Monthly Archives: April 2004

general April 30, 2004 posted by

Mork calling Orson…

I bet that the Bellsouth Communicator watch doesn’t go beep-beep when you turn it on, nor will it hail a passing starship, but for $29.99 the 1.5 mile range sounds reasonable. Now all you’ve got to do is find someone else with one.

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

TV on the go.

The TV Walker mini is a cute little ‘television-in-a-box’ which will convert your laptop into a super efficient boob tube, complete with time shift recording and other PVR type goodness. USB 2.0 and MPEG 1/2/4. �98.95. OK, so you may look a little dorky holding a thumping great aerial above your head in the airport lounge, but who cares when it’s a matter of missing American Idol, eh?

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

CityBuggy.

I don’t know. Is an overgrown golf-cart really a viable form of urban transportation in the 21st century? You decide. The CityBuggy. [Babel]

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

eMusic Live.

The eMusic Live service. Genius. ‘Now, minutes after your favorite band sounds its last note on stage, you can load a live recording of the concert onto a cigarette-lighter-sized hard drive hanging off your keychain…At $10 a pop for the recording, and $20 for the reusable, keychain drive, let the downloading begin. “This is a tool that allows fans to take home and share some of the best independent music from small live venues around the country”…’

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

Handy recovery.

Based on the fact that you can never have too many free undelete programs, here’s Handy Recovery. ‘Handy Recovery is an easy to use program designed to restore files accidentally deleted from a hard disk or a diskette. The program can recover files damaged by virus attacks, power failures and software faults.’

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

Subtitles for all.

The Cinema Subtitling System, which can supply subtitles to individual seats, sounds quite neat. ‘CSS also has a feature dubbed Reverse Window (see graphic), which can provide subtitles for specific seats, so that not everyone has to see them…The selected seats each have a screen in front of them, like the autocue screens that politicians use to make speeches. The top part is clear, allowing the person to see the film, while the bottom part is silvered so that it…

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

Gee mail.

I’ve just started playing around with my Gmail test account and first impressions are quite good. Clean-ish interface, lots of nice functionality like threaded conversations an’ all. I’m still not convinced though, that I really want advertising plonked willy nilly into all my private messages. There’s lots of early reviews around so I won’t add to it, but I’m reserving judgement for the time being.

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general April 30, 2004 posted by

Whiter than white?

Mmm, what message do you get when you learn that Proctor & Gamble, purveyors of soap powder to the gentry, has put the Tide brand mark onto an ultrasonic cleaning gidget? Does it demonstrate a huge level of confidence in its detergent products, or say something quite different? Anyway, the Tide Buzz Ultrasonic Stain Remover. $49.95. ‘Forget tedious scrubbing and rubbing. The Tide� Buzz� removes virtually all stains. Using ultrasonic energy waves, it breaks up tough stain particles and knocks…

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general April 29, 2004 posted by

His master’s voice.

Suddenly you’re caught in the middle of a medical crisis. It’s an emergency, but you can’t talk because of the portion of chicken nugget clamping your jaws together like a pregnant clam. Fear not, your trusty My Voice ID will come to the rescue. No word on whether there’s an anti-embarrassment volume control. $39.95. ‘With just the touch of a button to this electronic recording device, your medical profile is revealed. Record the message yourself, and re-record anytime you need…

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general April 29, 2004 posted by

Follow that bike!

The Niedermeyer Bike Message CycleLight [Babel] attaches to your pedal poppy and lets you send a range of 9 messages to the world. Stuff like ‘follow me’, ‘I love you’ and ‘be careful’. Why you should want to say these things to random passers-by as you zip past is not fully explained, but I’m sure that it’s worth the 15.90 euros in any event.

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general April 29, 2004 posted by

Slow service.

I adore the concept behind Droog Design’s Slow Service exhibition. Classic! ‘Slowness is a quality that is hard to come by in our modern urbanized world which is dominated by speed and fast consumption. We are extremely busy. We no longer follow processes. Our patience does not extend to .slow. and .difficult.. Things must be easy and complete. Slowness is luxury. You are invited to a slow experience. Take your time. Experience processes. Enjoy attention and care. Enjoy relaxation. Enjoy…

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general April 29, 2004 posted by

Mainstream media smartens up?

Wow, could it be that an august member of the 4th estate – to wit the New York Times – is actually smarter than it seems? The New York Times Link Generator lets weblogs link to NYT articles without the registration flim-flam. Not only that, but apparently they’ve had a weblog friendly RSS feed linking service in place for a while now. Good grief, are you all listening print-land?

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general April 29, 2004 posted by

The life line.

The Life Line is a free online palmistry service. Of course it’s all mumbo-jumbo, although…er…it did say that my perfect career was as a writer!

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