Posts Tagged ‘Gadgets’

In my last power bill, Dominion Power reported that “(n)ationally, 6 percent of our residential electricity consumption goes to … ‘phantom loads’ used by devices – such as, VCRs, televisions, stereos, kitchen appliances – that are turned off and not in use.   Holy cow!  6 percent?!

I don’t know about you, but my power and gas bills  shock me each month.  At home, we upgraded our HVAC system to high efficiency Trane units; we have turned our thermostat down to 68 this winter; we have window film on bedroom windows; all of our light fixtures and lamps use compact flourescent bulbs; well, you get the picture.

But we’ve completely overlooked the phantom loads used by: the laptops that get left on at night; the PS3, Apple TV and Wii that are on standby all the time; and on and on.  So I dug a little deeper and found these suggestions for reducing the phantom load at home and at work. Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Gadgets

After taking over 15,000 shots I retired my old Sony digital camera and got this green little number. Love the high res images, long battery life, video mode, and smile detection.

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Engadget posted a story about a guy who hacked his washing machine and got it to tweet (send a message via Twitter) when a load of wash is done.   Here’s the Twitter account for PiMPY3WASH, which I’m now following.

I guess it’s possible this is a true story.  I’m married to a guy who can install Linux (I mean NetBSD) on practically anything.  But I’m suspicious about this story for one reason: there’s too much laundry being done.  There were 3 loads done on December 30 and two loads on December 29.  That’s too much laundry, especially for a guy (no offense, guys!).

However, I’m excited about the idea of appliances and gadgets communicating with humans.  If I had the engineering chops, I would design the following:

• A refrigerator with a special slot(s) for milk.  When the fridge detects that we are low on milk (based on weight?), a text message would be sent to my phone. I don’t want e-mail or a tweet, I get too much data on those devices.  But a text message, preferably scheduled for around the time I’m driving home, would be perfect.
• A shopping cart that has an inventory of products that I can access with a touch screen. If I’m looking for pesto, I touch pasta sauce and the cart tells me which aisle to visit.

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Okay, so it’s December 5. I feel like I have tons of time before I celebrate Christmas with my family, but I know that I need to get on the ball with my holiday shopping.  So I asked my staff for their favorite gadget gifts; this is what I got back.  Some items are oldies but goodies, some are outrageous, all are loved by at least one Matrix Group staffer.

• Japanese toilet – I’ve asked Santa for a Japanese toilet this year.  Japanese toilets have heated seats, front and back sprays (heated, too), blow dryers, and even music.  I cannot understand why they are not more popular here in the US!
• XO laptop – The OLPC (one laptop per child) movement works like this:  $400 pays for one laptop for you and one for a child in a developing country.  The laptop has a nice screen, terrific software for kids, and it’s virtually kid-proof (love the sealed keyboard).
• Nerf Vulcan Automatic Heavy Blaster – This is the biggest, baddest, Nerf gun ever.
• Yoda Star Wars Force FX Lightsaber – Harout got one and it looks, sounds and feels like the real thing; love the lightsaber hum!
• If you’re on the Dark side of the Force, you’ll love the Darth Maul double-sided lightsaber.

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• Tags: Gadgets, marketing

High Definition (HD) is everywhere. The Blu-ray format has won the HD DVD war and I’m seeing a lot more Blu-ray movies at my local video store and retail stores. As I mentioned in a previous post, Apple TV and the PS3 now have HD videos on demand.

Earlier this year, Microsoft released Silverlight, their answer to Adobe’s Flash. The official Web site describes Silverlight as “a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.” I downloaded Silverlight in order to watch the Democratic National Convention live, in HD. The picture was unbelievably crisp and the audio was terrific. BTW, I checked; no HD feed on the official Republican Convention site.

I didn’t realize it, but the NBC Olympics Web site had videos powered by Silverlight (not in HD, however). Here’s a link to a video feed of the closing ceremony and a PC World article describing what Silverlight allowed the Web site developers to do.

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• Tags: Gadgets, Microsoft, Video

Over the past couple of weeks, my family and I had the opportunity to check out the video on demand services from Apple and Sony. We found the services to be easy to use and competitively priced, but there are still a few kinks to work out in the business models.

Apple TV vs. Sony PS3

Let’s start with the Apple service.  We have an Apple TV (we bought ours for $199), which is a device that hooks up to your TV and connects via wireless to your Macintosh computer.  Using the Apple TV, we can stream photos, music and podcasts to our big screen TV.  Perhaps most fun of all, Apple TV has a custom interface for surfing YouTube!  Surfing YouTube as a family, on the big screen, from the comfort of my couch, is wonderful.  And now, we can rent or purchase movies from Apple.

The Sony service is available on the PS3.  I love our PS3 because I absolutely love Blu-ray.  The Sony service has a good selection of movies, although you’d think that a company like Sony would have a much bigger selection than Apple because it is in the entertainment business, but what do I know about these things.

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• Tags: apple, Gadgets, Video