USB Tannenbaum 2.0

Posted on January 18, 2008 by maksim

Deep in the shadows of strangely silly and wonderfully childish Great Woods of USB Crap there exist bizarre little creatures that speak German and smell of fresh pine. Thallbach, a company from the town of Wasserburg, makes USB flash drives with ordinary insides of 4gb and extraordinary price of almost 100 euro, and a choice of external body being made of a selection of woods, from birch to palisander, polished and varnished to pseudo-natural perfection.

Germans have a special relationship with woods and trees. For them, a forest is a sacred place, a stage of ancient myths and fairy tales. Die bűrger from Hamburg love woods and know woods more than Americans do hamburgers. They would talk to a tree, just like a Hindu would hug a cow or a Mexican would live with a cactus.

If you are German and like to spend your time in a company of IKEA genocide victims then you will probably love the idea. For the rest of us, it is just silly to pay extra 50 euro for a chance to carry a piece of German tannenbaum in a pocket. And it is not stylish. A bit like wearing leopard skin pants- you will be the man of teenage dreams in urban Zimbabwe, but will probably come across as a little old-fashioned anywhere else.

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Source: Thallbach.de


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5 Things You Need To Know About Macbook Air

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Boris

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Apple started year 2008 by introducing MacBook Air, the new ultra-thin notebook. Rumors ran wild the weeks before the show, and not surprisingly a lot of them came true. A trademark Apple feature, MacBook Air is recognizable more for what it doesn’t have than what it does.

1. Target Market
All the people who don’t like the new notebook automatically assume that Apple was targeting them and missed horribly. Well, this was not intended to be a mainstream hit. The paper thin laptop is marketed to a specific market, one where weight and portability is of utmost concern.

2. World’s thinnest notebook
MacBook Air is so thin that it fits in a regular post envelope. It measures an unprecedented 0.16 inches at its thinnest point, while its maximum height of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks.

3. No User Replaceable Battery, HDD, RAM
Selling devices that are not owner serviceable is now the Apple way, after people tolerated this in the iPod and reluctantly accepted it with the iPhone.

4. No Optical Drive
With MacBook Air you can wirelessly borrow the optical drive from any other computer or rent movies from the iTunes Store. Even Apple haters should appreciate the way Apple introduces new and bold concepts that has the competitors tiptoeing behind.

5. Limited Connectivity
Getting that thin has meant sacrificing connectivity, ports and storage. There is no Ethernet, no Firewire, no express card or PCMCIA slot either and single USB port. What you get is 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0 + ERD connectivity, micro-DVI socket, headphones jack and iSight webcam.

“Thinness” being the major selling point is a doubtful advantage, with the price of over £2000 for a solid state harddrive version, enough to buy seven Asus Eee Pcs for every day of the week. Still, you don’t loose inches overnight, there is some groundbreaking advanced technology inside that fragile body, and it comes with the price. Air might not be a revolution, but it certainly is a remarkable innovation.


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DJing for Dummies

Posted on January 16, 2008 by maksim

Consider the life of a sculptor. What an unusual, unexpected choice of a namebadge, not only for a man, but for an artist too. The mountain does not crumble and fall to Muhammad, Muhammad orders the mountain to be blown up, cut, and delivered to him, by UPS, on a Monday morning. And then he is locked away with the rock in a studio, possibly for years, turning it into a huge stone thing looking like a spermatozoid on one side and a teardrop on the other, symbolizing the victims of a 1937 Great Wisconsin Tornado, or anything to that effect involving angry tornado-looking forces and dead spermatozoids.

Life of a DJ is in no way that exotic. It is mostly just sex, drugs, drums till dawn- usual, everyday, mundane routine. Yet they are somewhat similar- to become one, you need a lot of investment and space.

iCue DJ Mixer is an attempt to eliminate the need of both money and vacant room corners. It is tiny and very, very cheap in comparison to what the alternative of the real DJ equipment and vinyl costs. It connects to the USB, and plays mp3 tracks off anything that moves. It does basic DJ mixing functions and, for a beginner, is a fun thing to take off the ground with. A sculptor’s rock made of whipped cream, it is not meant to be used in heavy outdoor conditions of Ibiza, but should be just perfect for innocent amateur indoor fun.

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Source: Firebox.com


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Laptop Bags With Marker Dabs

Posted on January 15, 2008 by Christine

Artists are weird, eccentric, mysterious people, they are hard to get along with, but how difficult it is to resist the charm of these dreamy-eyed people. Years ago being an artist was blameworthy; the meaning of the word “artist” was close to the meaning of “beggar” or “idler”. It’s amazing how things have changed as now being an artist is prestigious, artists are bohemia, and if you want to be one of them, it’s never too late to do that.

Step 1. Make sure you have a Skooba Skin DIY or a new Case Logic’s SN laptop bag.

Step 2. Take a marker. (Skooba’s markers are sold separately while Case Logic sell their SN bags together with markers).

Step 3. Use imagination – boring designs are no longer in fashion.

Step 4 (optional). If you end up with something fuzzy and clumsy, don’t throw your laptop bag away – tell everybody that this is a concept that only a few can understand.

You see, being an artist is as easy as ABC these days.

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Via: ChipChick


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Save Our Cords

Posted on January 10, 2008 by Christine

When you have all your bags packed for a holiday or a business trip and are ready to leave for an airport, some small things are always missing – a toothbrush, an extra pair of socks or a mobile phone charger. And a mp3-player charging unit. And a laptop adapter. And a pocket PC charger. And a camera charger or video camera charger or both.

When you are traveling by train and doze off unwittingly just to wake up and realize that this is your station and you must be getting off immediately, the first things you grab are a bag and hopefully a laptop. Chargers are always left in haste and are doomed to traveling miles and miles.

When you want to draw a portrait of your friend to impress all your guests with your digital drawing skills, but cannot find the cord that connects the computer and the graphics tablet, you probably feel upset and go on with your search until you find the cord lying peacefully under the sofa.

These things have probably happened to people who have invented a charger bag. To store things in one place is a universal idea, whether it is a CD-holder, a bookcase or a Tesco. But keeping all cords and chargers in one neoprene bag with 6 compartments is something new and probably convenient since the number of gadgets we own and want to own is constantly increasing.

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Source: builtny.com


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Laptopozaurus Ordinaris

Posted on December 29, 2007 by Sasha

We usually like to search the web for new amazing and stylish laptops that impress our imagination with innovative features and new technology. The progress of today is astonishing indeed. But looking back into the past can be even more exciting at times.

The first laptop in the world, GRiD Compass 1100, was the brainchild of Bill Moggridge, British industrial designer; it is now 28 years old, dating back to 1979.

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Just imagine the memory of 340 Kbytes and a 320×200-pixel display. The laptop could run its own operating system GRiD-OS. The design was a break-through, with the screen that could fold flat when closed.

In addition, the laptop boasted the weight of a little over 5kg, which was like having your ski boots made of swan feathers, by today’s standards.

But unfortunately the laptop wasn’t so popular among public with the price of almost £5000, and the main buyers were the US Government and NASA.


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Laptop Bones, Mascara, and a Chewing Gum

Posted on December 25, 2007 by Christine

You don’t see a bikini here, do you. You can’t see sun lotion, a beach towel or flip-flops either. Because it is not a see-through plastic beach bag, it is a new Skooba Skreener.

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Unlike sun seekers who don’t need much to take with them, all of us busy with work or studies feel trapped if we don’t have keys, an mp3-player, a wallet, a cell-phone, a favourite permanent marker or a comb with us. The list can be endless, but all of the above will definitely go into this bag. Along with the laptop, of course, as this is a laptop bag in the first place. Small gadgets, CDs, pens, usb flash drives - everything has been thought of, but it is the design that catches the eye. Images of x-rayed objects is not a new idea (even Kaiser Chiefs fell prey to it), but it is still so much fun.blog4.jpg

Source: Scooba Design


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3 Screens And a Strawberry Margarita

Posted on December 22, 2007 by maksim

If there was a New American Dream, a dream of e-generation, what would that be like? What do we, people that are free of sex and family constraints of 20th century, are able to travel around the world, and are financially independent from young years, want? A mortgaged house in suburbs, a strong family, a stable job, a car? We, kids of postmodernism, would rather print that on our toilet paper.

We are the victims of choice. We are too spoiled with alternatives. We don’t want a house because we don’t want to settle in one place and instead we travel more. We don’t want a family because we want to spend as much of our Me Time on ourselves as possible. Just being together, being committed to a person is hard for us, with sexual freedom reaching new heights every day. And we don’t want a stable job because with so many alternatives around we are constantly looking for a better one, preferably with us in charge.

And, speaking of a decent job, we don’t want an ordinary-looking office either. A bungalow on the coast of west Mexico, with roof made of palm trees, 20 meters from the beach? Surfing lessons in the morning and just before sunset, a cosy village bar with superb frozen strawberry Margaritas? Sounds just about ok. The tipping point might be our new laptop with three screens, perfect for gaming, stock trading, graphic, video and audio design. The only thing that the 3 LCD Surround System from Acme Portable is missing is the display sunlight filter, in case we want to relocate to the beach after the day heat eases off.

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Source: Acme Portable


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The Beauty vs The Beast

Posted on December 21, 2007 by maksim

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Two extremes of the same territory, two laptops that could not be further away apart- today we compare Asus Eee PC and Getac A790- the Snow White and the Terminator of the laptop world.

Difference starts with the price. Asus Eee Pc is famously the cheapest laptop in the world, with the price of 200 dollars. Getac costs 30 times more, just below 6000 dollars.

Small and light, Eee Pc has a processor to match, Intel Celeron-M 900MHz. Getac, in spite of its seemingly awkward shapes, has an impressive Intel Core Duo 1.66GHz.

Elegantly small 4gb harddrive of Eee Pc is not prepared to waste its space on something as unglamorous and time-wasting as movies or games. Getac, a road warrior, has shock-resistant 80gb, and options for more if needed.

For wireless connectivity, Eee Pc has WiFi, simple and effective, job done. Getac is a jungle kid and WiFi can never be enough- it also has Bluetooth, GPS, and a GSM/GPRS support.

Never meant to leave civilization for too long , Asus has a reasonable battery life lasting over two hours. Getac, a companion of night shifts and field trips, has a maximum possible battery life of around eight hours.

Graceful Eee Pc has a webcam on its list of additional features, and that is all it needs. Getac wants much more. Fingerprint scanner, optional touchscreen and sunlight readable display, dustproof keyboard, fully waterproof case with sealed ports and connectors, vibration resistance and extra strong magnesium alloy case.

Sources: Asus Eee Pc and Getac A790


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Cubicle Cucumbers, Drum!

Posted on December 20, 2007 by maksim

Imagine a stranger looking at you from the side as you are reading this. Looking at you, a hunched, silent, unmoving figure in front of a panel of plastic. Take the monitor, the furniture, your clothes away, and you start to look like an overgrown vegetable hidden away from sunrays in a cellar.

How do you fight this vegetable state? You need something involving physical activity, reasonably addictive to keep you going, yet short enough not to distract you too much. Obviously, nicotine is a perfect choice. But what about us, non-smokers?

How about a drum machine? Small, portable, easy to hide, easy to unhide. Compatible via USB with any laptop. Silent, if you use headphones. It may not be suitable for an office cubicle, as you will look daft, jumping silently up and down while hitting your desk with two sticks. But for a home office, why not? Surely not much worse than shower singing.

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Source: Gadgets Club


Posted in Laptop Music | Tagged | 1 Comment
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