The Gadgets Page

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.

Remember two years ago, when I was searching for the perfect watch? You don’t? Then check it out here:

• Gadgets Page » I Hate the Watch Designers of the World

I was looking for a watch that did the following:

• Women’s watch
• Digital
• Metal case and band
• Time and Date on the display at the same time
• Stopwatch
• Countdown Timer
• Light
• I would also like Dual Time, but I’m willing to give that up

The latest iteration of the Casio Baby-G doesn’t quite fit all my qualifications, but it’s very close. It is technically a women’s watch, even though it’s pretty large. You can see it takes up most of my wrist here:

It is digital and displays the time and date on the face of the watch. It also has a stopwatch (chronometer), and countdown timer, light and dual time. In fact, it has features that I didn’t even know I wanted like an accelerometer that can notice when I’m holding the watch up and looking at it and change the display to show slightly bigger numbers when I do:

If you think this photo is the same as the previous one except that it’s a little out of focus, then you can understand why I find the accelerometer feature useless. The numbers are ever so slightly bigger in the second picture, but the difference is so minute that it makes me wonder why they bothered.

Their execution of dual time is clunky. Sure, the cool thing right now is to have your time attached to wherever you’re living, but that is an extra feature that hinders rather than aids time setting. Instead of making me find the nearest city in my time zone, how about you just let me tell you what time it is now? Is that alright?

Oh, and when I set the time in the other time zone, don’t make me choose yet another city. Just let me change the hours. Can you keep the minutes and seconds to match the original time line? No? Why is that? What planet do you live on? We’re all just separated by hours, not minutes. Is it really necessary for me to reset the minutes and seconds in EACH time zone?

If you are in love with your shiny white Apple MacBook or your brand new 3G iPhone, then can have the Casio Baby-G to match. Otherwise, it’s just a bulky white watch that is close, but no cigar. It’s serviceable, but it is by no means the perfect watch.

If you have a need to figure out what a person is doing with their computer, for example to monitor what your teenagers do online, there is a class of devices called Keystroke loggers that security and HR professionals often employ to capture everything that is typed on a computer. This includes passwords, websites, outgoing email, and instant messages.

If you need a keystroke logger, you can’t do better than the Keelogger Flash USB, from www.keelog.com. This clever device records all the keystrokes that go through it to a text file stored in flash memory on the device. At any time, you can press a set of keys simultaneously (by default, “kbs”) to connect the device as flash memory. When you do this, another drive will show up in “my computer” automatically (or on your desktop in Mac OS X) and it will contain a simple text file of all keystrokes logged since the file was created. You can copy that file to your computer, and then simply eject the flash drive to re-enable the keyboard functionality. There is no software or drivers to install to read the data from the device.

It’s a huge boon to my security practice because we can read data directly on the computers we need to monitor without giving away the presence of the device to the people being monitored and without removing it.

There are caveats to the use of any keystroke logger however: It is physically obvious that something is connected between the keyboard and the computer. Should someone notice it, they could move the keyboard to a different USB port and them move it back when they’re finished—giving you the impression that you’ve captured all keystrokes when you haven’t. The only solution to this is to disassemble the keyboard and install a keystroke logger inside it, which is technically somewhat difficult. You also can’t use a keystroke logger to capture data from a laptop keyboard or from fingerprint sensors, so monitoring laptop users requires a software solution. Finally, keystroke loggers can’t pickup data from remote control software such as VNC, Macintosh Screen Sharing, or Microsoft Remote Desktop.

The Keelogger is considerably simpler to use than the keystroke loggers I’ve used in my IT security practice in the past. Without getting into the morality of spying or admonishing you to trust people before spying on them, the keeLogger is a simple, effective device that requires no software to perform it’s job.

Back in December of last year, Jason Kottke wrote about how much he feels about his cell phones. You can see it here:

• Remembrance of Phones Past (kottke.org)

In 2001, I spoke to my father on this Kyocera smartphone from 8th Avenue, having run up the block from work just in time to see the first tower fall. I don’t have to go into all the emotional baggage which that implies.

Since the time began that we were never to be found without our mobile phones (or whichever portable devices, for that matter), I feel that somehow all of the memories of the current chapter of my life are being constantly averaged out and inextricably linked to the phone that I’m using.

The Kyocera smartphone was the same one I was using when the the towers fell. I remember my client calling me on it, worried that I would be glued to the television instead of helping him with his move. Terrorists or not, he was going to homeless in 14 days if we didn’t close on his deal and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

A couple of months before that, I used to visit the phone at Office Max every few days. It was the epitome of smartphones at the time and I really wanted it. When I finally earned enough to buy it, I went to the familiar office supply store. They were closing them out and the only one left was the same display I had been fondling for the last month. I used to joke that I was going to visit my phone. I had no idea how true that was going to be.

Now, the idea of buying a phone at Office Max seems silly. They only sell the lame phones. Even going to the cell phone store to buy one seems strange, since I have bought my last two phones at the Apple Store.

I’m surprised at how much my perceptions of what is normal have changed over just a few years. I have gone through so many phones over the last ten years, each one offering me more than I had dreamed of the year before. I can remember so many times in my life, just based on what phone I had. It’s funny how our lives can be defined by our gadgets.

I was pretty excited to finally get the Sennheiser Pc121 In-Ear Mono-Aural Headset in the mail last week. Personally I had been looking for a small footprint headset I could use for Skype conversations, and this looks like a winner.

The headset came in a retail package, which I can’t stand because you have to use a blow torch to open it, and I just want to get to the device. To my surprise, the packaging just opened right up, a big win in my view.

This PC 121 model only has audio plugs (one green and one pink), and fortunately my laptop had the correct receptors. The package didn’t include an adapter from audio connector to USB, however I have an adapter from a Plantronics headset, and it seemed to work just fine. I would suggest Sennheiser include this simple inexpensive adapter with the headset, because not all laptops have audio connectors, but almost all come with a USB adapter.

A couple of things really excited me about this headset. The first thing was the over the ear clip like a cell phone wireless headset. No bulky over the head brackets and big ear pieces. Next was the very long wiring. This allowed me to move around while talking.

The big test would be whether the headset was recognized by Skype. That seemed to work with no problem. I could hear really well, and talking with this headset was comfortable most of the time.

Figuring a good test would be using the headset for my podcast, The CouchCast, I plugged it in and recorded the show. Here is a link to the show. The podcast is recorded live, and usually over Skype. In the past I’ve used a Logitech headset, and a Sony headset. But both of these are large and not very mobile.

The unit is light, small, has inline volume and mute controls, and the ASUS EeePC seemed to recognize the device with no problems. The boom mic is movable up and down, allowing you to adjust for comfort and clarity.

I tested the headset in several scenarios, and on several machines with Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems. All of the tests worked well, and none of the machines had any problems recognizing the device.

The only issue I had using this device, was the ear piece staying in place, at least in my ear. I couldn’t get it to stay put, even with the foam cover. It seemed the piece that goes over the ear either kept moving and pulling the piece out, or it simply would not stay in my ear. I spent most of the time holding it so I could hear and talk. Your experience may differ, and again, it could just be my ear, but I have several other devices similar to this and I have no problems keeping it in place.

It’s a great headset, and I really like that it’s small, and easily fits in my computer bag, which is what I have been looking for. This product easily meets my needs. I would recommend the headset to anyone looking for a small, light, portable device, that is easy to use and works on most platforms.

Photographs taken with film fade with age, and even negatives yellow and become brittle. Digital photos, on the other hand, retain the same brilliant color and clarity every time you pull them up on the computer screen—until your hard disk crashes and you instantly lose every photo you’ve ever taken.

Yes, digital photography has its share of disasters, and that leads some people to distrust it, or even to claim that film lasts longer than digital. But the good news is that your digital pictures can last forever if you take good care of them. Here are 10 rules to follow to make sure you don’t lose pictures to a digital catastrophe:

1. Use a quality memory card.

Start with the “film” your pictures are stored on: the memory card. While the cheap memory cards offer a huge capacity for a small price, it’s best to pay a bit more and get a quality card. A card from a good manufacturer will have less risk of data corruption or other failures. Sandisk, Lexar, and Kingston are good choices.

• Tip: Buy two smaller cards instead of one larger one: for example, two 1GB cards instead of one 2GB card. This will often save you money, and you’ll also have a hedge against data loss—one corrupt card will only affect half of your photos.

2. Get those photos off that memory card.

You might have a huge memory card in your camera that can store thousands of photos, but you should still consider the memory card temporary storage—a memory card can fail, or can be lost or stolen with the camera. Whenever you finish taking a batch of pictures or return from a trip, use a card reader or USB cable to transfer the pictures to the computer.

3. Don’t delete photos in the camera.

Your camera probably has a convenient “Delete” or “Trash” button. I suggest you never use it. There are three reasons for this:

• You avoid accidentally deleting the wrong picture, or accidentally using the “delete all” option.
• I find it helpful to keep all of my photos, since even the “mistakes” could turn out to be the only photo of something important, or a “happy accident” that is good in its own way.
• Can you really determine which photos are good or bad by looking at your camera’s tiny screen? It’s much better to transfer them all to the computer, then decide what to keep.

4. Don’t delete photos at all.

For that matter, why delete photos at all? I keep every photo I take with my digital cameras: the great shots, the out-of-focus shots, the mistakes, the duplicates, everything. Even the bad ones are useful years later for documenting my vacations and remembering what I saw, for seeing how my photographic technique has improved, or for seeing whether a camera is working as well as it used to. This also ensures that I never delete the wrong photo. If there’s a gap in the numbering on my original photo files, I know something’s missing.

If you don’t have room for all of your photos on your hard drive, remember that hard drives are cheap. You can also archive the old ones to CD or DVD media.

5. Keep a Backup. Or two.

Did I mention that hard drives are cheap? I recommend keeping two copies of all of your original photos at all times. I have a daily backup script that copies the new files to an external drive. Be sure to use a separate drive or another computer as your backup, to avoid losing photos in a drive crash.

If you want to guarantee you won’t lose photos, you should also have an off-site backup—use an online backup service, upload them to a server, or just drop off a few DVD-ROMs at a friend’s house. That way your photos are protected even if you have a house fire or other disaster.

6. Use generic photo formats.

Most cameras store images in the standard JPEG format, which should be easily readable for many years. However, higher-end cameras usually have a RAW format option. While raw images are great for post-processing and often beat JPEG in quality, keep in mind that all raw formats are proprietary, and you may have trouble opening these files 10 years from now. It’s best to save a standard JPEG or TIFF version of each photo, even if you use RAW. Some cameras can save a JPEG file along with the RAW file, giving you the best of both worlds.

• Tip: If you are serious about your photography and insist on using RAW format, keep a backup copy of the software you use to process the files. You might need to install it on an antique PC 10 years from now to access an old photo.

7. Don’t edit original photos.

If you use a photo, you’ll often resize, crop, or otherwise process it. This is fine, but the first thing you should do when editing a photo is save it to a new file. Keep the original, unprocessed, full-resolution file along with your edited version. This will make it easier to use the photo for a different purpose later, and it also avoids the costly mistake of overwriting a photo with a messed-up version. Back up the edited version too.

• Tip: Unless you’re very careful and use special software, overwriting a photo will erase the EXIF data that the camera stored with the photo. This is your record of the date and time the picture was taken and the camera settings used.

8. Don’t trust someone else with your photos.

Online photo sharing sites like Flickr are great for sharing photos, but avoid the temptation to use them for storing photos. Don’t trust an online service with the only copy of your photos, or even the backup copy.

Online services might go out of business, and they don’t guarantee that your data will be safe—especially if you forget to pay the bill. They also almost always process the photo (resizing, etc.) when you upload it. Use these services to share pictures, but don’t expect them to last forever there.

9. Test and maintain your backup files.

A backup copy is no good if it doesn’t work, or if you lose access to it. Here are a few tips for making sure your backups will back you up:

• Take a look at your backup files regularly, and make sure you can load a few photos.
• If you back up to a hard disk, check the disk for errors regularly.
• If you back up to CD-R or DVD-R, use quality backup media.
• Test CD or DVD backups every month or two.
• Once every year or two, copy CD or DVD backups to brand new discs. Media has a lifespan potentially as low as 5 years.
• If you get a new computer, be sure to move the photos from your old computer, and make sure you still have two copies.
• If CD or DVD formats are going away in favor of some kind of new Super Blue-HD discs, copy your files to the new media as soon as it’s practical.

10. Label, organize, and sort your photos.

If you follow the above rules for 20 years, you’ll end up with thousands of great photos—and now you have a different problem. Finding a few pictures of “that one time we went to Yellowstone” could be virtually impossible when you have thousands of photos stored in a disorganized mess of folders.

At the very least, do what I do: store each batch of photos in a separate folder with a descriptive name beginning with the date. Here are some examples:

• 2006-05-10 Yellowstone Park
• 2006-08-22 Testing new Camera
• 2006-09-01 Elvis sighting at Caesar’s Palace
• 2006-12-26 Opening Christmas presents

I avoid renaming the photo files, since I consider them my “negatives” and want a complete record of the pictures I’ve taken. Instead, I store them in folders like the above, then group those into larger folders for each year. This makes it easy to find particular photos, and the pictures are in convenient groups for archiving to DVD-ROMs every few months.

You may even want to move the best photos (or the ones you’ve chosen to print) into a separate folder within each folder, especially if you’re like me and you have more “misses” than “hits”.

If you want to go one step further, you can catalog your photos with a program like ACDSee, which lets you store a title, description, keywords, and rating for every photo. That would make it even easier to find what you’re looking for, if you can find the time to label and rate each picture.

• Like this article? Digg It!
• Thanks to Problogger’s group project for linking to this article.

If you have been worrying about all those batteries you use every year on your remote control, here is an eco-friendly option for you, the wind-up remote control:

• Wind-Up Remote Control at Gizoo

Product Specifications

• 30 revolutions gives a full charge
• Can control up to 6 different devices
• Product Dimensions: (H) 22cm x (L) 5cm x (D) 3.5cm

My biggest problem with this product is that I don’t use that many batteries on my remote control. In fact, I only change them once every few years. I’m not going to hand crank a remote control just to save myself the bother of changing batteries. Honestly, the remote control isn’t a big power hog, so I’m not going to worry about it.

As one reader said:

Had one for over a year. A full windup is right. Fully wound for 30 turns lasts approx 1 hour if you’re lucky and don’t channel hop or change volume. I’ve gone back to eco-unfriendly battery operated controllers because at least they work. Nice idea but so poorly implemented.
Adrian, UK

Via: Pocket-Lint: The remote control goes Eco