The Gadgets Page

I was watching an old episode of House the other day. The patient wouldn’t allow Wilson to do a colonoscopy, so they had her swallow a Pillcam. The show followed the pillcam into her body snapping photos every few seconds. All very cool, but I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought it might be a good plot device for a medical drama, but I had no inkling that the Pillcam might be real.

It is. It’s made by a company called Given Imaging:

• Given Imaging Patients Information: Abdominal Pain, Crohn’s Disease, Gastrointestinal bleeding, Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The PillCam SB video capsule is designed specifically to help your doctor see inside your small bowel (small intestine) to diagnose disorders such as Crohn’s disease, Celiac disease, benign and cancerous tumors, ulcerative colitis as well as others disorders. The small intestine is the part of the gastrointestinal tract that connects the stomach to the large intestine and absorbs nutrients. PillCam SB transmits images at a rate of two images per second for approximately eight hours, resulting in more than 50,000 images.

It’s funny how little trust I have in television programming. I immediately thought that Pillcam was fake and that the refusal of the colonoscopy was just a plot device to demonstrate the patient’s insistence on control. Now, I’m pretty sure the entire episode based on control was a plot device to show off the cool new toy from Given Imaging.

I have to admit that I love House M.D. and his gadget-loving ways. From his DS to his PSP to his tiny medical camera the size of a calcium pill and even his bad-ass motorcycle, he’s got to be the most geekiest of the television personalities.

A friend of mine purchased the Free Standing full size Harvest Shelf from Shelf Reliance and really loves it. I liked the idea of the food rotating through and not getting lost at the back of the cupboard, but I don’t have a ton of canned goods. As I researched further I found the CanSolidator and CanDensor models also by Shelf Reliance. Costco had a deal on two so I bought four, and was glad I did.

When I first put the unit together it was too small for my pantry leaving 5 inches of shelf in front and 7 inches on the side. Each bar of the unit is 10 inches long, so as long as your shelf is divisible by 10 inches wide these are great. The other issue I had with the CanSolidator was that after putting the two bars together and splitting it up for the cans (all the pieces for one shelf kit), I was one spacer short of fitting in four rows of standard size cans (the size of a Campbell’s soup can), making the unit even more of a space hog.

After trying various configurations and not liking any of them because they took up more space and held less, I ended up cutting the bars and adding an additional 7 inches to my row, which also allowed me a lot more variation in configuring for different can sizes. It’s not too hard to cut the bars apart and you can order additional pieces by the piece at ShelfReliance.com. I used my Open It! tool to cut the pieces to size. All in all it took me a half day of working and reworking the lay outs to get it right. I now have three shelves made up of most of the pieces of the four shelf kits.

I like that I know at a glance exactly how many cans I have of soup or tuna. I like that it automatically rotates my food for me so I eat the oldest stuff first. So for me it was worth the hassle of breaking it apart and putting it together the way I wanted it. This unit will take up more room and hold less than just stacking the cans on your shelves so if its space you’re worried about this might not be the best fit.

We have all purchased items in hard-to-open vacuum-formed plastic packaging and after trying to cut it with scissors, we try to tear it and then get a giant cut from just trying to grab the item out – we swear to never buy anything packaged like that again, but then we end up buying something packaged that way again because it’s all sold that way.

The tool everyone need is the Open It!. It easily cuts through the plastic and even has a blade knife for opening boxes. If for some reason you also need a screw driver, it has that too. The blades are on a spring-loaded scissor mechanism similar to garden shears (except much shorter) and sharp enough to cut through layers of plastic and cardstock easily. I even used it to cut through the hard plastic bars of my CanSolidator, and anytime I want a straight cut through something thick or difficultly placed this is my tool of choice.

Here’s a photo of how you can use it to open packaging:

Use it to snip open a plastic tie:

The box cutter can zip open a CD or DVD wrapper:

It’s difficult to find one tool that can do so many things, but Open It! has been my favorite.

The nice people at Devotec sent me a Solar Charger to test. It came with collection of adapters, so it can charge a wide variety of electronic devices.

• Devotec Industries: Solar Battery Power

I was most interested in my iPhone. It’s the device that goes dead first when we are camping, so I wanted to see if it would work. It did and I have been able to charge my cell phone with the adapter a couple of times this summer while we’ve been out and about.

When I upgraded my iPhone from the first generation to the 3G version, a lot of things that used to charge my iPhone, stopped working. Fortunately, the Devotec Solar Charger kept working like a dream.

The way it works is the solar cells charge a lithium-ion battery. When I need to power up my iPhone, it gets juice from the battery AND the solar cells.

The only disadvantage is that it is almost the size of my phone. Since the iPhone doesn’t have the option of a removable battery, the Devotec Solar Charger is actually the BEST way to have a backup battery for my phone just like I used to have for the Treo. If you were bothered by the lack of additional battery option with the iPhone, this is just the device for you.

Update 10-14-09: I just tested this charger with the iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, it does NOT charge that phone.

You are looking at the Windation wind powered energy generation unit.

It sits on 70 square feet of your roof and generates 6,912 kilowatts a year. It’s quiet. It won’t massacre birds. It has an integrated turbine, a design that has been in use since 1904. If the wind is blowing, it provides electricity for approximately 1000 square feet of office space.

Why doesn’t every house have one of these on the roof?

Their website is sadly missing all the important information like cost, availability and installation. They seem to be marketing these to business and urban buildings, but homes could profit from this just as well. Does that mean the cost exceeds the grasp of the ordinary homeowner?

I’ve contacted them for information, but until then, I eagerly await. As soon as I find out specifics, I will update this entry.

Via: Twitter / anntorrence: This could be a gamer-chan …

Update 3:55 pm: I just got off the phone with Mark Sheikhrezai, the founder and CEO of Windation. He was nice enough to answer my questions.

The WES-2KW is the unit that will probably work best in a residential setting. It is an 8 foot by 8 foot unit, so unless you have a flat roof, it would be rather difficult to mount it on your home. At the cost of $30,000 for this unit, you would have to show some serious dedication to wind power to add it to your house.

That’s why their focus is commercial buildings. Their larger unit, the WES-5KW is $40,000 and fits easily on the roof of a commercial building. They are working on getting approval from the California Energy Commission and CE (which is a European certification).

Their products are made in Nebraska, so they are U.S. made.

Mark Sheikhrezai was so personable and willing to answer questions, so if you have a deciding vote on the planning of a commercial building, remember Windation.

Check out this awesome video from Randy George. He did a cover of Daft Punk’s Something About Us.

He made the helmet in the video as well. Of course, the LED words were a visual effect. He explains here:

It was made of papier-mâché with a custom LED visor built in … post production! using Softimage XSI and Adobe After Effects! Yes, it was a visual effect! 3D modeling, manual rotoscoping, and motion tracking/motion stabilization tricks were employed to pull this off. A LED array with animated text was projected on to a manually rotoscoped 3D visor, that was subsequently composited with the original footage using motion trackers in After Effects. The helmet itself took three days to make. I used 7 layers of card stock/normal stock paper strips in a special heavy mix paste recipe. The shape was built around a custom mold of shipping foam and gaffers tape. It was finished off with gunmetal grey paint. The visor was made of plastic cut from a microwave oven splash cover I found at Target for 5 dollars, laminated on both sides with Limo dark auto window tinting. I could see out, but the translucent plastic from the microwave splash cover along with the heavy tinting made it a little bit difficult. On the inside, the helmet was padded with custom cut felt blocks to fit my head size perfectly. The total weight was around 0.5 Kg (about 1 pound).

Via: no es bueno.com » Blog Archive »

Tokyoflash is the creator of MANY useless watches that are more jewelry than timepieces, but Negative is a watch that is almost useful.

The display can be either horizontal or vertical. The LEDs can display in any one of seven colors, or even choose the colors randomly. Most importantly, the time is displayed in the LEDs that are NOT lit, thus the name, Negative. Tokyoflash somehow thinks this is a new thing and even suggests on their website that it might be difficult to read at first, going to the trouble of teaching you how to read it:

This is the most usable watch made by Tokyoflash, which isn’t saying much from the company that brought you Barcode, Pimpin, Diode and Retrofit:

I’m still waiting for the watch that worries more about displaying the date and time on the face than about the color of the LEDs. Nice try, Tokyoflash. It’s the closest you’ve come to creating a watch that will please me, but you still are FAR from the mark.

Via: Tokyoflash: Telling Time With The Negative – Geekologie

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.

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.

Just when I thought I had heard it all, Gordon warns me of a new email exploit that looks like it’s from CNN and pretends to load Flash on your computer. You can see the whole story here:

• getluky.net » Blog Archive » Almost got owned by a fake CNN today. =[

However, for all the cues that were available, the writer of this exploit put in an amount of effort into crafting an authentic-feeling damnit-I-have-to-upgrade-Flash-again experience for an average Internet user that nearly fooled me. If it hadn’t been for my tendency to give up on content rather than install yet another Flash upgrade, I might have been caught hook, line, and sinker.

How many times have you chosen okay on a window without even reading it? I know I have MANY times. I probably would have fallen for this one.

One step you can take to avoid an exploit like this is to go directly to Adobe’s website and install the latest version of Flash right now:

• Adobe Flash Player Download Center

Then when something suggests that you might not have the latest version, you will KNOW that you do.