Tag: gadgets
Top ten techie gadgets and tat to take with you to the beach
Back from a few days’ holiday over in Lowestoft, on the East coast of England, I’ve gained not only a lot of sunburn (curse my parents and their fair-skinned genetics!), but also a lot of wisdom in regards to just what you should pack for a good few hours’ worth of lounging in the sun…
Style yourself ghetto-fabulous and abuse yourself crazy with Tomy's Mock U Rapper toys
If you don’t get abused enough as is in the office environment, then the sadists amongst us will be probably wanting to head over to the Tomy website to pick up one of their new Mock U Rapper toys.
Choose between birds, monkeys or cows, who are all sat in trees bizarrely, and simply record a short message into the device, then et voila! The animals…
Londoners love their gadgets, and Brits spent £7.8bn overall
New research from GfK shows that Brits spent over £7.8 billion on consumer electronics between May 2006 and April 2007. That equates to an average £311 for each household.
Londoners easily top the pile, spending at least twice as much on gadgets as any other region, with £2.2bn spent, or £431 per household.
Those in the south west of England spent the least, at just £195m, or £245 per household.
Average increase in spending on the previous year was 10.6%, proving that we’re still happily spending more on consumer electronics products than ever before.
Top five Harry Potter gadgets (not including a naked Daniel Radcliffe)
Planning on queuing up to get the final Harry Potter book this Friday? I am, and have endured a relentless tirade of mockery in the office for the past week after letting that fact slip. I won’t do that again.
Philips launch seven-strong range of audio docking stations. Yes, they work with iPods
Philips has gone into dock overload mode, as it prepares to launch seven docks that will provide “an extensive choice of how and when to connect and listen to devices”. Woot!
The range includes the compact AJ300D (pictured above) which is ideal for use in the bedroom (or anywhere you might fall asleep) as it features a dual wake-up alarm, in-built radio tuner, and iPod and Go Gear dock connection. It has five speakers using Philips’ wOOx technology that promises deep and powerful bass reproduction. Price £69.99.
Next up, the DCM230 has both an iPod / Go Gear dock, and USB Direct function that allows any other portable music player to be connected via USB. The two speakers each deliver 15W of power. Price £199.99.
Ring Alarm may save your marriage
One of the perpetual problems of relationships occurs when the couple has to get up at different times. (As a writer, I know this problem well since I never have to get up, ever, so any time anybody wants to get up is at odds with my schedule.) Designer Meng Fandi has come up with a possible solution. The Ring Alarm has two vibrating rings and a computerized charging cradle. The cradle is used to program each ring to vibrate at a certain time. Voila: a buzz for him, and a buzz for her. (Or him and him or her and her; it’s not prejudiced.) A more detailed diagram of this follows the jump. [GT]
Ring Alarm [via SciFi Tech]
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Remote control jousting knights
Now you can have all the thrills of a Renaissance Fair right in your home (without the insane cover charge, drunken louts, “prithee”ing or the Renaissance-grade body odour) with the remote control jousting knights from ThinkGeek. Each set includes 2 R/C Horses (one 27MHz and one 40 MHz) with knock-offable knights and lances. Once you unseat your opponent’s knight from his steed, their control over their horse stops. Uses 8AA batteries (2 per horse and 2 per remote) – included! Video of the noble knights in action, and fighting a fearsome dragon, after the jump. $39.99 [GT]
R/C Jousting Knights
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Thieves breaking into houses — to steal high-tech cars
Newsflash: even if your vehicle has a built-in immobilizer to prevent theft by hotwiring, you still have to protect the key. “Vehicles are being stolen through residential break and enters, where the suspect[s] enter the home and obtain the keys for the vehicle,” according to police in Toronto, Canada. Logically, you should lock your keys in a safe, and swallow the key to that. Then take the tube. [GT]
Vehicle anti-theft devices spur brazen break-ins, authorities say
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MIT builds Digital Water Pavilion out of… water
“To understand the concept of digital water, imagine something like an inkjet printer on a large scale, which controls droplets of falling water,” said Carlo Ratti, head of the MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory. This is the principle behind the Digital Water Pavilion, a structure designed for Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain. Thousands of water jets will be programmed to show images or text, but made of simply a thin film of water which can be easily walked through. “The entire surface becomes a one-bit-deep digital display that continuously scrolls downward.” Hard to picture? Check out the video at DigitalWaterPavilion.com. [GT]
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Robot receptionists get temp jobs
The job market being as volatile as it is, even robots are having to take temp jobs to make ends meet. Mitsubishi made its Wakamaru receptionist robot available for hire last month and PeopleStaff, a major temporary staffing agency based in Nagoya, has accepted 10 of them which will be sent out to work in the Tokai area of central Japan. According to Wakamaru’s resume, it can recognize faces, carry on simple conversations with a vocabulary of 10,000 words, and perform simple manual tasks. Under “Special Skills”, Wakamaru points out that it is “adept at thanking visitors for waiting and can sing songs as it shows the visitors to their destination within the building”. As for salary, Wakamaru is asking for 120,000 yen ($1,000) per day for short-term gigs, but is willing to accept 3 million yen ($25,000) for one year, which is about as much as a human temp worker gets. And like most temp workers, Wakamaru will probably spend all its time on coffee breaks and surfing itself. [GT]
Human resource agency hires Wakamaru robot receptionists
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