9 posts tagged “irs”

The Model 604 Duplex Speaker was first made by Altec Lansing in around 1944.  It mounted a high-frequency compression driver which sent sound from behind and through the centre of a 15" woofer/bass driver, with a 6-cell horn placed over the cone, enabling a compact design.  It's a type of coaxial speaker.  The speakers were installed in cabinets or other housing.  Subsequent models were made but the basic design remained the same.  Dick bought the 604C model after he started working for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions.  To Dick's chagrin, his mother later gave them away, along with some of his Lionel trains.

Dick also says that his were Voice of the Theatre speakers.  For pictures of some VOTT models, see Episode 137, and check out audioheritage.org's profile of the VOTT.  A few years ago Altec Lansing re-introduced the VOTT A7-Legacy, which didn't last very long.  It's now part of Plantronics.  For a summary of the evolution of the company including its more recent past, see Wikipedia.

More about the Gadget Warehouse
Dick's Gadget Warehouse is a 10' x 10' x 10' room, complete with floor to ceiling shelves, with no windows and no doors (well, there must be one door), at Sofia Bros Storage Center, 475 Amsterdam Avenue, New York.  You can see some pictures of the warehouse taken by Leo when he visited it back in Episode 246.  For a look inside the building, see Sofia Bros' video:

Mr What?
What should Leo be called?  Check out Answer Giz Wiz Questions.

Keeping One's Sanity
Chris Lind Hodson, from Richland, Washington, started working last August as a high school graduate.  Listening to the Daily Giz Wiz and other TWiT shows helps keep his sanity and dignity, as he stacked pop bottles and juices in the cooler of 7-Eleven and filled oxygen tanks in a different business location.  If Dick and Leo should one day hear about an explosion relating to oxygen, it might have been Chris.  Explosive thoughts, but understandable when you know where Chris lives.  Richland, Washington is sandwiched between the US Army's Umatilla Chemical Depot to its south and the Hanford Works to its north, home of the atomic bomb in World War II.


Listen to Episode 850
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

The PLANon Printstik PS910 is a portable handheld printer which works with Windows and Blackberry phones.  It's 1" x 10.75" x 1.5" in size, 1.5 lb in weight, and prints black and white on to custom thermal paper (20 pages in one paper cartridge).  As with most thermal paper, it only prints up to the end of the document, so that a single print job does not necessarily use up a full page.  Connection can be via USB or Bluetooth.  Print resolution is up to 200 x 400 dpi, print speed is 3 pages per minute.  It uses a rechargeable battery, a full charge of which can print 30 pages.

It comes with an AC charger, one roll of paper cartridge, and an installation CD.  For $50 more, you can get the PS950 which includes a car adapter, a USB cord and an executive hardshell case for the cables and chargers, although the car adapter can be bought separately as an accessory for $30.  The refill paper cartridges are currently sold in packs of 3 for $25 (i.e. 60 pages, about 42 cents per page), or packs of 9 for $60 (about 33 cents per page).

Back to Square One
As the Chatroom noted while this episode was being recorded, Dick has previously covered another PLANon product, the DocuPen portable scanner, the very first gadget covered in DGW, Episode 1.

A New Sponsor ...
... for DGW, GoToMeeting, which Andy Marken used to show Dick a demonstration of Cyberlink's MediaShow 4 (Episode 583).  Listeners can try it for free for 30 days, at www.gotomeeting.com/gizwiz.  According to Dick's Digital Day Counter (Episode 611), it's been 195 days since the last cheque.  However long ago it was, It's been too long.

DownThemAll !
DGW marathon listener JR Rodriguez IV (see Episode 600) wants to thank Ludwik Trammer especially, for helping him download all 577 past episodes of DGW by setting up a special webpage for JR with all the right download links.  JR then used the Mozilla Firefox extension DownThemAll ! to download all the links on that page.

Any listeners who need to catch up with past episodes and want more convenient access to the download links can use the same webpage, at www.gizwizsearch.int.pl/list2.php, which automatically adds new episodes to the list.


Listen to Episode 613
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

This is the second gadget donated by a listener and accepted by Dick into the hallowed grounds of the Gadget Warehouse.  Prompted by the PhoneMate Just In Case Beeper (Episode 540), listener Ed Wunder offered the Sharp Dial Master 100 EL6230 to Dick, which was small enough for Dick to find room for it in the Warehouse.

Ed Wunder bought it from K-Mart 20 years ago for $100.  It was a calculator, address book (for 100 contacts) and auto-dialer.  The lid flipped down to reveal the keypad.  There was even a secret compartment to hold notes which your could password-protect.  At the back of the gadget was the speaker which you would hold near a phone for its auto-dialing function.

It may still be available on AudioBlowouts, and Amazon.

Match Game Cards
There are still 6 sets of those left.  Your last chance to get one.

DGW Fix
Kory Klimoski was listening to Episode 567 on his way to work in which Dick and Leo discussed the IRS and the FBI, so he called DEA.  DGW is like crack to Kory.  He must have his daily fix, even if it makes him spend all his hard-earned money.  Speaking of audible crack, Kory recommends the Aubrey series by Pat O'Brian.

Mad Minute
No Mad Minute today.


Listen to Episode 585
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

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
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

The makers of the Fubar (Episode 231) has released a new model of their Tripod Flashlights, the model 95-146.  It offers high power LED 40 lumens of light output.  Its base expands into 3 legs forming a tripod and supporting the flashlight.  Its head, with a shatter-resistant lens, is adjustable and rotates into 4 positions.  It also retains the technology of older models called MaxLife 369 (such as models 95-112 and 95-115), so called because it can operate on 3, 6 or 9 AA batteries, as you like it.  A 3-position switch gives you the choice of high, low or off.  Low battery indicator.  Water resistant.

Plea and Mitigation
Brian Davis, a judge of the British Columbia Provincial Court, and an ex-friend of Dick's, writes in to tell him that the listener who gave him a copy of an old Gadget Magazine (from Episode 510) and whose identity Dick had forgotten was the same certain personage who took him to high tea at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver (Episode 346), namely himself, and that Dick received the Gadget Magazine over tea itself.  Dick pleads guilty as charged.  In mitigation, Dick offers lunch or maybe even dinner, and more DGW podcasts, and hopes to be friends again.

Listen to Episode 548
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

In the first episode of TTTT after Leo's Tasmanian trip, Leo talks about a gadget he took to Tasmania and used a lot (or will take and use).  It's the Lowepro Slingshot 200AW.  Lowepro specialises in camera bags and other photography-related accessories.

The Slingshot series gives you backpacks with a single shoulder strap, called the sling strap, ergonomically designed to evenly distribute the load over your body.  It has a nice camera compartment large enough to fit your DSLR and its mounted lens, with a built-in micro-fibre cloth to protect the camera's LCD screen; storage spaces for additonal lenses and flashes; a memory card pouch; an all-weather cover which you can slip out from within the bag to protect the bag from rain, dust and other inclement conditions, and other compartments and attachment loops for further storage.

It's called the Slingshot because you can swing, or sling, the bag from your back to the front easily, giving you convenient access to the contents of the bag without having to unload the bag from your shoulder.  The largest model is the Slingshot 300AW, with an extra padded waist belt to distribute the weight on to your hips.  The 200AW and 100AW are smaller sizes, which have a "stability strap" for added stability.

You can watch a demo by Lowepro at this link, or better yet, watch Leo's own demonstration from the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania, before he set off for the Freycinet Forest.

A New Cop Show
Chicago-based Dan Lueders, who made a gravy jingle submission and the theme-free Wednesday Theme, has done a TV commerical for the TV Event of the Year, a new cop show called "The Spork".  For more details on Dan, see the blog entry for Episode 528.


Listen to Episode 547
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

Neuros produced the MPEG4 Recorder 2 for converting videos into MPEG4 for playback on portable devices such as the iPod and PSP (Episode 49).  It has now come up with the Neuros OSD (OSD standing for Open Source Device, Linux-based) with far more functionalities.  It is a video recorder for all your videos, and a bit of a media centre.

It makes use of the analogue hole to transfer the input video into digital form, on to your choice of external storage (such as a USB hdd, flash drive, memory cards or NAS).  Hook up the Neuros OSD between your video source and the TV (using RCA jacks), connect your storage to the Neuros OSD, and start recording into MPEG4.  You have a choice of 2 resolutions: 320x240 at 30fps for playback on portable devices, and 640x480 at 30fps for playback on TV and PC.


It is also a very capable playback device for audio, video and still photo, supporting many media formats, including mpeg4, mov, wmv, flv, avi (including Dvix and Xvid), mp3, ogg vorbis, wma, flac, jpg, bmp and gif.  You can choose your playback source from an USB-connected storage, or any memory card in the built-in card reader (supporting most major memory cards), or from any networked source via the ethernet port (such as your NAS or even the internet).


Its firmware is upgradable, and the software includes built-in automatic software update capability.  Because the device is based on open source software, Neuros also encourages open development of additional features for the OSD.  Comes with a remote control, an IR Blaster, and RCA cables (European models include SCART adapters).

Automatic Podcast Generator
Dick and Leo lament the missed opportunity of getting a push-button automatic podcast generator, while Leo was away in Tasmania, from Ludwik Trammer, DGW's official statistician, database compiler, RSS feeder, general factotum and all-round nice guy.

Missing Feature
Girl Geek Myra Joyce (who wrote in in Episode 495) referred to the letter read in Episode 526 about the Canon Pixma iP4300.  To her disappointment, the CD-label printing capability is enabled only in models shipped outside of the US (which could be enabled for US models but only with some dismantling and reassembly of the printer).

The Ultimate Toaster
Leo has come up with an idea for the ultimate toaster.  It can print any image you want on your toast.  A toast before it's even made and one destined for the Gadget Warehouse.

Listen to Episode 546
Go to TWiT
The Giz Wiz Home Page

Scan your receipts with the Scanalizer and let the software help you with your tax return (the Tax Organizer), as the IRS accepts digital copies of your receipts.  It also organises your business cards and other documents into a searchable database by way of Excel spreadsheets.

Good Days And Mad
Dick's book of memoirs on Mad, with a lot of stories on Bill Gaines, Good Days And Mad, is available on Amazon.


Mad Office
Leo has been to the Mad Office, part of the Time Warner offices.  When Mad was purchased by Warner Brothers, they allowed Bill Gaines to continue to run Mad in the old office.


March '06 What the Heck Is It
It's the iPod Tripod Speakers.  More than 100 people got the answer, and Leo's the one who "screwed up", because it's featured in one of Leo's Gadget Almanacs.

When Dick started WTHII, the number of prizes was a dozen Mad magazines, then it became 2 dozen, then it was 3.  Now he's doing it all.

Listen to Episode 31