Archive for August, 2009
Friday, August 21st, 2009
Electrical gadgets are usually gadgets which help you to control the amount of electricity you spend and they also help you save some money and they help you be eco-friendly. Other electrical gadgets just make your life easier and they are innovations on older products, or simply new creations.
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If you usually buy a lot of batteries, maybe it’s time to get a smart battery charger and rechargeable batteries, and you will save a substantial amount of money. This excellent AA and AAA battery charger from La Crosse Tech. has a lot of interesting, advanced features, and be sure that you will use the rechargeable batteries at their best level of quality. This charger has 4 operations available: Charge, Discharge, Refresh and Test. In the Charge mode you can charge the batteries in the device, and you can also choose the speed of the charging process, slow or fast. When you use the Discharge mode, you reduce the memory effect of batteries, and with Refresh you can bring back to life old batteries. Test mode measures the power level of a battery. This charger comes with 4AA and 4AAA NiMH rechargeable batteries and also 4 C and 4 D battery adapters. All the AA batteries provided can be used in the adapters for appliances which work only with C or D batteries. When you purchase this charger, you also get a travel bag, which is very useful when you are not at home.
If you charged the batteries too many times, or you just have too many of them in a drawer and you want to clean up, you can make a selection using this ZTS MBT-1 battery tester, which is designed for measuring the capacity of charge in more than 30 well known types of batteries. It works with disposable and rechargeable batteries too, and it just uses a pulse load to check the capacity and it also measures the battery performance in simulated power demand. It doesn’t measure only the voltage and the resistance, and this makes the accuracy of the results to be increased and very exact. There are battery checkers which don’t load the battery enough during the test process and this leads to wrong results. Using it is very easy: you should place the battery (+) in the appropriate contact terminal, and then hold probe tip on the battery (-). The pulse test begins automatically, and on the LED display you get the remaining battery capacity.
I find this device very interesting, and I like because you can easily manage the time spent by your child in front of the TV or playing on the computer. It turns off the TV or the computer’s monitor after the time you set up and allocated to your child for that activity. For example, a kid gets a pin code and a specific time, which can be calculated daily or weekly. When he turns on the TV, he has to type the pin code in the device and then it starts counting…second after second, until the time initially programmed is finished. When this happens, the TV is switched off by this device, BOB, automatically. This is an interesting gadget because it learns children to value better time, and to organize the time spent in front of the TV or the computer better. They will learn that if they learn junk TV shows they won’t have time for the really important shows, and they will value their free time more wisely.
This interesting gadget, Kill A Watt is a monitor which shows you how many watts is your electrical system using and how much will this cost you. It can help you to identify the efficient appliances and it will help you eliminate the inefficient ones, it will make decisions to leave something on standby or turn it off completely, and it basically helps you save a lot of money. Kill A Watt is an electricity monitor which measures the consumption range and it calculates the operating costs for all the normal appliances which can be plugged into a normal outlet. It can also calculate the costs per day, hour, week, month, and you will have a statistic database without messy mathematic calculus. The most important thing is to input the electric rate, and Kill A Watt will do the job, You should connect this to all the appliance in the house. It can be plugged into a wall outlet, and after you input the electric rate it is ready for functioning and saving your money. The electric rate can be read on the bill, and if you don’t have one, you can call at customer service number and they will help you.
I fell in love with the following gadget since I saw it first, and I think it’s a pretty cool innovation. Using this book reading light when you are reading means that you will no longer disturb anyone anymore, no matter if you are in a train, at home in bed, or in the bus. Instead of shining a beam from a distance it illuminates a thin transparent piece of plastic which you can place on the page you read. I think it is great because it puts the light on the page you are reading, and only there, without disturbing anyone, and it uses a simple functioning concept: a thin, flat page sized plastic is illuminated by 2 LEDs in the handle. This device is suitable for hardcover and paperback books and it works on 4 AAA batteries, which is more than cheap, and they provide 40 hours of reading.
There are a lot of gadgets which can help you be more eco-friendly or they can just make your life easier and more comfortable. There is a gadget for almost every need we have, and I think adapting to the new generation of products is the most important skill of a person. Nowadays gadget market brings a lot of new products almost daily in front of our eyes!
Posted in House Gadgets | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
A new feature which became available since Vista has been released and can be also found in Windows 7, is Microsoft’s Desktop Gadgets application. Gadgets became very popular, and they are very useful in their form of small application which brings information on your desktop. They are practically mini-applications which run on the desktop while you can do anything else, and they bring you the specific information you need. Microsoft didn’t become more popular with this additional feature, and he isn’t the first to use these mini applications, but they are a good improvement on the system, and they help a lot the users. Now it’s easier to create gadgets, and there are a lot of people developing their own gadgets, and then offer them to the public.
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If you want to add Microsoft Desktop Gadgets on your desktop, the method is quite easy. You should right click on the desktop, and then choose the Gadgets option in the appearing menu. This action will bring you a dialog windows, which will show you the gadgets installed on your system. In the following image you can see a print screen of this dialog, and you can observe that the interface is user friendly, and quite well organized. You can add some of the gadgets in the sidebar, or you can get more gadgets from Microsoft website.
A very simple gadget is the Calendar, and I chose it to explain you some details about Windows 7 gadgets.
Each
gadget has the possibility of customization, if this was intended by the designer, and if he made it available. Here you can see the standard buttons which can be used in customizing the gadget. First button is for closing the gadget, so if you want it to disappear from the Sidebar, you just click it and the gadget is gone, you can make it smaller (there are gadgets which have expanded form, larger than the sidebar’s limits, and you can press on the second button to make it smaller, so it can fit inside the Microsoft Sidebar. The third button is for positioning the gadget inside the sidebar or on the desktop. All gadgets can be used inside the sidebar, or anchored on the desktop. The last button is for settings, and the dialog which shows up varies from gadget to gadget.
Here are the default gadgets which come with
Windows 7, and short descriptions for each of them. More than these, you can download any time new gadgets, which fit your needs and preferences.
The Digital Dutch Clock is the default clock which comes with the installation of Windows Vista or 7, but the Dutch Clock is the better version. It has an analogic clock and an additional digital time with seconds, in the lower part of the clock, and it also shows the day and the date. It allows you to name it, and you can have more clocks, for various cities or time zones.
Weatherbug is great for weather geeks, and it shows you the weather for the next three days for the location you set up. GMail is the decent way of managing you GMail account, and it also has sounds for alerting you on various events. CPU meter is a very useful gadget in my opinion, and it helps even the people who know least about computers to take care about their devices. It shows information about the CPU and it can work with eight, quad, triple or dual core machines. The image here is for a quad machine.
Another interesting metering gadget is Wireless Network Meter, and it shows the SSID, the quality of the wireless signal you receive, your IP and the up/down speeds.
Social networking hasn’t been forgotten and there is a default gadget called Facebook Explorer, and it shows notifications and news without having to check the website all the time.
Posted in Computer Gadgets | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
A lot of people who use laptops like to listen radio on Pandora, and they can be happy now, because there has been released a new gadget for Vista, which allows them to listen to radio directly from desktop. This Pandora is a version of the website, but comprised into a small square, on the right side of your desktop. Next to the weather bug, notepad and CPU meter, you can add this useful gadget which will bring your favorite radio utility on your computer. This gadget allows you to log you into your Pandora account, and access all the stations you have previously saved, and it is nice because you can also customize these stations by approving or disapproving songs and artist. Users have the possibility to do this even in the gadget, and it is a very simple system: thumbs up or down.
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This gadget is organized in tabs, and there is the first one, where you can see all your favorite stations. The next one allows you to search for new radio stations, and it’s very simple. You just have to type in the search bar what you are looking for, and then, after the search is done you can save them or delete them from your search history. The search bar appears like a pop-up bar when you click on the Station tab.
Pandora allows, on the website, to email the radio station to friends, and the option is present in the gadget too. There are more options related to stations, like bookmarking. Clicking on Bookmarks will take you to your bookmark page on
Pandora website, and there you can see your profile and the bookmarks you have previously saved. Video series feature isn’t available in the gadget version, but I think it is enough, it is perfect for listening to music and it is pretty cool for this purpose. In the gadget version, you cannot find other listeners, like you can do on the website, but if you are the simple type of user, who just navigates to Pandora to listen to music, the gadget is perfect for you. There are no visual ads on the gadget, and this is pretty cool, though they aren’t annoying on the site either.
When going to the website, while the gadget is running in background, the site remembers the last station you were on the site and it starts streaming for music on that station, while the gadget continues streaming from the station chosen in its window. Something interesting, when you set up the website and the gadget on the same station, users reported that both played the same artist, but different songs. This gadget also offers you the possibility to buy the tracks you like, from Amazon or iTunes, and this is great for people who want to listen music while working or just browsing the Internet, and it is the best alternative to illegal downloading.
Installation is very very simple. You have to click here, ‘
Download the Pandora Vista Gadget‘, and then choose from the alternatives shown ‘Open with Windows Sidebar’ and then ‘OK’. When prompted click on ‘Install’ and then ‘OK’. After you installed it, you can manage the stations, the playlists, you can thumb up or down the songs right from the gadget. Pandora developers continue improving their radio system, and all the features, almost all, are transferred to the gadget too
If you have Vista 64 on your computer, you should do some extra steps. Following information is from Pandora’s website.
- Right-click the Windows Sidebar and select Properties.
- Un-check the “Start Sidebar when Windows starts†option and hit OK. Then…
- Click the green Windows Start Button in the lower left of your screen.
- Click “All Programsâ€
- Scroll down until you see the “Startup†folder
- Right-click the “Startup†folder and select “Exploreâ€
- In the window that pops up, right-click the empty white space and select New->Shortcut
- Copy the following text, including quotes:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exeâ€
- Paste that copied text into the Shortcut’s “Location†field.
- Click “Next” and then click “Finish.â€
- Restart Windows Vista 64
Posted in Computer Gadgets | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Gold has been, since oldest times, the color and the material of wealth and status. I think there shouldn’t be any wonder when we see more and more gadgets covered or totally made of gold. Most of them come with pretty high price tags. There is a wide ranger or gold covered gadgets, and many of them are strange. You wouldn’t think of those things, in the golden version, but they are very special, and they can be very interesting gifts or collection items.
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The special golden Wii edition was a special gift for the Queen of England, and it is a normal Wii covered in gold. Even the console is gold all the way. Is the Queen really playing with it or is she added it to the gifts exhibition?
The golden BMW M5 is very impressive, and it belongs to a Russian, and if you want to see it with your own eyes you should take a trip to Russia. I think it is a great idea for people who often happen to forget where they parked the car. But I think you get heartbroken when a hurried taxi driver crashes this nice jewelry. Well, it is one of the coolest gold gadgets, but the price is also “gold” edition.
The iPhone is the undisputed smartphones’ market leader, and if there is anything which could make it cooler, than it would be a special
gold edition. This version has a gold covering the whole back and front, and even the Apple-logo is precious, it is made of 24 karat gold. It costs€954, and besides the special material, it includes a 16GB memory.
Do you need to spice things up in the bedroom? Then take a look at this
gold bra, which can be the perfect gift for your girlfriend.I think that every girl will feel like a goddess wearing it. A Korean company, Golden Zone, created this bra and it costs $1.89 million. It is covered in diamonds, and I think it a very special gift which could bring a lot of salt’n'pepa in your bed.I don’t think it’s very comfortable, but it looks great!
A lot of
gold computer
gadgets are out there on the market, and you can buy a gold mouse for your Apple or for your Windows computer. Another interesting product is the gold iPod, which has a slick and smooth appearance. A really collectors’ item is the Transformer, which has been produced only in 10 pieces, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to have one of these, so the collectors and Transformer’s fans are crazy to have one.
I am wondering who would like to get a heavy metal poisoning by using a gold plated vibrator, but it would be nice to have it in the collection. So here it is: Elo Vya gold plated vibrator, for only $1500. It will satisfy women and maybe even men, and for sure, it will pass some AU in your..hidden parts of the body. If you want to know, it is on sale for $1350, so you can save some money buying it now! Cute, small, offers pleasure, but poisonous!
This 24-carat gold MacBook Pro is a really nice
gadget. It is all golden, with a diamond studded logo. Another product for some filthy rich people who need attention or who need the latest hi-tech on their desks. This MacBook was designed by Alex Wiley and I am sure it is not for mass customisation. There are two versions: 24 kt Gold& Diamonds 15” MacBook Pro and the version without the diamond Apple logo.
Golden gadgets market is enriching daily, and the products belong to wider ranges, and they can satisfy even the most pretentious esthete’s eyes!
Posted in Strange Gadgets | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
In the Sci-Fi literature, along time, we have seen a lot of futuristic gadgets, which, at that time were simply futuristic products, but soon, closer to our days became a reality. In this article I gathered some Star Trek Sci-Fi gadgets which became in time reality, and some of them are pretty usual now. It might not be anything special if you are a Star Trek fan, because I think you have already made all the connections between the devices in the movie and the nowadays real life, but there are people around us who don’t make these links and don’t think about technology evolution in time, and I would like to make this analogy, between Star Trek, a SF movie and the reality surrounding us. Many of them can be owned by any of us, but some of them are still in the works, and some are just strange and I don’t find any utility for them.
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One of the most interesting and well known concept in Star Trek, which became a successful real product is the cell phone. In the movie they had some sort of flip-open communicators, and as a funny fact, Kirk and the crew were often cut from the ship for some reason, like having “no service” nowadays. Kirk always opened his flip communicator and asked to be beamed up.
I wouldn’t really like to see the real version of the Phaser. In the movie, a focused beam of energy from a handheld device was able to stun the opponent. If it was set in the “kill” mode, it could even injure the opponent. It is produced as a toy, and as I know, since the mid 1990’s, the government is perfecting this technology, and soon we’ll walk through dead bodies with laser holes in them, and there will be everywhere in the streets the smell of the burnt ozone. Ok, this is a very pessimistic scenario, but the government is working on creating a gun which uses directed waves of electromagnetic energy, sent over long range, which makes target’s skin feel like on fire.
The little red colored cube in the device in the image was the equivalent of the CD and DVD, or even the SD card in our days. In the image we have one of McCoy’s medical devices. They kinda looked like cheap plastic tools, but they were funny and they kept the Star Trek universe alive.
Another interesting Star Trek gadget would be the computer tablet. Yes, it is funny, but this tablet has the shape of a smartphone, if you want the nowadays equivalent. We have a huge variety of tablet PC’s and palm devices, and the men and women of The Next Generation wanted for sure to hold in their hands some sleek and sexy devices.
Oh, yes, the holodeck, I think everybody is waiting for the creation of this cool
gadget in our days. We are probably halfway there and it looking that soon we will be able to own a holodeck, and all of this thanks to more companies and researchers around the world. It would be nice to get into the holodeck and spend some time relaxing while simulating a quick flight in the Universe.
The wrist phone which appeared in the Start Trek movie seemed something surreal for those times, but now we have a pretty large variety of
gadget watches, and they do even more than offering phone features: they allow you to access the Internet, they have GPS location services and they also allow you to manage a lot of your activity. I wrote in an older post about
Gadget Watches, and you can take a look to see what other cool things a watch can do.
“Engage!” is one of the most well known line in the movie, and this was the signal for the teleporting device functioning. It won’t take long until we’ll be able to do the same thing as the characters in the movie did, as in being teleported from one place to another. Scientists already have done this with small amounts of matter, and the idea of such a device is in development. Keep working on those equations, because when I will use the teleporting device I will need both my hands!
In The Next Generation, there was a touchscreen for everything, and this is the situation now too. Almost every device has touchscreen, including the little iPhone. A lot of
gadgets on the market are beginning to have this design, and to use this interface.
Even the general idea, of the spaceship travelling in the Universe might come true in the future, because all kind of space ships have been developed, and many bright minds of humanity are searching for means of traveling in space. Another interesting perspective would be travelling not only in space, but in time also.
Almost all the Star Trek gadgets mentioned here became reality, and the rest are still in work. This is the biggest proof of humanity’s progress and its hunger for new technologies. It is interesting that a lot of ideas, like Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine, ideas who represented pure insanity in their times, became over time reality, and this shows that human mind has a great creativity, and that in time, all the crazy ideas of one time can become usual things for future times.
Posted in retro | No Comments »
