Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Geek-Friendly Business Accessories?
As a departure from the usual Ask Slashdot
faire, we have this question from
Jonas Öberg:
"There's quite a lot of misc nerd
accessories out there, such as T-Shirts,
pens, and mousepads. I've even seen
hacker-related underwear! But where's the
salvation for us nerds who must spend our
days in business environments? Are there some
really cool wallets, briefcases, clocks or
other cool things out there somewhere?"
Underwear? Now I have seen it all! But
really, if handhelds like the PalmPilot don't
make this list, I'll really be surprised!
www.sharperimage.com has a lot of Yupppie-scum type stuff, but there are a few gems. Multi-tools, MultiFunction travel alarms yadda yadaa. Caveat: You can find most of this stuff cheaper at other sources. -nme
There are tons of catalogues out there of cheapo giveaway items like pens, etc. that can be silkscreened with company logos, slogans, etc,
I don't see why you couldn't slap a sideways smiley onto one of them.
Most of it is business-related stuff, too.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Unfortunately, I have no idea where it came from or how long its been here since it has been here far longer than I have. So my post isn't very useful as far as acquiring one's own. I suppose making one wouldn't be hard, though.
http://www.vireference.com/vimug.htm
----------------------
It's too bad stupidity isn't painful"
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
what's the matter, xclock not good enough for you?
heh. in my day we had to look at the angle of the sun, and we liked it! clocks... feh.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well... Copyleft mentions the possibility of ties on their site, but it has been a long time since that was suggested and I have seen nothing. I am not quite in on the business end of things just yet, but my school has a dress code and some geek ties would be good to have. Anyway... maybe someone will get the right idea and start producing these things.
- Aaron
I have a nice time planner from tempus. You can order it at www.tempus.de. The only drawback is, that you can't get the paper inserts in every US store. Oh, the cover is made of circuit boards of course. By the way, the Tech museum store in San Jose, CA has some nice pencil cases, etc too. ciao, florian
One thing that I did find the most useful on rootshell.com was one of their banner ads. http://www.my-mug.com has a just about everything you might find in a gift shop with a surface flat and smooth enough to draw on for sale, and they let you suppply the graphics through a CGI. Thankfully, they let you know in advance what the idea size of the image should be, and you can order single items just as easily as bulk. The site certainly seems like a good place to start if you're thinking about making some smart-arsed novelty item and don't feel like shelling out $$$ for a minimum lot that would leave you swamped in coffee mugs with the name of your website misspelled. ;)
(for example... I have a "Hacker Inside" logo that's just begging to become a front license tag on my car...)
I've got hardly any of this stuff . . .
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Sorry girls, Boxers for me.. Not into the tighty whities...
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Not seen one. But someone could make a mint off of a emacs beer cooler.
I've recently been selling some penguins, which would really look cool at a board meeting, really!, but am also considering some other things. We're working on a couple designs for embroidered polo shirts and we might also consider embroidering other things. Perhaps some ties might work. We're open to adding some things to our 'product line' but as a sideline business, we cannot front what it takes for 2500 coffee mugs and things like that. If there's enough interest, embroidery is the easiest thing for me to do. I have the ability to embroider any BMP you've got onto something, but of course different cloth gives different results. If you have an idea, I'm open to trying it. LEt me know.. personal email address is below (or is it above? :)
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
Foresight has nanotech attaches:
j pg
http://www.foresight.org/FI/Images/Attache.jpeg
and also office-suitable wall art:
http://www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/Images/MolArt.
These are sent as "thank-you gifts" to higher-level donors.
geek friendly women for those guys who are stuck in from of pc/terminal all day? :)
I like my big cube. But it would be cool to Lan Parties.. Need sound proofing, at least for me.. I like to laugh at my opponent when they explode!
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
my-mug.com does a bunch of stuff, but does any place like that exist that will do those adhesiveless vinyl static-cling "stickers"?
Company facilities people and townhouse association weenies get pissy about things permanently stuck to windows, see...
WHOA!! Ken and Barbie are having TOO MUCH FUN!! It must be the NEGATIVE IONS!!
Badtz-Maru has some great geek merchandise (even wallets, Jonas). I've got a great Badtz-Maru time-keeping device. If you live outside the United States, however, eBay is the only way you're going to be able to get the goods.
--InitZero--
Someone should make coffee mugs with the full text of that "THE MIGHTY ED" rant that always gets posted during the vi/emacs wars. I'd buy one.
:-P
ac
p.s. emacs rules
KMFMS has some cool stuff on it. I bought the mousepad/t-shirt combo.
Any industrial geek's gotta have it!
Basically, do a search for "promotional items" and they'll be coming out of the woodwork.
A brief list:
Some things have to be ordered in bulk, still...
For OTAKON, we give out customized fortune cookies.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
As always the Dilbert Store is your friend, with watches, mugs and whatnot.
But then, Dilbert is more about nihilism than geekdom...
Computer Gear is the best.
-- Liquor up front, poker in the rear.
[1] I couldn't find a URL for it, but the if you sign up for the Prairie Home Companion catalog, you should get Signals as well. The URL for the PHC catalog request form is http://phc.mpr.org/catalog/order_cata log.html.
--
Sean Lamb
These guys make the most stylish and functional briefcases in the world. Waterproof and made of aluminum. I have seen anodized aluminum from them in bright colors like lime, fly yellow, and cobalt blue. These a briefcases for the fasionable geek. http://rootintl.com/halliburton/
http://www.buythebest.com/comp_case.html
They make laptop cases, camera cases, briefcases, cigar humidors, and many other functional and useful cases.
pronoblem
What, you wanna drink your coffee from a five gallon gasoline can? Hey, that's not a bad idea!
slashdot broke my sig
Amiga Inc. has some accessories for business clothing on their web site for sale www.amiga.de (has english text).
But I'm still looking for nice ties. I had an OS/2 tie, but I think that one is really out now...I'd like to see ties with the BeOS logo or the smiling Mac logo....
I forgot to add that one:
If you want a really geeky pen you should get that
one that can record voice for up to 10 mins - yes it exists! I've seen it in some magazine some months ago, but it's pretty expensive...
Otherwise I can recommend the black Dogbert Pen.
Features Dogbert - the Supreme Ruler of Earth, a computer and a mouse as design elements. Looks way cool!
I do use "saytime" to have a computer speak the hour (of course, the computer uses NTP to have the correct time).
Or, a step above a sundial is XEarth, and tell the time based upon where the shadow is on the globe.
I don't know if these are available or not, just struck me as a good idea. you take a polo shirt(or golf shirts?, the knit ones, with a collar), and replace the little horse with a penguin...
just an idea...
I made a hexadecimal clock a few years ago.
More recently I've begun making and selling (analog) desk and wall clocks from trashed (or just obsolete) hard drives. The entire drives, not just the platters! If anyone is interested, email me.
The horrifically headcrashed ones look the best, IMHO, so if you've got a favorite "old friend" that went down in flames, I can very probably fix it up into a nice clock for you...
Use this link to see the Tux stuff...and then jump to the 'Wearables' category after the upload for the polo shirts..
If you are interested in Slashdot stuff...go here.
Use this link to see the Tux stuff...and after the upload choose boxershorts under 'Wearables'.
http://www.my-mug.com/art/linux.html
If you are interested in Slashdot stuff...go here
I personally think the Hamilton Ventura is a way cool geek watch that suits won't even notice as being geeky. It is, of course, the watch worn by Will Smith in MIB.
There is a small store here in Houston, Texas that sell geek ties. Printed circuit board ties, ties with mainframes on them, they even have a tie that is made out of printed circuit board, it's done like plate mail withe cloth behind it, kinda takes some getting used to but it look really cool at project meetings._ _________________
______________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99
I personally like the Demotivators from www.despair.com. It's a spoof of all these new-Age motivational posters: "Failure. When your best just isn't good enough.", etc.
Surely the serious geek mousepad is the 3M one. How can you not have a 'precision mousing surface' and specialty wristrest gelfilled support when you _know_ since it's 3M they invented every material in the thing from scratch, just to do it right... 3M are unbeatable for chemicals and materials, and this just confirms it. I bet it improves Q3 scores too. >;) :)
On a less serious note, I have a calculator watch
I like some notebooks I found with circuit boards as covers. Anyways else ever seen them? They are fscking heavy though. But rather geeky. I also have my Yoda watch that got turned into a necklace cuz the strap broke. I also have a Pikachu on my Jaz drive.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I've had a ZH, and now have a toolkit made from a Pelican Case (same thing, but polycarbonate, for expensive cameras). I dont carry it on airplanes anymore, since every snot-nosed security guard learns that the only thing ever carried in these is hard drugs. But just asking you to open it and look at the stuff inside is too simple for them. They will pull you off to a small room and search everything, wait for the dogs to show up, etc.
:-)
I got smart after about the third trip, that I really don't need to protect my electronics that well. Now I just use a cardboard box, and they dont care. Only lost one color LCD screen in about 40 trips.
But the cases are cool, when you have to go to a customer site and impress the shit out of the suits. They can be very "james bondish" if done right
And yes, I made my own. True geeks always assemble their own stuff.
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I don't know about America, but here in the land of downunder, you can get shirts with two little penguins as the logo. This is in fact the logo for the company that makes said shirts. I assume that they're still being made, seeing that I haven't seen them advertised heavily on TV recently, nor have I checked in a clothes store recently.
-- Martin
Well, the usual boring stuff can be found at the local Comp USA or Babbages, including Circuit Board Keychains, Clipboards, and Day-Books... But isn't the essence of geek ware to make it yourself?? I work at newspaper where we used to use the bullets and pneumatic tubes, and the left over bullets make great change holders, pen holders, and attaching a handle makes a groovy tranparent lexan tool kit for screwdrivers and such. Also a left over tampon dispenser made a great "help request form" holder for the front door to my office.
Gut the sheetmetal from an old PC case, preferably the screwless kind, and add a handle, and you have a breifcase. AT ports become a great place to make a pencil/pen holder that is accessible from the outside, as well as the old serial port holes making useful for an eraser etc... A slimline calculator can be put on tracks inside the floppy slot. Mine is my olde Packard Bell 286, and I just joke with people that I have finally found a use for a Packard Bell... Again, put your "Hacker Inside" logo on the front and you'll be the envy of Linux Expo.
But c'mon, you're a geek! Use your imagination. I have even used the old platters from our RLL hard drives to make an attractive desk cover. I'm talking the big suckers that used to attach to our PDP-7's. An Autokon front panel with a light bulb and a rotating multicolored transparent sheet makes an attractive wall covering.
Hmmm, Maybe I sould start a website selling this stuff....
Jason Maggard
Richmond Times-Disgrace
I'm starting a business soon called GeekShirts ( http://geekshirts.com) which will be devoted to selling cool and stylish geek wearables. The website currently shows only a few design ideas, but there will be lots more stuff in the coming weeks. If you have some product requests or ideas, let me know and I'll do my best to make them available through the site. Cheers. Ian Wojtowicz
I recently got a cool shirt as a gift -- a polo-style shirt featuring Marvin the Martian with the caption "As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist."
You can get it at the Warner Brothers store in the local mall...
Last fall I visited the Computer Museum in Boston , whose gift store had a wide variety of items made from old circuit boards -- binders, notebooks, planners . . . I think they even had a breifcase. I bought a gorgeous pair of earrings there made from chip frames.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. -- G.K. Chesterton
Geek Culture has some cool geek caps (is that an oxymoron?).... the hacker hats are especially quite cool, with the scary skull on it. Their T-shirts are OK too, I bought a glow-in-the-dark alien one that I'm very fond of.
www.everglide.com
Yes, it's a mousepad.
No, it's not a lubricatant.
There's lots of interesting stuff at our site www.hotbox.co.uk Chess sets made of shot glasses, pictures made from pi, programmable frisbees, puzzles with a first prize of $1.6 million etc etc
Intel Inside has several really neat items. besides the jackets/t-shirts/hats/etc... they have really neat jewellery items like earings pendants etc... that seem really cool One of my favorite items is a P2 chip mounted in Pewter to be worn as a pendant. get your BunnyPeople dolls, shirts, and other stuff.- http://www.intel.com/intel/intelis/shop/bunny.htm
Eh?
Edmund Scientific
The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild
I don't know about you, but I'm wearing Mozilla underwear right now! Unfortunately, it seems to have been discontinued: along with all other Mozilla items! I can't find any of them in the Netscape store. There used to be a ton of things with Mozilla on them: beach towels, hats, there was even a Mozilla beanie baby. But no more.
This is a sad day.
(A few weeks ago I was riding my bicycle in downtown SF, and someone saw my mozilla.org sticker and yelled out, ``Go Mozilla!'' I thought that was pretty cool.)
The company is surprisingly enough Pengiun... and you can still get them at places like K-Mart, Tareget, Dimmey's Forges, and in the bargain basement at Myers/Grace Brothers.
I think they are around $5-10 still
lounge around on the blue couch
Here's a page that I found a while back while looking for some stuff on PICs.
e x.html
http://www.bobblick.com/bob/projects/mclock/ind
Janic sans Cookie.
Our office is using one of the original CD-ROM :-)
drives (single-speed, own enclosure) as an
audio CD player. Very, very funny when visitors
try to express their amazement at a CD-ROM
player, well, umm, playing CDs
We also have the compulsory Mac fishtank (real
water, glass pebbles and fish). When iMacs
get obsoleted they will look *so* cool filled
with water.
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
-=Ellis (D)25=-
What does my keyboard count for?