11 posts tagged “aol”

From 1993, the first portable video projector from Fujix from about 13 years ago, the Fujix P701 weighed about 6 pounds, with built-in speakers and amplifier, microphone input and RCA audio and video inputs, and Dick thinks it cost about $700-$800.  It was considered a business class product, but had only 89,000 pixels (little more than 320 x 240) and 100 lumens.  Dick and Leo joke that if Kenner or Mattel were to make a toy projector today, its specs would outclass the P701.

The German site projektoren-datenbank.com lists the recommended retail price as €900.  Back in 1993, the Euro did not exist, so it's unclear how the price conversion was done.  There was a P701 available on German eBay a week ago, but the auction has now ended (final price €51).

Bicycle Gadgets
Larry Blakely from Vienna, Virginia (where AOL is, says Leo) has been a listener since the show began (and Larry was one of the winners of the weird gadgets competition back in Episode 146).  Recently Larry has been training for a fund-raising event organised by bestbuddies.org - a charity for fostering friendships between volunteers and people with intellectual disabilities.  He has chosen the 50-mile cycle challenge, during which he will ride on a trike from Carver to Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.  Larry would welcome suggestions from Dick of bike gadgets such as headlights, safety lights, and flat tyre protection.

TerraTrike
For some hi-tech recumbent tricycles, visit terratrike.com.  These are state-of-the-art trikes for the dedicated cyclers.


Butter and Eggs Day
Petaluma will be celebrating its annual Butter and Eggs Day tomorrow, and you may hear the parade band pass by if you listen to Leo's radio show.  Meanwhile, Leo will be preparing himself and Ozzy for the Cutest Little Chick contest.


Listen to Episode 815
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Made by Grandma Keenan Specialty Products, the Flaming Fruitcake looked like a Christmas log but was intended for the fireplace as a combustible log.  Made of sawdust, wax, colour wood and colouring agents, it was not a food product.  "Have fun burning these calories."  "Finally a fruitcake you will enjoy."  Dick got it in 1991 from a PR agent, and the only reference to it on the web one can find is on Living On Earth, 24 December 1993.

Gadget Ideas
Steve Greenberg writes in his book Gadget Nation that it's not enough to have a good idea for a gadget.  It's all about marketing and distribution.

Mad Over Time
The Mad cover with Obama morphing into Alfred E Neuman (Yes We Can't) has been named by Time Magazine as one of the Top 10 Magazine Covers of 2008.  Obama has also been named 2008 Person of the Year.

When Mad first turned itself into a comic magazine, Time's review predicted that it would be a "short-lived satirical pulp".  Not only did Mad continue to thrive, but Warner Bros/Time Warner in due course acquired it and brought it under the same division as Time Magazine.  In the acquisition deal, Bill Gaines slipped a clause into the final draft of the contract reserving to himself the right to be unreasonable.  He also felt confident that the affairs of Mad would be totally unaffected because for the first few years, the new owners wouldn't even realise that they had acquired the new property.

For a fuller account of Mad's management after the acquisition, check back at Episode 68.  For the "unreasonable" contract clause, see Episode 106.

Book Royalty
Dick has written 11 or 12 Mad original paperback books.  For one of them, Dick got $12,000 as an advance payment from the publishers.  Dick was puzzled by the sheer size of the advance, and Bill Gaines explained that the big corporations never read the contract and he inserted a clause that the publishers had to print a million copies.

Powerline Technology
Mike Knox who has been listening to DGW since Episode 1 writes to clarify something about powerline carrier technology (PLC).  In Episode 713, Leo thought that the Belkin Powerline AV Plus Starter Kit would not work in Dick's situation as powerline technology would not work over 2 fuse boxes or power meters.  Mike points out that while there are different implementations of PLC, they will pass through fuse boxes and utilities meters and are completely transparent to the conduction of electricity and any signals multiplexed on to the power.  The signals will stop at utility transformers and will degrade over distance, but can go over to other homes.  Dick's own test has proved Mike right.

TWiG
Dick has a T-Shirt with a TWiG logo - This Week in Gadgets.


Listen to Episode 725
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Timex, who made the Datalink Watch (and its later incarnation the Datalink USB Watch: Episode 20), also made this Internet Messenger Watch.  It used FLEXtime to give you the correct time whichever city you were in, and through SkyTel retrieved paging/email text messages (up to 100 characters) and displayed them on the watch, and you could scroll through the messages.  It came with a 12-month free subscription to the SkyTel service which gave the watch a special telephone number, and messages were sent to [telno]@skytel.com.




The battery it used was not the common watch battery, but the zinc-air hearing aid battery.  Because it kept checking for FLEXtime and paging messages, its batteries did not last very long.

Leo's 5 Visa Cards
Leo gets a little carried away with the commercial and shows off his 5 Visa Cards on TWiTLive, then gets worried that he might have revealed too much.

Todcasts
Dan from Fontana, California, would love to watch Dick and Leo recording DGW but cannot sit in front of the computer all day long like a vegetable, and wonders if the videos will be downloadable as podcasts, or as Leo calls them, Todcasts (TWiTLive On Demand).  Leo replays the live shows over the rest of each day, and has got Cachefly to agree to provide the download bandwidth for special segments (and GizWizLive would fall into that category).  Leo is still working on it.

Sunday Theme
Premiere of the Sleeping-In Sunday Theme.  Right at the end of the show.


Listen to Episode 635
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The SpokeLit is an LED lighting device which you can attach to any bicycle wheel (with a 3-cross spoke pattern) which glows as a lighted circle when you ride on your bike, to announce your presence to other traffic in dark conditions.  Available in Red, Green and Blue.  Available from Nite Ize, which also sells the Fibre Optic Flashlight Adapter, the Dec '06 WTHII gadget (see Episode 226).

Copyrighting Gadget
Dick explains that the reason so many gadgets are spelt in funny ways, such as SpokeLit and Nite Ize is so that they can be more easily copyrighted.

The Birth of DGW
Dick and Leo think it was the Hudson Hotel in New York where the idea for DGW was born, while Leo was in town to appear on Regis, after the Hardware Show Preview.

Another Trivia Question
"What is a pregnant goldfish called?" a listener asks Leo.  "A mamafish," replies Leo.  All right, it's a twit.  Read The Straight Dope to learn more than you want to know about it.

Leo's Autobiography
Another listener suggests a name for Leo's autobiography, "TWiT'll Be Me", although Leo now prefers "I Never Stopped Talking".

600th Episode
Episode 600 is coming on in 2 weeks, and Dick and Leo may well be recording it on 20 June when Dick is at the TWiTLive Studio.  They might get Wild Planet to give away some prizes, or get ThinkGeek to make some monogrammed Sporks, or SpearHats.


Listen to Episode 589
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The iSoniCast enables wireless streaming from your iPod to your home stereo or other powered speakers.  Monster Cable calls it a "wireless audio bridge".


Connect the base station to AC power and to your home stereo and to one of the audio inputs of your home stereo (via the mini-jack to RCA cable provided).  Plug the transmitter into the iPod (which draws minimal power from the iPod), start playing and the music will be streamed by 2.4GHz wireless technology (with a bandwidth of 4 Mega-bits per second) to the base station receiver.  The iPod doubles up as a remote control.

Mad Currency
Randal Schwartz, Perl expert, co-host of FLOSS and long-time fan of DGW, came across an entry on Wikipedia about fake denominations of US currency and found that the Mad currency (3-dollar bill) which Dick talked about in the past (see, e.g. Episode 121) has made its way into that entry.  Dick goes on to describe the Alfred E Neuman postage stamps that Mad used to make.

Spork Cartoon
Dick and Leo mention in passing a spork cartoon which listeners have written in about.  Leo says he is going to save it for the Letters Section, but naturally he forgets.  While we wait for Dick and Leo's memory to come round, here's one which is pretty good, by Jakin J Waldock.


Listen to Episode 567
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The 3rd product from Newertech on DGW, after the USB2 Universal Drive Adaptor (Episode 267) and the NuPower Video+ (Episode 299).  This time, it's the Bass Response Earbuds, with insert-Passive Noise Reduction engineering which reduces noise an average of 42dB while boosting the audio soundtrack up to 10dB at higher frequencies.  Very decent sound for the price.

It's Thursday the 21st
Leo gets the day of the week right today, but gets the date wrong in the opening intro.  It's 21st February, not 22nd.  Thanks to Trey Hanson for pointing this out.

Retronyms
A little English lesson from listener Ian Lumsden from Wisconsin, Dick and Leo, on words and phrases such as the acoustic guitar (after the electric guitar was invented) and the dial telephone (after the advent of the number pad).

Listen to Episode 508
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Read Dick's Write-Up

Match Game Cards
Perry Boomershine, who works in interesting places all over the world including Egypt, Afganistan, north of Thailand and Kosovo, thanks Dick for making him a hero.  This year, his sister got as presents a pair of pale green jade dragons, and a set of match game cards.  There are only 12 sets left.  The new GizWizBiz cap is available now.

What the Heck Is It
Join the WTHII Jan '08 contest, as there haven't been too many entries so far.  Here's a tip.  It's neither a cucumber leash nor a thumb puller.

Listen to Episode 491
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Read Dick's Write-Up

Available exclusively from Best Buy, the Insignia Pilot NS-4V24 has 4GB storage, expandable by SD card, 2.4" high-resolution LCD screen, bult-in digital FM tuner with 20 presets.  If you like what you hear on the radio, you can save the track and artist info from FM stations broadcasting RDS data.  Supports mp3, wav, wma (including Plays For Sure DRM), ogg vorbis, Audible, mpeg-4, wmv, jpg.  PC and Mac compatible, although Mac compatibility is limited to the player being a mass storage device (mini USB cable included), and you can drag compatible media files from your Mac on to the player.  Dimensions are just under 4" x 2" x 0.5".

For PCs, the bundled software includes the Best Buy Digital Music Store Software, for media management, and the ArcSoft Media Converter, for media conversion.  The player is Rhapsody-compliant and can access music on Rhapsody if you have a subscription (again PC only).

You can use the player to record from the radio, or from a line-in source via the auxiliary jack (which also doubles up as a second headphone jack so that 2 persons can listen at the same time).  The bluetooth supports A2DP and works with any A2DP-compliant headphones, such as the Motorola MotoROKR S9 (Episode 422).

An 8GB model, the Pilot NS-8V24, is also available.

iPod in the Gadget Warehouse
Dan from Richmond, Virginia questions how the iPod, which he still uses, can be in the Gadget Warehouse (Episode 420), when it continues to power on day after day.

Mad About Star Wars
Jonathan Bresman, senior editor of Mad, has just issued a collection of all the Star Wars parodies for the last 30 years, called Mad About Star Wars.  In 1980 Dick wrote a parody on Star Wars, and Mad received a letter from the Star Wars attorneys threatening to sue Mad.  Bill Gaines had a complete answer, with a little help from George Lucas himself.

In Defence Of Parodies
Bill Gaines learned that a small magazine was being sued for doing a satirical parody and made the services of his legal team at the magazine's disposal.

Listen to Episode 426
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Set the temperature (99 to 120F) you want for the bath water.  Put Sally the Pig's tail into the bath and Sally will start squealing if the water is too hot.

300th Episode Contest Answer
Dick has picked the word "sponsor", and so far only 2 have answered correctly.  [This show was recorded 2 weeks ahead.]  Leo has picked "LED".  Answers sent in have included Tostino, Tostino-pizza-roll, I'll-be-here.

Leo's Giant Garage Sale
After Leo's last garage sale when Jennifer sold off everything for a dollar, Leo is going to have another garage sale where he will be selling off his old junk.  The Titanium Spork might be going for a song.

Old Modems
Mike Gunn from San Francisco reminisces about signing up to Compuserve using his 300 baud modem which he bought from Quantum Link, a precursor to AOL.


Listen to Episode 315
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That Little Old Winemaker ... Me!
That Little Old Warehouse Keeper ... Dick!

Internet Sunglasses Revisited
The Interstate Battery Booster played a part on World News Now when Dick showed off the new Internet Sunglasses.  Listen to the story again (A reprise from Episode 13).

Michael Gellman and Regis & Kelly
Hear how Regis producer Michael Gellman pushed the show to the limits.

Farewell ...
... to Visa, T-Mobile, and the Finnish MIDI letters jingle.

Foreign Language
Letter from Alan, in response to Episode 134 and Dick's reference to sign language as a foreign language.  Back in 1972 Computer Language was offered at his school as a "foreign language".

Books
Dick's Good Days And Mad is still available, but Leo will be stopping his Gadget Almanacs.

Risky Business
Doing the DGW podcast is a risky business.  During the recording, Dick's AOL pathlock beeped, and while going to turn it off, he nearly ruins his laptop.

Mad Minute
Repeat of Motel Records's religious music collections.

Listen to Episode 160
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Read Dick's Write-Up