Make: Online: Gadgets Archives

Gadgets Archive: Gadgets

February 8, 2010

Papercraft Surrogate iPad

Can't wait to cozy up to the new Apple iPad? Why not try your hand at constructing this handsome papercraft surrogate? Here's links to the front and back. It may not have access to your iTunes or eBooks like the real thing, but it does share its good looks and lack of multitasking, GPS, and camera. [via MacRumors]

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February 6, 2010

ChumbyChimp and Po

Back when I got my Chumby Guts kit a few months ago, I imagined that it would be pretty funny to set up it up Teletubby style with the screen in the belly of a plushie. At the time, I didn't have a suitable doll to sacrifice at the alter of maker fun, but like Kent Barnes, I did have the box it came in. I like the alarm clock features, and enjoy being chirped awake. Eventually, though, the box kind of wore out, and my Chumby Guts lay loose on the night table.

Sunsue heard my call for a sacrificial Teletubby and found me a Po doll. When I saw it, I realized that this one would not work, since it is smaller than the ones my daughter used to have. It does have an interesting voice box, so that will come in handy some other day. A bit later, I fell upon a Build A Bear monkey at the Duxbury Mall. In his first invasive surgery, I found the heart, bar code and a monkey voice box with a dead battery. After swapping out the dead battery, I hid the voice box in my daughter's school bag, where it occasionally went off (ooh ooh aaah aah) as she bumped the bag. It now sits atop her social studies teacher's desk as a warning signal for those about to get a detention.

The monkey looked like he was on a starvation diet for a couple of weeks, as his stuffing sat in a bag in the cave as waited for the right moment to do the next operation. Eventually I got tired of loose ChumGutz on the night table and got together with my neighbor, Robin. She's pretty crafty and I figured would have some good techniques for the project. We went over and got to it. A few snips in the belly and monkey boy had gastric bypass of a kind. We hot melt glued the screen in place. Then I removed the speakers from the plastic holder and fit the circuit board inside the body behind the screen. I thought that I would have the switch loose, but left it attached over the power input and usb connectors. We re-stuffed him and he became ChumbyChimp. He is pretty happy to hang out with Po, and even gets to spend a little time with Creepy Baby.

This is the third iteration for my Chumby Guts, and I suppose that it will be a somewhat transitional situation. It would be useful to sew an old PDA stylus into his hand. That way it will always be easy to make accurate selections on the screen. I would like to put in some iMac ball speakers left over from the 50 iMacs project into the body instead of the nice little box speakers it came with. It would also be neat to add a switch to the hand with either a tactile switch or some conductive thread. I would definitely like to explore battery power, if only to add a bit of portability between locations in the house. The kitchen counter is a decent location, and with the right widgets ChumbyChimp really adds to the room.

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January 29, 2010

AirMouse, a cyberpunk-styled, hand-mounted mouse

The AirMouse begins with the human form and builds functionality around it. The AirMouse is composed of a lightweight durable fabric that seamlessly aligns itself with the ligaments of your hand and wrist and assists them into a neutral posture during use preventing you from developing computer-related repetitive stress injuries such as carpel tunnel syndrome normally associated with other computer mouse use.

I'm not sure I really buy that this is better than a mouse -- in my experience, the goal is to find the perfect posture and then move your hand as little as possible. Waving your hand around or hovering it seems like it would cause more stress rather than less. On the plus side, this bad boy would look great with your Thompson Eyephones. [via gizmag]

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Weekend Project: Rumble Mouse

January 23, 2010

Portable wind turbine

This project, by designers Marcos Madia, Sergio Ohashi and Juan Manuel Pantano, explores the idea of a folding wind turbine. The artwork suggests the turbine could generate 600 watts, what do you think, O readers? [via Inhabitat]

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January 20, 2010

Flashback: Geared up with a gunbelt and leg holster

Back in MAKE Volume 05, Chicago Sun-Times technology columnist Andy Ihnatko offered two fun gear-related DIYs: one on how to get VIP treatment by dressing the part of a pro photographer and the other on using a gunbelt and leg holster to hold your gear. The caption that ran in the magazine under the images of Andy below was: "How flexible is a gunbelt system for carrying your stuff? Flexible enough that you'll no longer bristle at a concert event's 'No Bags or Backpacks' policy. I keep a pouch containing iPod speakers, a canister of Pringles, and a thermos of frozen dacquiris ... or as I like to call it, the 'Date-In-A-Bag.'" Andy makes me smile, and I do love repurposing. Check it out. You can also still pick up a back issue of Volume 05, the Outdoor Issue, in the Maker Shed.

Geared Up
By Andy Ihnatko

We geeks have a crackhead-like dependence on personal electronics, gizmos, tools, and other modern fetish objects. Things like pocket computers, smartphones, LED flashlights, USB thumbdrives, multitools, ZipLinq cables, notepads, digital cameras, spare batteries, and GPS units enhance our lives in obvious and inexplicable ways, but we can't deny that living in the Push-Button World of Tomorrow greatly complicates the otherwise straightforward task of changing one's pants.

Every night, you have to empty all of your pockets. Every morning, you have to fill 'em up again. And portable pockets (in the form of belt pouches) are a mere Band-Aid solution. Unless your electronics are machine-washable, you still need to unthread them from your belt and reinstall them over and over again, morning after morning. Decent men and women change their pants every day, so what else can you do?

Well, you can head off to your nearest police supply store and buy yourself a genuine, professional duty belt. With your pouches suspended off of that wide band of stiff, thick nylon or leather (structurally speaking, it acts more like a supporting frame than a belt), a simple click of the buckle leaves 6 pounds and $1,200 worth of personal electronics hanging off your bedpost until you get dressed again in the morning. And no, whistling the Clint Eastwood theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as you put it on isn't at all inappropriate.

My day-to-day gunbelt configuration consists of a medium-size pouch for my cellphone, iPod, and PDA, plus a holder for my Leatherman tool. But with a drawer full of pouches purchased over the years at various camping and photo stores, I can easily add capacity to suit the situation.

For the ultimate in added capacity and conven-ience, buy yourself a leg holster, which allows you to quick-draw your smartphone, even when you're sitting down or wearing a jacket. Tactical Tailor (tacticaltailor.com) manufactures equipment for urban SWAT units and Army Rangers. They make a "Modular Leg Rig" that can be custom-configured to your specific needs, along with a wide array of pouches that can easily be perverted to nonlethal, geeky needs and will hold everything but your PowerBook.

When I attend trade shows and conferences, my usual gunbelt is supplemented by TT's small leg rig. I've configured it with their adjustable Small Radio Pouch (which is perfect for a PDA or a chunky smartphone), a Small Utility Pouch for my camera, plus the real superstar of their line: the compact, compartmented Multi-Purpose Pouch, flexible enough to hold anything from a folding PDA keyboard to a palmcorder. You can even mount most third-party belt pouches to the leg rig, using Tactical Tailor's "Malice Clip" system.

Gunbelts are a perfect answer to the blight of personal electronics. I've been wearing one for years, and its value has only increased with recent tightening of airport and building security. Yes, indeed: I routinely walk through airport security while wearing a police gunbelt and a SWAT tactical leg holster, and I haven't been held in a windowless room without charge even once. To the contrary, screeners and passengers are relieved to encounter a geek who can get all of his personal gear on the conveyor and walk through the archway after just two seconds of fiddling with a buckle, instead of holding up the line for five minutes while he desperately curses and pats himself down.

Just, um, be sure to refer to your gunbelt as a "utility belt" while you're in the facility.

January 19, 2010

Alt.CES: Video-recording ball point pen

The stylish looking black ballpoint pen has hidden talents as it contains a pinhole video camera so small you almost can't see that it's there. The PenCam's intelligent design includes 2GB of built-in internal memory for storing your video. Viewing or copying the videos is easy, and you can connect the standard USB plug straight into your computer to view your movies. No special cables, no adapters, no drivers, no worries! What's more, you can use the USB port to recharge the pen's battery to give up to 90 minutes of video recording time before needing recharging again. The PenCam DVR is perfect for sales people, lawyers, law enforcement, mystery shopping, covert surveillance or internet fun. It's an affordable business person's accessory or a cool gift idea!

• Captures color AVI videos in 640 x 480 & still images in 1280 x 960 resolution
• Footage recorded on 2GB internal memory; 1 hour of video & 9,000 still images
• Integrated USB connector allows for easy video/image back-up
• Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery lasts 90 minutes on a full charge
• Built-in microphone

One could imagine how wobbly and nausea-inducing the video would be -- particularly while the pen is being used for writing! Still, this looks like a fairly impressive package with a lot of gear packed into the pen's barrel. Totally James Bond circa Octopussy.

What do you think, readers? A $99 gizmo that will never get used or a serious tool for "sales people, lawyers, [and] law enforcement"?

Alt.CES - EyeClops digital optics toys

The Jakks Pacific EyeClops brand made waves back around the 2007 holiday season with their super magnifying camera toy, which set a successful design strategy they've since followed up on with their Night Vision 2.0 and Mini Projector toys: Take a professional piece of digital optics and make a functional $50 toy version.

I bought both their active night vision and video projector toys for my nephews this last Xmas. The older of the two, Michael, agreed to review them for us:

EyeClops Night Vision 2.0 Infrared Stealth Binoculars

When I saw this, my first impression was that it was probably a fake. I thought it wouldn't actually be much better than my eyes most of the time. I was wrong. The infra-red system does work. This toy has two settings for the infra-red light. The low setting emits no visible light, and detected a person wearing blue jeans and a dark green shirt about thirty feet away. On high, it emits some dark red light and managed to pick up the same person 77 feet away, which was better than I could do with my eyes. The image is displayed on a screen inside the object, which can be set to display black-and-white or black-and-green. Unfortunately, the detail isn't too great. Faraway things appear only as white outlines, and it requires some playing with the focus for closer stuff. It handles bright lights well, although it does tend to be washed out in bright areas. Overall, it's a pretty good toy.

EyeClops Mini Projector

This is a pretty cool little device. It's about the right size to fit in the palm of my hand, and yet it projects an image up to 60". Understandably, the speakers are rather small. It comes with an AC adaptor and a battery base. The package says the batteries last for 270 hours, but I haven't used it that long so I don't know. I tested it in the shadow of our TV in a lighted room during the daytime, and it clearly projected an approximately 20" image. Understandably, it needs a dark place to be able to project a 60" image, but it's fairly bright for such a small projector. It accepts RCA audio and video input, and features a headphone port. It's a good little device to take with you on trips.

[Thanks, Michael!]

Dell Mini 5 teardown

Hot on the heels of the iFixit Nexus One teardown, this Dell Mini 5 teardown by the folks at tinhte.com strips the MID to the bone to reveal a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 3G radio. [via AndroidWorld.it]

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Alt.CES: Flexible e-paper newspapers

Oddly, electronics manufacturer LG chose not to announce their revolutionary-seeming invention -- flexible e-paper in A3 size -- at CES. From their press release:

LG Display has announced its development of a newspaper-size flexible e-paper. The 19-inch wide (250x400mm) flexible e-paper is almost as big as a page of A3 sized newspaper. The product is optimized for an e-newspaper and able to convey the feeling of reading an actual newspaper. Additionally, as the product measures 0.3 millimeters thin, the e-paper weighs just 130 grams despite its 19-inch size.

LG Display arranged TFT on metal foil rather than glass substrate, allowing the e-paper display to recover its original shape after being bent. The use of a metal foil substrate makes the e-paper both flexible and durable while maintaining display qualities. In particular, LG Display applied GIP (gate-in-panel) technology which integrates the gate driver IC onto the panel. This improves its flexibility by removing driver ICs which are attached to the side of panel and hinder the bending of the display.

Any thoughts on why they didn't want to wow the crowd at CES? What are the odds that this technology will spawn a viable product anytime soon?

[via Dvice]

January 14, 2010

Alt.CES: I just want ONE remote control

Some day our grandchildren will look at photos of remote controls and laugh uproariously at how tacky, inefficient and impractical they are/were.

Seriously, why can't anyone do remote controls right? Most remotes have dozens of buttons, most of which you never use. And you need several remotes just to do anything... one to turn on the TV, a cable remote, DVD, stereo, TiVo... And if you lose one of the remotes in a couch cushion, good luck trying to navigate menus with the buttons on the unit itself.

The closest I've found to a satisfying remote control experience is using my iPhone to interface with my AppleTV. It connects via wifi so I can start or stop music or movies anywhere in the house, and it uses the phone's touchscreen to provide gestural navigation. Of course, if I want to turn on my TV I'll need the TV remote for that.

Come on, personal electronics makers, get on the stick and make the remote control (as we know it) obsolete!

[image, CC]

January 12, 2010

Alex Rider contest WINNERS!

Thanks to everyone who entered the Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest! We had a great time checking out all of the entries with lasers, grappling hooks, and other spy-stealth goodies, all designed by Alex Rider fans ages 8-18. It was a hard decision, but the winners are in!

Grand Prize Winner:

The Listening Cup by "nic", who writes:

Many people have used cups to eavesdrop through walls and doors, but I don't think it works very well. This is the eavesdropping cup with a modern improvement: It has a built-in mic and small amplifier circuit built into the fake bottom. A small earbud speaker on the very bottom of the cup lets the user hear everything.

Project Materials:

an opaque plastic cup

a small circle of plastic to form the fake bottom

circular PCB

an amplifier IC (like the LM386)

a small speaker, like an earbud speaker or similar (can be pretty much any size, just so long it fits in the cup!)

a small microphone sensor

a little trimpot to adjust volume

a coin cell or an external (hopefully hidden) power source

Nic will receive the grand prize package which includes:

A signed collection of hardcover Alex Rider novels
iPod nano with a personalized message from author Anthony Horowitz
A backpack full of goodies and gadgets from the Maker Shed
And The Listening Cup will be built by MAKE Labs and featured on Make: Online!

Runners Up:

Copter Cam Aerial Recon/Surveillance unit by "The Bear Builder," who writes:

This looks like a fountain pen. Inside is a disposable flying camera and transmitter based on the design of an ash tree seed pod, and vertically launched with a simple rubber band catapult up to about 200 feet up. As it slowly spirals down, it feeds a 360-degree scan of the area via wi-fi to Alex's PDA or cell phone. Software in the PDA decodes the spiral scan into a scrollable 360-degree still image in 2-D or 3-D.

Project Materials: Advanced lithium watch battery is tiny, holds a charge a long time but has high output for the short run time of the camera and transmitter. The copter part is made of molded plastic, so as not to show up on radar, and the single airfoil blade contains the transmitter wire embedded in its leading edge. The really complicated part is the software in the PDA that senses repeating bright and dark points in the spinning video feed and lines them up to progressively build a scanned image much like an early mechanical TV camera. By layering identical angles from two offset heights, you can create stereoscopic 3-D stills as well.

Inspiration for creating this gadget: We play with rubber-band-launched whirligig toys in the summer time, and it is fun in fall to watch ash and maple seeds fly down. This unit is based mostly on an ash tree seed which fits the secret fountain pen better than the fatter maple leaf pod shape. Right now university researchers are working on radio-controlled versions of this idea, called "monocopters", but my version is non-motorized, slim and small; a light-weight, one-time-use spy tool version that's very stealthy. The rubber band launcher is low-tech, efficient, common and innocuous, a good thing for spy tools.

Scenario in which you would use this gadget: Anywhere you need a quick bird's-eye view, you would shoot this silently up overhead, and grab a 360-degree scrollable aerial view, in 2-D at night, optional 3-D in daylight. Good for getting a current sense of the "Big Picture" where you don't have Google Maps, or seeing the bad guys you are chasing from a safe distance, revealing any ambush they may have planned. What's on the roof of that building? How do I get out of this maze? The copter cam can show you.

Altoids Tin Rangefinder by "electronicsguru," who writes:

This is a fully operational "time-of-flight" style laser rangefinder that fits perfectly inside of an Altoids tin. Enclosed in the tin are 4 things : #1: x7 viewfinder #2: Nd:YAG transmitting laser with appropriate circuitry #3: Receiver with appropriate circuitry and LCD screen #4: 6 VDC Li-PO battery pack To use the rangefinder, the lid is first opened. Since the viewfinder is on the same hinge, when the lid opens, it pops up as well. Then the battery pack is connected to the circuits, powering them up. Then the receiver is pulled up, then the laser it pulled up. The receiver and laser are already perfectly calibrated to align.The laser transmits continually and the receiver picks it up. The range, azimuth, and elevation is then shown on the LCD connected the receiver circuit board in whatever units Alex chooses. To stabilize the rangefinder, three stick pens with holes drilled in then 3/4 of the way up are held together with a steel pin. The writing end sticks into whatever strata Alex happens to be on, while the opposite end has adhesive dots to stick to the bottom of the tin.

Scenario in which you would use this gadget: Alex Rider is behind enemy lines in a foreign country and in a jam. There is an enemy fortification in the distance preventing him from continuing his mission and he needs to hit it with some artillery fire from support behind him. He uses the rangefinder to calculate the azimuth and elevation of the target as well as the distance away from him so the artillery will not hit him. He calls in the information to the support and they hit it dead on. Alex is victorious and can continue with his mission.

The Bear Builder and electronicsguru will each receive:

A signed hardcover copy of Crocodile Tears
An Alex Rider t-shirt

Congrats to the three winners and thanks to everybody who participated!

January 9, 2010

Tor Bridge on chumby One

C1 Tor
Cool project - Bunnie (designer of the Chumby) writes -

Tor is an open-source project that is dear to me for many reasons. For those who are unfamiliar with it, in a nutshell, Tor can enhance your anonymity on the internet: it obscures who you are, and what sites you are visiting. This is important, especially for people who live and work in oppressive regimes where direct access to on-line social networking is restricted, and where your opinions can put your life at risk. Protecting free speech is important to me.

Recently, Jacob Appelbaum pinged me and asked if it would be possible to make a Tor Bridge Relay client for the chumby One. Bridge relays are needed because policy-making entities can “filter” Tor by querying the list of public Tor exit and entrance nodes, and consequently direct the country’s internet authorities to block all Tor nodes. In other words, once you enter Tor, you have enhanced anonymity, but Tor itself has a clear and public footprint on the internet. Because of its well-defined footprint, someone with sufficient authority can “cut it out” by simply ripping out all of its connections to the rest of the world.

January 8, 2010

Alt.CES: Google Nexus One an iPhone Killer?

Take a look inside Google's brand new unlocked mobile phone, Nexus One, and see how it matches up to the Apple iPhone 3GS. More details at Google Phone

Alt.CES: Wood-housed electronica: ostensibly green or faux-maker?

One of the products released at this year's CES is iWave's Grass Roots Collection of personal electronics accessories -- iPhone cases, earbuds, and earphones, all cased in recycled wood.

They're due out Q2 of 2010 with a MSRP of $10-40.

iWave's press release explains:

The design-forward electronic accessory company is offering its loyal customers the opportunity to enjoy the green lifestyle without having to sacrifice stylish appeal to do so. The Grass Roots Collection will offer a selection of accessory options, including headphones, earbuds and cases for the iPhone/iPod, all made from reusable, environmentally friendly and fully recyclable materials like plastic, wood and bamboo.

Setting aside for the moment whether Grass Roots accessories really are green -- I'll take their word for it -- my first thought on looking at these was that they're meant to look like DIYers modded them.

This begs the question: are we going to start seeing companies mimicking the garage-borne aesthetic of maker projects? What would headphones look like if Kaden Harris built them? Will the low-rez look of Makerbot output catch on?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

January 7, 2010

Alt.CES: Everything's amazing and nobody's happy

The gadget orgy of CES, and the angry kerfuffle over the SparkFun Free Day, made me think of this viral video from an appearance of comedian Louis CK on Conan O'Brien. We take so much of our modern technology and modern services for granted. They seem to almost instantaneously become birthrights to us.

Example: A few months after getting my first iPhone, my son and I went out to lunch. It was the middle of the workday and we were in the middle of putting one of our Make: Books to bed. Thanks to the iPhone, I was able to continue to answer the flurry of email that was gusted into my inbox as we waited for our meal. But this was the first-gen iPhone, with that lovable Edge technology. It was taking "forever" for my mail to load and my responses to woosh their way back out into the aether. I started cursing. My son said: "Yeah, it's such a drag to have to wait a few seconds to answer your email, on your phone, while you're out having lunch." It definitely put a different perspective on things. Without this net phone, I wouldn't have been able to go out to lunch, wouldn't have been able to read and answer any mail, at any speed -- and I hadn't been capable of doing such a thing just a couple of months before. But already, I treated high-speed Net services on my mobile like a right that was being cruelly denied to me.

Louis uses this very example in the video ("Give it a second. It's going into SPACE!"). And the part about how we all take air travel utterly for granted is poignant.

Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy [Non-embeddable video]

Alt.CES: D-Link announces Boxee Box, now in Dali-esque form-factor

One of the CES hardware announcements that looks interesting to us is D-Link's Boxee Box, a media player built around the open/closed source Boxee application (Boxee is a "fork" of the open source XBMC media center software, with some closed, proprietary code bolted on). The Boxee Box will play Adobe Flash 10.1, H.264 (MKV, MOV), MPEG-4, Xvid, Divx, and other video formats, and will feature built-in 802.11n wireless. The Box can play 1080p video from locally-stored content and stream HD video content over the net. It has one HDMI connector, two USB 2.0, Ethernet, plus composite audio, and S/PDIF output. There is no internal hard drive(!) but there is an SD card slot.

Announced today is the fact that the Boxee Box uses the NVIDIA Tegra 2 (T20) system-on-a-chip. The T20 is built around a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU which can hopefully deliver some of the graphics power for which NVIDIA is known. A lot of people have installed the Boxee software on other computers and media player hardware, and have developed plug-ins for the software. It'll be interesting to see what they'll do with the Boxee Box, which is allegedly going to sell for under $200.

(And, BTW: You have NOT skipped a dose of your medication. The Boxee Box really does look like it's melting into the shelf it sits on. Hey, who said that boxes have to be rectilinear? Not really sure what to make of it. It's different, I'll give it that...)

The Boxee Box from D-Link

Alt.CES: EPOC neuroheadset as a loop controller

Emotiv's EPOC neurosensor headset offers the ability to convert brainwave signals to keystrokes on a PC. Tron of Illuminated Sounds recently acquired an EPOC and posted this quick demo of the interface triggering beats in Ableton Live -

It should be interesting to see how much the response time can be improved given a bit more practice/experience with the device. Once that's covered we can hopefully move on to the much-promised flying cars.

January 6, 2010

Alt.CES: Oregon Scientific's wireless energy monitor

One of the offerings at this year's CES that caught my eye was Oregon Scientific's Advanced Wireless Appliance Manager. This basically works the same as an Energy Logger, but without the disadvantages of only one plug in and having to lean down to your outlet to see your totals (a problem the tweet-a-watt doesn't have, BTW!). Its stand-out feature is that the display can be programed to receive the wireless signals from up to eight plugs throughout your house, totaling up the amounts spent each month. However, it appears to lack the robust logging technology some users may require. For instance, Extech's EM100 has a SD card slot for exporting months worth of data, and comes with analysis software.

Available August/September for a MSRP of $80.

A display that can receive up to eight discrete wireless signals? I'd love to see what hardware hackers will do with this baby.

More:

Alt.CES 2010 - MAKE's take on gadget mania

Make Pt1582

Let's be perfectly clear. We love gadgets here at MAKE. We like technology that works. Technology that expands ones reach and abilities. Technology that's fun, challenging, and rewarding to fiddle with, improve. And technology that's just darn cool. But there are gadget freaks like us, and then there's the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the annual orgy of gadget exhibitionism that's equal parts personal technology uber-convention, PT Barnum-worthy 3-ring circus of silliness, and traveling snake-oil theater (not to mention the black-out Bacchanal that happens after-hours). Fittingly, it happens in Vegas.

Now all that might sound like fun, and it can be, at least the first time or two, and the first few miles worn off the shoe leather. But then the surreality of it all starts to kick in, everybody starts sounding like polyester hucksters (even your blog buddies), and the phoniness of Vegas starts to overwhelm the whole enterprise. It's definitely not necessarily a friendly place for those who prefer their technology... slower, more perennial, more about function than hype, more thoughtfully designed and presented; tech that would satisfy the Maker's Bill of Rights. Technology that doesn't suck, basically. There's a lot of technology there that just plain sucks; gilded techno-turds that consumer electronics companies hope they can put over on you with enough razzle-dazzle and endless swag stuffed into your gimme bags by barely-dressed "booth babes."

Last year, here on MAKE, we started the tradition of covering CES from a safe distance, and a skewed angle. The idea is to train the lens of MAKE onto what's coming out of CES and ask: Would this interest makers? What can makers do with this? Is it hackable? Is it open source? Can it be combined with other technology to create something truly interesting and useful? And CES gives us an opportunity to think about technologies that we really wish were being shown there, technologies that don't exist yet. And, to keep all of our technolust in check, we want to take a giggly little look at technologies of the past that promised us the world, but delivered something that smelled more like, well something far less than the world... and a lot stinkier!

So, over the next week, we're going to be looking at CES through the funhouse mirror-world we call alt.CES. This also kicks off our monthly theme for January: Gadget Hacking. For the entire month, we'll hold our own little gadget gathering, taking a look at the gadgets we love, how we can keep them running, improve them, morph them into other useful gadgets, or short of that, make them into a decorative planter.

If you see anything in the CES coverage that strikes your fancy, or incites your ire, tell us about it in comments. And tell us some of your "jetpack future" wishes, things you'd like to see on the CES showroom floor.

More:
Alt.CES wrap-up, 2009

January 1, 2010

Say Hello to iLamp

6A00D8341Bfa6953Ef01287692E2D5970C-800Wi
iLove this lamp!

On January 7, 2002 Steve Jobs introduced a beautifully redesigned iMac loaded with an 800 MHz PowerPC 7445 (G4) processor and 15" Flat Panel LCD screen. The new iMac was nicknamed the "iLamp, since Apple advertised it as having the flexibility of a desk lamp. Almost eight years since the official launch, our old friend iMac has actually been reimagined as a proper desk lamp. Because old macs never really die... they just continue on as works of art.
Designer Randal180 has three of these clever creations for sale on Etsy. Expect to pay $75 each plus $20 dollars for shipping. It's the coolest way to light up your life like it's 2002.

I see Gareth spotted this earlier too, great project to remake!