Mr. Alex

Eccentric iPod Alternatives

Put away your iPod. These music players don’t hold thousands of songs, movies and audiobooks. Their features are limited, but you will get more of a “wow” reaction from them. First up–the Foxhole Radio. These simple radios were built from scraps of wire, cardboard tubes, razor blades and safety pins by GIs in WWII. Instructions [...]

Read more

How the Matrix Begins

Morpheus couldn’t tell Neo how the Matrix was first built, I think we’re seeing some interesting groundwork being laid for an ever-more realistic simulations of the earth coming out that will may one day give us the option of choosing to live in a virtual world instead of the real one. Which would make broadband [...]

Read more

Bluetooth Headsets and Rhinoceroses

I want to talk briefly about bluetooth cellphone headsets, as California’s new cell phone ban is due to take effect in a few months, and I might need to buy one for myself. The decision I face reminds of the plight of Stanley, the iconoclast everyman of absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, played by Gene [...]

Read more

It’s like Amazon for Mad Scientists

I know what you’re all thinking. Here it’s nearly April, and Mother’s day is coming up, and where, exactly, does one go to buy radioactive isotopes? Maybe a glow-in-the-dark Tritium keychain for the kids? Or bit of certified genuine Trinitite–that would be glass that was created from the desert sand by the historic Trinity nuclear [...]

Read more

Hulu.com–Free TV and Movies (with ads)

Last Wednesday, Hulu.com officially opened for business, offering up free-with-ads video on demand through the browser. The project is a joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Here now a quick look at how Hulu changes the online video-on-demand picture. A few short years ago, I would have told anyone that video over the Internet [...]

Read more

PicLens–Firefox Extension is a Photo Library Revolution

The Internet’s collective library of images is vast. A quick Google image search can quickly locate a picture of pretty much anyone or anything. Flickr is not only a great site for hosting your own photo albums, but the ability to search and browse other people’s photos is a pastime in itself. The problem is [...]

Read more

Snap Circuits Electronics Kits

There’s nothing new about electronics kits–I had one as a kid from Radio Shack, and I remember sitting over my desk, cutting and stripping wires and hooking up battery clips and the like. My problem was that the kit ended up as an unholy tangle of wires and loose clips and cardboard cutout diagrams after [...]

Read more

Q Branch Would Approve: The Rinspeed sQuba

A cursory glance of the latest Fords, Chevys, Toyotas and cars available from any of the other big automakers in any given year reveals little in the way of truly new or revolutionary features. A redesigned cupholder here, a different color backlight on the instrument panel there, but when you think about it, there is [...]

Read more

Geek Challenge: Mythbusters vs. Brainiac

The eternal question that begins, “I wonder what would happen if I …” is the foundation of modern science. Galileo was actually the first person of note decided it might be worthwhile to put the long-held scientific principles of Aristotle to the test by the simple experiment of taking objects of different weights and dropping [...]

Read more

Rubik’s Revolution… A Post-Holiday Toy Review

by Mr. Alex of Geekfoolery Just six weeks ago, Christmas gifts were opened, and gift givers gauged the reaction of their giftees–was that a polite smile, or a genuine, “Wow! That’s cool!” Despite the vast array of product research available to any consumer with an Internet connection, it’s still a tough call to know if [...]

Read more

← Previous Entries