldoze buildings to do it.

Kudos to them for choosing Microsoft Solitaire for the list. That game single-handedly taught the world how to use a mouse. I remember Mike telling me how as the IT officer, he assigned people to play that game so they would learn how to click, drag and double-click. It was a stroke of genius for Microsoft to include that game with their operating system.

Via: WWdN: In Exile: some generation x nostalgia for a monday morning

This is a pretty fun video showcasing the history of computers. It’s called Dot Matrix Revolution from SUPERBROTHERS and I found it delightful:

DOT MATRIX REVOLUTION* from superbrothers on Vimeo.

Even their description of it is fun:

Following an early morning status check of their vintage electronic equipment, two computer engineers “throw down” in an awkward dance-off that seems to echo the development of information technolgy and the internet from 1951 up to the present day (!?). The film features a catchy jingle by pop impresario Jim Guthrie. This is the second film by SUPERBROTHERS.

Next time you hear Steve Jobs talking about uploading things to “The Cloud” remember this little rendition of what it may look like.

Via: The History Of The World In 10 1/2 Pixels: Want To See The History Of The Computer In Under Four Minutes?

Check out this awesome video from Randy George. He did a cover of Daft Punk’s Something About Us.

He made the helmet in the video as well. Of course, the LED words were a visual effect. He explains here:

It was made of papier-mâché with a custom LED visor built in … post production! using Softimage XSI and Adobe After Effects! Yes, it was a visual effect! 3D modeling, manual rotoscoping, and motion tracking/motion stabilization tricks were employed to pull this off. A LED array with animated text was projected on to a manually rotoscoped 3D visor, that was subsequently composited with the original footage using motion trackers in After Effects. The helmet itself took three days to make. I used 7 layers of card stock/normal stock paper strips in a special heavy mix paste recipe. The shape was built around a custom mold of shipping foam and gaffers tape. It was finished off with gunmetal grey paint. The visor was made of plastic cut from a microwave oven splash cover I found at Target for 5 dollars, laminated on both sides with Limo dark auto window tinting. I could see out, but the translucent plastic from the microwave splash cover along with the heavy tinting made it a little bit difficult. On the inside, the helmet was padded with custom cut felt blocks to fit my head size perfectly. The total weight was around 0.5 Kg (about 1 pound).

Via: no es bueno.com » Blog Archive »

If you bought the Apple 3G iPhone, then you got one of these really cool tiny chargers for it. Unfortunately, they are being recalled.

• Apple Announces Ultracompact USB Adapter Exchange Program

Apple says that they have received reports of the adapter’s metal prongs breaking off in the power outlet. They will replace the adapters in mid-October and they will be marked with a green dot.

In the meantime, they should charge their iPhone 3G by connecting it to their computer with the USB cable that came with their iPhone or by using a standard-sized Apple USB Power Adapter (with fold up prongs) or with a third party adapter designed to work with the iPhone, such as a car charger.

Personally, I LOVE my new iPhone adapter. It is so small that I have no problem packing it up to go on a trip. Instead of forcing my computer to stay on all night while my phone charges, I can just plug it into the wall and close my laptop up.

I don’t want to surrender my adapter until I know I can have a new one soon. I guess I’ll sign up to get a new one and grit my teeth until October. Fortunately, I have no travel planned between now and then.

Via: Twitter / Michael D Jensen: Recall of Apple iPhone 3G …

This is being marketed as a stylus for those with long fingernails, but there have been many times when my fingers haven’t been able to quite make things work on the iPhone. The Pogo Stylus for the iPhone is a stylus, just like I had with the Treo, which I honestly miss. According to the Pogo Stylus website, here are the benefits of a stylus:

The sleek design of the Pogo Stylus features an ultra-light aluminum body with an anodized finish and laser graphics. The soft tip glides easily over the surface of the display, making it fun and easy to sketch, draw characters, or just slide to unlock. Sized for accuracy, it does away with the awkward typos and misfires common to fingertip-only use.

Eliminating fingers has the added benefit of keeping the screen free of smudges and grease. Designed to firmly hug the contours of the iPhone 3G, the Pogo Stylus travel clip will keep your stylus close at hand. A second clip is included for the original iPhone and iPod touch.

I’m digging on this red one:

The only problem I can see with this stylus is the multi-touch features. How do I pinch or stretch with the stylus? I can’t and I can imagine fumbling with the stylus in my hand while I have to go back to using my fingers. This is a cool idea, but the more that Apple adds multi-touch gestures, the less useful it will be. Considering I usually text with two thumbs, I think a stylus would slow me down.

Via: Long Nails? No Problem With the PoGo Stylus For the iPhone | iPhone, iPhone accessories, pogo stylus | geeksugar – Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

Tokyoflash is the creator of MANY useless watches that are more jewelry than timepieces, but Negative is a watch that is almost useful.

The display can be either horizontal or vertical. The LEDs can display in any one of seven colors, or even choose the colors randomly. Most importantly, the time is displayed in the LEDs that are NOT lit, thus the name, Negative. Tokyoflash somehow thinks this is a new thing and even suggests on their website that it might be difficult to read at first, going to the trouble of teaching you how to read it:

This is the most usable watch made by Tokyoflash, which isn’t saying much from the company that brought you Barcode, Pimpin, Diode and Retrofit:

I’m still waiting for the watch that worries more about displaying the date and time on the face than about the color of the LEDs. Nice try, Tokyoflash. It’s the closest you’ve come to creating a watch that will please me, but you still are FAR from the mark.

Via: Tokyoflash: Telling Time With The Negative – Geekologie

Here is a project that has finally come to fruition that a lot of us old-school gamers would like to see. They have created the Super Genintari, which plays games from the following consoles: Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis and Super NES.

• STUPIDFINGERS – Projects (Super Genintari)

This 4-in-1 Atari 2600/NES/Genesis/Super NES combo system actually began its life sometime circa early 2002, and at the time it only consisted of a Sega Genesis/32X and Super NES. Soon after accidentally destroying the 32X (no big loss) and moving to the smaller Genesis 3 board, I decided to throw an NES into the mix, making it a 3-in-1 system. It went through a few redesigns before I finally chose to go all out and add the Atari as well since i’d already spent so much time on it. I worked on it on and off for several years (taking sanity breaks for several months at a time) and finally have a finished machine to show you! This is to date the most involved and time-consuming project I’ve ever worked on, and I’m happy to finally call it done.

You can see the console demonstrated here:

Via: Hybrid Gaming Systems: The Super Genintari – Geekologie

This commercial for Nokia is so good I want to watch it over and over:

Welcome to the Fourth Screen!

Via: Nokia’s Fourth Screen Commercial is Epic | commercial, geeky video, Nokia | geeksugar – Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

Just so you know, Princess Peach wears underwear in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

• Princess Peach Does Not Fight Commando – Geekologie

Yes, someone has gone to the trouble of looking up the skirts of video game characters verifying that they have proper undergarments:

Now I could go on a tirade about how whoever the hell bothered freeze-framing the hell out of the game to get these pictures and videos is a sick and twisted bastard that’s f’ed in the head. But, well, they saved me the trouble of doing it myself, so I won’t.

You can see a video of the process here:

Yep, just as you would expect, she wears bright pink granny underwear. She always seemed like the kind of girl who would wear underwear that matches her clothing. A princess isn’t the type of girl that just picks whatever underwear that’s on top of the pile never looking at the color. She’d never be caught wearing stripey undies with a plaid skirt. No way.

To all you thirteen year old boys out there looking up Princess Peach’s skirt, there are REAL girls in your class at school who’d love some attention. Of course, their undies probably don’t match their outfits, so maybe Princess Peach IS better than the real thing.

You are looking at my first problem with Google Chrome:

I downloaded Google’s new browser to see if it was worth all the hype and within seconds, I had my first problem. The download was “kind” enough to import the bookmarks from my Internet Explorer browser for me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t used IE since I first found FireFox years ago. The only bookmark on that old list that I still use is Bloglines, but when I tried to go to Bloglines, it asked me to log in.

I haven’t logged into Bloglines for YEARS. The cookies have just transferred over from one version of FireFox to the new one for so long that I don’t even remember which email address or password I used for Bloglines.

So much for making it easy for me…

I’m going to play with Chrome for a little while to see if it is as cool as everyone is thinking it’s going to be, but they don’t have a Mac version and I switched to Mac last year. I really hate going back to my clunky PC just to test things, so I can’t even promise that I’ll write an in-depth review of Google Chrome. Instead, maybe I’ll write a devotional for Firefox.