Tag: GADGETS

As befits the tech-blogger lifestyle, we have piles of aging gadgets lying around. And, while many of them could potentially net us a few bucks on eBay, we're usually too lazy to put together a listing, post photos, and actually ship the small mountain of junk to the people willing to pay for it. But eBay doesn't want you to let your tech castaways gather dust, so the auction site has just ...

Amongst a sea of corporate retailers in Hong Kong, craftsman Au Yeung Ping Chi has found a niche market for his gadgets: mourning families. Admittedly, his products aren't meant for vigorous use, as they are made entirely out of paper and only meant to dissolve into ashes. At the Bo Wah Effigies Shop, Au Yeung crafts paper effigies that are custom-made to fit orders put in by bereaved families. ...

Usually, when we talk about the union of gadgets and the outdoors, we're discussing how the latest tech can make your excursions into the wild safer or more comfortable. It turns out, though, that our gadgets are just as adept at putting us in harm's way. The New York Times spoke with park rangers from around the nation, and compiled a list of anecdotes about cameras and cell phones putting ...

If there's one thing that should've been created a long, long time ago, it's Quirky's new Pivot Power power-strip. One power-strip probably won't drastically change your existence, but this might at least eradicate one of life's great annoyances. Sure, your power-strip might claim to support six devices at once, but when was the last time you actually succeeded in filling out the entire thing? ...

When Mattel's 'Puppy Tweets' opened up Twitter to the entire canine community, cat owners everywhere were outraged over what they saw as overt discrimination -- and with good reason. Why, pray tell, should a dog's inner thoughts be valued higher than a cat's? Would the animal kingdom really sit on its hands and allow Twitter to refuse service to an entire population, simply because of the size ...

Share Several of us Switched writers live in New York, where kitchen space is a precious resource. But despite the fact that we cook in spaces the size of coat closets, we like to prepare dishes that make our friends jealous and our significant others fearful of losing us. [Ed. note: Matt is speaking for himself. We rely on him to feed us. Seriously.] And, while no kitchen appliance will ...

Get a group of geeks together, and someone is going to come up with something genius. But for every clever creation, there are several bizarre projects that address a need too obscure to ever have been a concern, or too strange for any consumer to even consider. Mostly, these ideas and items are discarded. The ones that pass through the collective weird-filter, however, end up at CES. ...

While some would probably prefer to bring the very wrath of God down upon unsuspecting rodents (see Victor's Multi-Kill Electronic Mouse Trap), others might prefer a more purist method to offing them -- with a high-powered twist. Jack Easton, managing editor of Telovation.com, tinkered with the concept of the classic mousetrap, which is how his pneumatic version came to be. "Many people have been ...

A new decade rapidly approaches, and while the soon-to-be-departed Aughts have witnessed the birth of revolutionary gadgets and gizmos like the iPod, the same devices have rendered some classic objects obsolete. In a nostalgic look back, New York Magazine has cataloged 17 of the most notable items and pastimes that will inevitably be forgotten during the Teens, if they haven't been already. Sadly, ...

What do you see when you look at a busted cell phone or computer monitor? Probably a heap of junk. But as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's... art. That's the view of a burgeoning number of artists who are repurposing old electronics into works of art. These objects of geeky creativity might never hang in a museum next to an Italian masterwork, but that's fine by us. After ...

Now that the gadget hordes have conquered the task of translating dogs' barks into something human understand, it's time to move on to that other frustrating non-speaker in your life, your baby. The Why Cry Baby Analyzer (which we can only assume was inspired by a particular 'Simpsons' episode) uses something called "advanced frequency analysis technology" to translate all that crying and ...

This product may be a bit over the top for some of you, but somewhere out there is a germ-a-phobe who's been waiting his whole life for this gadget. The Cole Cleaner, designed by Leon Peng, is a one-stop bacteria-killing shop for anyone who loves a can of cola but hates the bacteria that may or may not be residing on its aluminum shell. The Cole Cleaner, which only treats one can at a time, ...

Have you ever come out of a rigorous session in the stall and said, "I feel like I've lost five pounds"? No? Well, have you ever been curious about how much weight you're actually losing after spending some quality time on the can? Still no, huh? Well, even if none of you will admit it, we know there's one person out there who cares -- artist Haikun Deng. Dubbed "Light Girl," the toilet seat is ...

Anybody who has made the mistake of boarding an airplane without a book, laptop or armful of work has undoubtedly picked up the train wreck (or gold box, depending on your outlook) of a catalog known as SkyMall. Well, for those late shoppers that haven't spent any time in the air recently, the folks over at Urlesque have done the hard work for you, picking out the 'Best/Worst' of SkyMall's ...

Here's a gift for the geek and golfer on your holiday shopping list, the Gyro Swing, a golf club with a gyroscope in the head. A perfect gift, that is, as long as you don't mind dropping $200 and are comfortable with purchasing something based on questionable scientific claims. The gimmicky Gyro Swing claims that the gyroscopic disc inside the head, which spins 20,000 times per minute, lets you ...