Gadgets, Gizmos and Other Electronics that Will Make Life Easier in the Future

by French Davis

So, 2008 is ending and the ’09 Consumer Electronic Show is the first thing on everyone’s mind. Right? Okay, maybe it’s a stretch to assume it’s something awesome to people besides me. But give me a few minutes, and I’ll tell you why it’s something you should be giddy for, too. This year’s conference will showcase a host of new, innovative products that will change the way you consume your media if you give them half a chance.

i2i Stream, www.i2igear.com
The i2i Stream is the kind of thing I’ve been longing to see for years. A wholly wireless solution for streaming audio throughout the home. Granted Apple’s Airport Express has done it well for the last few years, but the i2i Stream doesn’t need to be locked in to a draconian system of proprietary parts and software to work.

Camera Mask, www.liquidimageco.com
It’s an underwater camera. No, it’s a facemask. No, it’s a facemask that’s also an underwater camera. It works up to five meters deep, looks a little ridiculous, and totally frees up your hands to fight off that tiger shark that just took a chunk out of your thigh. Hey, at least they’ll have video of your final minutes…

Audio Recorder, www.honestech.com
I have a few hundred LPs in my collection, and I keep meaning to digitize them. Sadly, it can be a daunting task for someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. I mean, I can connect my earphone jack output from my record player to the mic port on my Mac and use Garage Band; however I’ll get extra crappy mono sound and enormous files that will take weeks to compress. Honestech’s Audio Recorder 2.0 Deluxe has both the hardware connections and the software to do it right, and it’s simple to use. The only catch? Gotta do it on a Windows machine.

Popstick, www.popcatcher.com
True audiophiles most likely won’t dig this one, but since most of the free world is fine with mp3-level quality, this is right up their alley. The Popstick is an unassuming device that takes songs you’ve recorded off the radio with the Popcatcher ripper, turns them into mp3s and stores them for later playback on any device with a USB input and a speaker. The Popcatcher can be integrated with pretty much anything that has a radio in it, including the radio in your car. So, now you can listen to the same eight songs over and over again without all that annoying DJ banter and Rocky’s Auto commercials. Neat.

Rovio Webcam, www.wowwee.com
You’re at work and you’ve left the kids with your mother-in-law and her shiftless bum of a third husband. You just know they’re not good childcare providers, but your spouse is gonna need some hard and fast proof before agreeing to let your mother watch them. Good news! The Rovio mobile webcam is a remote control moon lander-looking gizmo that can broadcasts images via Wi-Fi anywhere in the world, and also be controlled from anywhere in the world, too! Dress it up like a geranium, and they’ll never know you’re watching!

December 2008

More Clever Cell Phones Coming

by French Davis

And now it’s getting interesting. Longtime readers (thanks, ma!) are familiar with my unabashed love of the iPhone and all the innovation and awesomeness it brought to the market when it was released last year. iPhone 2.0 further raised the awesome bar by opening the floodgates of development and really turning loose what this puppy can do—third-party applications ranging from a light saber to unparalleled wireless integration with your home network to seamless social network compatibility really started to drive home how much this elegantly simple, one-button device brought to the table.

But despite all of this, it’s becoming evident the biggest contribution the iPhone made to the entire tech sector is the gauntlet it flung into the faces of every other manufacturer in the genre. And only now are we really beginning to see the fruits of what the competitive spirit of the marketplace have wrought.

Samsung was the first to come out barrels blazing with its Instinct model—riding Sprint’s faster network (at the time) than the laboriously slow AT&T GSM band the first iPhone was relegated to. Though there was a lot of early hooplah about this fabled “iPhone killer” from the trade pubs, sales of the Instinct barely registered a notch on the long totem pole erected by the iPhone. In the last year, several other manufacturers, like LG, RIM and Neonode have tossed their handsets into the ring, only to see them lurch along in relative obscurity, lost in the iPhone’s massive shadow.

Nothing lasts forever, however, and by the time you read this, T-Mobile’s G1 will be on the streets. The G1 operates on the Android platform, a system developed by Google—pure open source on a Linux kernel.

Though the handset, developed by HTC, is a little clunkier looking than the iPhone (despite being smaller all around), it’s basically an upgrade in many other areas. It offers a touch screen (does not support multi-touch, which the iPhone does) that slides out into a full qwerty keyboard, a 3-megapixel camera (as opposed to iPhone’s 2 megapixels), expandable memory (via MicroSD cards—comes with a 1 gig card and can expand up to 8 gigs; iPhone’s 16-gig is their biggest and isn’t expandable from there) and a few other things I’ve complained are missing from my iPhone:

• Multimedia messaging
• Copy and paste
• Voice dialing
• Removable battery

It’s also $179, which is $20 less than the iPhone. The most impressive feature on the G1 is the map function, which not only provides Google’s awesome street-level view, but overlays a compass for you and you can actually pan the image on the screen by simply moving the phone from side to side. That’s pretty freakin’ awesome.

But what’s really notable isn’t the phone itself, it’s the software. Android is open to the world, and in the coming months you’ll see a slew of new handsets operating on this system.

What does that mean to the iPhone? Not much, yet. But Google’s already punched a huge hole in the Microsoft monolith by allowing its open office applications to be used for free by anyone on the Net. Whereas Apple maintains an almost Machiavellian grip on all of its wares, systems and software, Google opens it up to the world.

And though I love my iPhone, I’m rooting for the company with the best slogan…

Don’t Be Evil.

October 2008

Celebrate These Great Inventions

by French Davis

As I type this, the new Hadron Collider somewhere under the Alps on the French/Swiss border has just had its first successful test. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last several years, the Hadron Collider is the biggest particle accelerator on Earth.

It was built with the hopes it would clue physicists into the nature of the universe by revealing particles that only exist when you smash two Hydrogen atoms into each other at nearly the speed of light.
Now, that’s all well and good, but lots of folks (mostly the same ilk as the ones who were afraid of sailing off the end of the Earth or the nut jobs who are convinced the Raiders have a chance at a title while Al Davis lives) were concerned that firing up this bad boy might mean the end of the Earth—or maybe even the universe. And while that does sound like the beginning of a Douglas Adams novel, it more likely signals the start of a new era in science, which got me thinking about some other technological innovations that shaped the course of history (in no particular order)…

1. Flight: In 12 seconds over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on Dec. 17, 1903, Orville Wright proved man could fly, all so you can pay an extra $25 to take your suitcase with you on that trip to Madison next month.

2. The Telegraph: While everyone thinks of the telephone’s importance in connecting man across great distances, it was the telegraph that first used electro-magnetic current to transmit signals over distance, thereby opening the door for the phone and later, the Internet (thus saving us those embarrassing trips to the adult bookstore).

3. The Printing Press: Though the Chinese developed the technology first, it was a German named Johann Gutenberg who developed the press in 1439 that really gave rise to the publishing industry. And despite what all the “experts” say, there’s still plenty of life left in this old dog yet. But nothing has contributed more to culture’s evolution and development (and de-evolution, for that matter) than the written word. Let’s not forget how important Mad Libs are!

4. Internal Combustion Engine: Though it was a collaborative effort (that even included Leonardo Da Vinci, who also lent his considerable talents to the Wright Brothers research), a Swiss man named François Isaac de Rivaz built the first working model. Without this one, forget powered flight, commuting, OPEC and air pollution. On second thought…

5. Phonograph: Thomas Edison had to end up on this list, right? He was the first to record and reproduce sound, using a cylindrical device that later evolved into Emile Berlinner’s disc. Then it was onto 45s, LPs, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CDs, and the self-sustaining legal quagmire of copyright litigation we have today. Good times.

October 2008

While Fighting for the Good Stuff

by French Davis, illustration by Stephanie Mott

Child pornography is bad. Okay. I think it’s safe to say we’re all in agreement on that one, right? (I mean, except for maybe the freaks over at NAMBLA.) (more…)

July 2008

by French Davis

Finding random stuff on the web takes up at least 30 hours a week. It’s tough work finding such obscure stuff for my beloved readers. I wonder if my boss will start to notice my dip in productivity. It’s well worth it… (more…)

June 2008