Gadgets and Gizmos and Doo-dads, oh my!

You know what? I’m tired of reading and writing articles full of Doom & Gloom about computers. I feel like the love-child of Chicken Little and Schleprock… “Wowzee-wowzee, woo-woo! The sky is falling!” There are plenty of great things online like kids' sites such as PBSkids.org, websites to help you save money like Fatwallet.com, and, of course, there’s Facebook. One of my favorite things, though, is “window-shopping” gadgets and gizmos. The majority of the stuff I see elicits a feeling of “What were they thinking?!?”, but every so often I get the occasional “Why didn’t I think of that??” Here is a little of both for you to enjoy. :^)

I found this little gem on HackedGadgets.com. It’s called the Isophone and it’s a designed to keep you from getting distracted while on the phone. Sounds great, right? Riiiight... It’s a combination isolation chamber and telephone. You put on a helmet that blocks out all peripheral sensory distraction and has a hands-free phone built in. Oh yeah, it’s also a flotation device (just like your airplane seat cushion, but not as stinky!). Once you have it on, you hop into a pool of water that is heated to match your body temperature “blurring the physical boundaries of the user’s body”, according to the manufacturer. The helmet-phone-floatee thing keeps your head above water at a comfortable (hopefully) angle, so you can chat away. According to the website, “Floating in this manner frees up to 90% of the brains workload normally engaged with calculating the lie of gravity.” I don’t know anyone that I would talk to on the phone that I want to concentrate that much on! Well, at least not anyone that I can call for less than $1.99 a minute. ;^)

Tired of the workout of slicing pizza the old-fashioned way? Dread the sore arms and aching back you know is coming the morning after serving up a piping-hot Digornio frozen Pizza? Ouch! Well, do I have something for you! The Pizza Pro 3000! Engadget.com brings us this little kitchen utensil that looks like it belongs in a woodshop. It’s a circular saw for pizza! It looks like a little buzzsaw that fits in one hand, but it’s not powered, battery or otherwise. Actually, it would probably work pretty well!

Here are a couple of devices I found in a green gadget contest on Core77.com. First, here’s a little something that I’m not quite sure about yet, though the principle is promising. It’s called the Recompute and it’s basically a PC with a cardboard case. On the surface, it’s a great idea: the case is definitely recyclable, it’s probably cheaper than standard aluminum cases, and it’s about as “green-geek” as you can get. Still, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the fact that today’s computers get really hot really fast and I don’t know if good ol’ corrugated cardboard is such a good idea. Still, the principle is interesting.

Finally, one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” ones. It’s called the sunLight. You’ve probably seen solar powered chargers for cell phones, solar battery chargers, and you’ve also seen solar powered flashlights (insert joke here), but the sunLight combines them all and does a great job of it! It’s a flexible solar panel that has 6 LED light “modules” each containing 2 AAA rechargeable batteries. You lay it out flat in the sunlight to charge and you can plug small devices like cell phones into it to charge their batteries. The coolest thing about it, though, is that when you roll it up, it becomes a rechargeable flashlight! And if you’ve ever dealt with the new LED flashlights that are out these days, you know that they are very bright and very efficient.


The Isophone: http://www.auger-loizeau.com/projects/iso/pro_iso.html

The Pizza Pro 3000: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/04/pizza-pro-like-a-circular-saw-for-your-pizza-pies/

Recompute: http://www.core77.com/greenergadgets/entry.php?projectid=32

The sunLight: http://www.core77.com/greenergadgets/entry.php?projectid=49#img151