The Year's Best Gadget Ideas

valdean writes "David Pogue, the influential personal technology columnist for the New York Times, has chosen what he calls '10 of the year's best small, sweet improvements in our electronic lives.' Rather than your average pseudo-commercial list of branded devices, it's a list of improvements. As Pogue puts it at the end of his column: 'Come New Year's Eve, raise one tiny toast to the anonymous engineers whose eccentricities or idealism brought these sparkling developments to life.' They are (sans explanation): the folding memory card, the voice mail VCR, the front-side TV connector, the bigger-than-TV movie, TV à la carte, the outer-button flip phone, the free domain name, the modular DVD screen, the family-portrait burst mode, and the hybrid high-definition tape.'"

Comments

no mention..

[User 956]

What, no mention of the invention of blogging?

Is this a gadget?

[dada21]

USB charging ports on cell phones is my favorite "gadget" for the past year. I'm not sure if they existed in 2004, but I have 3 different phones in my household that use USB charging ports, and it is a Godsend for my desk.

The other "true" gadget that I really appreciate is the iPod. I don't use it, but it surpassed the WAF (wife acceptance factor) enough that I literally saved about 50 square feet of wall space by dumping all our CDs permanently, and saved 3 units of shelf space in the entertainment center as the CD changers are gone.

Re:Is this a gadget?

[User 956]

USB charging ports on cell phones is my favorite "gadget" for the past year. I'm not sure if they existed in 2004, but I have 3 different phones in my household that use USB charging ports

They've existed for a few years now. Maybe in 2006 you'll discover the Wall->Usb adapter, and possibly even the CAR->USB power adapter. So you can use all those mobile gadgets when you're, you know, mobile.

Re:Is this a gadget?

[User 956]

well, what's really cool, is that a lot of gadgetry that doesn't have a USB charge jack, takes the correct voltage such that they can be charged directly via USB. Like, for example, the PSP and the iriver iHP-340 both take 5v input, and can both be charged with the same ziplinq cable. And I can use that same 5-pin ziplinq cable to get pictures from my camera.

So rather than go to best buy, and spend $25 for a mobile charger for the PSP, another $25 for one for the iRiver, $15 on a "sync cable" for a camera, and another $20 camera travel charger, you can do all that with one $3 cable from hong kong. Usually, you can get ziplinq cables for $0.99 + shipping on ebay, because ebay is flooded with them. And shipping is dirt cheap. (With all the auction fraud, that's all ebay is good for these days. items under 10 bucks)

I carry a total of three ziplinq cables in my bag(4pin USB, 5pin USB, treoUSB) and they charge/interface every piece of gadgetry I have, both at home, and in the car (with the Car-> usb adapter).

New Spin

[mysqlrocks]

This year, the high-tech industry made clever steps forward and put new spins on old features.

How about online newspapers that don't make you sign up to read their content? That's a new spin.

NYTimes Logins

[MikeWasHere05]

U: bimbyflam
P: bimbyflam


U: brillemann
P: brillemann


U: fuck
P: you


U: trynopasswords
P: bugmenot


From http://bugmenot.com/view.php?url=nytimes.com

the front-side TV connector

[timshea]

Like on my 10-year-old Sony TV?

Re:the front-side TV connector

[HFShadow]

Whoops, found one:

http://h10058.www1.hp.com/digital/entertainment/us /en/theater/tvs/mdtv_guide.html

Scroll down a bit..... not a bad idea, it seems to work

Link without signup

[Anonymous Coward]

Article via a non-stupid-NY-times-signup-site

Re:Free Domains

[SeaFox]

you forgot

3) A web presence with ads tacked on by your provider isn't professional, that's like having a redirect from your domian name to an Angelfire account.

I guess you could only look at your homepage with Firefox+Adblock, then you can pretend there are no ads. :-)

Pretty disappointing article

[slashdot.org]

Keeping in mind that the title is "10 Greatest Gadget Ideas of the Year", you'd have to conclude this really was a terribly lame year. Let's go down the list:

1) [folding memory card] How about digital cameras taking USB memory sticks directly (I understand this would require a new physical spec, but wouldn't that make a lot more sense?)

2) [VM VCR] It would be nice if the link pointed to a Treo 700W. I agree that VM should appear like email with VCR like controls on a mobile device. But this is not a device I can go and buy today...

3) [front side TV connectors] Don't know what he's talking about; I've had front interfaces on my TV for years, but there must be something more to see for people that care to register.

4) [increased video resolution on digital cameras] Increased resolution is hardly a gadget idea, it's just an incremental improvement, as one might expect (after several years I might add). Fair enough 1024 is a pretty nice jump.

5) [downloadable video] We'll see how this _really_ pans out. It certainly isn't a bright or clever idea, it's all about (biz) politics.

6) [outer button flip-phone] Come freaking on. A bad UI design has been corrected.

7) [free domain name] Seriously. (a) who doesn't have $8/year to register the domain with registerfly or something and get a advertisement-free domain (b) is this really something new? I can hardly believe it.

8) [modular DVD screen] This is not a smart idea. If it hasn't been done before it is because it's just not going to last. Either the LCD is going to have to support a wild range of interfaces (VGA, S-Video, DVI etc etc) and hence would become much larger then it needs to be if it were driven directly by the hardware (direct digital). Or it could support just analog video say. Now the quality suck. So it could support just VGA. Now the driving logic in the devices needs to add VGA output. Well, it's just not going to happen. You're going to be buying this stuff from one vendor because it sounds great, and a year from now half of it won't work and the vendor has discontinued the idea.

9) [family portrait burst-mode] Let's grab the quote: the odds of somebody's eyes being closed increases geometrically with the number of people in the group. (emphasis mine). That's a hoot. But, sure I understand the problem. My camera from 2003 let's me take a bunch of pictures in a row. It's not a 2005 idea.

10) [HD tape] I guess... A great gadget because they DIDN'T change the physical format.

Very disappointing list to me. Surely there were better tech advancements than just this!