If you’ve ever wondered how long it takes the postal service to deliver something as simple as a postcard, then you’ll appreciate this concept. Created by the DAG-designlab, the Stopper postcard comes with an actual digital timer with an LCD display in the upper corner that will keep track of how long it’s been from when the postcard was sent, to when it arrives at its destination. Really nothing more than a curiosity killer, but clever nonetheless.
If you haven’t noticed, I probably couldn’t survive without my iPhone anymore. It keeps me in touch with the world, has a ton of cool apps, and provides music just about anywhere for me. The only downside is that despite the sheer number of awesome accessories for iPods, there are still only a few that it works with. Thanks to Scosche and their passPORT line, a lot more options have been opened up. However, I’ve finally gotten my hands on the iLuv Double Play, which is fully compatible with the iPhone straight out of the box. I’ve had a bit of time to put it through the works, so read on for my full review.
I’m pretty sure that almost every kid has had that dream to one day design their own video games. After all, when you spend so much time playing those games, surely it wouldn’t be that hard to create your own, right? Of course when you get older you realize just how much time and effort going into the creative process, which can be very overwhelming for even the simplest of games. Some do actually go on to work on their own creations, starting with small games, probably in the older 8-bit format. Sure, it’s cool bring over your creation on a flash drive, but what if you had your own console?
The Fuzebox is a small 8-bit console that has all of the inputs and outputs you need to play your own custom games. The DIY console is based on an AVR 8-bit general purpose microcontroller, while the coding is done is C. There are two versions of the kit, one just has the bare circuit board and parts, while the other includes an enclosure, power adapter and a controller. They will each run you $70 and $100 respectively. My biggest complaint? They have the Player 2 controller port upside down.
Maybe it’s unfair of me to say that this Microsoft laptop cooling pad from Microsoft is mediocre. But I don’t know, I guess I kind of expected that if Microsoft were to come up with a laptop cooling pad, it would be somehow notable or significant, and as far as I can tell, this isn’t. It’s 1.16 inches thick, and it’s got a single USB powered fan.
And it has a cable management clip.
And it’s kind of curvy, I suppose.
It’s available in black or white (to match your MacBook), for $30 in July.
Keeping your eyes open all day can be such a painful chore, and you deserve some relief. The Eye Vibrato is a mask that provides heat, vibration, and four different intensities of pressurized air to relax your eyeballs. Plus, the mask blocks out ambient light, meaning that you don’t have to spend the time and effort actually closing your eyes at all. It’s $64 on Amazon Japan.
I’m spending today at the ETech Emerging Technology Conference, and I just got back from a talk by Aaron Koblin. You might remember Aaron from his Sheep Market project, where 10,000 people were paid two cents each to draw “a sheep facing to the left” via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a service (that you can participate in!) that lets humans perform crowd computing in exchange for money. If you haven’t seen this project, it’s awesome, especially if you like sheep.
In his talk today, Aaron showed two other crowd sourced projects… One was an image of a hundred dollar bill composed of 10,000 individually drawn pieces. The other, in the video above, was a rendition of Daisy Bell, the first song ever sung by a computer and made famous in 2001 (the movie, so in 1968). Aaron’s version of Daisy Bell was sung (and accompanied) by a mix of 2,088 people singing one syllable each, when they had no idea what they were contributing toward, just that they would get paid six cents. It’s pretty remarkable.
I don’t recommend trying this with a Plasma or LCD TV, but if you’re still got an old CRT at home and happen to be a big fan of YouTube, these stickers created by industrial designer Ignacio Pilotto will make any TV show look like you’re watching a YouTube stream. They’ll probably also work on windshields, rear-view mirrors, microwave doors, ovens and pretty much anything you might waste time staring at throughout your day. In fact, if you wear glasses you might even consider sticking a smaller version of these in the corner of your lenses, making your whole life a YouTube clip.
Radar Rat Race might have been the first C64 game I ever played, but it didn’t take long for our household to amass a healthy collection of Commodore game cartridges. Another title that became a regular in our 64′s cart slot was a game called Sea Wolf, which was really nothing more than a shooting gallery/Space Invaders homage wrapped in a naval combat theme, but it had 2 things going for it that made it particularly enjoyable.
1) It was the first game we had that supported real multiplayer. Not that player 1 goes first followed by player 2 crap. No, Sea Wolf allowed you to go head-to-head with another player at the same time, on the same screen, trying to sink as many battleships, destroyers or PT boats as you could before your opponent did. There’s nothing like a little competition to make things more interesting.
2) It was the first game we had that required the Commodore 64′s paddle controller, which I’ve already discussed in my Lemans post, and still dearly miss to this day. Now I’m hopeful that titles like Sea Wolf might eventually make their way to the Wii’s virtual console, but it just wouldn’t be the same without those paddles.
This morning Apple updated their popular iPod Shuffle with a new version that’s moved the playback controls from the player itself to a small inline remote on the headphone cord. As a result, the Shuffle has become considerably smaller in size, just 1.8 inches tall and 0.7 inches wide, but at the same time has received a bump in storage up to 4GB.
The other notable update is the addition of VoiceOver which allows the Shuffle to tell you the name of the current track or artist or even when it’s time to recharge the battery. And, the addition of VoiceOver finally allows the iPod Shuffle to take advantage of multiple playlists, since they now can be navigated as the player announces their names. Not too shabby at just $79.99 in your choice of silver or black. However, the fact that it seems to be completely reliant on the bundled Apple earbuds is a total dealbreaker for me. Apple, how about a headphone adapter of some sort so I can use my own?
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