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Next Generation of MP3 Glasses
Doggie Fizzle writes "A review of the Nu Tech Dark Shadow 256MB MP3 Sunglasses shows one of the latest attempts to multitask common items, whether we want it or not. The Oakley Thumps may have come first, but at 3x the cost of Nu Tech Dark Shadows, even frugal geeks can look smooth... From the review: "I am a sucker for any tool or gadget that tries to combine more than one use or function into a single item, but I also have learned from experience that many times such items fail to perform well at any of the tasks they were designed to do.""
Obviously not a Unix person.
From the slashdot article:
or he'd already have known:
The sad part is, you'll have listened to all the songs before the sun goes down.
If you already wear glasses :/
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
This is an interesting item but it is so 1990. The review's comment of "I am a sucker for any tool or gadget that tries to combine more than one use or function into a single item" is exactly why we don't need so many all-in-one items, but instead, mininetworked items.
Why is Bluetooth such a relative failure? My PDA has bluetooth and I use it ALL the time. The problem is that I don't see very many viable, workable, user friendly bluetooth devices.
If I want an MP3 player, what I'd really want is a portable deposit/store/memory bank (SD card is fine), a very tiny MP3 player and a bluetooth set of headphones. I can't find anything of the sort that WORKS.
My bluetooth headset for my phone has TERRIBLE sound quality. The bandwidth for bluetooth should allow for a decent sound in stereo, but the mono headset is just crap. Can anyone recommend a good stereo set of bluetooth headphones that work?
I believe the future of portable music will probably not be the MP3 player, especially as network availability becomes more pronounced. I use Shoutcast on my PDA phone to stream my entire MP3 collection from home as I want to. GPRS at 33.6K is fairly crap quality, but when I am in range of a public WiFi router (my phone has WiFi as well) I can get pretty awesome quality streaming. Nowadays I am near a public WiFi router probably 15% of the time, compared to 5% last year.
Will we even NEED storage or a large bulky scratchable iPod when we can stream terabytes of music in a few years?
Sorry I don't share your enthusiasm, but I don't think you will look smoother, only geekier. I am geeky enough and I don't want to wear it on my face. Besides, the audio actually sucks....what, I had to try it on...common gimme a break!
Seems like this would be the PERFECT product to have a rechargeable solar battery!
these bulbous pieces of shit look dumb on everyone, not just you. So do the oakleys. You are just not going to make a cubic inch of electronics look smooth on a pair of glasses. A product like this will be ready for prime time when you can fit the entire player in the eraser head of a mechanical pencil.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
All I want are those x-ray specs I ordered from boy's life 15 years ago.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
So now when I lose my sunglasses (which happens a LOT), I've also lost my 256MB mp3 player? No thanks.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
... even frugal geeks can look smooth...
These are not for geeks, as can be shown by your idiodic comment (who "looks smooth" with a huge box attached to the side of your head?). They are for bikers, runners, and people involved in sports. They are not for a WOW playing geek in his mom's basement.
Ever try to bike through traffic while screwing around with a headphone cable? Probably not. If you did then you would see that there is a huge market for these kinds of devices.
Now you can misplace your MP3 player in your hair.
But really this is a good combo, since glasses have parts going right beside your ear anyway, so it's handy to have your MP3 player on your face protecting your eyes from UV damage, while damaging your ears with music that is too loud.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
What a ripoff. A nice pair of polarized sunglasses will set you back around $100 to $150. Throw in an iPod Shuffle for $100.
i'm not even a parent, but it'll be like the world is full of teenagers
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
..Unless you want to listen to your MP3s at night.
Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.
"Installation CD on 3-Inch CD"
Damn, my CD drive is made for 5 1/2 inch CDs. Looks like I'll have to pass on these specs.
This is like, I don't know, putting an email alert light on a mouse.
...a dazzling idea.
Again, I'm so sorry.
If not, I would never buy it.
Once the lenses are scratched it is worthless, unless you enjoy listening to music with blurred vision.
For under $500, I'll show you the wonders of super glue when applied to your favourite sunglasses & mp3 player.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
but there are many times I want to listen to my tunes at night or in a dark room, especially during the winter months since it gets dark a 5PM. I personally don't see the need for a sub-par MP3 player, married to a sub-par set of sunglasses. I guess these things are made for a day on a deserted beach (where fashion isn't required) or the uber budget conscious. I'd say that I, much like any self respecting geek, would much rather have a high quality pair of sunglasses and a separate high quality MP3 player. A polished turd, is still a turd - even with a built in MP3 player.
you've got to be kidding me. the only difference between these and the oakleys is that no nerds will actually buy these because no one that knows how to ALT+TAB is stupid enough to buy crap like this.
give me a BREAK
-- lol pwned
Sheesh...does this thing come with a plastic pocket protector, too? Like some of the other posters, it's obvious enough to even the most casual observer that I'm a geek. Do I really need to paste a sign on my forehead? My Treo plays MP3's rather well and can play them through the headset I'm already wearing. Why add ANOTHER set of headphones?
2 cents,
Queen B.
HDGary secures my bank
...ugly sunglasses with a built-in USB memory-stick-mp3-player and crappy headphones? That'll work.
The Oakley one might sell on the back of the name, there are brand snobs out there. I don't think I'd touch this thing with a bargepole though.
Game dev and music blog
If I ever see anyone wearing MP3 player sunglasses I'm going to smack them. And this is coming from someone with a Bluetooth headset.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Oakley Thumps here.
didn't they have headphones awhile back that would work by sending vibrations directly to the head? I remember them being marketed for swimmers, I think. That would have been a much better use of the wraparound sunglasses - I wouldn't want to have to put things over AND in my ears, I want one or the other.
Oakley recently unveiled a new product, the Razrwire, that is derivative of their thump glasses. These feature a bluetooth earpiece that can integrate with a bluetooth phone. Hopefully they're more comfortable than I've heard the thumps are.
Somehow, I just don't see these things catching on. They're ugly.
so what if you want to listen to your mp3s when you are inside?
that's the problem with multi-function devices...
Hmm, maybe an Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit would help... :-)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Will come with a tiny display in front of each eye that will be able to show visulizations as well. Now that will be "cool". I can't wait for someone to bring out a half way decent VR headset for a reasonable price. Oh and make good use of it :o)
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
So, where can I get a pair of these Dork Shadow sunglasses?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
[insert your own drug joke here]
If you're a swimmer, here is another interesting mp3 player. It is called the SwiMP3 and it can be worn and listened to while swimming.
Another interesting thought about mp3 players: Apple's domanance with mp3 players makes it harder for other players to make a solid-state mp3 player with more than one gig of memory. The only non-Apple solid state player with over one gig is the SanDisk Sansa M250 (street price lower); this player is made by a company that makes their own flash memory. This is a shame, since the iPod Nano, in typical Steve Jobs style, uses a proprietary interface which doesn't talk with Linux well.
If one is willing to use a hard disk mp3 player, there are 60 gb 1.8 inch hard disks available; I expect to see a 60gb handheld mp3 player in the near future.
Howabout just some wireless headphones or earbuds that can clip onto your glasses. Then you can choose the mp3 player you want (or use the one you already have), and more importantly, choose some glasses that don't make you look like a complete fool.
How long before we start seeing these on woot.com?
Blog
Podcast
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
The Toyjust in time for Christmas
I seen embed/hide their shuffle in a hat with wires down to the ears. Its not bulky. In fact you have the opposite problem with being the size and weight of a stick of gum, you may not notice you've lost it if its not on. You cant make it much smaller and still have controls and earphones jack. If you could only bluetooth away the wires.
A few more years of Moore's law the price falls on the 100-song model to that of transistor radio and losing it doesn't matter. Else you keep the current price for 1000 songs.
These are an uglier version of the ones that come up on Woot from time to time. After the third time I saw 'em, I got a pair from Woot; arrived yesterday. I'm loading tunez on them now. I paid 11% what these cost, for half the storage space.
The Woot version doesn't have the big box on the ear pieces; from a distance, you can't really tell there's anything unusual about them, although I look like a Secret Service d00d with the earphones.
None of this should be taken to mean that I am NOT a dork, nor that these are not the dumbest thing I've ever bought.
I like 'em anyway. I think it's funny.
jIyajbe
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
Do they expect me to *pay* for the luxury of wearing -- on my face no less -- something that looks like a Geigeresque metal-sheened plastic turd? I would be ashamed to leave the house wearing one of these. I might as well have a sign on my chest that says "Too much money, and no standards" And, to anybody who says these are for cyclists and such. Well. I'm a cyclist, I ride 50+ miles on weekends on a road bike, and I bike to work daily in downtown washington dc in rush-hour traffic. My iPod works *just* fine, and as a bonus, I still get to wear my real glasses, so I can see the taxis that want to annihilate me.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Dayton, OH - Thomas P. Wetsalot has invented an MP3 condom, and hopes that by getting some Slashdot editor to do his advertising, he can rake in the dough.
"It's a remarkable device." Wetsalot said. "It has 128mb of RAM, and in comes in ordinary and French Tickler. We're hoping to have the self-lubing model ready for 2006, though we've had some troubles with electrocutions. Another big innovation will be the ability to download songs via our patented USB butt plug."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
For me the whole point of making sunglasses an mp3 player is that the foldable bands of the glasses could be the earphones too. How hard is that?
Just extend the bands so they wrap around your ears in stead of using those small insert earphones that everyone hates ..sheesh
Seems like this would be the PERFECT product to have a rechargeable solar battery!
Since we're integrating gadgets, we could place small solar panels on a hat and attach the hat to the glasses. The panels would charge the battery while providing additional sun protection, and it wouldn't look much dorkier than the Oakleys. (How could it?)
The silly things is, now that you've read that, some of you are thinking "Is he serious??" and some of you are thinking "What a great idea!". I'm sure you'll identify yourselves in short order.
For the record, I think this would be marginally functional (inefficiency of solar panels, small surface area for collection) and not at all practical, but would be an interesting exercise.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I think mostly what us nerds object to is the conversion of two commodity "nerd tools" into an overpriced status item.
We want an Open Source sunglass+MP3 player!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Personally, I've been waiting on the Oakley Thump to come down in price to a level that didn't make me laugh. These may just be a good alternative.
What are they good for? well, bike riding, jogging, yard work...all of the things I like to have music for. I've developed a real distaste for having my earphones forcible jerked out of my head every few minutes since the cord has a magical property to entangle in things it had no reason to.
Are they ugly? Sure they are. Which of you was trying to make a fashion statement with your MP3 player in the first place?
Where I live (Seattle), I seem to recall it being illegal to wear headphones while riding a bicycle.
Napoleon:
This is probably the worst idea ever
Kip:
Like anyone could ever know that...
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
A review of a pair of sunglasses, and not even one single picture that shows what they look like when worn by a person...?
Only on slashdot... are the reviewers a) to ugly to show themselves b) lacking good looking girlfriends to do the modeling for them...
Obviously I'm not in the loop. I didn't know that there was an initial offering of mp3-enabled sunglasses.
Better idea:
mp3 enabled Beer Goggles
Or better still,
mp3 enabled beer helmet
who needs mp3 enabled sunglasses?
one of the latest attempts to multitask common items, whether we want it or not.
I hate this New Order Globalized Communism we found ourselves into. I hate being forced to buy gadget upon gadget some marketing department idiot thought of, whether I want it or not. I miss the days where we could freely choose where and on what to spend our money
s/smooth/idiotic
one of the latest attempts to multitask common items, whether we want it or not
Its not hard to understand that if you dont want it, dont buy it.
I for one certainly want one.
"I am a sucker for any tool or gadget that tries to combine more than one use or function into a single item, but I also have learned from experience that many times such items fail to perform well at any of the tasks they were designed to do."
I'd say if you buy something like sunglasses with an mp3 player built in, you definitely are a sucker.
But yeah, I lose sunglasses all the time, mainly because I forget and wear them in from my car and then leave them. On the other hand, I'm happy with el-cheapo sunglasses, so it's not annoying unless my car runs out of sunglasses.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yeah, obviously we wear sunglasses when we're sitting in the basement staring at the computer.... The last year or so I've had to start wearing reading glasses while working on the computer, and most of the time if I'm wearing sunglasses, I'm in my car, which has a much better sound system than they can cram in a pair of glasses.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Did this really need to be done? I already feel stupid enough with my Bluetooth wireless headset hanging off one ear, do I need to combine that with a Cyclops-inspired visor ("Optic blasts... FIRE!!!")? Why not just go the route of building a computer system in a motorcycle helmet with a head's-up display, powering it with the heat generated by the brain, and call it done?
Are we all going to end up looking like the Borg?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I didn't even know there was *any* generation of MP3 glasses.
I'm too cool for a sig.
500 bucks?? That's Frugal???? No thank you...I'll buy an iPod and duct-tape it to the back of my head.
I kill harmless processes for sport
I quit wearing headphones while commuting by bicycle a while ago, but I didn't quit having music. Open headphones at a fairly high volume around the neck put out just enough music to enjoy it but not so much that you cannot hear your surroundings. Also, parent should quit calling names.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
What we've got here is a situation where computers have gotten easily small enough to be wearable on a purely practical level, but are still fighting against entrenched aesthetic norms. People hold up cell phones for seemingly hours at a time while walking around, even though they could easily have some sort of hands-free system. People put mp3 players in their pockets and run wires to their head, even though mp3 players could easily be fit somewhere near the ears. One can easily imagine a world in which it would have been cool all along to wear some kind of crazy cyberhelmet, and in that world we would have progressed much further into augmented reality. No use crying over spilled milk, so let's see what's possible with the culture we've got.
One possibility is that the barrier of aesthetic conservativism will be bypassed only once the size gets down to the point where it really is vanishingly small-- where a pair of sunglasses (or a necklace, or a bracelet, or a ring) with a computer in it is indistinguishable from one without. The computers will simply disappear, and the state of the art for most people in wearable computing will be whatever level is the latest to be effectively vanished.
The other possibility (the one which I, and I suspect most of us here, would prefer) is that there will be some new product or class of products that will change the collective aesthetic of our society and allow wearable computers to fully flourish. One entirely reasonable route for such a transformative device would be a pair of computerized sunglasses. Sunglasses are the largest head-mounted device which is a currently acceptable fashion. They are also conveniently close to the ears and even go in front of the eyes; they're perfectly situated to talk intimately with a user.
In order to effect such a transformation, a product would have to be a brilliant innovation either technically or aesthetically-- and probably both. The product under discussion here comes nowhere close to achieving that prerequisite. My guess is that the first mass market computerized sunglasses will be ones which can project some sort of display onto the glass.
<3
If you were my sig, you'd be reading yourself right now.
most physically handicapped people would choose a good-looking but non-functional prosthetic over a functioning but ugly one
It's not either-or, it's both-and. This guy has four kinds of prosthetic hands, plus a spare for each kind. The cosmetic one looks perfect and works okay, but he only uses it a couple of times a week. The rest of the time he uses the more functional ones.
These might have been cool (well, the Oakleys) while cycling in Summer (don't worry - on the cycle network in Milton Keynes, not on the road), but when it's dark by 17h00 and pouring with rain, I think I'll stick with 'street style' headphones and a cheaper player hung inside my jacket!
Wasn't the implication that most of the Borg weren't asked if they wanted implants (as opposed to actors/actresses who positively will take any implant as long as it looks good).
No, the reviewed item is only $100 or slightly under. It is the Oakley Thump that pops up in the ads at the bottom that is $500. This makes sense given the cost of Oakley sunglasses alone (hence the booming market in "Foakleys", cheap knock-offs), but for $500 you think you'd get at least 1 GB of space.
$100 for decent sunglasses and an MP3 player really isn't bad. Too bad they're ugly. Shouldn't stop poker players from adopting them, however...
Personally I really only wear sunglasses while driving or as a passenger in someone else's car, and just about every car's stereo system sounds better than earbuds. Plus, it's not legal to drive with headphones on (not that anyone would notice) and as a passenger it would make it difficult to communicate with the driver. I suppose they would be nice on a trip with a lot of people, where you may not be able to stand each other's taste in music, and as pointed out above, they would be nice at the poker table (at least until you want to take them off but still listen to the music).
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
The video-glasses won't be anymore distracting while driving than a cell phone, right?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
But I have a feeling that those earphones won't be so easy to replace when they break.
When they make some MP3/Bluetooth headset sunglasses, that also noise cancel in the mic's, and have the lenses that adjust to the light level, AND it looked cool, I would consider getting something like this, it would need a lot more memory too. A hud wouldnt be to shabby either.
This product is even worse than that device for that lets you connect your PSP to a TV...
$500... $500.. that is INSANITY... if not FUBAR...
This isn't news. It's an AD for overpriced bullshit that makes you look as important as an asshole.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4435639.stmwhy does he keep falling of his bike?
This is obviously not a useful item. This is the kind of crap that ends up in those Sharper Image catalogs that they wont stop sending me. Its about as useful as the Simpsons mockery of Sharper Image hardware, the frying pan with a radio in it. Ive been noticing recently that items such as this and the Moto ROKR are consistently inferior to the alternate solution of just taking something and taping an iPod Nano to it. We have some very good music players and some very good other devices, why is it whenever they try to integrate those two together it always ends up in a product vastly inferior to the two original products?
"If you glue two things together that have never been glued together before, some schmuck will buy it." - George Carlin
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Logitech has wireless ipod headphones with controls built in. Just a transmitter that plugs into you ipod. I dont know how well they work, but logitechs stuff is usually pretty solid.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
You know, I think people misunderstand the unix philosophy sometimes. It's not that apps do one thing. It's that they're modular, and *interoperate*.
A compiler doesn't do one thing: it does lots of stuff: parsing, translating, optimising, retargetting. But it does that by using other subtools, and by communicating with other parts of the system and libraries etc.
Likewise, there's no reason an app or tool can't play music and videos and download podcasts all in one slick interface. It's just that it shouldn't try to do all that with one huge mess of code, without relying on pre-existing work such as OGG codecs or ID3 tags, or RSS, or GTK/Qt/whatever.
KDE, for instance, is made up of many, many programs, all doing their own specialist things. They share libraries, and classes, and call child programs and expose application functions for scripting via DCOP and DBUS. They use existing technologies and build on them. It's not a single tool by any means; it's a framework of parts. And I think it's the very best example of Unix I've seen in quite a while.
i work for a sunglass company in australia, we were offered these exact glasses from one of our vendors in china. We were going to use them for one of the local brands here, except a little research revealed that oakley holds a patent on sunglasses as mp3 players..
so depending on how these are sold, it's very likely to be patent infringement.
and no the original vendor does not have a license from oakley.
I went to geeks.com to confirm the price, and couldn't even find the product.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Do they really make you look like a complete tool as you stroll past in your polarized, MP3 cocoon?
What happens if you try and interview someone using the built-in voice recorder?
Is the storage case really "a little too geeky for most to use it on their belt?"
I want to see!
Plus, it's not legal to drive with headphones on
Why, mr Officer, that's my hands-free telephone setup!
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
care to post the link?
These seem like a cool enough gadget. Unfortunately, after the sun goes down they start playing "Sunglasses At Night" repeatedly at maximum volume.
Why, mr Officer, that's my hands-free telephone setup!
Legal in one ear, but not in both, at least in California.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.