Omega Heavy Duty Low Speed Juicer

Posted on April 7, 2012 by curiouscat

I haven’t jumped into juicing myself. I have thought about it and mainly haven’t done so out of laziness. In looking at options I think the Omega VRT350 Heavy Duty Dual-Stage Vertical Single Auger Low Speed Juicer looks very nice.

I like the convenience of just drinking healthy stuff. The slow juicers seem to capture a greater yield of juice (based on reviews I have read). Reviewers also seem to think greater nutritional value is retained (I am not sure how much credence to give this claim). I do think losing the fiber is a bad part of juicing though.

Omega J8003 Nutrition Center Single-Gear Commercial Masticating Juicer (this is a bit slow but very good for wheat grass and leafy green vegetables). Both have 10 year warranties.

Small Solar Panel for Recharging Your Phone, Tablet, Digital Camera…

Posted on April 2, 2012 by curiouscat

2.0 Watt 6 Volt Panel: ightweight, monocrystalline solar 2 Watt panel for $25. They are waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. This one is designed to charge USB battery for handhelds (for iPhones…).

They also offer a Spark Tablet Case which includes solar panels and a battery. The solar panels charge the batter and the battery can be used as power for the tablet (iPads and other tablets).

Asus Padfone: Tabet with Plugin Phone

Posted on March 27, 2012 by curiouscat

Smart phone from Asus that plugs into a 10.1″ tablet that runs Android. It looks kind of cool but honestly doesn’t seem that special. Still, even just the size of the tablet is good.

Zeo Personal Sleep Manager

Posted on March 21, 2012 by gadgets

The Zeo personal sleep manager monitors your brain wave patterns using a headband. You can also move data from your Zeo to your computer using an SD memory card (like those used in digital cameras) out of the headband and put it in your computer and get a view a graph of your light, deep and REM sleep over the course of the night.

The optional SmartWake alarm feature will look for a “natural awakening point” based on your sleep patterns to decrease the grogginess associated with waking from Deep sleep. When SmartWake is selected, Zeo will find a time to wake you within a half-hour of your set time, never later. The result should be a slightly easier way to wake up.

Subwing: For Underwater Adventure

Posted on March 13, 2012 by curiouscat

Fun looking device to pull you through the water. The device is connected to a boat that is pulling you. Get yours at subwing.net: the price is about $750.

Macro Lens Band for Phone Cameras

Posted on February 8, 2012 by curiouscat

Easy Macro Cell Lens Band is a neat tool to let you have macro photo capabilities on you camera phone. Only $15.

Buy the Easy Macro Cell Lens Band at the Photojojo Store!

This lens will transform your cell phone photos from meh to awesome by giving you stunningly sharp details. See the curious detail of your own eye, get a close-up of the sprinkles on your ice cream cone or see what an ant’s face really looks like!

Celluon Magic Cube Laser Projection Keyboard and Touchpad

Posted on January 31, 2012 by gadgets

Keyboard projected onto desktop using a laser

The Celluon Magic Cube turns any table or surface into a virtual keyboard or multi-touch mouse with its amazing laser projection and motion detection technology. The Magic Cube is smaller than a pack of cards – easy to use, and a great travel companion projection keyboard for mobile, tablet, and laptop devices. Do read the reviews on Amazon, it isn’t so much magic as a bit of cool engineering that might be a bit ahed of ready for prime time. Still if you like to try cutting edge gadgets and are willing to accept the drawbacks they sometimes have, this might be worth looking into.

Projects a virtual laser keyboard onto any table and detects keystrokes. The experience of typing on a projected keyboard is different than a standard keyboard. Projects a condensed QWERTY layout. The Magic Cube detects movement just above the surface of each projected key. Practice using included tips is recommended. Devices with automatic keystroke correction, like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod improve accuracy significantly.
Acts as a standard keyboard via Bluetooth (wireless) or USB (wired)–no drivers needed
Great companion wireless keyboard for tablets and touch phones. Small. Light. Charges via USB
Compatible with Win XP SP2+, Mac 10.4+, iOS 4.3.5+ (iPhone/iPod/iPad), etc
Mouse mode projects a standard two-finger multi-touch pad (Windows 7 only. Not iOS capable)

Try on Clothes and Accessories Virtually

Posted on January 17, 2012 by gadgets

FaceCake Swivel lets you try on clothes at home taking advantage of Kinect technology. Very cool. Kinect continues to allow some great innovation.

The application allows you to try on multiple items, layer them and see how they look from different angles (as you move the items move with you – it is true that this is still pretty rough, but given how fast innovation moves this part will likely improve quickly). You can also send an image to friends to have them weigh in on your potential purchase.

I haven’t been following that closely but my vague recollection is Kinect backed off attempting to prohibit innovation that integrated connect into other products. That was a very smart move, I believe.

Self Balancing Enclosed Motorcycle

Posted on January 6, 2012 by curiouscat

Very cool. I believe small cars and easily hourly rentable cars are going to dramatically increase in use in the future. This may well be one option. It looks fun.

The C1 is fully electric and gets 150 miles per charge. Lit Motors has target price is $13,000 with production starting in 2013.

Continue reading →

Storing and Sharing the Photos You Take with Various Gadgets

Posted on December 21, 2011 by curiouscat

Cell phone cameras have greatly increased the number of photos most of us have to share. Once you have them how to share them is the next question. There are various options that are pretty good for those that like them but also with some limitation: facebook (I don’t use it), Google’s Picasa (I don’t at all like how rigid Google is in how things are handled), Flickr and Smugbug (along with many others). I ran across a new site that seems like it might be nice: OpenPhoto.

The easiest way to signup is to use your dropbox account, for storage. If you don’t have a dropbox account yet, sign up (it is free).

Get an invite code (they are in an early, limited release right now). You can just email them or follow them on Twitter and send them a request.
Sign up (select the option to “Store originals in my personal Dropbox account”)
You will then be prompted to login to Dropbox to complete the integration
Then follow very easy add and upload photo process, that you are taken to.

If you have dropbox already, it should take less than 2 minutes to be up and running.

Good job, OpenPhoto. One feature I would like is to be able to edit the date of the photo (I have photos from the 1970s saying they are 5 months old (when converted to digital images) and I don’t see a way to edit it yet. This project is new, so that isn’t surprising. It would be nice to see that updated at some point.

Overall, it is very easy to use, and I really like how it keeps the photos in your control (to the extent your dropbox [or whatever you use] space is in your control). Very easy to assign rights (all rights reserved – or various creative commons licenses or your own license); on a per photo basis. You can also make photos public or private (for viewing over the web).

Unless you are sharing originals so other can print them out, for archival purposes (or something similar) you are probably wise to save the images in a much smaller file size. There is really no reason to upload 2 Mb images for people to look at on their monitor (unless there are going to zoom in like crazy). You can reduce the file sizes dramatically and what people see on their monitor will not change.

Here are my photos. It took me less than 10 minutes (and most of that was finding the photos and editing the text) for the first 2 I uploaded.

You can make groups, which is nice. Hopefully this allows you to share photos with groups (or will, at some point). I haven’t figured that part out yet. The software is open source, which I like. The idea behind it is to have something like wordpress that provide software that you can run for your own blog but this time it is to manage your own photos.

Curious Cat Gadgets

Technology in human sized portions