The Gadgets Page

I had previously talked about MillionHeir and how fun it is to play. You can see that review here:

• Gadgets Page » Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir

After a few weeks of playing, I have enjoyed many quiet hours playing. It’s a wonderful and relaxing way to end my day. Finding a few objects in a picture right before I go to sleep may make for interesting dreams, but they ARE relaxing ones.

The other day, I was watching House on USA and this commercial for the game came on:

This is exactly how it was playing the game with my sister. The first few games, we played against each other, but we really enjoyed the cooperative mode where we found objects together.

It’s such a quiet and relaxing little commercial that it caught my eye and it portrayed the game perfectly. It’s not about the story of a lost millionaire. It’s about finding the celery before your sister does.

Grand Theft Auto IV was heralded as the AntiChrist and the premiere in video graphics and story telling. It was hated and loved. I tried playing with it at Dan’s house and after accidentally blowing up his car with a grenade, I decided that it was too stressful for me to play and thought I was alone in that decision. My friend Ernie, however, has redeemed my judgment. Here is his review of Grand Theft Auto IV:

• little. yellow. different. – Grand Theft Auto 4, in a nutshell

Seriously, I don’t care if this is the highest rated game on the Playstation 3 — if I wanted to be screamed at in an automobile, I could driving my mother around the Bay Area and tell her I was gay.

If an accidental push of a button can blow up my car and put me in the hospital, I don’t want to play the stupid game. I didn’t even get to the part where someone else screams at me while I’m trying to get away from the cops.

Why can’t all games be like Animal Crossing?!!

The geek girl inside of me is supremely happy to learn that YouTube is now showing full episodes of certain old television shows like Star Trek, MacGyver and the original Beverly Hills 90210.

I enjoyed a lovely 50 minutes with Charlie X today:

• Star Trek: The Original Series – Charlie X

There are advertising commercial breaks. I would LOVE to have cool 1960’s commercials for companies that still exist. Couldn’t Crest have dug up their old commercials for these episodes of Star Trek? They would have been FAR more noticeable than the boring Crest mouthwash commercials that are showing now.

Kudos to CBS for bringing us full episodes to YouTube!

Via: YouTube Gets Full Episodes of Geeky Classics! | News, online tv, Star Trek | geeksugar – Technology, Gadgets, & How Tos.

When we talk about design, sometimes things just seem a little familiar. Take this design for a yo-yo, for example. It’s used to charge your iPhone.

• Peter Thuvander: Yo-Yo Charger

It’s a design for a yo-yo that has a LI battery cell that gets charged when you play with it. Ingenious, isn’t it? Who would have ever thought of something like that?

Well, it just so happens that Chris Aimone and Tomek Bartczak thought of it a full two years earlier:

• Gadgets Page » Gadgets of the Future? Yo-Yo Powered MP3 Player

They actually were the grand prize winners for the Pop-Sci Core77 Design Challenge. Sorry, Peter. Try again and this time come up with your OWN idea.

Via: Popgadget, DVICE, TreeHugger, Engadget and Boing Boing. NONE of whom noticed the similarities.

Nintendo announced their new iteration of the Nintendo DS series. It’s called Nintendo DSi.

• Kotaku: Nintendo Announce New DS: The Nintendo DSi

This version can no longer play Game Boy Advance games, but it has a huge list of new features:

• It’s thinner than the DS Lite.
• The screens are larger (3.25 inches).
• A 0.3 megapixel camera and webcam (that’s 640 X 480 for all you folks from 1992).
• SD memory card slot
• Built-in Internet browser
• The DSi Shop, where you can download games for the Nintendo DSi just like you can for the Wii.

The camera could introduce some intriguing game play. Just like the microphone and the touchscreen did for the original DS. I think I would have preferred a camera that faced toward ME while I’m playing the game. With that feature, game designers could program a way for me to see my opponents when playing online. Of course, that’s probably asking a bit much from a little handheld gaming device.

Honestly, the iPhone is seriously kicking butt on the “it’s already in my pocket” front. Since I don’t carry my DS around with me everywhere, I have found myself playing games on my iPhone a little more than on my DS.

The Nintendo DSi will be available in Japan in November and the rest of us will have to wait a while until it comes here. I’m not quite ready to give up my GBA games yet, so I’ll see what they do to entice me.

Via: OtakuBooty: Nintendo Announces Upgraded Nintendo DSi

After MONTHS of dealing with my 3G iPhone thinking I was in Minnesota, something FINALLY has been fixed. I don’t know what it was. It didn’t happen with the last update. Somehow, the 3G data for the cell tower, or whatever Apple had done to the programming has been fixed and now my iPhone finally believes that I’m in Utah.

What about the rest of you? There were people in Oregon, Minnesota and Philedelphia having these problems. Did they get fixed? Does your iPhone believe you are back in your hometown yet? I’d hate to think that this was just a singular fix and I’m hoping that everyone who has had this problem is enjoying the 3G iPhone the way it was MEANT to be enjoyed.

The nice people at Devotec sent me a Solar Charger to test. It came with collection of adapters, so it can charge a wide variety of electronic devices.

• Devotec Industries: Solar Battery Power

I was most interested in my iPhone. It’s the device that goes dead first when we are camping, so I wanted to see if it would work. It did and I have been able to charge my cell phone with the adapter a couple of times this summer while we’ve been out and about.

When I upgraded my iPhone from the first generation to the 3G version, a lot of things that used to charge my iPhone, stopped working. Fortunately, the Devotec Solar Charger kept working like a dream.

The way it works is the solar cells charge a lithium-ion battery. When I need to power up my iPhone, it gets juice from the battery AND the solar cells.

The only disadvantage is that it is almost the size of my phone. Since the iPhone doesn’t have the option of a removable battery, the Devotec Solar Charger is actually the BEST way to have a backup battery for my phone just like I used to have for the Treo. If you were bothered by the lack of additional battery option with the iPhone, this is just the device for you.

Update 10-14-09: I just tested this charger with the iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, it does NOT charge that phone.

Mini-laptops are finally coming into their own, as small hardware has finally become powerful enough to run typical business applications. The Macbook Air, the Sony TZ series, and the new HP Mini typify mini notebooks. The Air and the TZ are diminutive, to be sure, but they’re no less expensive than a full-sized laptop. That seems a bit unfair, considering that you actually get less.

The HP Mini, on the other hand, only costs $600—you can get three of them for the price of a Macbook Air.

The best thing about the Mini, beyond the fact that it deftly runs Microsoft Office, is the full pitch keyboard. While it’s not a full sized keyboard, the keys are the same size as a normal desktop, making the computer a true “note book”—you can actually type at full speed, despite the diminutive size. Comparable Ultramobile PCs such as the Samsung Q1 are useless for typing.

Software

The “Out Of the Box Experience” for Vista computers absolutely sucks, but the Mini is better than most in that it isn’t bloated with crapware—in fact, there is no trial-ware or unnecessary software installed at all except for a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office and the AOL toolbar for Internet Explorer. I have to give HP props for putting user experience over bloatware revenue. Expect the computer to take about two hours from the time you start it up until it’s ready to use.

The HP Mini ships with Windows Vista Home Basic, the least expensive version of Vista which is no better or worse than XP Home in my opinion. Vista Home Basic lacks the 3D “Aero” 3D desktop enhancements, Windows Media Center, backup and recovery tools, and Remote Desktop. All of those things are either pointless or pretty easy to rectify with free software such as iTunes and VNC.

Hardware

The computer comes with 2GB of RAM—a saving grace for a computer with a relatively slow processor. Coupled with a fast hard disk, the computer is quite snappy and more than sufficient for typical applications. The Windows Experience index comes in at 1.7 because of the processor, but the computer doesn’t feel slow at all—it’s quite a bit better performing than my Sony UX-390, which has a faster processor but half the RAM. I installed Vista Ultimate on the machine to see whether it could handle Aero, and it does so quite handily, with no performance related artifacts (other than that the task manager reports that the CPU is usually quite busy). I installed Alcohol 52% and used an ISO image of Vista Ultimate on an Express Card Flash drive to perform the Vista upgrade, which worked just fine. Also unique in the small notebook range is the gigabit network adapter, which makes the computer ideal for dedicated use as a network sniffer, the purpose to which mine will be put. This is the least expensive laptop with a gigabit network adapter on the market at the time of this writing. I don’t expect that it will be able to capture at full gigabit speed (under Windows), but it should be considerably better than a 100Mb/sec adapter.

The screen’s native resolution is 1024 x 600, a widescreen format. Its about as small as a screen could be for Office applications without being annoying.

The laptop shell is aluminum, which helps dissipate heat (and the laptop does get hot under a full load). The computer does not come with a CD or DVD-ROM drive—you’ll have to use an external USB DVD-ROM drive. The computer comes with a full set of ports: ExpressCard 54, SD flash, VGA, gigabit Ethernet, Wifi b/g, a webcam, and headphone and microphone jacks. The only significant missing interface is Bluetooth.

Summary

In all, it’s the best $600 I’ve ever spent for a computer, and I highly recommend it to anyone for whom portability is important and an internal CD/DVD drive is not necessary.

If you have a iPhone, then you understand how difficult it can be to take close-up photos. Fortunately, Griffin has a solution for you. The Griffin Clarifi is an iPhone case that has a macro lens that slides over your normal iPhone lens.

Nicole Lee has been trying out her Griffin Clarifi. She said:

The Clarifi claims to improve macro close-up shots of the iPhone’s camera, and as you can see in the Before and After shot, it definitely makes close-up pics appear clearer and more in focus.

She provided a photo to show how well it works:

The Griffin website has another example:

There are so many times when I really need my iPhone to be able to snap a good photo, so this would come in handy for me.

This comic from xkcd is SO true!

It says:

The most powerful gaming systems in the world still can’t match the addictiveness of tiny in-browser flash games.

Honestly, I would far rather spend hours playing Bejeweled than stealing realistic cars in a realistic environment like Grand Theft Auto. Here are a few sites that offer free online games that are fun and addictive:

• PopCap Games – Free Online Games: Peggle and Bejeweled are the most popular.

• Free Online Games – Fun Online Games, Play Online Games from Shockwave: Collapse and Cubis are the best puzzle games on this site. They have Cake Mania as well.

• Free Online Games | Big Fish Games: Try The Hidden Object Show or Cooking Dash for some fun.

• SpinTop Games – Download Free Games: These folks have some classic board games like Monopoly, Scrabble and others.

If you have a computer, you have a wealth of free games to play. You don’t need a Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3 to enjoy the simple joy of online puzzle games.