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For audio, buy a decent digital-analog converter like stereolink. This replaces your soundcard, and plugs into your computer on one end, and your home audio on the other. You can then attach massive home speakers or whatever you want

The whole thing ends up looking like this: stereo

For those of us who a) don't want to really buy an Xbox 'cuz we already have a PS2 or b) don't want to mess with modding an Xbox even if we have one, wouldn't Qcast do the same thing?

Programming is as an art as bridge buidling is.

What about this?

Art or no?

Use the network adapter and this $50 piece of software...

PS2 Divx/MP3 Player

Very cool, just run the media from it's existing location, no need to replicate.

Hubzilla!

I don't normally bitch about Ask Slashdot... but for crying out loud, either this guy didn't actually look at Think Geek, or he must have missed the "Gadgets" section, where the LightWedge is a "Geek Pick".

I don't normally bitch about Ask Slashdot... but for crying out loud, either this guy didn't actually look at Think Geek, or he must have missed the "Gadgets" section, where the LightWedge is a "Geek Pick".

I have two of these, bought through ThinkGeek, and they're great. Both of mine are still on the first set of batteries.

It's already starting to exist but requires special paper (it reads dots on the paper instead of using gyros) and a dock (no bluetooth). Read all about it at Logitech's site or buy one at ThinkGeek.

In other news, I've seen those 256 MB USB keyring drives on sale for $90-100 for the last two weeks. Probably even cheaper if you look around at pricewatch or whatever power-shopper site you like.

Reissues aren't out of the question, for example the Atari Classics 10 in 1. They might argue it would sell better if so many people didn't already play Yars Revenge on emulators.

I already have trouble cooling my XP1900 without having it sound like a jet engine. With a slow fan and decent heatsink, my CPU still sits around 48 degrees C.

I use this Zalman, and my Athlon XP1700 is at 49 C. The only thing I can hear from my case is an old 60GB Maxtor drive.

Anyway, the Zalman seems to be a perfect match for you, at least if you believe what you read on the Internet:

"it's designed to provide efficient cooling without sounding like a turbine engine..." (from the ThinkGeek page)

well I have an extra $100 that I have been saving for the George Foreman USB iGrill...

God my friends will never let me down for falling for that one...

Or better yet, get one of these keyboards and as an added bonus, cybersex is now 1000% easier. :)

For the really paranoid, get one of these keyboards or one of these keyboards and carry it around in your briefcase. Pretty to hard to stick a hardware sniffer in something that's always with you. :)

I'm sure this is just a natural progression of advertizing and

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it will go away eventually as it is deemed ineffective. Unfortunately all the IE users are going to be stuck in the meantime. Another plus for mozilla.

Kinda hard to detect this in any OS. I'm sure they have a smaller more discrete version for the Feds. Besides, did you check the back of your computer for the key sniffer today?

I don't know what you are talking about.

But did you get the shirt?

How about...

All your base are belong to FOR THE LOVE OF GOD stop it's two years old and not funny anymore and everyone's getting really sick of hearing it and I'd really like to be able to use the words "cats," "base" and "justice" without having to hear some dumbass try to jumpstart his comedy career.

General law: when someone prints a joke on a t-shirt, it's time for said joke to go away. Forever. Where it can't hurt people ever, ever again.

The mini RC helicopter is good and all but for covert operations you need a mini airship.

* USB-enabled fishing pole

This seems like an interesting product for car/mobile applications, but for home stereo systems I think something like this would be more useful. Basically it just bridges the gap between your fileserver and your stereo.

Sony and HP are coming out with similar products, but the Prismiq model doesn't have the wireless hardware built-in, so you should be able to easily upgrade to 802.11g in the future.

That reminds me of my freshman year Chem final. I don't recall the exact wording of the question, but it was something like "Describe three ways to get a 3 molar solution of something something something." And I think I recall the amount that they wanted was relatively large.
One of my ways was "Call Fisher Scientific and give them your credit card number. Barring any major postal carrier or trucking strikes, you should have your solution within 3 business days - faster if you used an express method."
From what I have heard of others that have had that class since, I'm now used as an example of what not to do. To think that my real life has become much like a despair poster makes me uncertain to feel bad, or laugh and pump my fist triumphantly.
Either way, my dad found it funny (he was an analytical chemistry prof at the time).

There is also the story (likely an urban legend) (which perhaps influenced my choice of answers on that test) of the student that had a physics test and on it was a question that said "Using only a barometer, how could you measure the height of ."
The student then answers using various methods beyond any "normal" use of a barometer.
One was using the sun and measuring the length of its shadow and the shadow of the building and then the math of similar triangles.
Another was to get its weight and drop it off of the top of the building, counting how long it took before it crashed on the ground.
Another was to find the building custodian and bribe him by offering him the barometer in exchange for the information about the building.
There were likely more, but those are all of the answers I can recall that didn't use it for measuring pressure changes.

Try this one. It's only $140 and can take upto 3.1 megapixel, takes SD/MMC cards, and has a USB hookup. I honestly think that you should give up on the durability idea. Price/Reliability/Durability, pick 2. At $140 even if they break 1 or 2, it's not a bad deal considering how expensive disposables/film processing/time lost/what-if-they-fuck-up-my-film is in the long run. Hell, I'd look into getting a discount if you buy like 5 or more. As for conditions, just buy a really sturdy/waterproof case. Hell, get a watertight tackle box and shove it in there.

Not quite what you're after, but it's close...

As mentioned in earlier posts, this thing, or that thing.

You can buy one here. They're not too hard to get used to. And lefthanded:)

I believe the fellow who invented the mouse also had a matching one handed keyboard that never caught on.

Also lets not forget the game oriented sort of keyboard devices like the Nostromo, and the claw. And I'm suprised noone mentioned things like the DVORAK and split-maltron keyboards and such that are designed to speed up touch typing rather than slow it down (turns out the gains are really offset by the amount of time it would take to have everyone relearn touch typing).

I believe the fellow who invented the mouse also had a matching one handed keyboard that never caught on.

Also lets not forget the game oriented sort of keyboard devices like the Nostromo, and the claw. And I'm suprised noone mentioned things like the DVORAK and split-maltron keyboards and such that are designed to speed up touch typing rather than slow it down (turns out the gains are really offset by the amount of time it would take to have everyone relearn touch typing).

How many other people's first thought on this was powerball, I don't have one but the little motions this talks about makes me think up the same thing.

I got some Lavita ATX cases which were advertised as Extended ATX, but I had to cut a hefty 10cm corner off the 5.25 bay to make the motherboard fit (it's okay, it's for a cluster).

On second attempt I got a Antec PlusView but the beast is huge !

Question: what are the smallest/lighest Extended ATX cases around ?

So how about providing a cell phone with a generator from one of these forever flashlights? Just shake your phone a couple times and it's recharged.

Okay, I realize you'd need quite a bit of shaking, since a LED uses a lot less power than the transmitter of your mobile phone, but still... maybe in the future, phones get smaller, need less power because cells get smaller maybe. Ah well, wishfull thinking...

Cheers!

Costyn.

I'm sure if there were some form of generator hooked up to my leg I could power a PDA with a full colour screen.

Give it a shot. Get or build yourself a Faraday generator (copper coil and magnet), rig it to your leg, and wire it to a battery. Then see how long a color screen PDA runs off of it.

Outright shaking it would give more power. This flashlight works that way.

"* Video iPod.

I wouldn't be suprised if there were a few pieces of hardware floating around in some r&d lab for this. Someone is eventually going to make something like this. Sony just released a portable CD/DVD player that has a small LCD screen that attaches. It isn't too much of a stretch to imagine the drive replaced with a hard drive."

Whether it is good or not, I don't know. But here's an example of a device like that.

I would love to see companies incorporate colour screens that could provide the ability for video to be displayed since the storage is already there.

Try this. It holds 20 gigs, and has a small color screen for displaying divx. Only $359. Not a bad deal, considering the price of the iPod.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/5cef/ This watch detects radiation, and is smaller than a PDA. The only thing big about it is the price ($1,500 for a watch?)

not even for this pen?

Thinkgeek.com has a watch that detects radiation. No GPS though

Radiation Watch

AWWWWWW! I can't find it on ThinkGeek

It can't be that cool if its not 4 sale at ThinkGeek

ThinkGeek is the only place that sells cool gadgets.

I'm suprised /. would even post something about a gadget that is not 4 sale on ThinkGeek

Hey CmdTaco, did I plug ThinkGeek.com to make up for it?

;P

AWWWWWW! I can't find it on ThinkGeek

It can't be that cool if its not 4 sale at ThinkGeek

ThinkGeek is the only place that sells cool gadgets.

I'm suprised /. would even post something about a gadget that is not 4 sale on ThinkGeek

Hey CmdTaco, did I plug ThinkGeek.com to make up for it?

;P

Far more important than its application in spreadsheets etc. is the fact that these are modern optical mouse that still have balls.

Didn't you find it really annoying that with the advent of optical mice you could no longer play with their balls. All you worries have been lifted with the "4-D optical mouse"!

Not only can you play with its ball but it is positioned on top so you can do it with out looking like a wierdo with your mouse upside down on your desk. Your boss thinks u r scrolling through important-looking spreadsheets with your ball mouse when u r really just playing with its ball. Amazing stuff!

Far more important than its application in spreadsheets etc. is the fact that these are modern optical mouse that still have balls.

Didn't you find it really annoying that with the advent of optical mice you could no longer play with their balls. All you worries have been lifted with the "4-D optical mouse"!

Not only can you play with its ball but it is positioned on top so you can do it with out looking like a wierdo with your mouse upside down on your desk. Your boss thinks u r scrolling through important-looking spreadsheets with your ball mouse when u r really just playing with its ball. Amazing stuff!

3 button optical mouse with wheel

Set of screwdrivers (prolly just need a #0 and #1 phillips)

X-Acto Knife

McDonald's Straw - I am not sure if other straws will work it needs to be thermo softening while being thick enough for wear and pliable enough for use.

Personal flamethrower or lighter or soldering iron

krazy glue

about 30 minutes of your time.

Heres how to do it:

1. With the X-Acto knife make a faint score on the mouse wheel along the profile where it sticks out of the mouse
2. Remove mouse cover (typically by removing 2 screws maybe 3 in your case)
3. carefully remove the screw holding the circut board to the upper mouse casing
4. Remove the wheel and action spring noting how they were installed.
5. Trim the mouse wheel with the X-Acto knife so that it is almost flush with the mouse case (using your earlier score) - Nice thing here is you have 3 chances if you mess up at first because you can just rotate the wheel 120 degrees and have a fresh surface!
6. Cut the straw latterally so as to be able to lay it flat and cut a section off which is approximately 35% longer than the exposesed mouse wheel opening in the upper shell of the mouse
7. Heat the straw fragment (dont burn it) until it lays almost flat on your work surface (you do still want some curve)
8. place the mouse wheel back on the curcuit board with the flattened side up (away from the board
9. place the now flattened straw fragment over teh mouse wheel centering it.
10. once you have things the way you want them remove the upper cover again and the trimmed straw fragment
11. place a single tiny drop of krazy glue on the former wheel and immediately recenter the star fragment on it
12. wait a few minutes as the off gas of the glue will cloud the optics of your mouse if you re-assembled immediately.
13. Re-assemble the mouse and you now have a 3 button no wheel mouse!

I know what you mean. I have the Logitech dual optical (available at ThinkGeek for the low low price of 35.99)

there is a tumb button that is useful if you think the middle mouse button on the scroll is somewhat useless. of sourse you still have the scroll, but it's worth a shot, yeah?

... with a German geek-toys site à la thinkgeek. Since I hadn't the money to build up the logistic part around it, I tried it as a reseller. I found a good (German) affilate program (zanox), that lets me choose products out of the participant's catalogues and get a revenue of 5% of every sold item. Additionally, every participant delivers a couple of banners in every needed format.

I mix the affilate program with amazon stuff, using their reseller program and make the products the content of the site.

Using movabletype and keeping in mind some main ideas of google in mind (search terms in filename and in the header, etc.) I finaly made my site to appear on top in google using some interesting keywords (dialer blocker (a tool to stop troyan horses dialing expensive numbers), div x or mx 700).

Additionally, I show banner ads. I show both, valueclick banners from external sponsors and 'internal' ones (sending the users to products or shops of the affiliate program or even sending them to the bestsellers of my site).

The content based ads are making around 3/4 of the money, the rest is devided in 4/5 of the affiliate banners and 1/5 (only a couple of Euros per month) through valueclick.

All in all, I have around 1500 visitors per month generating around 140.000 hits. It pays the traffic, but not my work (I've to post at least one new product a day).

The most important thing is that I have two other software products (ImagePuzzler and ImageDupe) I can advertise for on my site. Since ImageDupe's website is an often linked site and ImageDupe links back to futuregeek.de I got a little 'google-bonus' from it.

All ads and clicks (even the valueclick's) are tracked using phpAdsNew and 99% of my visitors come from google, the rest is yahoo, lycos and a german meta search engine. Since I don't trust webalizer (especially the search engine identifier), I wrote my own script, that keeps an eye on the referers.

You bought the QCast Tuner from thinkgeek.com, and you didn't send them an action shot!? Thinkgeek thrives on action shots. It's people like you that have made this world into the inhospitable place it is today. :-P

.:Jon:.

To the commenter above, those are Mini R/C rovers, they are bigger and do not fight each other (thoguh they are hella kool too). I know that ThinkGeek is selling the Tiny R/C Digi Q Cars, but Moe Moe wants a tank to help fight in Iraq against Bush's "evil do-ers"!

I... I can't believe that actually exists.

You can get your very own copy of it, too...w00t! (At least RMS wasn't attempting to sing it...)

Still hoping for that George Foreman USB Grill to come out :-)

from the article:

In the thick of it, Neo is dancing, chucking black-tied bodies skyward, pivoting around the signpost, and using shoulders as stepping-stones over the raging river of whup-ass.

If "raging river of whup-ass" isn't on a t-shirt at ThinkGeek yet, it damn well should be.