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Looking Back: A Decade Full of Amazing Gadgets

brock — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:00:13 +0000

The decade is almost over, and wow, what a decade it has been. The technological advancements easily set this decade apart from many others, and a lot of that has to do with Apple and Nintendo.

The world of gaming saw the creation of the motion-controlled Nintendo Wii, X-box 360 and hardware powerhouse PlayStation 3. Everyone was “bowling” with the Wiimote and fighting with light sabers until Microsoft came out with the Kinect for X-box 360 and the game changed. As graphics and sound developed far beyond those of the ’90s, televisions have kept up with them. You can now watch movies and play video games on 3D high-definition televisions and even see them in realistic 3D on the big screen.

This could easily be considered the decade of the smartphone. Perhaps, no other medium has come so far so fast. Blackberry started it all by syncing e-mail and calendar with my computer, and then Apple revolutionized smartphones by adding real Internet browsing and hundreds of thousands of apps for everything from shopping and maps to games and sexy women in bikinis. Just when you thought Apple was going to corner the smartphone market, Android came in, and while it hasn’t overtaken the iPhone yet, it’s gaining a following.

This decade put the final nail on the paperback coffin, with millions of e-readers being sold. Kindle and the like can download books directly to the reader, as well as get the daily New York Times. Entire bookshelves can be downsized to a single tablet reader.

If there is any gadget this year that has the opportunity to revolutionize the future of electronics, it’s the tablet pads that have taken the world by storm. Reminiscent of something from “Star Trek,” the iPad and others are quickly making the main purpose of a cell phone talking… again. With larger screens, more memory and new ones with amazing features being developed, these machines will likely lead the gadget revolution of 2011 and beyond.

Gadgets have become not only an important part of our lives, but also an integral part. Our everyday lives are filled with gadgets of every size and shape, and as technology develops, that will only continue. Enjoy the New Year, everyone. It’s going to be filled with the most amazing gadgets ever seen.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/ejk/2024478414

The Mobile Office: Freeloading at Starbucks

brock — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:51:53 +0000

I work from home and I love it. I spent years at the corporate cubicle surrounded by gray walls and velcroing my children’s drawing or using a magnet on the filing cabinet. When I started working from home, I knew that with three small children there would be times of…well… chaos.

For their entire lives, I have been gone before they woke up and got home only a few hours before they went to bed, and suddenly I am home all the time. Now, they want to play all the time, come and talk to me during deadlines and I have to graciously and politely tell them that I am working and I will be done in a little while and we can play then.

Most of the time, that works or I may take a few minutes to play hide and seek or just sit and watch television. There are occasions when a deadline is coming too fast or I need absolute concentration to focus on my writing, so I grab my laptop and head to the local Starbucks from some overpriced tea and free WiFi.

I’m not usually there for more than a few hours. I can take the whirr of a cappuccino machine for only so long and if I hear the word vente one more time it may turn violent. For me, it’s a necessary evil, but for others, it’s their office.

In my opinion, turning Starbucks or some other local coffee shop into your eight-hour a day office is wrung number four on the circles of hell, but some people just can’t things done at work. The mobile office allows certain people the luxury of heading out and getting away from that corporate structure. You sit down order a coffee and spent three hours creating that PowerPoint presentation, order lunch and type out that management memo then grab a chocolate chip cookie for the road.

I can’t help but think that what was once created as a service primarily to students has become a thorn in the side of many coffee shops. When you camp out at Starbucks and take up their seat for eight-hours and only order a couple of lattes and maybe a sandwich, the baristas are probably looking at you in contempt and contemplating putting a little Exlax in your grande half caff double mocha cappuccino with soy milk (because of lactose intolerance, and you don’t want to be gassy.)

Recently, the economy has caused Starbucks to close several of their 3.5 billion stores and part of me wonders if mobile office freeloaders are cutting into their profit margins. They will never be able to yank out that WiFi because it is a major draw, but don’t be surprised to start seeing a two-drink minimum and Starbucks bouncers showing up to get rid of riffraff i.e. me.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/bnpositive/4310950389

Five Star Trek Gadgets to Make Life More Interesting

brock — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:57:52 +0000

Growing up I watched a lot of Star Trek and dreamed about exploring space and seducing women while captaining a massive starship. What can I say, I was in high school. Many of the gadgets in the classic and next generation series have come to fruition like the communicator, which is reminiscent of current cell phones. There are still many machines that are far into the future, but I can imagine how life would be much more interesting is some of those gadgets were available for purchase online.

Transporter: There is nothing that will make you want to drive off the road and into a guard rail than a three hour car ride with a group teenagers or screaming toddlers. If only we had the ability to move from place in just a few seconds. No more “Are we there yet?” or mid-trip potty breaks. Sure, you would have to have your body disassembled, transformed into energy and then reassembled at the destination. It may not sound like fun, but I would do anything to avoid a long care ride.

Tricorder: This little gadget was Star Trek’s equivalent of an electronic Swiss Army Knife. It was magically able to do every test from figuring out antimatter ratios to diagnosing rare diseases. The tricorder knew everything and is the equivalent of an iPad mixed with a super computer. Doctors could diagnose you in the waiting room and no more prostate exams. Whoohoo! That’s one regular checkup I am not looking forward to. I have no doubt as computers get smaller that one day soon a Tricorder like gadget will be a reality.

Data: This green skinned android was my favorite character of all the various forms of Star Trek. He was smart, strong and even developed a sense of humor. He was as loyal a friend as there could be and even sacrificed himself for the good of the crew. That’s a guy I would love to play racquetball with on Fridays and go out for a few brewskis. Sure, odds are he would beat me every time and he can’t get drunk, but something tells me he would be awesome on trivia night.

Alternate Universe: Sure this may not be considered a gadget, but it was still pretty cool and how they got there always involved some type of gadget. The alternate universe was explored in several of the Star Trek series and was basically made up of the evil twins of the crew members. I think it would be fun to meet my evil twin. Since I already have a goatee, does that mean my evil twin would be clean shaven or maybe the universe has gone horribly awry and he sports a Magnum P.I. mustache? Would he be truly evil or a mix to reflect my own balance of good and evil? Knowing my luck, he’s probably a saint which makes me the evil twin. I should have never grown the goatee.

Warp Drive: Warp drive allowed starships to travel several times the speed of light and was based on a scale from 1-10. Warp 10 was theoretically impossible to reach as it was the speed of time, so you would occupy every space in the universe at the same instant. Cool on paper, but not so much in reality. Warp drive was a nice little package that allowed the crew to travel light years in a matter of hours and conveniently sidestepped that whole time traveling issue that Einstein figured out. I have been known to drive two hours for a good burger, imagine the places I could go for a good burger if my minivan had warp drive.

The world is a fun and interesting place if you just take the time to look, but we are often enamored with the world as it is portrayed in the future. These gadgets would make life more interesting, but I guess it’s not so bad without them either.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/bundabergtim/309204057

Space Maid Kicks My Twitter Behind

brock — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:28:42 +0000

NASA recently unveiled Robonaut 2, a human-looking robot that will do some of the mundane chores on the International Space Station, so the astronauts can focus on more important things. To celebrate the occasion, a Twitter account was created for Robonaut 2, affectionately called R2, and last time I checked it had more than 12,000 followers.

The first thing I thought of was Rosie the Space Maid just kicked my Twitter behind in a day. For writers, Twitter and social media in general are important tools to our success. We use them to promote ourselves and our work with the goal of our followers reading the pieces and upping the page views. Writers are active tweeters and try to cultivate as many followers as possible. It’s not unheard of to reach several thousand followers, but we lack the exposure or true “artists” like Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan.

When I broke the 700 mark on my Twitter account, I practically did a jig, sure it looked more like a spasm, but it was supposed to be a jig. It took weeks to get that number and it grows daily. I felt a little cheated when I heard that Robomaid received so many followers in a day especially since he can’t talk, has no emotions and looks like Boba Fett.

A quick look at its tweet stream and we find that he is no relation to Hal 9000, the supercomputer from 2001: A Space Odyssey that went nuts and wiped out the whole crew. It’s good to know there’s no crazy psycho robot in those digital genes.

Is Robonaut 2 the next generation of twitter stars? I doubt it. His fame will wear thin after a few weeks and the world will forget about him. They will no longer care about his life in 140-character snippets. In a way, it’s kind of sad. Maybe my jealousy of being twitter beaten is misplaced. I guess Robonaut deserves his 15 minutes of fame just like everyone else.

I know Rosie will be doing far more on the space station than just making sure Elroy gets off to school and Astro gets his morning walk, so I offer good luck to this next stage of robotic evolution. He now has 12,001 twitter followers.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/rosauraochoa/3939487692

Fushigi Ball: Relaxation With a Wave of the Hand

brock — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:12:15 +0000

Who hasn’t wanted to be David Bowie at some point in their life? Anyone? Ok, so just me and definitely outside of the whole Ziggy Stardust phase. Let me rephrase: How many people have seen the movie “Labyrinth?” Ok, I got few more hands raised on that one.

This ’80s Jim Henson classic starred a young Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a imaginative and possibly insane girl, who must complete the magical “Labyrinth” to save her little brother from the clutches of the Goblin King a.k.a. David Bowie.

When Bowie and Sarah first meet, he has a large ball that he waves around doing all sorts of tricks. At the time I thought it was completely CGI. This is kind of funny given CGI back then consisted of Commodore 64 and a little dude called Pac-Man.

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Fast forward 20 years later. It’s 2 a.m., and I am watching Robot Chicken on Cartoon Network when a commercial for the Fushigi Ball comes on. It turns out that the whole David Bowie ball thing was a form of entertainment called contact juggling using these acrylic balls. You manipulate the ball making it look like it floats, levitates and otherwise defy the laws of physics through a trick of perception.

The balls are clear and look the same from all sides. It creates a trick of perspective, so it doesn’t look like it’s rolling on your hands and arms. Along with being really cool looking, this also requires concentration and focus, making it a relaxing and therapeutic exercise as well. Think of it as Tai Chi for 30-year-old men who still think like children i.e. all of us.

I immediately walked up to my wife and told her I was buying this and she had no say in the matter. Ok, I quietly walked up to her and asked to buy it under the pretense it’s therapeutic and would help lower my blood pressure. She didn’t buy it, but said go ahead and buy it anyway. She’s a “Labyrinth” fan as well.

In only a few days, I will be Fushiging my way through the day and getting one step closer to becoming a Goblin King. I guess my high school career counsellor got it right.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/foxtongue/742400264

Robot to Explore Great Pyramids

Dan Evans — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:40:40 +0000

Typically on the Smarter Gadgets Blog, we focus on consumer-oriented products designed to make our everyday lives easier. Products such as smartphones and laptop computers are used on a daily basis to network us with the world, gathering information from the Internet, and connecting with old friends.

Today, however, we’ll be taking a look at a very specialized gadget, one that won’t be seeing time on the market anytime soon. Earlier this week, a robotics team at Leeds University in the United Kingdom unveiled a metallic creation intended to explore the inner corridors of Egypt’s Great Pyramids, something that has puzzled archaeologists since the 1800s.

The Upuaut-2 robot, named for the Egyptian magician King Khufu consulted before building the Pyramids, has been specially constructed to penetrate into the inner chambers of the Pyramids. Two unexplored shafts of the largest Pyramid have puzzled scientists since the discovery of the Queen’s Chamber in 1857.

With a limestone barricade protecting the chamber from intruders, the mysteries of what lies beneath the chamber may soon be coming to an end. Previous efforts, including the insertion of a camera into the chamber, have not yielded suitable results.

The main obstacle has been a series of limestone doors in the shaft. The Upuaut-2 robot is equipped with a drill intended to burrow through these doors, a tool that will hopefully allow the robot to explore the chamber to its ultimate end. The entirety of the process has been a long time in the making for the Leeds team. In addition to constructing the robot itself, the team has worked in close cooperation with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities to both further academic understanding of the pyramids and to preserve the Pyramids as a natural wonder. Archaeological efforts are severely limited in scope due to potential damage to the structures.

Ultimately, the secrets of the Pyramids might gradually be coming into the light of day. According to head scientist Robert Richardson, the team has no presuppositions about what lies beyond the door. While it is tempting to believe something supernatural or fantastical lies beyond the wall, the truth will likely be just as interesting and vital to our understanding of the ancient Egyptians.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/waldenpond/4237758518

Gadgets Quiz: What Was the First Computer Ever Invented?

Ritika Puri — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:37:30 +0000

The answer:

The Z1 is considered to be the first modern computer. It was designed and built between 1935 and 1938 by Konrad Zuse, a German engineer. It was the first programmable machine that used Boolean logic & binary floating numbers, and it contained almost all the parts of a modern computer including a control unit and memory. The Z1 was privately financed by Zuse’s family.

The Specs:

64 words of 22 bits
1 Hz clock speed
four basic operations – add subtract, multiply, divide
It weighed 1,000
It completed basic calculations in an average of 5 seconds. Multiplication problems took up to 10 seconds

Where Is It Now?

The Z1 was destroyed during World War II during the 1934 Allied air raids. A replica is on display at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin.

Sometimes, You Just Need a Break…

Ritika Puri — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:21:41 +0000

As a gadgets and technology aficionado, I’m glued to my smartphone and laptop. Both go where I go – I never know when I’ll need them, and I can’t stand to feel unplugged.

Even though my email accounts are 95% spam, I need to check them at least every hour. At any moment, someone – somewhere may try to reach me. Of course, they won’t call me – they know I’m probably multitasking.

When I was 13, while my friends were interested in art and poetry, I was into programming and web design. Little did I know how much these two “hobbies” would benefit me professionally – I just enjoyed the satisfaction of working through the challenge of creating something new.

Ten years later, I spent about ten hours a day – every day- in front of my computer. What I do to space out? Shop online…look for templates to build my new website…try to find cool open source programs.

Recently, I’ve realized that I need to make more of an effort to unplug myself and leave my smartphone behind. Before I began working, I made an effort to be outdoors as much as possible. I loved hiking and just walking around aimlessly. I need to do more of that. More of us need to do more of that.

I have a friend who majored in philosophy. She doesn’t even own a computer. I asked her how in the world she could do it: “My life revolves around the computer. I don’t need that,” she told me. To some extent, she really has a point. The human body was designed to move. Sometimes, I feel like my brain is the only part of me that’s doing any moving at all.

If you’re like me, and glued to your computer, make an extra effort to unplug yourself and reestablish some balance. Seriously, force yourself to do it. It’s refreshing to get outside, hang out with people, and just kind of forget about whether or not you need to learn that new programming language to be a person of value.

Technology is who we are and what we do, but we are also so much more. Keep innovating, but do it healthily and gracefully.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/21560098@N06/3796822070

IBM’s Supercomputer to Compete on “Jeopardy!”

Dan Evans — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:03:07 +0000

Few television programs in the United States have the same legacy and pedigree as “Jeopardy!” The game show, hosted by legend Alex Trebek, is a trivia program that has been a household name for several generations. Contestants are posed with questions, frequently worded in idiosyncratic ways intended to trick the players, who must then respond in a question format.

The television show challenges both the trivia knowledge of the contestants as well as their ability to interpret these clues, which often involve wordplay and combinations of unlike terms. It’s a game intended to showcase the sharpest of human minds… until now.

IBM recently unveiled their latest supercomputer named Watson, and unlike previous game-playing computers from the company (Deep Blue, the chess playing computer, comes to mind), Watson showcases a talent for understanding human speech. The technology involved is intended to interpret everyday human conversational language, as opposed to simplified commands.

This is what makes Watson unique compared to other computers, such as search engines like Google or Yahoo. While a search engine uses a bulk-force method to find a specified term in a large number of pages, Watson can provide exact answers to more complex questions. A skill that lends itself to Jeopardy!

Read more about IBM’s Watson Supercomputer over at Engadget.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/22926400@N04/3447978179

Man Vs. Machine: What Is “Jeopardy” in February?

Gadget of the Week: The Vuvuzela

Dan Evans — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:33:57 +0000

Few things bring out absurdly wonderful displays of nationalism like international sports, and in that regard we’re in the midst of perhaps the highlight of international sporting competitions. World Cup season brings about all sorts of excitement for both serious and casual soccer fans alike, and also (thanks to USA’s 1-1 “victory” against England) makes for excellent trash-talking calling upon historical dates and long-forgotten wars. And while the excitement on the pitch itself is certainly exciting, the real headline-maker thus far has been in the hands of the excited spectator. Our Gadget of the Week is also the noisiest gadget ever to appear on this blog: the vuvuzela.

Spectators are expected to be loud at the World Cup, and 2010 is no exception. While some fans sing and chant, the tradition in South Africa is to blow incessantly on this three-foot-long horn, generating a low monotone capable of reaching some absurd decibel levels. According to Wikipedia, the vuvuzela can generate sound at a staggering 110 decibels, which can cause permanent hearing damage over periods of long exposure, such as a soccer match. The horns originated as a soccer-specific noisemaker in the 1980s and were adopted as a common practice in African matches during the 1990s.

However, one of the annoying side-effects of the horns directly effects the television broadcast of the games. The ambient-noise audio from the stadium itself consists almost entirely of the buzzing noise, which drowns out the crowd and other interactions on the pitch. The solution? If you’re perturbed by the sound and your television has a sound-equalization option, it’s possible to minimize it’s noise. Turn down the mid-range frequencies while turning up the treble and bass to eliminate most of the annoying noise. Sadly, if you’re TV doesn’t offer an equalization option, you might be out of luck. The sound is so permeating that both players and officials are calling for it to be banned, or at least limited in use.

On that note, I’d like to extend a hearty congratulations to the United States for their play thus far in the tournament. Much like the Olympics bring international attention to overlooked sports, the World Cup is one of the rare times in the US where people get excited about soccer. And lucky for us, we have a team this year that has the capacity to actually win some games. Hopefully, the hullabaloo over the vuvuzela dies down so the noise isn’t a problem for anyone. BBBBBBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/coca-colasouthafrica/4638238373