Pants that repel stains, shirts that keep sweat on the inside, a backpack that stores your gadgets where they are readily accessible, and a miniature camera that can be mounted on a pair of glasses or a baseball hat. It is inevitable that tech has met fashion to product clothes that merge our thirst for technology so that we can wear it all the time.
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By John R. Quain
In the digital world of online shopping, billing, and banking, anyone can pretend to be you. According to the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft is the No. 1 fraud-related complaint, claiming over 10 million victims each year nationwide. I should know: I’ve been a casualty of identity theft–not just once, but twice. Well, for every tech problem there’s a tech answer. In this case, “biometric” fingerprint readers that are easy to use and add an extra layer of Mission: Impossible- style security to mundane tasks like logging into websites.
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What are some of the fastest ‘things’ in the world? Fastest growing plant? (Bamboo.) Fastest spreading computer virus? (MyDoom.) Fastest roller coaster? (Kingda Ka – a new Six Flags coaster set to open in April in New Jersey.) Popular Science is running just such an article. If you can get your hands on the print edition of the magazine (Feb 2005), check out the picture of the coaster – it looks pretty wild.
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By Eric Gwinn, Chicago Tribune
Want a notebook computer that fits in your purse? Or a USB memory stick shaped like sushi? How about a 5-megapixel camera that’s smaller than your wallet? Maybe you fancy a laptop made of the same material that keeps jet aircraft safe. Gadgets express who we are in ways other status symbols can’t. You can’t carry your car with you everywhere you go. And though your shoes are always with you, they don’t tell everyone how imaginative and tech-savvy you are. Whip out a notebook computer with an Apple logo on it, however, and people instantly know what you’re all about.
Finding that purse-sized notebook computer or sushi-shaped memory stick – gadgets that look and act like nobody else’s – takes a wee bit of effort, though, unless you live in Asia, particularly Japan.
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Whether they’re strapped to our belts, sitting on our desks, or jammed in an overstuffed closet, we absolutely love our gadgets.
So it wasn’t exactly easy coming up with the definitive list of the 100 best gadgets ever unleashed. In the weeks we spent debating the entries, tempers were flared, fingers were pointed, chairs were smashed over heads, and feelings were hurt. But we emerged, like Moses from the mountain, with the world’s most authoritative ranking of the best gadgets of all time.
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Smarthome Celebrates its 10-Year Online Anniversary by taking 10% off the entire inventory! Yes, their ENTIRE inventory.
Read on for the full details.
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WindowsForDevices.com is running a cool article with a comparison of devices running either a version of embedded Linux of embedded Windows. Make sure to click on the links in the table to see nice long lists of neat gadgets! They cover categories like PDAs, cell phones, VOIP phones, and audio/video devices.
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By Sean Carton
Are you ready for “cyborg consumers”? You’d better be. They’re already here, according to Markus Giesler. According to Giesler, the iPod is a great example of what happens when consumers unite with technology that fits their lives. More than just a music player, the iPod is a personal soundtrack, a memory device, and a gadget that carries around all the digital information we collect. As a result, a person and an iPod together form a cybernetic unit, one in which the device becomes essential to the person’s identity and wellbeing. The cyborg consumer is embedded in a hybrid entertainment matrix, one in which they’re always on and always connected, both technologically and socially.
Academic mumbo jumbo? Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. Though this description of the iPod user may seem a little breathless to those of you embedded in the realities of the business world, there’s a lot of evidence to support the notion that technology is changing consumer behavior.
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By Paul Boutin
One of the few long-term projects at HP Labs is a small nanochip fabrication setup that makes circuits one-third the size of the most advanced chips currently on the market. The technology is simple to describe, if incredibly hard to produce. It’s early to tell, but in 10 years, the tiny chip I could barely see under a microscope might replace the Pentium in your PC. It’s smaller. It’s smarter. It’s sexier. And most important in Silicon Valley these days, it’s cheaper.
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By Sarah Lazarovic
I grew up browsing at the Sharper Image (a U.S. based gizmo shop) with my dad. It was the kind of store, at its coolest in the post-yuppie years, where a dad of even modest gadget affinity could while away hours marvelling at the wonders of a post-industrial world, or their closest approximation – an automatic toenail clipper. I watched a little too much Inspector Gadget myself, so it was a perfect outing for us. With its piles of over-designed and unnecessary stuff – from massage chairs to pocket lasers to electronic office mini-golf to super-long-range walkie-talkies – there was nothing gadget-cool that couldn’t be found at the Sharper Image or Brookstone or in the pages of the deliciously unpronounceable Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue.
But did anybody ever buy anything at these stores? You could marvel at the neatness of a machine that emitted whale noises to get you to sleep, but would you actually fork over your hard-earned money to own one? These stores had tons of fancy machines designed to do things that usually didn’t need volted doing.
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