I’m a huge fan of napping. It’s important to understand that napping is not the same as sleeping, in that actually getting into bed defeats the purpose of a nap, which is to just curl up on a piece of furniture and drop off (especially when you have other important things that you really should be doing). So without further ado, here’s our ode to napping: The Top 5 list of Nap Tech:

#5: MetroNap Nap-Pod

Metronaps is offering these little pods for rental in a few cities around the world, including New York. The pod reclines, a privacy shield descends, and then you powernap for 20 minutes, whereupon the pod will wake you up with a combination of an acoustic alarm and a gentle vibration. According to Metronaps (and others), a 20 minute powernap substantially increases productivity. Buying your own will cost about $8,000.

It’s not #1 because: it’s public, it’s designed for power naps (only 20 minutes), and it’s basically just a glorified recliner that costs $14 per nap.

Check out the top four after the jump.

#4: Pillow Book

One of the main attractions of a nap, as I’ve mentioned above, is sleeping when you’ve got other stuff you should be paying attention to. Like, when you’re in class. People have been using textbooks as pillows since the invention of the two hour geology lecture, so it’s a little bit surprising that it’s taken this long for someone to come up with a textbook that actually has a comfy a pillow inside it. No word on whether the book is drool resistant. You can get a pillow book for about $100, imported from Japan.

It’s not #1 because: while it can definitely make illicit naps at work or in class more comfortable, it can’t possibly be that comfortable, which is one of the primary criteria for a good nap.

#3: Napgrass

Okay, so it’s actually called “schlafgras” (sleep grass), but don’t mind that. Napgrass is a meadow of styrofoam tubey things, covered in unnatural colors, that you can grow in your living room (through holes in the floor, apparently). You can vary the height of each piece of napgrass to create your own “personalized nap-landscape.” Unfortunately it looks like this napping concept never really grew out of the design stage and into a production model.

It’s not #1 because: although I love the idea of a personalized nap-landscape, it’s pretty bizarre, and looks like it has the potential to be either eminently comfortable or lumpy mess.

#2: Napmosphere

Remember back in the day when you were small enough to be allowed to romp around those awesome ball pits? Here’s one for grownups, albeit for the slightly (okay, majorly) more sedate purpose of napping. The Napmosphere is designed to let you burrow around until you find the most comfortable position, with the spherical balls preserving enough air space to keep you from suffocating. You can change the external fabric and/or the color of the translucent balls, which alters the lighting inside. Although not currently being produced, it’s effectively a single person tent filled with balls. DIY, anyone?

It’s not #1 because: it looks a little claustrophobic and you run the risk of having someone zip you up and roll you around, balls and all.

#1: Transport

Ready for a nap yet? If not, this baby should motivate you: the Transport, designed by Alberto Frias, is a “perceptual pod.” It’s made out of fiberglass, with an integrated sound system, full spectrum LED lighting (that can pulse with the music), and a cushioned water bed that measures a full 6 foot 6 inch circle. It is available for purchase for between $10,000 and $12,000 depending on what options you decide to toss in. Okay, so it’s a tad spendy, but can you really put a price on the perfect nap?

It’s #1 because: as if the waterbed, sound system, and lights weren’t enough, the transport is large enough that you can take a nap (or, um, not) with someone else. And no matter how high tech your nap gets, snuggling with someone else just can’t be beat.

Honorable mentions: Napshell, Quantum Sleeper

By David Ponce

It’s no news that the LCD playing field is getting increasingly crowded. Yet, that doesn’t stop newcomers from trying to make inroads in what was a $14billion market in 2006, with varying levels of success. One company that recently caught my eye is VisionQuest. I happen to have visited a friend of mine that owns a Visionquest LCD, and I got curious: the thing is gorgeous! Sleek, sexy and better yet: pretty cheap. It made me want to buy one, but I decided to do some research on the company first, and this is what I found.

Visionquest is a Singaporean company who recently chose Jimmy Davlouros as their General North American Manager. Davlouros is BenQ Canada’s former COO, who brings his years of experience to the table and hopes to push sales to $100million within the first year. How? Well, for starters, their products are hot. Take the sub-$1,000 LVQ-32EF1A (pictured above), from their higher-end Rembrandt line. It’s a 32inch HDTV LCD with more connections than you can shake a stick at: 1 HDMI, 2 HD Component (Y Pb Br), plus standard component and S-video inputs and PC/Mac VGA. This way you can connect anything, be it your old VCR, your PS3 or even your computer.

With display capabilities of 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i and a 1,200:1 contrast ratio, the image looks great, and a quick 8ms response time makes for blur-free action sequences. The panel is encased in a piano-black finish, which also happens to be a touchpad that allows you to control volume, channels and power. Finally, it comes with HDCP so you wont be locked out of any DRM-laden DVD releases. All this for under $1,000? Yeah, that’s right.

The interesting thing about VisionQuest, is that they don’t stop themselves at selling LCDs. As a matter of fact, the company is behind a bevy of other products, including DVD players (some are even DivX certified), recorders, sound systems, patio heaters and mini fridges (including wine coolers). Heck, they even have digital photo frames! So from the looks of it, they are positioning themselves as a consumer electronics company right from the start. Some might say they are spreading themselves too thin, but in Davlouros’ vision, that’s not true. They are instead appealing to a wide variety of niches, and his confidence belies a strategy that’s already beginning to pay off. Independent resellers across Canada have already started carrying the brand with very satisfying levels of success.

With a solid product, and a reseller channel finally excited to be selling something, you can bet that you’ll be seeing more VisionQuest products on store shelves in the months to come. Right now however, the panels are a little hard to find. You can visit the link below to find a retailer near you.

[ VisionQuest ]

[Every now and then our man Evan gets chatty and cranks out a feature length piece. They make for a good read, and this is one of them. We hear they'll show up now and then. -Ed.]

Batteries suck. We know they suck. They’re a necessary evil at this stage of our technological development. They’re bulky, they’re toxic, they never hold as much as you want them to, and (like all of us) as soon as they’re born, they start the weary and inevitable decline into uselessness. If you’ve ever owned an iPod (or pretty much any other device with a built-in battery) you know what I’m talking about. My iPod is down to about 2 reliable hours, my laptop gets 30 seconds out of a full charge if I’m lucky. As someone who travels a lot, I find it difficult to depend on the lifetime of internal batteries, especially when it comes to power hungry devices. That’s why I love the flexibility and interchangeability of “conventional” batteries, especially rechargeables. I can take my four rechargeable AAs and stick them in my TuneJuice to give me music from LAX all the way across the pacific (a 13 hour endeavour), and then swap the same batteries into my digital camera and take about a bazillion shots (after a quick recharge, of course). I know, integrated rechargeable batteries are sooooo much sexier, but at SOME point you have to put a premium on usability. It’s based on this philosophy of convenience and usefulness. After the jump, I am going to explain why I am such a big fan of interchangeable rechargeable batteries, and why you (and all your gadgets) should be too.

Part 1. The Batteries

Since we’re talking about rechargeable batteries, let’s start with arguably the most important component of the system: the batteries themselves. On the outside, a rechargeable looks like any other standard battery, but on the inside, it’s a completely different animal. There are a bevy of different types of rechargeables, but three are the most common: lithium, NiCad, and NiMH.

You’ll find rechargeable lithium batteries in most things with integrated batteries, like laptops and cell phones, since lithiums have a high power density and a flexible design. Their downside is mainly expense and durability… All those exploding laptop batteries? Yeah, they were lithium cells. NiCads were the rechargeable battery of choice for years, but they contain cadmium, which is a pretty nasty heavy metal, and due to a comparatively low capacity and shorter recharge life, they’re gradually being replaced by our happy friend, the NiMH. NiMH batteries (no relation to either the National Institute of Mental Health or the hyper-intelligent rats) are comparatively cheap, stable, and Earth friendly, with high capacity and a good lifespan. They’re the standard rechargeable drug of choice.

I personally use Maha Powerex NiMHs, which I bought from Thomas Distributing for 13 bucks (for a 4 pack). An often overlooked fact is that rechargeables have substantially greater capacity than normal AA batteries (excluding prohibitively expensive ones like Energizer E2s). My Powerex rechargeables have 2500 mAh (milliamp-hours) of juice a piece (although they’re packing up to 2900 now), while a standard alkaline AA has under 1000 (more like 700 in a medium drain device like a digital camera). When it comes to electrical batteries, the mAh rating is kinda like the size of a gas tank in a car, and (obviously) bigger is better. That is, if you can fill your tank properly, which brings us along to:

Part 2. The Charger

Yes, it’s true, you’ll have to buy and carry around a battery charger that is most of the time more expensive and bulkier than the charger for any individual device. But, I’m willing to bet that it’s smaller (and far less tangle-prone) than ALL of your chargers put together, and can often charge enough batteries to power multiple devices. And best of all, it only eats up one single outlet, which is a major plus if you find yourself needing to charge something in (say) an airport.

That said, it’s important that you buy the right charger. The charger directly addresses some of the major DISadvantages of rechargeable batteries: battery life, battery wear, and (of course) having to actually charge the batteries themselves. Charging batteries is always a trade off between charging speed and battery wear. The faster the charger dumps electricity into a battery, the more stressed out the battery gets, and it won’t hold quite as much charge next time. Another factor that contributes to battery wear is overcharging, or trying to pump more juice into the battery than the battery can actually hold. Most chargers nowadays are “smart” chargers, which means that they use some sort of feedback from the batteries that they’re charging to determine when to stop. While most rechargeable batteries work in more or less the same way, some smart chargers are substantially smarter than other smart chargers, which can have a big effect on the performance of your batts.

I personally use a Maha MH-C410FS charger, which I bought from Thomas Distributing for $40.

Why I like it:

-Trickle mode to keep batteries topped off after charging completes
-Fast charges in 100 minutes, slow charges and conditions in 5 hours
-Separate charging circuits for each battery (4 total)
-LEDs show status for each battery (yay, LEDs!)
-Doesn’t plug directly into the wall, keeping other outlets accessible

Why I don’t like it as much:

-Only charges AA and AAA batteries (doesn’t charge 9v batteries).
-Doesn’t plug directly into the wall, meaning that you have to carry around a power adapter.
-100 minutes is still a while
-Plastic cover is totally useless

Part 3. The Devices

If you’re going to adopt a rechargeable battery mentality, you have to be consistent with your gadgetry, or it’s not nearly as cost (and space) effective. Ideally you want every device to be able to operate on the same type of batteries, and you want to have the minimum number of batteries to power all the stuff that you might conceivably want to have running at the same time. If you look around a bit, it might surprise you just how many gadgets have optional AA (or AAA or 9v) battery adapters. If the manufacturer doesn’t offer one, odds are very high that someone has put one together and is offering it on eBay for about 5 bucks. Heck, you can even make them yourself if you’re so inclined. Of course, you have to weigh the costs and benefits… If only SOME of your gadgets take standard batteries, you’re still going to have to lug around charging cables for the rest, and either way you’re going to have to carry adapters for everything with an integrated battery.

Conclusion

Obviously, there are pros and cons to rechargeables. They involve a substantial investment of both money (around $60 just for the equipment) and time (you have to remember to keep your batteries charged, and rotate sets through your charger if necessary). But not only do they power many medium and high drain devices for a good deal longer than disposables, they’re more cost effective in the long run and are far cheaper and easier to replace than integrated lithium cells. And they’re environmentally friendly, since you’re not haphazardly dumping your used disposable batteries all over the place. But in fact, that very choice is one of the most important advantages: if you rely on standard format rechargeable batteries, you can always choose to use disposables. Run out of power? Forget to charge something? Forget your charger and batteries completely? No worries, wherever you are, odds are excellent that you can find somewhere to buy batteries.

Exactly one year and three days ago, OhGizmo was born with this strange little post. I was young and idealistic and believed in whirled peas and all that jive. And, for the next five months, as a token of my blistering success, what happened? I averaged around 50 visitors daily, amassing in that time about as many visitors as we now get in a day. Not exactly anything to write home about.

These days, while we’re still a far cry from where we’d like to be, we do manage a respectable 7,500 uniques a day. We’re still hanging on to that 29,367 spot on Alexa and things are going well. What happened? How did we get from there to here? Well, in this article I’ll walk you down memory lane: you’re going to see the posts that “made” OhGizmo. Not all of them, cause there’s a truckload, but the most significant.

What goes into building traffic? A little science-fiction, a little sex, a lot of luck and even more hard work. Yup, that’s the recipe (at least for us).

It all started with this, on May 23rd: The Humanoid Hugging Pillow. At first, it seemed to be a life-sized human shaped “pillow”, made for, em, hugging. Sort of an upgraded version of the lap pillows that had already come out at the time. Gizmodo picked it up, and 15,000 visitors poured in within a day. But then, some readers pointed out that it was no such thing. It’s simply a big rectangular pillow, a “dakimura”, with this picture printed on it. This sort of thing is popular popular among a certain crowd in Japan. Fun, but not quite as fun as it could have been, I guess. $140. [Humanoid Hugging Pillow]

Then, on June 28th, Gizmodo again picked up on an article: The Lineriders. This was a project to reinvent Hotwheels cars by outfitting them with technology allowing the little wheeled buggers to follow lines drawn on the ground. The idea being that you’d be able to draw your own racetracks, right on the floor, and annotate them with special symbols telling the cars to either slow down, speed up, etc. As the story unfolded, we found out that the project had already gone beyond the conceptual stage, with actual working prototypes, but was not in production yet. This article netted a respectable 12,000 visitors. [Lineriders, Hotwheels Revisited]

By then, we’d already caught the eyes of the guys at Gizmodo. They were receptive to our tips, and that came in handy when news of the Optimus OLED keyboard broke. To be fair, Andru at Gearlive tipped me off, but the next day, Gizmodo credited us both. People went nuts and flooded the site with traffic, linking from everywhere. What is it? Well, it’s a very special keyboard with a tiny OLED on each key, allowing it to become endlessly reconfigurable, adjusting to each different application. It’s not out yet, and there’s plenty of speculation on “when” or even “if”. Stay tuned for that one. [Best. Keyboard. Evar.]

At this point, I started recruiting contributors, and it’s one of them, Asim Waqar, who broke what is possibly our biggest story ever: The Heliodisplay, from company IO2 Technology. It was the sci-fi nut’s dream come true; R2D2’s three dimensional display come to life. The Heliodisplay projects an image into thin air. What’s more, you can interact with the image and manipulate the objects you see, with your fingers. It was madness, and it was finally in production. So what happened? Slashdot did. Let me tell you, a Slashdotting is frightening. Within two days, we had received 140,000 visitors. There was so much interest in the product that I thought I’d ask Chad Dyner, the inventor, for an interview. Sure enough, he accepted. [Interactive 3D Display: It's Here!] and [OhGizmo Exclusive: Interview With The Heliodisplay Inventor]

By now, things were peachy, and I wasn’t submitting things to other sites as much. So, it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I started seeing a deluge of traffic from Fark.com on October 1st. For what? The Duct Tape BandAid, a “rugged” bandage being sold by the Nexcare division of 3M, and targeted to manly men, concerned about their, eh, image. I never imagined people could be so passionate about duct tape. The next day, Boingboing picked it up, and the deluge continued, finally tapering after about 100,000 lovely new visitors. [The Duct Tape BandAid]

Well, the list really goes on and on. So, I’ll finish it up with this one: Eminent Tech’s TRW17, aka the world’s most powerful subwoofer. Of course, “most powerful” is a bit of a misnomer, as the TRW’s claim to fame is its ability to generate frequencies as low as 1Hz. It’s not a traditional subwoofer, with a magnet and a cone. Instead, it uses a fan-like design, where the blades are rotated and modulated to create a cone of vibrating air that can turn an entire room into a resonating box. And sure, you can’t really hear at that low a frequency, but I’m told that your insides get quite the shaking, and I know we’re all up for a little gut-shaking, no? So what happened with the story? Again, Slashdot picked it up and dumped a good 120,000 visitors on us. Yay subwoofers! [The World's Most Powerful Subwoofer]

Other notable mentions include: The Nostalgia Dial Phone Watch
Eye Jewellery
The Babyplane
The Pizzacones

And well, that’s it for now folks. The last thing I want to do, is to thank all our readers for a wonderful year, especially everyone who makes this site more interesting by participating in the comments. Thanks for spreading the word about us, as I know some of you have been. Thanks for reading, and keep coming back. We’ll keep getting better and drunker, I promise you that.

There are many clever old devices hidden away in attics and garages – forgotten movie cameras lie on dusty shelves beside obsolete computers and clever mechanical toys, all crying out to be rediscovered and brought back to life. That’s what Rear View Mirror is all about – getting the word out about classic gadgets. I’ll do my best to drop be every couple of weeks to highlight the neatest, coolest and weirdest stuff from Retro Thing.

Let’s start by checking out a nifty “new” 20 year-old computer kit. There was a crazy competition in the early 1980s to produce the cheapest computer possible. The hands-down winner was Sinclair, who managed to crack the $100 barrier with a kit version of their incredibly low-end Sinclair ZX81…

The ZX81 offered up a membrane keyboard, just like the one on your microwave oven. It probably has about the same mental capacity, as well. If you’d like to get your hands on one, it looks Zebra Systems still has a few brand new ZX81 kits at the original price. It only has four integrated circuits, but it might be wise to bribe your TV repairman uncle to do the assembly if your soldering skills aren’t up to par.

I don’t think any of my relatives would appreciate receiving an ancient computer kit for the holidays, but there are some other retro items that would make perfect gifts. So, without further ado, here are a few under-$100 vintage prezzies that I’ve stumbled across in recent weeks:

Vostok Wristwatch ($70): The Russians still make nifty and affordable mechanical watches. My favourite is their Kirovskie replica, based on the original model Vostok manufactured for the Soviet armed forces. It features a 31-jewel mechanism that ticks like a T-72 tank.

Schylling Tin Robot ($15.99): Schylling is a 30 year-old toy manufacturer based in Rowley, Massachusetts. Their coolest toy is the Lilliput robot, a genuine tin replica of the original Japanese clockwork classic from the 1940s.

SEGA Genesis Reissue ($30): The 16-bit Genesis was the hottest videogame console of 1989, knocking the Nintendo Entertainment System from first place in Japan. Now you can own an affordable mini-console version that includes six titles from the original, including Sonic the Hedgehog and the old pack-in – Altered Beast.

Holga Medium Format Camera ($19.95): Kodak introduced medium-format 120 film in 1901, along with their famous $1 Brownie box camera. It’s a roll-based film that captures images on a negative four times the size of modern 35 mm film. The result is strikingly high-rez. The Holga is an amazingly cheap plastic camera that shoots this film. They’re known for capturing dreamy artistic images. Alas, they’re not always lightproof. It’s worth picking up a roll of duct tape so the lucky recipient can tape the edges of the film chamber to keep light from sneaking in. What do you expect for under twenty bucks?

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse of gadgets from the past. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to showcase a handful more irresistible old contraptions. In the meantime, you’re welcome to drop by Retro Thing to explore.