The Gadgets Page

iTouchless is a electronics distributor that carries a wide variety of products for your home. Here is a video of a couple of the products: Towel-Matic and iMu.

The Towel-Matic is an automatic towel dispenser. It will spit out the exact right amount of paper towel when you wave your hand in front of it. You can set it to work with half sheets or whole sheets. If it has dispensed some towel, it won’t dispense any more until you pull off the sheet.

This looked like a great product until I remembered WHEN I use paper towels. I use them when I’ve spilled a bottle of grape juice on the floor and I need something to clean it up. I don’t want just ONE towel in those situations. I want to pull off at least three or four. The Towel-Matic would be great for those times when I wash my hands and I want a towel to dry them off, but for the emergency situations, I really just need to grab the whole roll.

They also exhibited this fingerprint door lock. Using your fingerprint as a key, this lock makes it so you don’t have to carry around keys anymore.

They also exhibited the iMu. It’s a small gadget that turns any surface into a speaker. It works best with glass, but it also made a pretty good noise with the wood display.

We saw the iMu in the International hall as well. We recognized the iMu speaker from the iTouchless booth, so we were showing it off to Matt Strebe. We picked up the speaker and the music almost went away. We placed it back on the glass and the music was loud and clear.

It wasn’t until after we walked away from the booth that Strebe said to us what he noticed. Every time we lifted the speaker, the woman had turned the volume down. When we put it back down, she turned it back up.

No one did that at the iTouchless booth, but it made me feel like I was in a carnival. The pins are bolted to the table so I can’t knock them down and the darts are dulled so they bounce off the balloons.

With a name like Innovative Technology, I expected something a little more futuristic, but when I saw these old school flip clocks, I squealed with delight.

When I was a child, my parents had a flip clock next to their bed. I remember lying on the bed, trying to fall asleep for my nap and hearing the click, click, click of each minute flip by. It makes me happy just to see a clock like this.

They also make these retro turntables. You can create a CD from an old cassette tape or record with this turntable. It’s not perfect and the record arm won’t automatically return when the record is finished playing, but it will do a fairly good job of getting your rare vinyl into the digital world.

Innovative Technology seems to have more style than innovation, but sometimes style is what we need. When you can choose from twenty identical turntables or clocks, it’s nice to be able to find something that actually works AND looks good.

It has been a long time since something like this has caught my eye. The Ozaki iMini Pet is merely a dancing flower connected to a clock radio/iPod dock. The difference between it and the dancing flower that I bought when I was in high school is that it’s a full-sized plush animal.

The reason that this display caught my eye, however, is because of the Obama doll sitting at the top of the pyramid of dancing stuffed animals. Here is a video I took of them dancing:

They never labeled him as an Obama doll, but he was dancing along to a speech made by Obama. When was the last time a president had a plush animal made in his image? Teddy Roosevelt?

I don’t know if this is just manufacturers cashing in on the Obama popularity or if it is a statement about our president. Seeing this dancing Obama doll made me happy and that’s why I filmed a quickie video of it. Here is a better video from the Ozaki website:

I wasn’t able to find a place where you could buy the iMini Pet. If any of spot them at stores or on Amazon, leave a comment here.

Nicotine isn’t the only addicting quality of cigarettes. There is also the ACT of smoking that people miss. There were several companies at CES this year who showcased their electronic cigarettes and cigars. Here is a great demonstration from E-Cig.

Here is a closer glimpse of the E-Cig:

I haven’t smoked since I was nineteen years old, but back then, something like this would have made me feel ALOT better when I was smoking to look cool. The only problem with it is it stays the same size. It never gets smaller like a real cigarette does. The end lights up and a harmless steam smoke comes out of your mouth (not your nose, though).

I could see these products being useful for props in the movie industry for actors who don’t smoke who want to play characters that do. Even HD would be completely unable to tell the difference between an E-Cig and a real cigarette.

E-Cig wasn’t the only company exhibiting electronic cigarettes. Desonic also had a WIDE collection of electronic smoking paraphernalia.

To me, the cigars weren’t quite as believable as the cigarettes. I can smell a cigar a block away, so if I saw someone smoking an electronic cigar, I’d KNOW it wasn’t a real one. The electronic cigarettes are MUCH more realistic.

Whether these gadgets could help you quit smoking is another question. A nicotine patch can take care of the cravings, but the electronic cigarette only handles the habit. If you want to stop going out to the smoker’s patio several times a day, an electronic cigarette won’t help you.

Additionally, I haven’t smoked for YEARS, but seeing these electronic smoking gadgets made me want to start again. How crazy is that?!

I suspect that in five years, every late night commercial slot will be filled with electronic cigarettes. Until then, you’ll have to buy them on Amazon.com. Here are a few companies selling them:

• NJOY NPRO ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE WHITE STARTER KIT
• Smoking Everywhere Electronic Cigarette – 2.0 Kit
• The E-Smoke Stop Electronic Cigarette Kit
• Electronic Cigarette, Ecig, E Cigarettes, Ecigarette – Starter Kit
• Electronic Cigarette by Smoking Everywhere E Cigarette
• Electronic E-cigarette Premium Combo Pack
• The Ok Super Mini Electronic Cigarette

Update 10-27-14

Here we are a little more than five years later and you can buy ecigarettes in every gas station in the nation. There are vaping stores even in the smallest towns in America, with flavored nicotine juices and high-tech vamping machines that look like Dr. Who’s sonic screwdrivers instead of trying to look like cigarettes. I am continually shocked at how quickly things change!

Buglabs creates little electronic boxes that click into a computer/power module and can be used to create gadgets.

The tagline needs a little work though:

Buglabs is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine.

Rather than soldering LEDs, transistors and resistors onto a circuit board, you can choose a completed circuit, like a motion sensor or a digital camera and mix it with other complete gadgets to create your own.

I first saw Buglabs last year at CES, but they have been steadily growing their community, so now if you buy a Bugbase, there are tons of people out there who can tell you how to create the gadget you want to create.

• BUG Community | Bug Labs

Here’s a video intro:

You aren’t limited to their pre-made modules either. This is entire system is open-source, so if you have a modicum of electronics training, you can create your own modules. You can find out more about that here:

• Bug Blogger

We’ve come a long way from soldering resistors onto circuit boards and Buglabs has made the barrier to entry even lower for us.

There were a lot of people displaying iPod cases and USB drives in The Sands at CES this year, but the cutest of them all was from Bone Collection.

They had these adorable penguin USB drives. They were 4GB, which is enough for the transfer of some personal documents. It’s even enough to load Linux onto and run from the USB drive instead of the hard drive.

Mostly, they were just CUTE!

When I worked in an office, there were some personal documents that I used to work on during my breaks or lunchtime. I would keep them on a USB stick so I wouldn’t have to save them on my work computer or keep emailing them home to myself. This little penguin would have been perfect for that.

The USB is under his head, so you DO have to decapitate a penguin every time you use the drive, but most of the time, he can just sit on your desk looking cute.

These little guys are actually available for purchase NOW. You can buy them at X-treme Geek here:

• X-tremeGeek.com – Bone Collection DR07021-4BK 4GB USB 2.0 Flash Penguin Drive, Black
• X-tremeGeek.com – Bone Collection DR08031-4BK 4GB USB 2.0 Flash Santa Penguin Drive, Red Hat/Black

I’m alright with Roomba vacuuming my home. I don’t own one, but I wouldn’t fear it if I did. The Husqvarna Automower, however, isn’t something I’m comfortable handing over to a robot. I don’t want to explain why my lawn mower killed my neighbor’s cat. It’s just a conversation I’m not willing to have.

All joking aside, I AM tempted by it. The idea of being able to just set the lawnmower out on the lawn and letting it take care of the grass is very appealing. If the Roomba is any indication of how easy the Automower is going to be, however, I don’t think it will be very useful unless you arrange your yard so that it will never get stuck between the doghouse and the bushes.

Unfortunately, the Automower isn’t quite ready for a set it and forget it person yet. After watching the demonstration, it was obvious that the Husqvarna Automower uses the same driving algorithm as the Roomba. This is fine for vacuuming up the floor, but for cutting the lawn, it’s just not an option. The lawn cutting would show the nearly random path that your Automower took.

When I was a child learning how to mow the lawn, my grandfather was VERY particular about how it should look. One week, we would cut the lawn horizontally. The next week, we cut the lawn vertically and the third week we cut the lawn diagonally. After that, we would go back to the beginning. Part of the reason we did that was to prevent grooves in the ground where the lawn mower wheels ran, but there was another thought at play in my grandpa’s mind. Cutting the lawn in these patterns was aesthetically pleasing. You could tell how we cut it for a day or so and it looked pretty. I especially liked the diagonal weeks and wondered why he would never let me do circles.

The pattern of cutting on the lawn left by the Automower, however, would be anything but aesthetically pleasing. Honestly, lawn mowing is ALL about making the home beautiful. If the Automower can’t do that, then you might as well use ForeverLawn and be done with it.

Over the next week or so, we’ll be showing you the cool things we saw at the Consumer Electronics Show two weeks ago.

CES was quiet this year. Less people attending and less companies exhibiting. CES tried to hide that by making the aisles WIDE and spacing out the exhibitors. We noticed, though. When it’s possible to see all the booths at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Hilton and the Sands all in one day, it’s hard NOT to notice.

I found the lack of crowds disturbing, but helpful. Since there were a lot less people, I was actually able to see products at the booths. I could walk up to an exhibitor and find out what they were selling without anyone pushing me around. I was even able to see things at the Microsoft booth, which is usually so crowded that I can’t even bear to walk in there.

What was good for me, however, wasn’t good for the exhibitors. There was a slight air of desperation among some of the companies. The big guys like Intel and Motorola weren’t even phased by the slack in the crowds, but the smaller businesses and OEM manufacturers from China and Taiwan had an air of panic mixed with boredom. Every keynote mentioned the slower economy.

I’ve seen this market spike and valley many times now. I wanted to reach out and give the entire industry a big bear hug and reassure them. I wanted to tell them to hold on. The companies that can ride these valleys are the ones that get to be the monoliths during the good times.

Hold on there, my friends.

In 1948, General Electric came out with this refrigerator/freezer with revolving shelves. You can see the full advertisement here:

I am continually surprised at products that DON’T survive. This fridge seems like the PERFECT solution to that bowl of moldy leftovers that got shoved into the back. Why don’t all of our refrigerators have revolving shelves?! The revolving shelf seems like the killer app for the refrigerator world. Why didn’t this feature survive?

Also notice that not one of those bowls of food have plastic wrap or lids on them. Is that just for aesthetics or did no one cover their food in the fridge back in the Forties? Nice to know that potato salad with boiled eggs looked EXACTLY the same as it does now.

Another difference between this fridge and the current ones is the size of the freezer. It’s TINY! The frozen TV dinner was invented in 1945, but it didn’t really catch on and become a fad until the mid-Fifties, so maybe they didn’t need big freezers back then. Or maybe everyone had a separate huge freezer appliance and this one was just for more immediate frozen food needs.

In the end, this refrigerator would fail miserably in present day with no can dispensers for sodas and a freezer that can’t hold even one frozen pizza. Still, I’d love to see a present day refrigerator include revolving shelves. It’s a feature that should have thrived.

Via: Found in Mom’s Basement: 1948 ad for General Electric refrigerators

The computer bag industry hasn’t quite caught up to the netbook fad, so if you’re looking for a bag for your new little netbook, you might think that you’re out of luck until they catch up, but I have an option for you. Most personal DVD player cases out on the market are about the size of your typical netbook, so you can buy them and use them for your new laptop bag. I found this Denali Sport Deluxe PDVD Bag at Target for twenty bucks. It fits my new Acer Aspire One PERFECTLY!

The thing that I love about this case is that it comes with a variety of straps and loops on the bag to hang it from the backseat of a car, but I can use them to make a convenient backpack out of this tiny bag. The Case Logic In-Car DVD Player Case has the exact same setup (without coming in fashionable colors like red). Since it’s so much easier to carry things on my back than just on my shoulder, I LOVE a backpack design. The fact that I have that option with the Denali bag (and the Case Logic) blisses me out.

I used to use a Targus Sport Portable DVD Player Case for my old Acer mini computer. It worked very well for me and I included it with the computer when we gave it to Mike’s dad. I was wishing for it back when I bought the Aspire One, but now that I’ve found this Denali case, I don’t miss it so much anymore.

Eventually, laptop bag manufacturers will catch up to the netbook fad, but until then, you can find a good case for your netbook right next to obsolete personal DVD players in your favorite department store for about twenty bucks.