The Gadgets Page

This photograph of the XDModo Window Solar Charger makes it look like a beautiful way to charge your phone using the power of the sun. When I read the review, however, it sounded like a colossal pain in the butt:

• XDModo solar charger sticks to the inside of a window to soak up the sun

I guess I’m lucky that I now live in a part of the world blessed with long sunny days that are perfect for juicing up the battery on my solar device charger. I do have to keep getting up and moving it, though, so that the panels don’t fall into the shadows cast by furniture in the room or even the window frames themselves, and reducing its efficiency. Propping the charger up against the glass is one way to ensure maximum exposure to those energy-giving rays, but XDModo has a much slicker solution. Users can stick the 0.68-inch thick Window solar charger to the inside of a glass window with the photovoltaic panels facing out and then feed off a charging cable to a portable device positioned in the cooling shade.

When I read this review, I realized that there isn’t a window in my house that would work well with this charger. The windows of my house face AWAY from the sun to keep out the heat.

When I saw how much it cost to buy one ($69), I was shocked. A normal iPhone charger can cost as low as five bucks at the local gas station. That’s a HUGE markup, just for the window cling solar solution.

If you really like this idea, buy the XTG Technology Premium Solar Charger for less than HALF the cost of the XDModo and they’ll throw in suction cups to attach it to a window.

Green products are great, but make sure you’re not paying extra for them.

Via: Lynsey Zahn on Pinterest: This is awesome & or I want that / window sticky solar chargers

Back in March 2009, I wrote a review for DecalGirl Skins. You can see it here:

• Gadgets Page » Decalgirl Skins

Because I had written a review, I was surprised when DecalGirl contacted me and asked if I wanted some free samples to do another one. I gladly agreed and waited for the skins I had selected to arrive in the mail.

I dug out my old gadgets that were still adorned with DecalGirls skins. My Acer Netbook computer was being stored in a box of outdated gadgets. Here’s a current picture of it: (Continue Reading…)

Felcia Day and Jason Charles Miller created a music video called Gamer Girl, Country Boy. I thought it was adorable and immediately gave it a thumbs up and thought that I should write about it here.

Before, I could, however, poor Felcia suffered a massive attack of trolls. She talked about it on her blog: Felicia Day » Blog Archive » Gamer Girl/Country Boy/Flame Fest

SOOO I guess some unnamed internet sites got wind and thought it would be cool to troll and basically flood the video with the nastiest comments ever. After a day of really hurt feelings (I have never had something THIS bad, so I’ve been lucky on the internet for YEARS!), I backed up and tried to figure out WHY it sparked so much hatred? I mean, sure, it’s low-fi, yes my eyeshadow is TERRIBLE (bad choice yeah), BUT I finally figured it out, I THINK. In all my years of championing gaming, I have ALWAYS avoided the title “Gamer Girl”. I always just said I’m a gamer, and left the gender unsaid. I don’t mean to disparage anyone who uses that title, to me, you change minds by being who you are, representing, and not pointing out you’re different from anyone else. That was just always my unconscious choice, to avoid that. But for THIS video in particular, I decided to portray a few stereotypical characters, I PLAYED a “Gamer Girl” and Jason Charles Miller PLAYED a “Country Boy”. WE WERE PLAYING CHARACTERS. But that didn’t really come across to some people, and I guess that gave them an IN to attack me, or attack the IDEA of “Gamer Girl” in that video. And the attack…thousands of Ouch.

It’s very strange, because two years ago, no one from that unnamed site attacked the G33K and G4M3R Girls Anthem Featuring Seth Green video, even though it was OBVIOUS that those girls weren’t gamers and were just hired to play the part.

Geek and Gamer Girls Song

That video went by without a Flame Fest, so why the sudden animosity? Why has the concept of the Gamer Girl turned from a cool thing to a hated stereotype that gamers want to frag instead of f**k?

I blame it all on COMPANIES like Frag Dolls. (Continue Reading…)

Sometimes I only want to link to a specific spot of a YouTube video. For example, on Starling Travel, I was talking about our magical encounter with fireflies in Oklahoma and I needed a video showing what I meant. I found an educational video, but the real firefly action didn’t start until the 1:38 mark. I didn’t want my readers to slog through the whole opening education, so I created an embedded video that started in the correct spot like this:

Here’s how I did it.

Firstly, Google has made embedding a YouTube video is much easier than it used to be. YouTube will create the embed code for you if you click the Share and Embed buttons.

You can easily edit the width of the video, copy and paste it into your blog or website. Adding the command that starts the video at the 1:38 mark, however requires a little tweaking. Look at the way this embed command is different than the one YouTube gave me.

Did you notice the #t1m38s that was added right after the link to the video? That is how you start the video at the specific spot. The 1m38s indicates the minute mark when the video will start.

You can also do this with links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8yK4dsOQLLo#t=98s

That link will open up the video at the exact spot where the fireflies start getting interesting. The way you create it is to right click on the video when it is paused at the spot you want and choose “Copy video URL at current time.” That will give you a URL that easily links to EXACTLY were you want the video to start.

The next time you want to link to or embed a video that has WAY too much introduction, here is a handy way to start the video EXACTLY when the video gets good.

Via: Matt Cutts: Link to a specific part of a YouTube video

Depending on how dusty your home is, this may be a shocking surprise or a nod in understanding. When we lived downtown during the I-80 construction, our home was covered in dust EVERY day. No matter how often I dusted, within hours, it looked like a haunted house again. Our computers suffered as much as my fireplace mantel, so we took a can of air and blew them out every once and a while.

That’s something the owner of this PC should have done EVERY week, apparently:

That huge cloud of dust that came out when they first started blowing on that PC was a familiar occurrence to me, but it was FAR more than anything we had ever experienced. Next time you curse your computer for running improperly, take a moment to blow all the dust out of the thing and see if that helps at all.

Just a quick retro distraction today with a YouTube video showing a TV news report about a computer virus in 1988.

I find it incredibly funny that they used video footage of the game, ET, to demonstrate how a virus might eat up your data and spread.

This is a description of the game according to Wikipedia: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (also referred to simply as E.T.) is a notorious 1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game console. It is based on the film of the same name, and was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw. The objective of the game is to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that will allow him to contact his home planet. [It] is often cited as one of the worst video games released and was one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history.

Stacey and I loved the video game and played it on our Atari constantly. It wasn’t as much of a favorite as Adventure or Journey Escape, but we loved it.

I find it interesting that something that we deal with on a regular basis was such a novelty less than 25 years ago. I like to think that people who write computer viruses, email spam and comment spam have a special hell that they will enjoy in the afterlife. They will constantly find themselves in a desperate situation: a loved one is injured, they are trapped in a hole, or they are irrevocably lost. When they try to call on the cell phone, they can’t because it rings constantly with calls from telemarketers. When they hang up on the intrusive calls and try to call out, they are blocked because the towers are so jammed full of telemarketing calls. Their torture continues as their situation gets worse and worse, with no hope of help in sight and the constant interruption of telemarketers.

We’ve come a long way from that news program that describes a hacker as a “dark genius” and a “good A student,” to the nearly epic proportions of attack we have on our computers every day. The financial economies of entire third world nations have been built on attacking our computers, email and comments sections. And I imagine a special hell for each and every one of them.

Via: Retronaut: COMPUTER VIRUS NEWS REPORT 1988

Every time you shoot a video with your phone (heck, I’ve even accidentally done it with a camera), there is the temptation to accidentally shoot a Vertical Video. Not know what I’m talking about? Watch this public service announcement.

The first video I ever posted on YouTube was an accidental Vertical Video.

Because it was shot on a camera, it was sideways and I had to use an app to rotate it. With the iPhone, it will be right side up, but look incredibly silly when showing it to family and friends, like this video.

You can’t escape the feeling that you’re missing something on either side of the frame and viewing the video is an exercise in frustration. Keeping the video sideways is even worse.

It’s not artistic. It’s just bad filmography that gives you a crick in your neck. LEARN how to use your device. Just Say No To Vertical Videos.

Via: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, boballthetime: Just say no to Star Wars: The…