For years I kept a kitchen timer on the back of my stove. Yes, the stove had a built-in timer, but it never failed that I would be cooking multiple dishes that each needed timing; hence the extra gadget. Now that I no longer have a stove with a back on it, I no longer have an out of the way place to keep my extra timer. Why not on the side of the refrigerator? Say hello to the Magnetic Rotary Kitchen Timer, available from Useful Things.
Here’s a doo-dad that James Bond might appreciate and use: the LaCie iamaKey. Available in 4 or 8GB sizes, this tiny flash memory drive is neatly camouflaged as a key. To further the illusion, the iamaKey comes complete with a weighty slipring and fob.
Spring is here, and along with the rains and milder days have come droves of moths, gnats, flies, mosquitoes, june bugs, mayflies, scorpions, spiders and every other weird bug that will scramble in when someone accidentally leaves the screen door open for longer than a second. I live in the country so I might have a few more bugs on my list than you would, but I know that you “city dwellers” have to deal with some of the same. I was recently on the Home Improvements website looking for some heat register deflectors and recycling bins, and I saw…
One of the more exciting announcements to come from Mobile World Congress was that HTC would be releasing the Touch Diamond2 and TouchPro2 as followups to their preceding namesakes. Neither is technically available in the US – not just yet anyway, but as luck would have it, HTC was kind enough to loan me a European version of the Diamond2.
I live as close to the middle of nowhere as possible, and that’s how I like it. For nearly as far as the eye can see my view consists of trees, hills…and more trees and hills. I can just make out the sound of the highway if I listen carefully, but there are days when I don’t even notice it anymore. Instead I enjoy the sounds of birds chirping, wind chimes, a visiting hummingbird’s wing thrum, and always a wind in the trees which sounds suspiciously like being at the ocean when I close my eyes. Our home in an…
Cats make great pets because they don’t require a lot of attention like dogs do. Just give them a bowl of food and a pan of litter, and they can pretty much take care of themselves. The only downside to having an indoor kitty is that we humans have to clean their ‘toilet’ for them. Not fun…
It’s not every day that I get to unbox an $8000 mobile phone…oh heck, who am I trying to kid?! Up until a few days ago, I could honestly say that I had never unboxed any device that cost so much. But through a twisting series of events, starting with my friend (and fellow gadget magpie) Drew purchasing a Vertu Ascent Ti at full retail price last summer (and eventually moving on from it), I now have one in my possession. Needless to say, the Vertu Ascent Ti a pretty big upgrade from the other two Vertus I have written about…
I usually keep my thoughts of economic doom and gloom to myself, but John Starkweather posted a link to this on Facebook, and I had to share. Chris Wilson of Slate has posted an interactive map of where jobs have been gained and lost across the country since January 2006. The map’s dates start with January 2007, and when each button is pressed they show respective losses or gains for each month throughout the previous year. Only counties with a gain or loss of 250+ are represented by a red or blue dot. Using the Labor Department’s local area unemployment…
No, this rectangular black box is not the monolith from 2001; it’s the LaCie Little Disk, and it’s the latest addition to my gear bag.
It looks like we can chalk up Ugobe, makers of the lovable Pleo Robot, as one more victim of the poor economy and the ongoing credit crunch. Evidently, it was never a matter of whether there were enough people buying the personable robots, because Ugobe defintiely had the orders. The problem came when the companies who ordered shipments could not pay Ugobe, because their credit was frozen or denied. As a result, Ugobe has had to lay off 20 employees and declare Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. Owners of existing Pleosaurs are understandably a bit freaked out. This just in from Robert…
I usually keep my MacBook Air nekkid as a jaybird because I love its skinny form factor, but the scratches I’ve begun to notice appearing on its metal shell have been causing me a bit of consternation lately. In an effort to keep my svelte beauty’s skin unblemished, I agreed to give the Speck Products See Thru Slim Hard Shell Case for MacBook Air a try.
Over the past couple of weeks, the internet has been abuzz with posts about the artist Erika Simmons’ iri5 “Ghost in the Machine” creations. These pieces of art, which are made from old cassette tapes and other media, feature musicians and film stars. I first learned about her work on Neatorama, and when I checked the artist’s Flickr, I was hooked; I wanted to own one! Bob Dylan
I know that this has to have happened to you; see if you can picture the scene: You’re laying in bed, and you wake up absolutely positive that it is time to get up, but in reality it’s just the middle of the night. It’s not too big of a deal when this happens to us adults, because we’ll simply look at the alarm clock and immediately realize that we still have some quality sleeping time left before we have to get up. We gratefully roll over, and we go back to bed, right? Young kids on the other hand,…
Julie and I have been using the AT&T Pantech Matrix Pro for a while, and it is time to share our experiences with this Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition smartphone. This review will be appearing on Gear Diary and The Gadgeteer; before reading further, you might want to start with my First Impressions of the AT&T Pantech Matrix Pro. My comments are in black, Julie’s are in blue italics. The Pantech Matrix Pro is a chunky little brick measuring 4.17″ tall x 2.0″ wide x 0.85″ thick and 5.34 ounces, but I have to say that it is so nicely…
It is not often that I’ll spot someone carrying a bag which prompts me to ask questions about it, but that is exactly what happened at Digital Experience, when I saw Vincent carrying his black ACME MADE Courier. His bag looked sharp; it was stylish, not bulky at all, and I liked the way it conformed to his hip. Vincent flipped open the front flap to show me how much room the bag had and how the sections were laid out, which brought on something I have not felt in ages…bag envy. Bag envy is an ugly beast; even after two…
The new Pantech Matrix Pro is a chunky and solidly built little smartphone, offered exclusively by AT&T. Measuring 4.17″ tall x 2.0″ wide x 0.85″ thick and weighing 5.34 ounces, it might be easy to dismiss this little beast as too thick and too heavy. But just like a story with a surprise twist at the end, there is more to this quad-band Windows Mobile Standard 6.1 device than first assumed.
If you love the look and comfort of retro DJ style headphones, then you might want to take a look at a special feature ifrogz has introduced to their EarPollution line – made to order Fallout headphones.
With all of the hullabaloo over the Amazon Kindle 2‘s recent release, one might think that there were no other eBook readers on the market; not so! Those who eschew DRM protection and who can do without the convenience of an online content store (I’m thinking of Amazon‘s and Sony‘s, specifically) should pay particular attention to the Ectaco jetBook, a reading device capable of handling .txt, .pdf, .fb2, .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, and MP3 file formats. According to the literature I picked up at CES, the EPUB format is expected in Q1 2009*.
[Ed. note – This is a joint review between Mitchell Oke and myself. My comments will be in black, and Mitchell’s will be in blue italics. Before reading this, you might want to first read Mitchell’s article “HTC Touch HD = Stands for Hot Damn!!” and my “HTC Touch HD Walk-Around and First Impressions” and “A Quick Tease: the HTC Touch HD and Nokia N85″] It seems like it’s been ages since there was a Windows Mobile phone with a nearly 4″ screen. The last one I can remember was my much loved HTC Universal, and that was back in…early…
There are many reasons to like the Nokia N85, but the one thing that has blown my hair back and made me truly appreciate this talented little device is something I had never before seen in a mobile phone…an FM transmitter*. And not just any weak wannabe transmitter, I’m talking about one that is just as strong – and allows the music to sound just as rich – as the dedicated transmitter on my Sirius box does.
According to astronomer Lyman Spitzer’s 1946 paper “Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory”, there were two main advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. The first advantage was that “the angular resolution (smallest separation at which objects can be clearly distinguished) would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere, which causes stars to twinkle and is known to astronomers as seeing.” The second advantage was that “a space-based telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light, which are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere.” The United Kingdom launched the first orbiting solar telescope…