mindtoss - musings, stylings, rants » Gadget

Transfer traditional freehand drawings to your computer with Inkling by Wacom

stephen chip — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:28:37 +0000

For illustrators, the Inkling by Wacom is the missing puzzle piece. You can now draw on paper and transfer all of your drawings to the computer and they will be editable as vector drawings in Adobe Illustrator. Amazing!

It will retail for $199.00.

Crowdsourced social product development

stephen chip — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:01:00 +0000

Most of you have heard of websites such as Threadless, CafePress, and Zazzle. In a similar fashion comes Quirky, a phenomenal social product development site. The basic premise is that anyone can submit ideas that may be selected for product development. If your idea get that far. So how does an idea get selected? Here’s an excerpt from Quirky:

There are two main steps to idea selection: community evaluation and staff evaluation. During the community evaluation, members of our online community vote, rate, and comment on all the ideas submitted. The top 5 ideas go on to our staff’s deep dive evaluation, where they get thoroughly analyzed in three areas: design potential, marketing potential, and viability. Each idea will receive a score (out of 100) and the idea with the highest score becomes Quirky’s next product! Whew, that was exciting.

Not only is Quirky exciting but they have incredible innovative products as well. Usually innovation comes at a price. On Quirky everything is fairly priced.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Cordies cable organizers

PowerCurl MacBook Cord Wrap

Contort Flexible USB Hub

Wrapster Headphone Cord Organizer

Of course some of my favorites are all based around Apple products. What did you expect from a so-called Fan Boy. In addition, you can also find a slew of innovative products that range from Dustpans to Rubber band hooks.

As a fan of user interfaces, Quirky also hits a home run. I love the way the shopping cart works. Items placed in the cart are alway visible by rolling over the shopping cart icon in the logo box located in the top left hand corner.

Head over to Quirky and check it out.

iBottleopener – It’s a party in your pocket.

stephen chip — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:18:30 +0000

So an app will go only so far these days. Never fear, now your iPhone case can open bottles. For only $20 bucks, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal.

via: coolest-gadgets.com

Turn your iPad into a classic table top arcade game

stephen chip — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:09:27 +0000

So you were the early adopter who stood in line for hours to get your hands on a new iPad. You probably downloaded tons of apps for your latest gadget. Maybe even bragged about the battery life. Now it’s time to get the next hottest iPad accessory. From Thinkgeek.com, comes the iPad Arcade Cabinet. Simply slide your iPad and presto, you have a table top classic arcade game ready to go. It retails for $149.00.

Some features:

Beautifully retro styled, handcrafted wooden tabletop arcade cabinet and MAME emulator for your otherwise useless iPad
Hundreds of games available from various online sources – not included in product!
Professional grade arcade stick and microswitch buttons rated for 10,000,000 uses
Authentic arcade controls connect to your iPad via a standard 30 pin dock connector
One and two player select buttons add authenticity and really work!

So get ready to trip down memory lane with Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Qbert, Donkey Kong and hundreds of others. Get one at Thinkgeek.com

Utili-Key 6-in-1 tool

stephen chip — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:21:47 +0000

Several years ago, I picked up a Utili-Key 6-in-1 tool at my local auto parts store. It turned out to be an awesome little tool. It features:

Semi-serrated knife blade
Regular blade
Micro Flat screwdriver
Phillips screwdriver
Eyeglass screwdriver
Bottle opener

It looks like a key and easily snaps on and off your keyring. I took it off once and loaned it to somebody and never saw it again. Time to pick up another one.

Get one at ThinkGeek.

Control a helicopter from your iPhone? Yep, there’s an app for that!

stephen chip — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:09:33 +0000

Four years of research and development went into building the Parrot AR Drone quadricopter. The AR Drone generates it’s own WiFi network which allows an iPhone or iTouch to connect and uses the built in accelerometer for control. It also features two onboard cameras which can viewed on your iPhone.

There is an autopilot feature which allows easy take offs and landings. The first question I had was “What happens if WiFi signal is lost?” In the event the WiFi signal is lost – part of the autopilot feature – the AR Drone will take over and stabilize and land the craft safely. Because it’s powered by Lithium-ion Polymer batteries, the AR Drone can fly for roughly 15 minutes.

Where is the bottle opener?

stephen chip — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:46:40 +0000

You may have forgotten where you left the bottle opener but you always know where your best friend Fido is. Bark4beer.com sells an ingenious dog collar that also contains a retractable bottle opener. Yet another reason why dogs are mans best friend. The Bark4Beer Collar is reasonable priced at just $14.95. Well worth it.

Luck-key bottle opener & keychain

stephen chip — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:22:14 +0000

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. Who wants to carry around a bulky bottle opener on their keychain when you can have this little beauty. Get one at Neatorama.

Wake the kids and tweet the neighbors, there’s hot goodness fresh out of the oven!

stephen chip — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:20:31 +0000

BakerTweet is a novel idea. Here’s the description from BakerTweet.com:

BakerTweet is a way for busy bakers to tell the world that something hot and fresh has just come out of the oven. It’s as simple as turning the dial and hitting the button. All of the baker’s followers get a Twitter alert to tell them that it’s bun-time. Or bread time. Or whatever.

What a great idea for a local bakery to alert the neighborhood what is hot and fresh out of the oven. Nothing better than waking up, checking your tweets and knowing you can head around the corner for some hot cinnamon buns. Mmmm Mmmm good!

Check out the tweets from the Albion Cafe on Boundary Street in Shoreditch, London. Follow them here: @albionsoven.

Move over Billy Mays, Vince is back with Slap Chop!

stephen chip — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:11:43 +0000

“Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life!”

America’s favorite new pitchman is back with “slap chop.” “You’re going to be in a great mood all day because you’ll be slapping your troubles away with Slap Chop” proclaims Vince. You know, Vince from Sham Wow. This time he’s pitching the the perfect kitchen chopper.

How is this chopper different from the bazillion other choppers out there you ask? Simple. Slap chop is easy to clean. One, two, and bingo, it pops open. The other choppers get bacteria in the food. Not Slap Chop! Face it, those other choppers are worthless because you can’t clean them.

Looks like there’s a new sheriff in town Billy Mays. And he’s gunning for you!