The Gadgets Page

I LOVE this TED talk with AWESOME time-saving tech tips. Not all of them were new for me, but there were enough new things that the video should be here:

Here are his tips:

• When browsing on the web, do not scroll using the control on the right side. Use the Space Bar on your keyboard to scroll down one page. Use Shift+Space Bar to go back a page.
• When filling out forms, use the Tab key to move from box to box. When filling out a drop-down menu, type the first letter of item. If there are multiple items with that letter, keep pressing it to get to each one. i.e. Press “T” twice to get to Texas on the states list.
• To magnify a website, use Control (or Command for Mac) and press the “+” key. It will make the text larger. To reduce the size, use Control and the “-” key.
• When you’re typing on your Blackberry, Android or iPhone, you can press the Space Bar twice to add a period, space and turn on capitalization for your next sentence.
• To redial on your cell phone, just press the call button without typing in a number and your phone will call the last number you dialed.
• To jump past the directions when you’re leaving a message, press the following: * for Verizon, # for AT&T, and 1 for Sprint.
• Google is also a dictionary if you type “define” and the word in question, it will bring it up for you. Additionally, if you type the airline and flight number, Google will tell you where it is and whether it’s on time. It will also convert units and currency for you.
• When typing text, double-click to highlight one word. You don’t need to delete. You can just start typing over it. Double-clicking and dragging will highlight text in one-word increments. Triple-click to highlight an entire paragraph.
• Hold down the button on your camera to calculate focus and exposure to prevent shutter lag.
• When you’re presenting using Keynote, press the B key to blackout the slide and make everyone look at you. Hit the W key to whiteout the slide.

He forgot the BIGGEST time-saving tech tip:

Don’t sit around all day, watching TED talks. Get some stuff done!!!

I love this little video from Player One[s]. After saving the world, the council questions the hero about how many side quests he completed. It highlights EXACTLY what I hate about some games.

I love how the hero defends himself:

Look guys, I saved the world! What else is there for me to do? This is just busy work that you guys have me doing!

YES, YES, YES! That is exactly how I feel with some games. Then, with other games, I can go on side quest after side quest and just LOVE it. I don’t know what the difference is between the two, but there are definitely some times when I feel like my enjoyable game is just busy work.

Over the years, I haven’t been shy about my love for Animal Crossing: Wild World.

• Gadgets Page » Nintendo DS: Animal Crossing
• Gadgets Page » Nintendo DS: Animal Crossing Update
• Gadgets Page » Animal Crossing: How To Complete Your Catalog
• Gadgets Page » Animal Crossing: Gulliver

Hands down, it was the best written game I had ever played. It was so well-written that many of the things that the animals have said have been documented at The Quotations Page:

• The Quotations Page – Animal Crossing Quotes

With great quips like, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he’ll eat for weeks!” it’s easy to understand why I love it so much.

But there is one game that has finally toppled Animal Crossing with the best writing in a video game, and it’s called Zombies, Run! (Continue Reading…)

This commercial made me laugh out loud! It reminded me of the sometimes importance of paper over the iPad.

The next time someone is chiding you because you’re using paper instead of your iPad, remember this commercial and chuckle to yourself!

Via: Clever commercial weighs the benefits of the iPad versus paper | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

I am in a panic. When I loaded Google Reader this morning to look at my RSS feeds, they announced that it would be retired in July. That gives me MONTHS to find a new RSS reader, but I was sincerely ANGRY.

I know I SHOULDN’T be angry. Google Reader was a service that I was not paying for. I was happy to use it and never worried for a second that Google would pull a “Yahoo” and kill my beloved reader. Even though they crippled it by taking out all the things that my friends had shared and shoveling them into their Google+ monstrosity. I STILL believed that Google wouldn’t possibly kill Reader. Call me naive. It appears that Google is heading the route of so many companies before it, killing the things that they have created despite protests and beloved status.

So, I exported my subscriptions using Google Takeout and put them into Vienna, which is an open source RSS reader. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than Newsfire, which cost me ten bucks and couldn’t import the .xml file that Google provided me… grr…

I would be bothered by going back in time by about five years to a desktop RSS reader, just like the old days, but I’m not. I realized that I only read RSS when I’m on my “real” computer, so the fact that it’s not synced with my iPhone or iPad isn’t an issue. I just don’t read RSS on my iPhone or iPad, mostly because reading RSS is my form of work and work is VERY difficult to do on my phone.

In short, I feel betrayed by Google. I know I shouldn’t because I wasn’t paying for the service, but I feel as if Google can no longer be trusted. I’m downloading all my YouTube videos and I’m suddenly worried whether shifting our email to Google’s professional email service was worth it. If they are willing to kill a service that I used EVERY SINGLE DAY, then they might just be willing to kill my email or delete all my videos. I can’t trust them anymore and suddenly, I’m looking at other options.

Thank God I don’t have an Android phone…

Nintendo announced that Animal Crossing: New Leaf will arrive June 9th this year! I bought my Nintendo 3DS TWO years ago just for this game and I have been waiting forever for it! They just released a trailer for the game.

It came out in Japan back in November, so there are tons of videos showing how the game plays with kind people translating for us. For example, LinandKo have been doing tons of videos and just did one for Valentine’s Day this year, telling us what you can receive from the villagers in honor of the holiday.

I feel strangely excited that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is almost here. I haven’t had a game I have loved as much as Animal Crossing: Wild World, so I have high hopes for New Leaf.

Via: Animal Crossing: New Leaf Release Date Announced – IGN

Over the years, the most tantalizing games of the Nineties were hardly able to be called games. My favorite, was The Dark Eye. It was a strange, retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories that let you see them from the point of view of the victim and the “disturbed.”

The most disturbing was the story of Berenice. I had never read the story, so the ending of this portrayal on the game is particularly vivid in my memory. Wandering around the library, trapped and the eery voice repeating, “teeth,” over and over again is how I will always remember that story.

Here is a walkthrough of that storyline:

Watching this brought back all the creepy fascination I had with this game. That random wandering in the library, not knowing what to do, and those unintelligible voices just gave me a shiver of fear. All the portraits changed to smiling teeth and flashing teeth on the screen are just the finishing touches on a brilliant work.

KotakuNYC has an interesting tribute to the game here:

After watching these clips, I realize why The Dark Eye hasn’t been ported over to iOS like Myst and The 7th Guest. It was less a game and more an interactive movie… with puppets… and Edgar Allan Poe… and William S. Burroughs. It was just too strange to be rescued from the sterile death of non-compatibility. It remains only in clips and bits on YouTube and suffers a dismemberment not unlike the very characters it portrayed.

For more clips:

• The Dark Eye – Menu Theme
• The Dark Eye Part 1- Introduction
• The Dark Eye – The Cask of Amontillado (Montresor)
• The Dark Eye – The Cask of Amontillado (Fortunado 1/2)
• The Dark Eye – The Cask of Amontillado (Fortunado 2/2)
• The Dark Eye Part 3- Storyline
• The Dark Eye – Berenice (Egaeus)
• Let’s Play The Dark Eye [07] – Berenice: Her perspective. 1/2
• Let’s Play The Dark Eye [08] – Berenice: Her perspective. 2/2
• The Dark Eye – The Masque of the Red Death (Part 1)
• The Dark Eye – The Masque of the Red Death (Part 2)
• The Dark Eye – The Tell Tale Heart (Old Man)
• The Dark Eye Part 8-The Young Man pt.1
• The Dark Eye Part 8-The Young Man pt.2
• The Dark Eye Part 11-The Fall of Henry
• The Dark Eye – Annabel Lee
• The Dark Eye – Ending

I love this one-handed clothes hanger that makes taking clothes out of the closet easy.

They were designed by Howard Tseng and are now being marketed by Quirky.

• Quirky Solo: Collapsible Hanger

I didn’t understand the genius of this hanger until I saw the video demonstrating it.

All of this looked wonderful until I saw the price. They are $11 for four hangers.

At that price, I think I’m willing to use both hands.

Via: One-Handed Clothes Hanger is a Quirky Product Redesign | Designs & Ideas on Dornob

I LOVE this video showing what a house in 2001 would look like. Here is the living room.

He describes a huge console that would control the entire house, whereas now, our fancy televisions and any home automation that we have can be controlled by a simple app on our cell phone.

Here is the home office, where you don’t go to work, the work comes to you.

These days, you don’t need to print up the newspaper for future reference, you can just store it as a PDF on your hard drive. Even better, our video conferencing can be done on a tiny phone in our pockets.

The kitchen of the future is interesting as well.

I don’t have an automated chef that takes food from the storage and cooks it. I also have to wash dishes, but I don’t think I want that kitchen of the future. I would much rather wash a plate than smell melting plastic every time I eat.

I love to see the retro vision of what the future would be, but in the end, the future turned out to be SO much better!

Via: Paleofuture: 3D-TV, Automated Cooking and Robot Housemaids: Walter Cronkite Tours the Home of 2001

It’s commonly known that printer manufacturers make money from selling ink cartridges, not from making the printers. I’ve even heard that they sell the printers at a loss in order to “get you hooked” on their ink.

Of course, there are options for people who want to enjoy their ink jet printers without shelling out the big bucks for the cartridges. You can refill the ink in the cartridges you already own. Here is a video showing you how to do it.

I’ve done this on my HP Printer and it has worked rather well. I used the Inktec Refill Kit that I found at Amazon.com with some syringe needles. I inject the ink into the cartridges and the printouts I had were just as beautiful as the ones with the HP ink. The HP ink was never water resistant and neither is this replacement ink, so I’m just as “happy” with my inkjet printer with the refill ink as I was with the original ink cartridges.

Except… (Continue Reading…)