Strollerderby : electronics

Retro Electronic Toys

Brett Singer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:36:00 GMT

Sometimes I think I might be psychic. For example, right now, you are reading this blog post. And you think the joke I just made wasn't all that funny.

See what I mean?

Anyway, I was talking to my son the other day about the handheld electronics I used to play with. Then I'm online, reading my email, and in my gmail toolbar I see the title of a Wired.com article: "Forgotten Electronic Games."

Hmmm. Maybe Google is reading my brain waves. Wouldn't put it past them.

But enough about my psychic ability. (I know that you don't want to hear any more about it. You see? You see what I mean?) What did Wired dig up? Here are some highlights:

Big Trak: Man, did I want one of these. You could program it to move around and stuff! And it had a laser! Well, it was just a little light that flashed, but it made a cool noise.

Vectrex: Another one that I didn't actually own. This little gem was a self-contained gaming system, complete with a monitor that displayed vector graphics (hence the name). The system is still popular with some folks -- Wired points out that there are even new games being made. http://www.classicgamecreations.com/

Microvision: This I had. And I wish I still did. The Microvision was really the first Gameboy, albeit a technologically inferior version. The controls consisted of a dial and a squishy membrane that became various buttons depending on which cartridge was inserted. The screen was a series of black squares on a gray background. But at the time, it was the coolest thing around.

Merlin: It seemed like everyone had one of these, except for me. I didn't care for it but it was hugely popular. Lots of beeping and more than one game to play. It looked (and sounded) like a futuristic telephone from a movie made in 1979.

Not on the list are some of my personal faves, like the Pac-Man knockoff Epoch Man:

"It's not just a game! It's a digital clock, with a musical alarm!" Things were much simpler in the early 80's.

Bring back any memories?

Source: Wired.com

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They Say: Black Friday Will Be Gray

Brett Singer — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:00:00 GMT

So, like, will there be good deals this year or not? Inquiring minds want to know.

CNET talked to some experts in the field of bargain-hunting who offered a few tips for consumers. For example, Daniel de Grandpre of Dealnews suggests patronizing regional outlets such as MicroCenter and Fry's Electronics rather than Best Buy or Circuit City.

While there is definitely money to be saved by savvy shoppers who like to get up at 5am and hit the mall, it may also be possible to get the same deals by staying home and shopping online. Even brick and mortar stores are offering "web only specials". Kmart's "Early Black Friday" deals started on November 2, and CNET says that "some retailers are doing Black Friday month specials." Online-only outlets like Amazon.com have been pushing their Black Friday specials for several days now. So you might not even have to wait until Friday to get the stuff that you want.

One thing I've noticed is a certain desperate feeling among retailers. For example, I got this email from CompUSA a couple of days ago. Then I got it again. And again. They want to make damn sure I know what they've got on sale. Toys R Us has been sending at least one sale-trumpeting email per day for the past two weeks. And Amazon let users vote on which products they wanted discounted.

If polls are to be believed, retailer's feelings of potential doom may be justified: CNET cites a Consumer Electronics Association polls that says "consumers...plan to spend $200 less on the holidays" this year.

One bit of good news, I guess. If you do plan on shopping, whether on Black Friday or some other time, you'll probably get more for your money than you would if the economy were more robust. That's something I suppose.

Source: CNET

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Are You Cutting Back This Holiday Season?

Brett Singer — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

In case you haven't heard, the economy has been doing its imitation of David Caruso's career before he got a part on CSI: Miami (and if anyone can tell me what show that line is from, I will be impressed because it's pretty random). Which begs the question: are you going to spend less this year than you have in the past?

TodaysMama.com released the results of their survey, which says that a whopping "85 percent of moms plan to cut holiday spending due to economic conditions." (I guess all of the dads were too busy playing fantasy football and visiting strip clubs to participate in the survey. I kid.)

From the press release:

SALT LAKE CITY.– November 24, 2008 – TodaysMama.com today announced the results of their 2008 Holiday Economic Survey, revealing that 85% of Moms across the United States are trimming their holiday budgets due to concern about the long-term economic outlook. Of those, 14% plan to cut holiday spending by an astounding 75%, and 32% will cut holiday spending by 50%. The survey, which included 1050 respondents, also found that 62% of Moms do not plan to shop on Black Friday, and 66% believe it will take two to three years for the economy to recover.

So – moms, dads, and everyone else – how about you? Will gifts be closer to "a package of socks" rather than "a flat-screen television"? (Nothing wrong with that, by the way. I could use some new socks.) Are you planning to cut back on your spending this year?

source: TodaysMama.com

image: CCTV Blog

Will Black Friday Deals Be Good This Year?

Maybe The 80s Are Retro

Will Black Friday Deals Be Good This Year?

Brett Singer — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

When the economy stinks, sometimes you can count on stores lowering their prices in an effort to entice customers to part with some of their hard-earned cash. Business Week reports that sales figures are down everywhere. So on Friday November 28 – the day after Thanksgiving, aka "Black Friday" – stuff should be even cheaper than usual, right?

Maybe not. According to Engadget, Walmart's deals are looking pretty lame, at least the so-called "doorbuster" early morning specials. Specifically, they mention "the already-discounted Magnavox Blu-ray player drops from $198 to $128…50-inch Samsung plasma of unspecified resolution is only $798 (720p, bet on it), and Xbox 360 + Guitar Hero III & wireless guitar pack…for $199." Also mentioned are "a $398 HP desktop PC and $175 gas grill." In other words, if you had your heart set on a new TV or the kids are begging for Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Other Fake Music Video Game, you might be able to get as good a deal online. So far, there's nothing really worth getting up early for, shopping-wise.

We'll have to wait and see if the other stores follow suit or cut prices even more drastically in an effort to get at least SOMEBODY to consume more conspicuously than they were initially planning on doing.

Source: Engadget

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Babyproofing Tip: Wind Those Cables

Brett Singer — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:35:00 GMT

Babyproofing is a hot topic on Babble at the moment, with some parents saying they ain't gonna 'proof no more, no more, they ain't gonna 'proof no more. To me, there's baby proofing and there's baby proofing. Which means what exactly?

As with all things, there's common sense and then there's insanity. This poll is overwhelmingly in favor of "hiding the bleach and covering the outlets," to which I will add "putting the steak knives in a drawer" and "not building a fire in the middle of the living room."

With that in mind, there are some things that qualify as babyproofing but are also just good things to do in your house. It's worth considering that you are not only protecting your wonderful children from themselves and all of your dangerous stuff. You are also protecting your wonderful stuff from your dangerous children. I'm not talking about cookbooks, which Thing 2 actually requests to have read to him, after he's done pawing at the pages. Or the salad spinner, another favorite Thing 2 toy, which, according to him, is used for making toast. I'm talking about my stereo. Laptops. iPods. The Wii. Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln, don't break the Wii.

Basically, babyproofing was a lot easier before we all had more electronic devices than Radio Shack. All that expensive stuff you own is great fun--until your daughter decides that she absolutely must yank the speaker cable until something happens. You know, like the speaker falling to the floor and breaking.

To tidy up the abundance of wires in our happy home, I use Cable House Cord Organizers from a nifty little online retailer called Cyberguys (get the catalog, the kids will love it.) Until you can redo the house so that all the wires are inside the walls (is that a pig flying overhead?), these brightly colored rubber doohickeys will help you tame even the wildest home theater/home network/evil scientist lair. At $5.95 for four, they're a steal, so get a bunch. Hey, they’re a lot cheaper than new speakers.

See also: LifeHacker's Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control

image: Vibrant.com

Fetal Monitor Inventor: My Baby is Misunderstood!

Madeline Holler — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:36:00 GMT

Show of hands: Who was hooked up to the electronic fetal monitor during labor? (One of my hands is up, the other down).

Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did you feel like all eyes were on the damn readout and none on you? Did you request it not be used continuously only to have nurses strap the monitors around your big belly anyway?

The fetal monitor is as much a part of modern hospital birth as the baby itself. But the father of the device doesn’t much like the machine, saying he thinks it does more harm than good. The first time he saw it used, he believes he witnessed an emergency c-section that was not actually necessary.

His opinions have made him an outcast in the OB/Gyn professional community, especially because he’s the go-to guy in malpractice suits to testify against doctors. According to a Wall Street Journal article, nearly 85 percent of fetuses in the U.S. in 2002 were assessed using the technology and the medical community agrees, the article says, that because of the continous feed of information, they have nearly eliminated stillbirths and are invaluable. But it’s a technology wholly reliant on human interpretation of the readings. And this is where things, the inventor/doctor says, go wrong, since there is a high false-positive rate for predicting adverse outcomes.

"According to data pooled from several studies that appeared in a bulletin issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, use of the fetal monitor, compared with stethoscope monitoring, increased the overall Cesarean delivery rate by 53% and C-sections for suspected fetal distress by 155%. The monitor also contributed to increases in the use of vacuum and forceps during delivery, the bulletin said. Vacuums and forceps are applied to a baby's head when the baby won't come out. The instruments may increase risk of injury to the baby during delivery,” the WSJ article said.

Some doctors complain that there are few alternatives. During my hospital birth with a midwife, the nurse hooked up my every other hour during early labor to check the heart rate. I'm not sure what happened during the active labor, but I'll assume the monitors were strapped on. During my homebirth, the midwife checked the baby’s heart rate with the handheld Doppler about a billion times an hour (or maybe once every few hours – time gets so skewed during labor). It didn’t seem intrusive or inconvenient. Why don’t doctors and nurses go this route? That's not a rhetorical question, either. I am curious, why they can't check periodically themselves?

Things Fall Apart: Coby Boom Boxes Recalled

Karen Murphy — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:22:00 GMT

I'm not exactly an electronics geek, nor do I live under a rock, but I've never heard of Coby Electronics, which makes me think that it's no surprise that about 13,800 of its boom boxes are being recalled for a little technicality, some silly wiring thing that causes the unit to spontaneously ignite. Which could come in awfully handy after it's played The Wiggles for the 742nd consecutive time, but could be decidedly unhandy if anything else caught flame too.

Erring on the side of safety is always prudent, which is why they suggest to stop using the darn things and to contact the manufacturer to see what they've decided to do about it in the way of getting you back your $20 - $50 (depending on where you bought it; don't you feel cheated now, knowing that you paid $50 for a $20 chunk of worthless plastic that could set your house on fire?).You'll know that the Coby boombox you own is the one that's been recalled because:

a.) it is model number MP-CD475

b.) it's white and silver, and

c.) it's either on fire or has smoke pouring out of it.

Strollerderby : electronics

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Fetal Monitor Inventor: My Baby is Misunderstood!

Things Fall Apart: Coby Boom Boxes Recalled