The Gadgets Page

The most worrisome thing for me about Guitar Hero: World Tour was whether it would work with my Rock Band gear. I didn’t want to have to buy a whole new set of plastic drums and guitars just to play the game. It was such a worry for me that I didn’t even consider buying the game. I didn’t do the research to see if it would work. I just ignored the game.

Bad move on my part…

My sister Stacey and her husband weren’t so shy. They bought the game and tried to use it with their Rock Band gear and had no problems. I don’t think it even occurred to them that there might be a hardware problem. so they have had weeks of fun with the game without one bit of worries. They invited us over to their house last weekend to play and I was surprised that Guitar Hero: World Tour works so well with the Rock Band drums and guitars. Honestly, you can’t blame me for thinking they wouldn’t work. Look how DIFFERENT the drums look:

While we played, I especially liked the difference between the two games. The singing is MUCH more sensitive, which gave me crappier scores, but it also added a challenge. The only problem is that Guitar Hero has some inaccurate programming for the songs, so I end up singing a boring and watered down version of the vocal track instead of what the vocals are REALLY doing. Maybe if I played on the most difficult mode, it would add those trills and vocal changes back in.

There are some problems with the game play, namely, there is no explanation on what I’m supposed to do. It took me several songs until I realized that I needed to press the A button to use Star Power (in Rock Band, you activate it by singing in particular rest areas).

There is also a spot where the vocal track is replaced by waves. As far as I could tell, I was supposed to sing as much as I could in those spots to earn points. It seemed to give me more points if I sang the chorus again or at least stayed in tune with the song. If I tried to make my voice go up and down like the waves, that didn’t seem to give me many points. I did best when I just sang some more of the chorus over and over.

There are also mysterious hand sections. It seemed like I should be shouting at the crowd during that time, but it didn’t give me points for doing that. It didn’t take away points, either. I thought maybe I was supposed to be silent and let the “audience” sing, but that didn’t seem to affect my score either. I still haven’t learned what to do with the hand sections, and the directions that came with the game are USELESS in that respect.

On the whole, we LOVED our evening playing Guitar Hero: World Tour. The next day, Mike and I went to the store to buy our own copy so I can practice singing the songs. I knew hardly any of them, so I want to get REALLY good so we can really kick butt the next time we play with Stacey and Dan!

The news that Cadillac is including a feature to allow you to have Wi Fi Internet access in your car at all times for only 30 bucks a month makes me happy and angry at the same time.

• Cadillac rolls out in-car Internet access | The Car Tech blog – CNET Reviews

Cadillac has announced the availability of an in-car wireless Internet option on its CTS sport sedan beginning in April. The new option will be called Cadillac WiFi by Autonet and be dealer-installed. The device itself will have an MSRP of $499, and the service will cost $29 per month.

I’m happy because technology has grown from cars like this before. The earliest mobile phones were car phones before battery life was stable enough to last. The idea that EVERY car will come equipped with Wi Fi makes me very hopeful.

Then again, it makes me angry. I wouldn’t need to have Wi Fi in my car if my stupid cellphone had the capability to share its Internet connectivity with my laptop. Why do they expect me to pay an extra 30 bucks a month just to do what my cellphone should be able to do already?!

Cadillac has a SMALL window to provide this in-car wireless option. Soon we will have a constant stream of connectivity and Autonet will seem as silly as car phones do today.

“You kids use the Internet, doncha?”

It was 1999. Mike and I were visiting my grandfather in Billings, Montana. He handed us a white plastic cat with a PS/2 connector at the end of its tail.

“What is it?” I held the plastic barcode scanner in my hand. My grandpa seemed proud to produce something that we computer kids had never seen. Mike piped up, “Is that a CueCat?” He took it out of my hand and turned it over.

My grandpa smirked. “They sent it to me because I have IBM stock.” Mike immediately explained that we were supposed to connect it to our computer so we could scan in magazine ads and it would automatically load up the URL.

“Why wouldn’t I just type the URL into the computer?” I asked. Mike shrugged and smiled. “I KNOW it’s the most useless thing! I heard some people are taking them apart and using them for normal barcode scanners, though.” Visions of kids playing grocery store at home ran through my head. I looked at my grandfather’s eyes. He was so proud to be able to produce such a strange treasure.

You can find out more about it here:

• CueCat – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The CueCat (trademarked :CueCat) is a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader developed in the late 1990s by the now-defunct Digital Convergence Corporation, which connected to computers using the PS/2 keyboard port and later USB. The CueCat enabled a user to open a link to an Internet URL by scanning a barcode – called a “cue” by Digital Convergence – appearing in an article or catalog or on some other printed matter. In this way a user could be directed to a web page containing related information without having to enter a URL. The system that supported this is no longer in operation.

Because we never throw anything away, we still have our CueCat…

Somewhere…

The folks at Cinemassacre.com share a video of their NES collection. Warning, there is some explicit language making fun of the games, so if these are sacred games from your childhood, then you might want to skip this one.

I was an Atari girl, but seeing all these old cartridges reminded me of those old 8 bit games. I played Adventure for so long that I can STILL negotiate those mazes. Here’s an excellent review explaining everything you need to know about Adventure and showing exactly HOW frustrating a game it could be.

I love this advertisement for the 1956 Flash-Matic Tuning television from Zenith.

It reads:

You have to see it to believe it!
Flash-Matic Tuning by Zenith
Only Zenith has it!

A flash of magic light from across the room (no wires, no cords) turns set on, off or changes channels… and you remain in your easy chair!
You can also shut off long, annoying commercials while picture remains on the screen!

Here is a truly amazing new television development – and only Zenith has it! Just think! Without budging from your easy chair you can turn your new Zenith Flash-Matic TV set on, off or change channels. You can even shut off annoying commercials while the picture remains on the screen. Just a flash of light does it. There are no wires or cords. This is not an accessory. It is a built-in part of several new 1956 Zenith television receivers. Stop at your Zenith dealer’s soon. Zenith-quality television start as low as $149.95.

It was a remote control television that used light signals to change the channels. Additionally, it had a mute button, a feature so new, it didn’t have a name yet. When you take into account inflation, that $150 television in 1956, would cost about $1133 now. For about the same price you can get a Zenith 42-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV at Amazon.com. Isn’t it funny how quickly things change?

Ad via: Where’s My Jetpack?: We’ve Always Hated Advertising

My parents bought a Fun Fountain for Stacey and I when I was in fifth grade. We LOVED that toy!

What this print ad doesn’t show in enough detail is the clown hat. It was made out of a HEAVY plastic and was completely unattached to the fountain. If you interrupted the water flow, it would fall and painfully knock you on the head. I remember trying to catch the hat on my head so many times and just ending up with bump after bump on my noggin.

The object of the game was to run through the fountain WITHOUT making the hat fall. If you were quick enough, you could do it. Seeing this ad, however, makes me understand just how little water pressure we had. We could have never gotten that hat to go that high at our house in West Valley.

The Wham-O Fun Fountain was truly a toy for all seasons. From late spring until early fall, the Fun Fountain could be used as a water toy. In the colder months, the hat was the perfect dress-up toy. Somewhere, we have a photo of Stacey wearing that clown hat. Long after we stopped enjoying playing in the fountain, we held onto the hat.

Here is a commercial from Wham-O for the Fun Fountain:

Watching this commercial doesn’t really show you how fun it was to play with the Fun Fountain. I was WAY better than that. Firstly, it was usually just me and Stacey, so we didn’t have to wait very long four our chance to run through the fountain. Secondly, there was always the risk of that hat falling on our heads, so it was more exciting than the commercial showed. Finally, the hat also sprayed water out the top while it turned, so even when it wasn’t your turn, you were usually getting splashed anyway.

Thanks, Wham-O for making one of the funnest water toys of my childhood!

Photo Via: Plaid Stallions : Rambling and Reflections on 70’s pop culture: Wham-O Fun Fountain!

Flickr member, spudz64, brought an old Philco Predicta Princess TV back to life.

It’s a gorgeous television and makes me think of cocktails and cigarettes while watching JFK give speeches on the nightly news. You can learn more about Philco and their televisions here:

• Philco Predicta Princess Swivel Television in 1959

As cool as this television was, it wasn’t innovative enough to rescue Philco from bankruptcy. It makes me wonder what our televisions would look like today if it had.

I’ve always liked the idea of tiny direct-to-flash video recorders, and bought one of the first Antec video recorders available. The optical quality sucked, and I wound up giving it to the kids because it was basically useless. Every direct-to-flash camera I’ve seen since then has reminded me of a toy—poor optics, poor video quality, and VGA or lower resolution. Unfortunately, the traditional video camera makers were slow to give up other formats—with Sony being amongst the slowest. Sony’s first forays into direct flash recording were very expensive, and for HD they recorded in the AVCHD, which has received very little support amongst software vendors (including Sony) and remains painful to work with still today.

That has all changed with the Sony Webbie HD. This slick little camera costs $199 (the cheapest product from Sony I think I’ve ever seen), records in full HD, and has by far the best optics I’ve seen in video camera in this price range. The Auto white-balance, autofocus times, and color balance, while clearly not on part with my $1500 Sony HD camcorder, are far better than anything I’ve seen at the low end of the market. They’re better across the board than the JVC HDD camcorder I paid over $600 for. My only real complaint with the optics is the occasionally long auto-focus times. It can take a few seconds for the camera to find focus when aimed at distant shots with few clean-edged objects, like the ocean or distant mountains. White balance can occasionally be a little washed out in strong daylight, but again, compared to the other $200 offerings the optics are outstanding.

The construction is noticeably cheaper than a typical Sony product, but in-line with my expectations for the price point. It comes in silver, purple, and orange. It fits entirely in the palm of your hand facing away from your thumb, which can be somewhat awkward. The button placement is reminiscent of larger camcorders and is a bit awkward for a camera this small. I have large hands and it worked well for me, but my wife didn’t like the button placement. The camera comes with almost no internal flash (just enough to demo the camera) so you have to supply a Sony Memory Stick Duo, which come in sizes up to 16GB at the time of this writing. You can plan on using about 4GB/hr. for full HD, 2GB for 720p, and 1GB for VGA resolution.

The camera records in your choice of full 1920x1080p HD, 720p HD, or 640×480 SD resolutions and creates standard MPEG-4 files that can be dragged and dropped into Roxio, iPhoto, iMovie, and just about every non-linear editor on the market. Zero compatibility problems. You can plug the camera into your computer using its standard mini-USB port and treat it like a flash-card reader. There is a built-in bright white LED for lighting, and with Sony’s low-light optics it actually works better than you would expect.

The camera takes 5MP photos, but with no flash, a second or more delay between pushing the camera button and having it snap the photo, and no ability to take a photo while recording, this feature is a pointless add-on in my opinion. Don’t get this camera thinking you’re killing two birds with one stone, because you’ll be disappointed with its still camera performance.

The only significant downside to this camera is the built-in, non-replaceable 80-minute battery. It rather sucks to have a camera whose storage lasts far longer than its battery. Sony could have gotten me to buy two or three proprietary batteries and a charger had they built it with a replaceable battery. Being a geek, I noticed that the camera charges at 9 volts, so a quick trip to RadioShack for an Adapt-a-plug, 9v Battery-clip, and a 9v battery puts me in business for a full day with only slightly lower carrying convenience.

You can’t do better than the Webbie HD MHS-CM1 for a low-cost full HD video camera. It has the best optics I’ve seen in a low cost camcorder and the convenient MPEG-4 format made it a no-brainer for me. Avoid it for still pictures, and think about the low-capacity fixed battery before you buy. Play with it in store to be sure you don’t mind the button placement and handling. If those aren’t an issue, then you’ll love your small and convenient HD camcorder.

Felicia Day is the very excellent actress from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long blog, The Guild and many other great performances. She’s also a self-professed geek girl and gadget lover. Her father bought her an Amazon Kindle a couple of weeks ago and she did a review of it on her blog:

• Felicia Day » Blog Archive » Kindle Oh, Kindle

She loves it, but she can also recognize the silly aspects of it. Here is her list of things that she loves and hates about the kindle.

Positive Aspects:

• Easy to read screen.
• Free wireless to download books.
• Great sync between the Kindle and the iPhone app.
• Light and great for travelers.
• Newspaper subscriptions that are inexpensive and paper-free.
• No embarrassing cover art when you read trashy novels. Feel free to indulge that cheap romance novel habit to your heart’s content.
• People want to ogle and touch your new toy.

Negative Aspects:

• No touch screen.
• It’s slow considering what it is doing.
• Disorganized home page.
• The web looks awful in black and white.
• No PDF support.
• You have to pay to put your own documents on the Kindle.

When Amazon released a FREE Kindle iPhone application, I immediately downloaded it and bought several books from Amazon. I have really enjoyed reading books on my iPhone and I have no desire now to buy a Kindle (again). I don’t think they ever wanted to sell me a Kindle. I think they just wanted to sell me books all along.

You can download the iPhone application here:

• Amazon Kindle application for the iPhone: iTunes Link

Being able to read a novel whenever a moment of boredom arrives is a luxury that only those willing to carry big purses used to be able to enjoy. Now, I can pull out my phone and read a book no matter where I am. I still carry the big purse, though…

Sometimes I realize that I’m writing an entry that only a SMALL number of people on the planet have any interest in, but when I’m one of those people, it makes it worth it to me. Last week, I finally got my Luar Swatch from Squiggly. The Luar is a VERY rare watch that is only sold the Swatch Luxury Store on the Via Della Spiga in Milano and on the Place Vendome in Paris. It is also the first Swatch with a moon phase.

Setting it was a bitch…

Since it keeps track of day of the week, month, date, time and moon phase, you can understand why it might be difficult to set a watch like this with only one crown. I scanned in the directions, but even with their help, it took Mike and I about ten minutes to figure out how to set the watch.

The crown has three positions. The A position is when it’s pushed all the way in. You can’t set anything in this position. The C position is when it’s pulled all the way out. The B position is the click between all the way in and all the way out. My biggest problem is that I read the directions to mean that there were FOUR positions. I didn’t realize A was all the way in. I thought there were three pulled out positions.

To set the day of the week (Sun, Mon, etc.):

Pull the crown all the way out (position C) and turn the time to just after midnight. The setting will click to the next day. To advance it an additional day, you don’t have to turn the hands another twenty four hours. You can turn the hands backward to before midnight (you will see the day of the week setting click a little, but not go backwards), then turn the hands past midnight again.

I recommend setting the day of the week setting to YESTERDAY. You’ll see why later.

To set the date:

Pull the crown one click out (position B) and turn the crown away from you (clockwise). This will advance the day indicator (it looks like a second hand). To set the month, you have to keep turning until you get past an entire year. There is no separate way to set the month. To make the correct month show, you must keep turning the crown past every day of the year until you get to the correct day.

I recommend setting the date to YESTERDAY. I’ll explain why later.

To set the moon phase:

Pull the crown one click out (position B) and turn the crown toward you (counter clockwise). To find out what phase the moon is currently in, here are a couple of websites:

• StarDate Online | Moon Phase Calculator
• U.S. Navy: Phases of the Moon
• Moon Phases :: Calendars

Once again, set it to the moon phase for YESTERDAY.

To set the time:

Pull the crown all the way out (position C) and turn the crown either away or towards you to set the time. Keep turning the time away from you (clockwise) until you get past midnight. Once you get past midnight, ALL the settings should change (day of the week, date and moon phase). Now you KNOW you’re on today’s date at just after midnight. Set the correct time and your Luar watch is ready to go!

Review

Many of the Swatch enthusiasts were disappointed that the Luar is a battery powered watch instead of an automatic. With a price tag of approximately $450, it’s a little much to expect an automatic with a real moon phase. I’ve talked at length about what I desire in a watch here:

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

My desires have changed a lot since that day nearly four years ago when I went looking for the perfect watch. I still haven’t found it, but the Luar was able to do more than any other beautiful watch. Here were my criteria and how the Luar stands up to it:

• A beautiful watch: The Luar is definitely beautiful. It’s the moon phase and the simplicity of one crown that make the Luar look so good to me.
• Women’s watch: The Luar is too big for my wrist. It’s a man’s watch, but I’ve given up on having a women’s watch with a day/date/month feature. If I ever find one, I’ll let you know.
• Digital: I had to give up digital. NO ONE makes beautiful digital watches. I’ll just have to finally learn how to tell time with an analog watch.
• Metal case and band: The Luar has that.
• Time and Date on the display at the same time: This is one of the best features of the Luar.
• Stopwatch: There is no stopwatch (chronograph), but I run with my iPod and Nike+ all the time now. Not only does it log my workout times, but it uploads them to my computer automatically. I don’t need a stopwatch on my wrist anymore.
• Countdown Timer: There is no countdown timer, but my iPhone has taken the place of my need for one on my wrist.
• Light: There is no light, but the hands are glow in the dark. That doesn’t help me at two in the morning when the glow has worn off, however.
• Dual Time: I had to give this up as well.

So, with a rating of three features out of nine desires, the Luar looks like it just doesn’t stack up, but it’s the ONLY watch that has come this close. Keep trying, watch designers of the world. You just might make a watch specifically for me.

Update 04-29-13: Thank goodness I wrote this entry. The battery finally died on my watch and I had to reset it. The whole process was MUCH easier this time because of what I had written. On another note, I still ADORE this watch, but I have gone blind and can’t read the month or day of the week without reading glasses, so it’s less useful to me than some other watches I have. Doesn’t stop me from wearing it, though. If I REALLY need to know that info, I can pull out my phone.