The Gadgets Page

• Music from Apple’s Keynote Presentations over the years. Needs iTunes links, but there are too many Beatles tunes. http://tinyurl.com/nj457g #

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The science fiction blog, io9 had a great entry:

• io9 – My First Microchip

They listed the computer embedded toys of the early Eighties, including: Speak & Spell, Simon and Teddy Ruxpin. They forgot MY first microchip, however.

Merlin The Electronic Wizard

Merlin was a handheld game that had six different games:

1. Tic Tac Toe
2. Music Machine: A rudimentary synthesizer. The first electronic music I ever made was on a Merlin.
3. Echo, a game similar to Simon
4. Blackjack 13
5. Magic Square, a pattern game similar to Lights Out
6. Mindbender, a game similar to Mastermind

I played with Merlin for hours. Here is a family photo of my dad playing with my Merlin. He loved that toy as much as I did. That was actually a very geeky holiday year. My sister got a Raggedy Ann radio that allowed you to talk into a microphone and broadcast your voice. God, I loved that toy. You can see all of us playing with those toys here:

• Merlin The Electronic Wizard – a set on Flickr

In fact, Merlin was the dawn of the casual gaming market. I could pick up Merlin, play a couple games of Mindbender and then put it down. It predated the GameBoy by almost a decade.

I still have my old Merlin in a box in the basement. Amazingly, it still works with fresh batteries and I can play all my old games just as well as I could back on New Year’s Day in 1980.

Here is an old commercial showing how Merlin was played:

• Nicole Lee shows us some Retro Tech. Apple Newton, old iPod and Nokia phone. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolelee/3644706188/ #

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After Microsoft announced Project Natal for the Xbox at E3 this year, I just shook my head in disbelief. Here is what I thought about the exergaming side of the marketing.

• Starling Fitness » Felicia Day Tries Out Xbox Project Natal

People have been saying that Project Natal is going to give the Nintendo Wii a run for their money in the exergaming market. I’d love for it to be true, but I think we’re going to have to wait ten years before technology is good enough for this to work in any living room.

My bullshit detector might have been pinging when watching Felicia Day play with Project Natal, but it’s off the scale with this Milo demonstration:

I want to believe in this Milo “game,” but I just don’t believe that it will work. I don’t believe that the A.I. can understand what I’m saying. I don’t believe I can interact with it like they show in the video. I can hardly believe that the game will be able to recognize me from one day to the next. What if I wear my hair curly or put on my glasses? Will Milo still be able to know who I am?

I’d love for Project Natal to be a reality, but I’m not buying it either in concept OR hard earned currency.

Check out this awesome video of Giorgio Moroder showing off his electronic music gadgets, including a vocoder, the predecessor of the auto-tune.

Dance Music God, Giorgio Moroder, is known to you. You’ve heard his music no matter who you are. It might just be that your favorite artist sampled his work for their song, or maybe you heard a movie score written by him. For me, “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer was the first song that remember hearing by Giorgio Moroder. You can find out more about him here:

• Giorgio Moroder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I love to look at the toys that Giorgio Moroder used to make his music. By today’s standards, they are brutish and rudimentary, but he used them to make awesome dance beats!

Via: Discopop Directory – “If there’s a limit to computerised electronic music, he hasn’t found it yet.”

I am a complete Weird Al Yankovic fan and have been since “Another One Rides The Bus.” His latest song is a Doors style parody with Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist from the Doors, on the synthesizer! You can see it here:

I love it when Weird Al gets technical! For reminiscing appeal, here’s “It’s All About The Pentiums.”

• RT @karmadude: How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0 http://bit.ly/xtT5B (via @twi5) #
• @bdrums83 iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak http://bit.ly/7WPhV #
• iPhone 3.0 Update is now available. I’m downloading it right now! So excited! #

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A special thank you to eyeseenicee for uploading these scans of the Swatch mobile phone.

Long before Nokia started allowing us to customize our phones, Swatch offered cell phones in a wide variety of colors.

Based on these features, it must have been available in the early Nineties.

I never heard about these phones when they were available. Back then, I wanted the Motorola StarTac. I don’t think these would have attracted me. They look awesome to me now.

Columbia University has developed a fully automatic face swapping system. They describe it here:

I can see this sort of thing being included in iPhoto in the next five years. I especially love the ability to replace one face in a group of people using a few of the photos you’ve taken. I don’t know HOW many times we’ve taken family photos where one (or more) of the kids weren’t quite looking at the camera.

How many times have I thought, “Dangit! If we could use Kristen’s face on this one and Sammie’s face on that one, THEN we’d have the perfect family photo!” With this automatic face swapping techniques, we could easily do that without having to burden my Photoshopping Skillz!

Yves Behar was the designer who brought us the OLPC, the Leaf lamp and the Jawbone headset. He has now teamed up with Forrest North to create the Mission One motorcycle. It’s a good looking electric motorcycle that can go up to 150 mph with twice the range of any other electric motorcycle. The following video shows them introducing it at the TED conference this year.

Here are the stats on the Mission One:

Max Speed: 150 mph
Distance on a single charge: 150 miles
Regenerative braking: The batteries are charged when you use the brake.
Charging Time: 2.5 hours when using a 220 volt plug. 8 hours when using a 110 volt plug (standard home plug).
Sales Price: $68,995

Their advertising says that it has zero emissions, but there is a little something I learned in science class in seventh grade: There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. That motorcycle is charged by electricity. If you get all your electricity from solar, wind, hydro-electric or geo-thermal power, then, YES, there ARE zero emissions. If however, your local electrical plant uses natural gas or coal (which is more than half the electricity generated in the U.S.), then there ARE emissions. They are coming from the electrical plant in your area. This is true of ALL electric vehicles that claim to have zero emissions.

With a price tag of $68,995, you could afford to buy three or four Honda motorcycles or MANY electric scooters. Unless you need to drive 150 miles to work every day, the Mission One is an expensive way to show everyone how green you are.