Results tagged “gadgets” from KPAO

We've written about the Chumby quite a bit before here on KPAO (start here, continue here). One year later and I still love it and use it every day. The folks at Chumby, Inc. continue to improve the software (the updates come nearly automatically), and through that process it has become the best alarm clock ever.

Since the Chumby is really a Linux computer, it runs some pretty sophisticated software. The Alarm Clock application lets me specify multiple different kinds of alarms for different days of the week, weekends, weekdays, and so on. On some days, I have the Chumby alarm play a favorite Pandora channel for a while and show a nice weather forecast. On other days I ask it to play the KQED NPR news for 10 minutes while scrolling stock values. It's all easy to setup and understand -- about the only thing I can't get it to do is feed my cat.

The Chumby also has two USB ports on the back -- these are intended for connecting mass-storage devices like USB-sticks or iPods for playing back music through the Chumby. I don't use the ports for that purpose, but it turns out that these ports provide enough power to charge my iPhone and other USB devices. That's one less transformer that needs to be plugged into the wall, silently wasting energy.

About the only complaint I have is that it doesn't remember its last powered state. We recently upgraded our electrical panel, and the power was on and off quite a bit during that time. When the power is restored to the Chumby, it does not automatically turn itself on. Most modern computers will turn themselves back on if they lost power while on. I do have one more complaint -- it has become such a capable music player, that it really needs a remote control but now I'm starting to pick nits...

A few days ago I wrote about Gazelle, the service that buys your used gadgets from you, and thus avoiding the hassle of Craigslist. I have a gently used Nokia 6120 classic mobile phone that I'm not using anymore, so I decided to give Gazelle a shot.

With David promoting rampant consumerism over at Rated Best, (kidding! well, sort of...), I thought I'd link to an interesting new service that aims to take the pain out of selling or recycling your older gadgets. Gazelle recently launched, and they have an easy to use interface to get a quick quote, and then sell to them your used gear.

I have replaced my Nokia 6120 Classic with a first-generation iPhone -- so I'll give the system a test and report back. At the moment, they say they will pay me about $100 for my old phone -- not a horrible deal at all. Leave a comment if you have used their service -- I'm interested in how it worked.

The Police were my favorite band in high school.  I saw them twice in the '80s, both times from far reaches of cavernous stadiums, because there's no way I could have afforded the rich kid seats.

Twenty-five years later, when they came through the Bay Area on their reunion tour, my wife and I splurged.   As established Yuppies, we could now afford the rich kid seats.  The concert was an exorbitant, decadent delight.  We sat a few rows back from Sting, and had enough lunch money left over for beers.

Still, the excess of it all made me feel uneasy.  I'd never spent so much on two hours of entertainment, and didn't think I was the type to do so.  Humble beginnings, and all that.

To assuage my guilt, my wife and I came up with a system that lets us temper our consumptive ways, without having to renounce the pleasure altogether.  It also encourages the positive habit of cooking at home.

A sticky note on the fridge lists the next decadent pleasures we want but don't need, and the cost of each.  Every night we cook at home, we draw a tick mark beside the next un-purchased toy.  Each tick is worth $20, which is about how much we save on average by not going out.

Once we've earned enough ticks to pay for the gadget, we get to buy it, guilt free.  The gadget is essentially monetarily free too, because the money we pay is money we didn't spend at restaurants.  It's even better than free because cooking at home is healthier and yummier anyway.

Later, we tweaked the system to have it pay off our parking tickets, which happen to be part of the cost of living in San Francisco.   This greatly lessens the sting of the ticket: instead of being a complete waste of forty dollars, it becomes the trivial penance of putting off the next fun purchase by a couple more days.  (As the photo above shows, the system also covers moving violations.)

Do try this at home, folks, and please, always remember our two mottos:

1. "Happiness Through Gadgetry."
2. "You don't have to put on a red light."

Or more accurately, my employer got my an iPhone. We're thinking about doing a mobile app, and this seems like the most interesting platform out there right now. The cool thing is you don't need to do a install; you can just use an iPhone-optimized web page and that will be good enough for a proof-of-concept. We'll see how it goes. It's certainly a major upgrade for me from my old Sony-Erickson phone with flashback-to-the-80s performance on it's 300 baud equivalent internet connection, and communicating-with-the-Mars-colony latency. 

It is probably safe to declare 2008 the year that Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) came of age. I really like my ASUS Eee PC -- it's got a lot of rough edges, but it works very well for me, and I don't think twice about taking it with me. My first PowerBook with built-in WiFi changed how I use computers -- it was just "there" and "on" all of the time -- a quick lookup of something on Wikipedia trivial. The Eee PC has that same quality, but it goes one further because in goes with me more places so easily.

Lots of other manufactures are noticing the success ASUS is having, and are scrambling to release competitive products. Many seem to be crap, having made some questionable design trade-offs, but some look nice. Regardless, 2008 will see a flood of UMPC designs, and I'm absolutely sure I will switch from my Eee PC to something a bit better. Really there's only two things I want: a 9" screen of at least 1024 pixels width, and built-in Bluetooth.

This entry was composed, edited (probably poorly), published and viewed entirely on my Eee PC. That's not that remarkable if you compare an Eee PC to an ordinary laptop, but it is somewhat interesting if you compare it to a hand-held or pocket computer. Tiny computer bloggers always seem to be making a big deal out of using pocket devices to post weblog entries. I understand this to some extent, as when I live on the technical edge I want to believe that I'm blazing a new path that others might want to follow. But none of this applies to the Eee PC -- it's just a small, workable, no frills laptop computer. Blogging on it is no big deal.

Though it may not be perfect, the Eee PC succeeds because it strips computing to its bare essence. It is just enough computer to type comfortably and see the results on a screen. It can browse the web and handle email competently, if not luxuriously. It can play music and movies and reasonably handle all of the usual mundane personal computing tasks. It's cheap and easy to hack on -- both from a software and hardware perspective. Asus even seems to be encouraging this.

The Eee PC reminds me of the old VW Beetle: cute, fits the task with minimal fuss and no flair, inexpensive, hackable, durable. Using the Eee PC for basic computing tasks (like blogging) is no more surprising that using a VW Beetle for a trip to the grocery store.

First a confession (if it's not already obvious): I like the idea of mobile computing way to much to be objective in thinking about all these crazy mobile gadgets. The six (five?) of you reading the this are all probably saying "duh!" right now, but anyway...

A while back I mentioned that I was trying to use a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet as something of a laptop replacement. My laptop needs are modest, as I have a computer at work and at home, and the MacBook I had was overkill. In a fit of insanity, I gave the MacBook away, and switched to the Nokia. I'll write more about life with the Nokia later, but that lifestyle change just didn't work for me.

So next in the never ending line of geek-products is an Asus Eee PC. This time I think we have a winner. The Eee PC isn't perfect, but it's amazingly inexpensive and gets nearly all of the trade-offs right. The keyboard is as small as it can be while still being touch-type friendly. The screen is as small as it can be while still being readable and useful for web pages. The CPU is as low-power as it can be while still being capable enough for all general-purpose tasks. And so on -- you get the idea.

You can't put the computer in any reasonable pocket -- but honestly I wasn't carrying the N800 around with me either. When I want to have something more than a phone with me, the Eee is just the right size. At $350 (for the model I have -- some are even cheaper) the Eee PC is a great deal.

There are a few problems with this first-generation product. I would make the trackpad larger, and less sunk into the case. I also think the quality of the keyboard could be greatly improved without effecting size and weight. (As an aside, I don't understand how a computer maker can spend the time to make a great machine then cripple it with junk keyboards and trackpads. The Dell M1330 has this problem -- it's a great computer in almost every way, but with a squishy keyboard and a tiny, shitty trackpad. These are two of the the three components that people use 100% of the time when at the computer -- they should be as high quality as possible). (Grrr!).

Back to the Eee PC. The microphone quality and placement are also crappy, though the speakers are fine. Finally, the trackpad buttons are poorly designed -- they take too much force to click. Then of course there are a bunch of improvements that *would* increase the cost -- such as a larger screen or integrated Bluetooth. I would certainly pay more for those, but I understand keeping the costs down.

All things considered, the Eee PC is very well done, and I enjoy using it.

I took a (virtual) look at the new MacBook Air today. It's very, very thin, and light and beautiful to look at. But it has no replaceable battery and no Ethernet port and it uses a slow 1.8" 80 GB hard drive. (That is, unless you want to pay $1000 more for a 65 GB solid-state disk). Plus it's expensive.

Yes, yes I know that Apple was among the first to drop legacy serial, etc. ports in favor of USB, and among the first to recognize the need for built-in WiFi. And Apple was among the first to realize that consumers value design in the products they buy.  But who will but the MacBook Air? There's always the people "working on their novels" (or business plans) at the local Starbucks, but that's a small market segment and everyone hates those people anyway. If the MacBook Air is designed as a product leader -- to attract attention to other Apple products, then you want attractive people (in some sense) buying them. Dorks at Starbucks are not trend-setters .

There is of course the international jet-setting road warrior. Those folks might buy this product. They will need to bring their DVI / VGA dongles with them to plug into the projector to give presentations. And they of course need the power adapter, so that means the system is going into a bag. The 13" screen with big keyboard form-factor is also usually too big for a coach airplane seat / tray, especially if the fat guy in front of you puts his seat back, which he always does. (Though maybe this isn't a problem for the international jet-setters, as they never fly coach).

I can't help but think that in the form vs. function debate, Apple has finally jumped the shark.

I took a quick look at the Amazon.com bestseller list for the computers category (as of today). Of the top 25, one is a warantee, so I'll ignore that for a moment. Six items are Macs -- including the top selling MacBook, two are Asus Eee PC's and two others are Nokia Internet Tablets. That's 10 of 24 (or a bit more than 40%) that do not run any flavor of Microsoft Windows. It's not quite half, but I think it's sufficient to officially declare that we are at the end of The Windows Age.

Recently I've seen a few Smart FourTwo cars around Palo Alto. Coincidentally I'm starting to think about our next family car, and while we can't fit four people into a two-seat car, we certainly don't need two "big" vehicles.

The tiny / economical car market in the US seems mired in an embryonic state. Corbin tried to sell their Sparrow but that seems to have fizzled. There are some signs of life, however. Several companies are promising to have vehicles available "late next year," with two of the most interesting being the VentureOne and the Aptera.

Both are two-seated, three-wheeled high efficiency vehicles, though the VentureOne seems more focused on "fun" and the Aptera on "efficiency". I think both cars look great and either would work well as the second car. I know a tiny bit about product development, engineering, and manufacturing, and I'll be very surprised if these cars get to market on time at the stated price and meet the declared specification. That doesn't mean they might not succeed (even in a limited way), but I'll wait and see.

We just flipped the switch today on our new solar panel array on the roof of our house. It was installed over a month ago by Solar City, and through several paperwork and communication fiascos, it took this long for the city and PG&E inspectors to approve. But at any rate, we're live now.

It only generates about ½ peak production during the winter, so we're not going to see great results until the sun starts coming back North (only 1 more week until the solstice!). Still, it's pretty cool to see the flow of electricity run backwards for part of the day.

Unfortunately there's no benefit to being a net electricity producer. The best you can do is reach zero with PG&E; that is, the amount of excess electricity you generate from the solar panels during the day offsets the electricity you pull out of the grid when the panels aren't producing. If you push more into the grid, it's basically a gift to PG&E.

The whole process of buying, installing, and activating the system was a lot more involved and stressful than it should have been, so if you're looking to get solar installed, you should check out some of the competing companies like Akeena.

I plunked down my credit card no more than five minutes after seeing David's discussion of the Chumby.

Here is the first product I have seen that embodies the future envisioned at the dawn of the Web era. An unobtrusive, wireless, sub-$200 Internet terminal with no specific purpose.  

That no-specific-purpose part partitions people who hear about the Chumby. Some see it as its greatest weakness, others see it as its greatest strength.  I'm in the latter camp.   I think the potential and relevance of this class of device is enormous. Here are some scenarios:

Alarms of every stripe:  It's time to wake up. It's time to sell Google. It's time to move the car for street cleaning.  My checking balance is getting low; better transfer some funds.  Oh my, something big exploded somewhere.  Oops, we left the garage door open.  Looks like a storm is brewing.  Uh-oh, traffic is bad on 101. Oooh, Tahoe got a huge dump of snow. Oh! Was that an earthquake? How big, and how far?  Hurry!  Wii's are available!  Shh!  Stay low!  There is someone at the front door and he's carrying a clipboard!

Ambient awareness:  What time is it? How many minutes before my next appointment?  Ah, my web traffic is growing nicely, and I even made $0.42 this week with Adsense.  Cool, there's the updated status of a bunch of my Facebook friends.  It's Friday night and three of my friends have no plans; maybe I will call them.  Hmmm, it's only foggy in my neighborhood of San Francisco, not everywhere   How does it look in St. Catherine's Street in Montreal?   Does the baby look ok with the nanny?  We've been using a lot of energy this month.  Philip's birthday is in a few days.

Control:  Time to put the house lights, climate and security in bed-time mode /  away for the evening mode /  away for vacation mode.   Time to put on ambient jazz or groove or drone or classical or acoustic chick rock or energetic rock throughout the house to suit the current mood.  Tell the DVR to record Heroes and Earl.

Tools:  Alarm clock.  Kitchen timer. Game timer.  My favorite Epicurious recipes. The family calendar in the kitchen.

Decoration: Ah there are photos showing what I was doing every year this month for as long as I have been collecting digital pictures.

Communication:  Receive a video voicemail.  Press a couple of buttons and record a voice message to your spouse.

On-demand radio: Listen to the latest NPR news broadcast in the bathroom, when you are shaving.

One could go on.  I could imagine several Chumby's around the house as views and controllers being fed by the same model.  (Our mobile phones would take part, too.)  

One piece apparently missing on the platform is a coherent infrastructure for pulling together alarms, ambient awareness, control, and tools.  From what I can tell, the first batch of applets will be disjointed, inconsistent, mostly useless.  The signal-to-noise ratio of useful vs. demo applets is too low, as happened with Palm apps and desktop widgets and gadgets.

But with the Chumby, the technology and price point have arrived.  The only thing in the way of most of these scenarios is a mere matter of design and code.

I'm composing this entry on an iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Keyboard that for some reason is now $30 instead of the usual $80 on Amazon. It's connected to a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. That in itself isn't that remarkable, but that's the point of this post. Nothing remarkable or complex happened to get this going. I just turned on the tablet, fired up the browser, turned on the keyboard and clicked "Write Post."

Now I'm ready to one of "those people" you stare at at Starbucks except I don't go there.

My Chumby arrived today! I'm not really sure what I'll do with it, but it's cute, runs Linux, and comes with a large set of widgets -- some of which are marginally useful.