Listen to rock music, from a rock!

Friday, April 23^rd, 2010 Netcast 1075.   Back to Dick’s Gadget Warehouse

Here's the bottom of the rock that faces down. It has the speaker, volume control & battery compartment.Almost 20 years ago a company called Datawave introduced something very unique for its time. It was the Datawave Wireless Rock Speaker System. For about $160 you got a pretty realistic looking fiberglass rock with a built in amplifier, receiver and speaker. Datawave went a little overboard when they called their new product a “combination of technology and Hollywood Movie Magic”. The fake fiberglass rock was designed for the garden. The speaker and electronics inside the speaker faced down toward the ground to shield it from the elements. Also in the Datawave box was a transmitter that hooked to your stereo indoors. It included cables so you could use the RCA audio out jacks (the red and white ones) or even the headphone jack to connect your music source to the Datawave transmitter. Four D batteries powered the speaker and the transmitter came with its own AC adapter. Using “advanced FM technology” -- again referring to the info from the Datawave instruction manual – you could transmit your music up to 150 feet away. Because it used FM it didn’t matter much what was in-between your transmitter and the outdoor speaker. Since the “rock” was battery powered it had a convenient “auto off” feature. If there was no music being played, it would shut down. There was even a “mic in” jack on the transmitter so you can ‘broadcast” announcements to your friends outside within ear shot of the Datawave rock. The mic was optional. Of course now there are lots of outdoor rock shaped speaker systems on the market, but Datawave was among the first! 

Hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1075

Do you or someone you know suffer from dysphagia? Do you know what is it?

Thursday, April 22^nd, 2010, Netcast 1074 

A listener, John Stewart, wrote to tell me about this gadget. He has an elderly parent who can’t swallow large pills and isn’t strong enough to grind them up by hand. So he did a web search and found the VitaCarry Handheld Power Pill Grinder. It’s for people who suffer from dysphagia. That is the medical name which describes people who have difficulty swallowing. (It’s easy to confuse with dysphasia, which very loosely defined applies to people who have difficulty speaking.) The VitaCarry Power Pill Grinder is battery operated so it easier to use and more convenient than a conventional pill crusher, an old fashioned mortar and pestle, or a hand-powered pill grinder. You just have to push a single button, so it’s easy to use for adults, children, or even pets who have trouble swallowing large pills. You can either grind the pills into a small holding container attached to the unit, or you can remove the container and grind pills straight into food or beverages. If a pill is very big, it will have to be broken in two so it fits into the grinding chamber. The grinding cartridge is easily removed for cleaning by hand or in the dishwasher. The VitaCarry electronic pill grinder is about the size of a pack of playing cards so you can take it on the go. It requires 3 AAA batteries which some places include and some don’t. Under $30. 

http://www.vitacarry.com/ 

I haven’t bought anything here, but this place sells it for under $24, cheaper if you buy two: http://www.bluffcitywholesale.com/php/products.php?prod_id=439D 

Hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1074

Here’s something you can see in 3D without wearing special glasses!

Wednesday, April 21^st, 2010, Netcast 1073 

We’re talked about 3D printing quite a few times on the Daily Giz Wiz. That’s where you design a product like a new toy with a 3D program and then use a special printer to render a real life a 3-D model. (I know the word “print” doesn’t seem to really describe the process.) Wild Planet has one of the least expensive 3D printers, which costs about $60,000. But now there’s a way to design your own 3D model and have the folks at Shapeways bring it into 3D reality! For the first time, 3D artists, architects, product designers and consumers of all skill levels can order their 3D designs as physical printed objects easily online. Whether you want to create a new utensil, the ultimate toy or wacky piece of art, you can Do-It-Yourself. Shapeways lets users create modify their designs, or import them from popular 3D modeling software. And this is important! In a few clicks, Shapeways checks whether the object can be made and provides a real-time cost estimate. Within 10 working days, a tangible 3D product is produced and delivered globally. The instant price quotes for products are based on the material selected. The company says the average cost runs about $50 to $150. They told me to design something of my own and they would “print it” as a demo of what they can do. I used one of their templates to make that Giz Wiz vase in the photo. It says: “Dick DeBartolo, The Giz Wiz” in letters that circles around the entire vase. It really looks good with a glass inside. They sent me a gift certificate, but had I paid for it, it would have been $62.50 delivered. Objects can be created in White Strong & Flexible (SLS), Cream Robust (FDM), White Detail and Transparent detail. Additional materials will soon follow. I certainly had no 3D experience, and yet I found it very easy to create that vase. There is a ton more info at the company website:  

www.shapeways.com

Hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1073

Leo Turns This Turn The Table Tuesday Over To Jammerb!

Tuesday, April 20^th, 2010, Netcast 1072  

About an hour before midnight, March 31^st, Jammerb, otherwise known as TWiT John (John works at TWiT) sent me an email reminder that at midnight central time, the Woot April Fool’s game would begin. That’s the game where you may win a chance to buy Woot’s famous “box of crap” (a.k.a. “box of carp” for reasons I do not know.) The box of crap might be just that, stuff lying around the warehouse that’s almost worthless. Or it could be a bonanza of useful gadgets. So many people now know about the box of crap, Woot makes it more and more difficult to be able to buy it. But if you do win a chance to buy it, it is really CHEAP! This year it was just $3, plus their standard $5 shipping fee for anything they sell. That’s just a grand total of eight bucks; an amount just about anyone is willing to gamble. To win this past April Fool’s Day game you had to solve a crime. If you uncovered one clue, you were presented with another. If you ended up lost, or at a dead-end, you could go back one step, or start over. At least I think that’s how it went. I played for 25 minutes and kept getting completely lost. I finally game up. But TWiT John kept playing and in 30 minutes had won the right to buy a box of crap. He did buy it, but the Woot website was so busy, he didn’t get a confirmation that his money was accepted until about 40 minutes later. When John emailed me that he had indeed bought a “box of crap” I asked him to do me a favor. Once a box arrived to wait until a Turn The Table Tuesday to open it so we all could share in the excitement. That’s what John did. His box of crap wasn’t crap, but then again it wasn’t a box of high tech stuff like MP3 players & digital cameras that some people have gotten in the past. Here’s what John got:  

1 x High School Musical Decal Wall Clock

1 x pair of Woot-Off lights (These are mini-strobe lights, one red, one blue)

5 x boxes of Christmas cards

8 x metal toy tractors

John told me that while looking over the Woot forum he found a guy who received a pallet weighing over 1,000 pounds. It was stacked with 864 bottles of car wax! I think John got the better deal. I live in a small apartment! Here’s that winners video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89F-TOVQtrI

Hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1072

Stick these in your ears! And like it!

Monday, April 19^th, 2010, Netcast 1071 

This is the complete kit minus of course, the iPod!Leo loves his Etymotic earphones. They do not provide “active noise reduction” the way, say Bose headphones do. However they still block outside noise because they’re designed to operate deep in your ears. It takes some getting used to, and some people don’t like the idea of pushing earbuds really deep into the ear. (It does make for far better bass reproduction in my experience.)  Leo happens to like that design and I thought I had found a gadget he might not own or even know about. They’re the wireless ety8 in-the-ear Bluetooth earphones from Etymotic. I should have known better! Leo has them and likes them. But he does say you will look a little strange wearing them because they’re on the large side. It’s like wearing a domino on each ear. Since Bluetooth wireless devices compress the audio signal and then decode it, there is often a loss of sound quality. To overcome this the folks at Etymotic supply an iPhone/iPod Bluetooth dongle of their own design. (You don’t need to use it and the ety8 is available for about $100 less without it.) In addition to being wireless, the ety8 has built-in controls for volume up/down, play/pause and next/previous track, that work with both iPhone/iPod (via Etymotic’s dongle) and devices using the A2DP profile. You should check the company website to find out if the ety8 will work correctly with your device. This technology is not inexpensive. The price with the Bluetooth Adapter & travel pouch is $249 / earphones alone $159. (If you do a web search you can find the kit for about $30 less.) 

www.etymotic.com 

Hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1071