Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Don’t be fooled by the retro looks of this alarm clock. While it does feature a set of real metal bells, it actually wakes you up by playing an MP3 file of your choice. Hidden in the back of the unit is a 22 inch USB cable that allows you to connect the clock to your PC. Using the included software, you can configure the alarm using a small selection of sounds, or upload any MP3 file you want to wake up to. And by ‘any’ MP3 file I mean any file that’s under 45 seconds in length. It seems like a big limitation, since I maybe have a handful of MP3s that are under 45 seconds long, and I’ll probably never go to the trouble of downloading an MP3 editor just to make a particular song compatible with my alarm clock.

It’s available from ThinkGeek for $19.99. And as an added bonus they’ve preloaded a special ThinkGeek Monkey Song for waking up in true geek fashion.

[ DIY MP3 Alarm Clock ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Did you ever have a Labyrinth, or one of those other games where you had to successfully navigate a metal ball bearing around a maze by tilting and angling it? Well the Aqua Drop from Bandai is pretty much the exact same idea. But instead of using a metal ball bearing, it uses drops of water, while the maze itself is covered with a water repellent surface. It kind of makes the water drops look and behave like drops of mercury, but you know, without all the risk of mercury poisoning. I’m not sure if the Aqua Drops will manage to tear kids away from their DS’s or PSPs, but come June there will be four different mazes to choose from, at just $15 a pop.

[ Bandai Aqua drop an old game with a futuristic touch ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m not necessarily an advocate of graffiti, but when someone manages to turn a regular transit shelter into an awesome retro video-game-themed shelter, I can’t really find a reason to complain. For some reason, whether it be for decoration or to make the glass more visible, the streetcar transit shelters here are adorned with a strip of yellow dots running all the way around. So a local artist (and possibly gamer) added some strategically placed graphics to recreate a scene from Pac-Man.

But this isn’t the first video game themed graffiti I’ve come across here. A few months ago a local artist named Posterchild paid tribute to Valve’s Portal game with a 3D Weighted Companion Cube passing through a couple of buildings. Unfortunately by the time I got back with a real camera to snap a photo, it had already been taken down. But a photographer friend of mine did manage to take a few shots before it disappeared.

By Evan Ackerman

Behold!

“Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel will finally be completed. Immediately afterwards, an extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope will be installed at both ends which will miraculously allow people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.”

I hope I’m not bursting anyone’s bubble when I reveal that the Telectroscopes (designed by artist and inventor Paul St George) are connected not by a tunnel but by fiber optic cabling, and an HD camera and projector on either end provide live streaming video. But who really cares, you can still look in one end of this device in New York and see out the other in London. You’ll find one end next to the Brooklyn Bridge, and the other across the pond, next to Tower Bridge.

Interestingly, the concept for this device has been around for over a century. Read about its origins, and check out a picture from one of the apertures, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m all for incorporating retro trends into a pair of sneakers, but I’m afraid these Tetris print Pumas just don’t do it for me. The shoes are custom variations of the Disc Blaze model which first came out in 1994 and besides the Tetris pattern print, they also feature some early ’90s color schemes. Remember when we couldn’t get enough neon? Yeah, I’ve forced myself to forget those times too. The ‘disc’ in Disc Blaze refers to the large dial on top of the tongue which is used to tighten the shoes instead of traditional laces. The system has since been copied by other shoe manufacturers with relative levels of success, so I’m wondering if Puma is hoping the Disc Blaze shoes will become more popular this time around.

Like a lot of cool stuff the shoes were first available in Japan, but should be hitting the US in the coming weeks. Not surprisingly you won’t be able to find them at your local Foot Locker since they’re only being released to selected Puma ’boutiques’.

[ Puma Disc Blaze 1990s Tetris Pack ] VIA [ Albotas ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While the post dates back to October of last year, on the Kodak ‘PluggedIn‘ blog Steve Sasson took a walk down memory lane regarding the company’s first portable electronic still camera. And who better to do so than Steve Sasson who is actually credited with inventing the digital camera and was one of the guys who created the prototype pictured above. The camera is really a Frankenstein of technologies from 1975 built from various components including a Super 8 movie camera lens, a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder, 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a new type of CCD imaging array and a collection of digital and analog circuits all wired together. All in all, the first prototype doesn’t look half bad.

Instead of memory cards, the camera relied on the aforementioned cassette deck to capture still images which took about 23 seconds to record the digitized image to tape. Viewing the image required you to put the tape in a custom built playback device which featured a frame store that would interpolate the 100 captured lines of data from the CCD to 400 lines so that it could then be viewed on an NTSC TV.

This reminds me of the electronic camera I invented as a child, but my version was actually capable of producing full color images. Unfortunately when I tried to apply for a patent the government informed me that my ‘camera’ was actually a Lite Brite that my parents had bought me for Christmas. But they were impressed with the photos of Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner I had ‘taken’… Or maybe they were just trying to let me down easy now that I think of it… Those jerks!

[ PluggedIn - We Had No Idea ] VIA [ Retro Thing ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Javier Segovia is a graphic designer working in Spain who occasionally turns his attention to concept designs for actual products. The reNESED is his take on the NES gaming console from yesteryear, and is hands down a big improvement over Nintendo’s original design. Of course it’s a bit easier to design shiny, curvy hardware these days thanks to 3D software and advanced manufacturing techniques (see the PS3) but the reNESED is still a nice piece of eye candy. Of course if I was redesigning the NES console I would have to incorporate some kind of automatic blowing mechanism to minimize the risk of me getting light-headed while playing. That, or actually fix the problem that caused games not to load correctly.

[ reNESED ] VIA [ Kotaku ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Got a stack of NES carts at home that you’ve been dying to play while traveling? I didn’t think so. Given the capabilities of the PSP and even the DS, I’m kind of surprised anyone would even want a portable way to play old NES carts when they can be so easily emulated. But the FC Mobile portable system does just that. It looks like a slightly fat, overly curvaceous version of the Game Boy Micro, but that’s mostly because of the slot on the back designed to accommodate NES cartridges.

You can either play the games using the FC Mobile’s 2.4 inch LCD color screen, or use the included AV adapter cable to hook it up to a television and enjoy all that 8-bit goodness on your hi-def display. It’s powered by 3 AA batteries, comes in a red & white or silver & black color schemes and appears to only play North American NES games.

Unfortunately the only place to pick one up right now is on eBay, where they range in price from around $30 to $60.

[ FC Mobile NES Game Portable LCD System ] VIA [ technabob ]

By Luke Anderson

It always fascinates me that you can take something, make it look old and it’s suddenly cool because it’s “retro.” Aside from the ability to create mix tapes, there wasn’t anything cool about the cassette tape that I ever saw. This Cassette MP3 player would probably be the closest thing to cool that the cassette tape will ever get.

What makes this device cool is that it can act as both a stand-alone MP3 player and as a cassette tape. If you actually still have a stereo that takes the old tapes, you can put this in and it will play just the same. It’ll set you back $40, which is a bit steep considering the fact that you’ll need to supply your own SD card to store the music.

[ ThinkGeek ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Argh! What I wouldn’t give for Nintendo to bring their Japan-only (soon to include Australia) Club Nintendo to North America. For one, I would have been able to order one of these exclusive Wii compatible versions of the original Super Famicom controller. Like the Wii’s ‘Classic Controller’ this one connects to the Wiimote giving it a wireless connection to the console itself. Inside Games has posted an unboxing gallery of their Wii Famicom controller, which makes me hate them even though we’ve never met and I’m sure they’re all nice people.

So… Are there any OhGizmo! readers in Japan who want to help out a gadget blogger weasel his way into a Club Nintendo membership?

[ Wii Super Famicom Classic Controller ] VIA [ Nintendo Wii Fanboy ]