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Five Custom Gadgets You Can't Buy
photojournaliste noted a little story running over on Forbes which kinda looks like their editors read Slashdot. Their Five Gadgets You Can't Buy include a few things you might have seen here, as well as some new custom hardware hacks. If you didn't get it for christmas, maybe one of these will inspire you to build it yourself.
Unbleievably's hard to read that articale with all those freaking ads. I gave up, it makes me sick.
was the Millineum Falcon 'puter. Now that was cool. The others were a streth to be even interesting.
WTF? Over?
www.hackaday.com www.mini-itx.com
..but you can build them for not that much of money.
actually, if you want to buy them, i'll sell them to you for 2000e a piece.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...a Phantom console? :-)
This is seriously one of the dumbest lists I ever seen. The first one you can actually buy, Belkin makes it. The second is a drink cooler, which you can get a device that does that same thing for 8 bucks. The third one (lego person inside of a mouse) is at least original.
The controlled etcha-a-sketch is actually cool.
And then followed by a mini-itx pc someone shoved into the body of an old Millennium Falcon toy.
So over all we've got 1 cool one, 2 ugly ones, 1 creative but useless one, and one that just shouldn't be in the list because you can buy a good version of it.
Mod point free since 2001
I thought there was already an iPod external battery pack for sale by someone. A google search shows one for sale by Bilk'n, er, Belkin.
The article seemed short, I only counted three gadgets, with it being page 1 of 1.
1: Jupiter
2: My toe-nail clippings
3: Profit!
4: A profound sense of well being.
My (not very good point) is that just because you cant buy them, doesnt necessarily mean youd WANT to buy them.
Good idea to have an article on custom gadgets. PC mods can be found everywhere, however. ./ has its hands on it.
Batteries for those small devices should be more of a concern these days as they *do* eat through them like mad. When it comes down to it, all you need are some cells and some resistors to regulate the power, but it'd be nice if someone started a little how-to section for each individual device.
The cryogenic mouse is neat.. not extremely practical I'm afraid. I'm sure someone will start making them commercially now that
With these sorts of articles, I like to see extreme stuff. Anti-gravitational engines, that sort of thing.
You probably could buy any of these. Like with everything, it's only a matter of price.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
Looks like something MacGyver would come up with. Just try to get it through a TSA screener!
Here's an unusual gift. It isn't conventially nice, cute or attractive, but it is unique!
...Most of these gadgets are really quite useless.I would'nt pay anything exhorbitant to get any of these.There are quite a few mods/hacks in the slashdot archives which are a gazillion times better than these.
Lord of the Binges.
It's just basic mods made by people just like you and me. Still cool to see it on forbes.
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
I am not anti-advertising. Just interested in the compromises that are made to sell product.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It is like playing "where's wally" except your looking for the TFA hidden in the ads.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It is like playing "where's wally"
You've never actually seen "Where's Waldo?", have you?
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Instead of a new Mac, I picked up a copy of Phatware's PenOffice, to make my Fujitsu Stylistic even more useful (PenOffice works w/ a wider variety of apps than Windows Pen Services, doesn't lock up like CIC PenX does on my machine after ~15 minutes use, and has a nifty annotation feature for Word .docs) --- unfortunately the only pen computing solutions Apple offers are Macs w/ Wacom graphic tablets (I mislike working on one surface and watching what happens on another, and gave up on schlepping a graphics tablet and a laptop around when I got my NCR-3125) or a PowerMac w/ a Wacom Cintiq --- that last is a pretty cool (albeit expensive) solution, but it's uncommon enough not much software specifically takes advantage of it (Alias' Sketchbook was ported to Mac OS X after many requests). Contrast this w/ the situation for Windows Tablet PCs and look at http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html &c.
.pdf version (why aren't .pdfs as document previews in bundles a standard for apps these days?) and allowed one to do basic annotation and mark up it'd still be fabulously useful (can you say ebooks? importing annotations from Acrobat and applying them as revisions in Word?)
Think of it as an extension to the iPod line --- the iPod lets one carry all of one's music (as a backup too) and modify the order it plays in --- the iPod Photo adds all of one's images to that --- how about a further upscale unit to allow one to carry all of one's documents?
Even if it did nothing but display a
Being able to run Mac applications in situations where a laptop is inappropriate / inconvenient (meetings, interviews, while walking about), and having the (portable!) equivalent to a Wacom Cintiq (look at the program Maxivista for an example of how this could work) is just icing on the cake.
And of course, it'd be nice to replace my Newton which I still use for contact management, note-taking and reading some ebooks.
William
(whose Stylistic has music, hundreds of ebooks, a complete graphic design portfolio _and_ all the tools necessary to update and work on said portfolio --- see http://members.aol.com/willadams/portfolio.html --- including a copy of TeX, LyX &c.)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Here's a link to the only cool thing there.
Why didn't Forbes just shit on my face instead of paying somebody to make that website? For more efficient in causing me misery.
Do you see what I did there?
Anyone get the sense of outright pandering here? Either this is 'hardware hacking lite' for your grandmother, or a really pathetic attempt to woo the /. type crowd into the folds of Forbes.
Granny: What'ca doin' there young man?
Me: I'm modding out my Sega Genesis with switches for Region, NTSC/PAL and overclocking the CPU!
Granny: Oh, you're putting a little man inside it..
Me: Um.. I love you granny!
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
....does not equal journalism.
He's a mutation, he has no genes for growing feet.
Not one of them were nearly as interesting as what can be built with a Capsela set.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 26, @09:12AM
from the because-you-can dept.
photojournaliste noted a little story running over on Forbes which kinda looks like their editors read Slashdot. Their Five Gadgets You Can't Buy include a few things you might have seen here, as well as some new custom hardware hacks. If you didn't get it for christmas, maybe one of these will inspire you to build it yourself.
Flattery - when orginality isn't enough.
This the kind of article thats worth nothing but the comments
Please post some interesting links slashdotters as the editors already posted the bait. I'm sure there are really cool gadgets around.
What else can we expect... editors are more likely to spend holiday time away from slashdot than us.
"c"hristmas is spelled "C"hristmas
- that mini-itx mod inside the Millenium Falcon has been around for almost three years!
Wow! Nice cars! I really can't afford them but Mercedes are nice to look at. What do you mean "look on the left side?". Oh! the article was referrring to the left side corner, not the prominent product advertisement from Mercedes?! If you mean this crappy hardware made by some kids, forget it then...
The following caught my eye as I read the Forbes article:
The article refers to the iPod external battery pack as being powered by "three nine-volt batteries"; however, the photograph clearly shows two nine-volt batteries and two AA batteries in a holder. I'm surprised such a well-known publication would make such a flagrant error...
I've been searching for a 'MP3 player format' SIDchip which is able to play SIDs to live out. Anyone know if such a thing exists? Optionally or besides this, it would be nice if other modules are also supported such as XM / S3M / IT however a bunch of SIDs on a flash ROM together with a SIDchip is both smaller, more of a unique hack, and better quality as well ;).
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
When posting a link to www.forbes.com articles, please note that you have to have cookies (or is it ActiveX and cookies) enabled in order to read it. All I get when I follow the posted link is an infinite loop of "skip this welcome screen", and then when I click on that, a page that redirects right back to the welcome screen (which really just shows an empty box, since I have ActiveX disabled).
For Christmas, I made my girlfriend a tissue box amplifier for in her car. It was a quick and artistic solution for her no-stereo problem, and could be plugged right into her brand new MP3 player.
That is, I was impressed when I read the article about it almost a year ago, before battery packs were availible for sale commercially.
The Electr-sketch reminded me of that movie Elf where he drew the mona lisa and stuff. I wonder if you could really draw like that. I guess the line has to be connected from beginning to end so its probably not possible.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
"Cool" maybe... but hardly functional. Most of that stuff had been on Slashdot already. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up.
sig.
your time back after wasting it reading this article
...was truly geek classic. It was kludgy, dumb, clunky, obviously home-made, and a Rube Goldberg work of art! Out of all of them it was the only one that made a "statement" to me, although the prisoner-in-the-mouse was pretty good.
As for the rest....no cigar.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
1: Jupiter
2: My toe-nail clippings
3: Profit!
4: A profound sense of well being.
Number 4 on your list you can buy in pretty much any rough neighborhood in almost any major city.
As for number 1, you can come close - you can get a patent on any technology related to Jupiter. The USPTO will let you patent almost anything, including other people's genes!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
- First item and its Home page.
- Second item and its Home page.
- Third item and its Home page.
- Fourth item and its Home page.
- Fifth item and its Home page.
All of the home pages have some graphics on them, so, to avoid slashdotting an innocent site, please don't visit a home page unless the corresponding Forbes page gets you interested.(I remember reading about this one on Slashdot before.)
(Byte magazine had anarticle about using an Etch-A-Sketch as a plotter back around 1980 or so.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
You're new here, aren't you?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Actually I have bought Waldo books, maybe you haven't heard of Wally. The name depends on what country you live in and when you bought the book(s). I don't know if it is like the street names on the monolpoly board or if Waldo/Wally is a rip-off. I bought some "Where's Wally" books for my kids in Australia about 15yrs ago and he looked just like Waldo's twin brother. There was also a wizard, cane, dog, hat, etc to find after you had found Wally. If you are interested in fairness in naming rights, google "Ugg Boots" AND "Macquarie dictionary". In case you haven't heard of google (make it a rule to google before you post something) I have included this random Wally/Waldo link for you. My original post was intended as a humourous analogy between Wally and the articles formatting, thank you very much for your input.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
50 gadgets I can't buy.
MythTV is one.
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