The arms race is on. The workplace has become a dangerous place, but once upon a time, it was all a laugh. Back in the day, your workmates chased each other with squirt-guns, then disc-guns. Everybody laughed when somebody brought in the harmless Airzooka. Gleefully, somebody brought in a marshmallow blaster.

Then it went kinda nuts. Sonic Grenades, catapults, lightsabers, ninjas… Suddenly, it was less about harmless fun. Suddenly, things got serious. Deadly serious. The day that the guy down the hall brought in the USB Missile Launcher was the day the gauntlet was thrown down.

Today is the day it gets picked up, and slapped across the face of your office enemy. ThinkGeek’s new USB Rocket Launcher has more than twice the range of his missile launcher – yeah, I said twice the range. Now you can be the one your cube-neighbors fear, and fear leads to respect… or does fear lead to anger? I forget.

Get Yours At

© TheBoredIT for The Bored IT.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gadgets, Toys, warfare

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Blackberry has it all, starting with a REAL keyboard, real sincronization, Bluetooth and much more. Why, it even has Copy & Paste! (I am being sarcastic here).

Now, the new version of Blackberry is just around the corner, code named “Storm”. I can really wait to get my hands in this beauty.

Not much information on the new BlackBerry Storm, I only found a reference to it in Gizmodo

Staying Connected
With BlackBerry’s push email technology, your email will find you without having to initiate a connection. BlackBerry devices are designed to remain on and continuously connected to the wireless network, notifying you as new email arrives. In addition to the text, you can also receive and view attachments in a wide range of popular file formats, including Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect, and Adobe PDF.

Browse the web with the integrated, full-featured browser, which quickly and efficiently displays HTML pages as well as enables you to set up RSS feeds to stay connected to up-to-the-minute news and blog posts. And keep up with your contacts using a variety of instant message (IM) networks, including the integrated Blackberry Messenger as well as downloadable clients for Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, and Lotus Sametime.

For corporate users, the Curve delivers all the enterprise email and messaging capabilities you’ve come to expect. It’s supported on BlackBerry Internet Service, giving you access to up to 10 work or personal email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts), as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Server, enabling advanced security and IT administration within IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise environments.

So, what does a Bored IT needs a Blackberry for? I started monitoring my servers (I am a control freak), but now I let my dedicated server provider do the dirty job for me. Still, the thing looks great on my desk!

© TheBoredIT for The Bored IT.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blackberry, gadgets, iphone, smartphone

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What better way to pass time that to take a long Summer road trip? However, nowadays, you have to think about fuel too. There’s a solution for those of use that like to drive hard.

Named after the green fruit, the PLX Kiwi from PLX Devices is a small device (a little more than 2 inches by 3 inches) that attaches to your dashboard or windshield.

By plugging into a vehicle’s diagnostic port, it can display miles per gallon as well as trip information and even the cause of engine problems.

But really it’s designed to make your driving habits more energy-efficient.

Accelerating hard and jamming on the brakes to slow consumes more gas than a smoother, steadier way of driving.

The PLX Kiwi shows off feedback on how you’re doing in that regard and gives you a “kiwi score.” It’s also programmed with 20 increasingly difficult challenges to optimize your score.

Making changes to driving patterns can lower gas consumption by 20 percent with gas at $4 a gallon, according to the company. That savings can go up to 33 percent if your driving is mostly on highways.

Depending on the type of car you drive, the savings can be several hundred dollars a year, between $560 and $800, according to the company. You can get a read-out of dollars saved on a given trip and a cumulative total.

For the eco-conscious driver, these foot pedal changes can add up: a sedan driver can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 16,000 pounds. That’s the equivalent of changing out 500 incandescent light bulbs for more efficient compact fluorescents.

Another in-car display designed for fuel efficiency is the ScanGuage II, which doesn’t have the same slick LED display as the PLX Kiwi or the scoring system.

The PLX Kiwi will be available later this month and costs $299, according to a company representative, while the ScanGuage costs $169.

Now, I only need a Driving LED Emoticon and I am ready to hit the road!

© TheBoredIT for The Bored IT.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cars, gadgets

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It may sound like something out of a 1980s sci-fi movie, but it’s not as far-fetched as you think. In fact, home automation is a burgeoning market with all sorts of toys available.

For most part, it’s a playground limited to a few lucky dot-com millionaires. If you happen to have sold YouTube for a billion dollars, just find a contractor who specializes in this stuff and pretty soon an automated voice will announce when the milk is low.

Fortunately, the rest of us aren’t completely left out of the home automation fun. But this stuff gets pretty geeky pretty fast, and it definitely helps to have some background knowledge about electronics and networking before diving in.

Why Automate Your Home?

Aside from the nerd bragging rights, fully-automated homes can be much more energy efficient. Left the light on in the basement after that last-minute laundry dash? That’s money out of your pocket. But an automated home could have killed the lights as soon as you came upstairs.

Ditto for the A/C you left running all night or the blinds you always forget to close in the afternoon heat. Your forgetfulness is wasting money and using energy you don’t need to use. Automation cuts down on your energy use by doing the smart and simple tasks for you.

Aside from the potential savings in money and energy, you can perform other practical tasks like monitor your pets, detect unwanted visitors or even send yourself an e-mail when the water pipes in your basement burst.

Using X10

For the DIY home automator, the most popular solution is the X10 network protocol. X10 is communications protocol and network address system not unlike the TCP/IP protocol that powers the internet.

The main difference is that X10 is very low-bandwidth. It’s able to use the power lines running through your house to send commands to your X10-compliant components. The basic set up is simple, and many X10 devices are quite cheap. A command center — typically a PC — sends messages over the wires and X10 devices respond to any commands you send.

Say, for instance, you plug a lamp into a common X10 wall outlet. Just set up your PCs with a serial X10-computer interface and you can control the light with your PC.

Using Software

Of course you’ll need a way to communicate with your X10 devices. Most DIY home automators recommend MisterHouse, a collection of open-source Perl scripts for controlling X10 devices. Not only is MisterHouse more robust than the software that typically comes with a serial interface, it’s Perl, so you can hack it however you like if you know the language.

There is also an elegant-looking home automation control center application for Mac OS X Leopard called Shion. It has support for Insteon devices (which aren’t hard-wired, making them great for apartment dwellers), uses Growl notifications and can schedule tasks through iCal. It even lets you use your Apple remote to run commands. It’s also an open-source app, so it’s hackable.

Another option is the commercial application Indigo. It is neither open source nor free, but supports the most INSTEON modules (thermostats, irrigation controllers, input/output controllers, etc.) and is extensible by both Python and AppleScript. It has has a graphical Ajax-based built-in Web server and has a very active user base and home automation discussion forum.

Further Reading

• Check out the MisterHouse site for more details and some examples of the things you can do with X10.

• comp.home.automation at Google Groups.

• Another excellent resource for the home hacker is O’Reilly’s Home Hacking Projects for Geeks.

• Here’s a link to an open source Zigbee software project.

© TheBoredIT for The Bored IT.com, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: automate, gadgets, Toys

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This is the kind of gadget you would expect to see agent 86 using, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out a real use for it. Maybe in the next version?

If I really wanted to have video in my wrist, I would use a Stainless Steel 8GB Video Watch. Now, this is cool!

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I got a new favourite fruit: Scientists with the Texas A&M’s Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center have found that an organic compound found in watermelon acts somewhat similar to sildenafil citrate, better known under its brand name: Viagra.

This is bad, really guys, we gotta do something: A major threat facing corals is climate change, the report says, which affects coral reefs in multiple ways.

LOL, this is fun: A 48-year-old gas station owner from Bend, Oregon triumphed Saturday on his third attempt in making a 235-mile (378km) ride in a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled party balloons. Kent Couch flew across the Oregon desert to the nearby state of Idaho in a trip that lasted around nine hours.

Flyin’! I do love fly, but safer. I rather prefer r/c-flying-devices, like this beauty. You will enjoy piloting the Microblimp with precision, proportional fingertip control of climbs, turns and dives up to 200 feet away! And since it’s only twenty inches across you can deftly maneuver it around office, cube farm or abode for serious indoor satisfaction… The Microblimp is ready to fly at a moments notice. Just pull your fully charged battery off of the combination transmitter/charger and you are ready for R/C Flying Fun! Finally, a proportional transmitter that is appropriate to the size and weight of indoor micromodels like the Microblimp! Where’s the antenna? This is 900Mhz, so the full size antenna is actually hidden inside the transmitter case!

As commander in chief of the world’s smallest micro radio controlled blimp, you’ll be able to finally complete your lifelong mission to die happy. And now that ugly-master isn’t here, lets fly!

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Post tags: balloon, flying devices, gadgets, geek, remote control, Toys, trip

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Not content with dominating the PC and smartphone market in the realm of operating systems, Microsoft has apparently now set its sights on PNDs. Today the folks in Redmond announced a new OS aimed directly at GPS units, dubbed Windows Embedded NavReady 2009. The software is based on Windows Embedded CE, and combines navigation tools enriched with Live Search, MSN Direct, and Windows SideShow integration, coupled with an emphasis on Bluetooth connectivity. The company says that the system is shipping to OEMs and developers as we speak, which will yield consumer devices in time for the 2008 holiday season.

Not that I am going to ever change my GARMIN nüvi 660 4.3″ Automotive GPS Navigation system, but I want the Hawaiian Dancer doll

© TheBoredIT for The Bored IT.com, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gadgets, gps, windows

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