Because I'm so easily distracted, I love silly USB gadgets but they tend to wear out their welcome after a few minutes. I think, though, I could learn to love Tengu. Tengu is a little USB-powered device that responds to voice and music, and while this is the standard modus operandi of most useless USB gadgets, Tengu can actually lip-synch to music or your voice. Not perfectly, of course, but based on videos, enough to be thoroughly amusing for a little while.
Here's one demo:
Tengu changes its expression if you blow on its um, "face". This is probably going to be lots of fun when I want to pretend that I'm having a conversation with someone who agrees with me completely.
I recently realized, when writing a letter, that I can now barely write. I'm so used to putting everything into a computer, or a PDA/phone that I can type with my thumbs much more quickly than I can write. I was ashamed and a little frightened and started imagining scenarios when there's a big Cloverfield-like attack and power outage and I die while thumb-typing and screaming into a dead Blackberry.
Another problem is that when I do scribble little notes and phone numbers, I forget what they're about by the time I find them in my purse a few months later. And forget notes from lectures or conferences- I clearly have undiagnosed ADHD because generally all I can make out are bad drawings of big-eyed waifs and mean notes to the lecturer to please stop talking so I can go to the bathroom. Once in a while, though, I see a note that says something like "IMPORTANT, make sure to look this up!" and I don't remember what it's in reference to at all.
I haven’t seen the retro look blend better with any product in a long time than it does with the Cassette MP3 player. This gadget looks like a normal cassette tape on the outside but is actually an mp3 player. The camouflage design is not without functional advantages too – not only do you get the cool retro look with the cassette casing, but you can also use the player as a car cassette, or with any cassette player, or as a normal mp3 player.
If you’re going to spend some time on a fishing or boating vacation, the Key Buoy might be just the thing to give you that added peace of mind. Hang your keys on it and if they fall into the water, the buoy will be triggered, sending up an air tube that inflates automatically and rises to the surface within 30 seconds. With its cheerful orange colour, it’ll be readily visible bobbing on the water.
The Key Buoy is strong enough to rescue a weight of 4.2 oz (120 g) and is good for one use only. But that one use lasts for 40 minutes, which is plenty enough for you to get around to rescuing your keys from a watery demise!
If you've been wanting a DS Lite, but haven't yet taken the plunge, then you're in luck. Starting tomorrow, Nintendo is selling a special package deal, with a beautiful crimson on top, black on the bottom DS Lite, with a matching color-schemed case, and a brand-new game, Brain Age 2, for just $150, which is about $10 more than the DS Lite alone. Brain Age 2 is the sequel to the top-selling "memory trainer" and contains more puzzles and concentration games to engage your pre-frontal cortex. I don't know what that means, of course, but I can play those brain games for hours and I feel like it improves my word recall ability and visual memory.
I got a look at the hardware at GameStop the other day, and it's beautiful- gorgeous, deep red with black accents. And no guy would be embarrassed to carry this- much much nicer than the cloyingly candy-pink version that came out a while back.
Available in stores like Game Stop, starting tomorrow for $150. Also available at Amazon.
Doncha just hate being at the beach when your cell phone dies? If you had this heavy-duty solar beach tote which incorporates a high-tech flexible solar panel, you'd never have that problem.
Just plug your device right into the bag using your car adapter. With convenient gadget pocket for your phone or camera, you're never out of power.(The solar panel can be removed for cleaning the canvas bag.)
As we live in earthquake-prone country (California) I'm always on the lookout for new gadgets for our state-of-the-art earthquake kit.
The AM/FM solar radio from Brando is perfect since it doesn't even need batteries, which can lose power over years. Just stick it in the sun during the day and the internal battery gets charged via the solar plate .The radio can be powered by a AAA cell also. The frequency range is AM: 88-108 MHz and FM: 530-1600 KHz.
Designers Sofie Collin and Gustav Lanber have developed The Carpet Alarm Clock, which only goes off when you get up and put both feet on it. Novel. I guess if you get out of bed you're awake, is the thinking.
But why not design an alarm clock that quietly makes your coffee, brings in the paper and then makes you scones? Then I would definitely get up.
Smarthome is offering a 10% discount on all of its products to Popgadget readers through the end of June. Just enter the code EPOP at checkout to receive your Popgadget discount.
A device warning a speaker that they're in danger of losing the attention of the crowd would be useful to a professor, but absolutely necessary for an autistic adult unable to read body language and emotion. MIT grad student Rana El Kaliouby uses intelligent software to interpret emotions from body language and facial expressions captured via a wearable computer/video camera combination. The video data is used to decide whether the listener is agreeing, disagreeing, thinking, concentrating, interested, or unsure. The result is an Emotional Social Intelligence Prosthetic that will vibrate whenever the listener's attention veers off topic. The eventual goal for the system is to provide the mildly autistic with an auxiliary notification of other people's emotions on a daily basis.
To train her software El Kaliouby used video of actors able to very clearly define an emotion on film. Now, the system is able to pick out the right emotion 90% of the time when using actor footage, and 64% of the time with video clips of everyday people. The recognition rate should greatly improve as more footage is added to the database, and the next round of training footage is coming from popular movies and webcams.
Illustration above from your friends and mine at the NYT
Ever since the October issue of O, The Oprah Magazine came out, we've been getting numerous mysterious emails from readers telling us they found out about Popgadget in the magazine. At first, we replied, "What?" Then we noticed a... Read More
Popgadget Recent Comments
Stacy Harp
on The email effect: experiment shows typing encourages lying
Mary Beth Figgins
on Firebox's USB Negative Scanner
Kent@MillenniumMusic.com
on Barter for gadgets on AbundaTrade.com
tommi
on Could Chrysler's GEM Peapod be the car of the future?
jane
on NBC leads in putting TV shows online
george
on Slotmusic: an album on an SD card
ellen
on PMS Buddy isn't at all offensive to women. Oh, wait...
.
