July 26th, 2006
Every time I travel long distances, I spend some time in airports looking for outlets. I'm a bit obsessive this way–I like knowing I have as much battery power as possible for the next leg of the journey.
Often outlets are difficult to find. Even worse, some airports rig their outlets so that you need a special kind of plug to access them.
Kudos, then, to the AirPower Wiki, which is dedicated to helping geeky travellers find power outlets across the globe. It's in its infancy, but it will no doubt prove useful down the line.
Tags: travel, airports, power, outlets, electricity, plugins
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July 20th, 2006
This company is in serious need of a theme song. Barry emailed to sing the praises of this cool-looking mini tripod from JOBY:
It's well made and works better than I imagined. Great for setting up on uneven surfaces but the killer feature is its ability to grip. I've used it in way more precarious situations than you would usually consider a tripod (on a boat for example).
I like the counter-intuitive product development approach. Instead of building huge, expensive tripods for the pros, build an affordable, lightweight tripod for the masses. It's easy to imagine some people telling them that the masses don't want a tripod, but hopefully they're proving them wrong.
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July 10th, 2006
Neatorama links to a photo gallery documenting a mountain road in the Yungas region of Bolivia. From Presurfer:
The road is so small and narrow there's actually space for only one truck and the humidity and water jumps in certain turns make the ground tremendously slippery. The wages of the drivers of these vehicles are so low that they are forced to work more hours than the recommendable ones.
The road up to Monteverde in Costa Rica was pretty freaky, especially in a torrential rain storm, but it didn't have anything on this.
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July 9th, 2006
I generally listen to podcasts and audio books while working out (currently it's Douglas Adams's excellent Last Chance to See). Of course, I can't take my iPod Nano in the pool. Here's an alternative, found via Product Dose:
With this in mind, Freestyle audio has fused these two elements to introduce the world’s first completely submergible and waterproof mp3 player. The Fusion Digital Music Player was designed for movement in the water and to cater to the special needs of athletes and enthusiasts of all water sports including: surfing, wakeboarding, swimming, snowboarding and all paddle sports.
If it works like they say it does on the box, then that seems like a viable option for the aquatic listener.
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July 9th, 2006
Via Digg, here's the list of the 2006 Industrial Design Excellence award winners. My favourite is the self-erecting tent:
2SECONDS is a self-erecting tent. Just throw it in the air and it opens on its own before reaching the ground. All that’s required are six pegs to secure it to the ground. The key to the design are the two spring hoops made of fiberglass, a material that reduces the diameter of the hoops and allows it to be easily folded for compact storage.
Other cool ideas are the hydrogen-powered motorcycle and the Camcopter, an unmanned reconaissance helicopter.
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July 1st, 2006
When my aunt is looking at travel photos, she only wants to see my best three. In that vein, here are the three most interesting ideas that I heard at Gnomedex, the geeky Seattle technology conference:
- Tara Hunt: Software companies don't necessarily have to aspire to become the 800 lb gorilla in a given sector (why can't we have eighty 10 lb spider monkeys instead?).
- Phil Torrone: Why don't we have more open source hardware?
- Mitch Ratcliffe: We need to open source the presidential election, providing way more acces and making it like a reality TV show. If the camera is constantly over the candidate's shoulder, that might re-engage the populace. If you were an unlikely candidate in the primaries, it might make the difference.
Derek Miller appears to have the best summaries of the sessions.
Tagerati: gnomedex bigideas purple monkey dishwasher
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