GlitchNYC.com

Missed Invention Opportunities: HandEase

Years ago, while carrying home tons of groceries in the cheap, thin bags that Key Foods gives you, I was struck by an invention idea. The thin bag handles were cutting into the joints of my fingers and no matter how I shifted, it hurt like hell. All it would take to alleviate that pain would be some sort of stiff layer that distributed the weight from a fishing-line thin razor of pain to a more manageable handle.

Rubber tubing seemed ideal, and I envisioned cutting a garden hose into 6 inch sections and then slitting it down the side so that you could easily pop the bags in, grab them, and go.

Having spent the first few years of my employable life working front end at Price Chopper, I figured that front end staff (such as register workers and cashiers) could churn these things out from cheap garden hose and then sell them for a dollar a piece at checkout. All you'd need would be a good pair of shears to cut the hose and you've got brand new revenue stream built upon your existing stock and labor.

There's a hook in the sale too - you can sell these little hand protectors as reusable items and invite shoppers to bring them next time, but you know they'll forget. For a dollar a pop, how many people will just throw them in again with the order when they forget?

Yesterday, I realized that I'd been beaten to the punch. Whole Foods offers these same devices (but mass produced in cardboard) for free as you walk out of the store. They're called Hand-Ease, and there's only an email address (handease AT cox DOT net) and the store logo printed on them, but I was able to find the website through google.

Designed as a circle that folds easily into your hand with two creases running down the middle, and made of 100% post consumer cardboard, they're much more environmentally friendly than my idea, and stores can simply order big boxes of them as an added incentive for customers to shop there. Brilliant work.

5:58 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Is Capsaicin the Next Ecstasy?

Capsaicin, the "active ingredient," to so speak, of Cayenne Peppers is powerful stuff. Eating it can cause you to break out in a sweat, screaming "whooo!" while your eyes water. Turned into a spray as mace, it can bring you to your knees. Formulated as a nasal spray it can... Clear your sinuses?

Amazingly, the answer seems to be yes. Capsaicin nasal sprays are said to be Drano of the nose, fixing sinus problems that were incurable with conventional medicine. I actually recommended them to my mother after she lost her sense of smell last year following repeated sinus infections.

Here's where the twist comes in.

As you might expect, blowing capsaicin up your nose f-ing KILLS. Anyone who loves spicy food knows breathing out through your nose while eating something really hot is a bad idea, and that's just a whiff of the stuff.

My good friend Sandra tells the story of trying Sinus Buster after getting some from its creator, Wanye Perry on her myspace blog. It's no big surprise that it hurt. The surprise is that she went back for another hit, and couldn't quite explain why.

She's not alone. Lots of people have commented that Capsaicin not only cleared up their sinuses and relieved sinus headaches, but also gave them a feeling of focus and wellbeing.

OnlyPunjab explains that the rush is due to the natural flood of endorphins triggered by the pepper spray, likening the feeling to that experienced by those who have gotten multiple tattoos or piercings, or long distance runners.

Capsaicin nasal spray is like an instant runners high that just happens to clear the sinuses.

Add to that the fact that endorphins are natural performance enhancers, and it's easy to see why athletes are using sinusbuster or another similar product before every workout. Skeptics will note here that firing burning pepper spray up your nose repeatedly sounds like a pretty classically bad idea. It turns out that for all the pain capsaicin causes, it produces almost 0 irritation to the skin or membranes it is applied to. All that pain is caused by a chemical reaction, and capsaicin is even marketed as a topical pain relief ointment under the brand Capzasin-HP.

It doesn't take long for word of a safe, natural high to spread, and you can bet bottles of this stuff will migrate from the locker room to the club pretty quickly.

I wonder how long it will be before we see batches of people outside the clubs in NYC going *sniff/snort* "Aughhhh ohhhh yeah!" and then shaking their heads and pumping their fists in the air, conquering the pain and then enjoying the immediate rush.

• Read more about "Sinus Buster" and its accidental inventor, Wayne Perry at About.com

1:47 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Delayed Gratification

Thanks to iWOOT (I Want One Of Those,) Jon and I got bit by the gadget bug this week, and we've been eying the remote control planes since Saturday. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This story really starts about 15 years earlier, in the slightly musty basement of my Uncle Joe.

Uncle Joe was a wiry, pipe smoking man and a wicked sense of humor whose mouth opened diagonally in a funny (and slightly but wonderfully insane) way when he laughs. My impression of him as a kid was always mixed with a caricature of "old age." His skinniness, leathery skin, and fungus encrusted nails made him seem just about as old as anyone was supposed to get.

15 years later, he is still beating us all at horseshoes and swinging from the branches of our neighbors tree. Like many of the older generation of my family, he's seeming younger and younger as our age-difference ratio shrinks.

The world is a bit distorted when you're young, though, and almost universally, everyone has a "you didn't get me that pony" moment - the moment when (often irrationally) you felt the world was utterly unjust. Mine centers around Uncle Joe.

Uncle Joe made the most magnificent RC planes; giant wing-spanned models that looked as though they could fly 1000 feet, and hung them from the rafters in that musty basement. He showed them to us sometime around 1989, and I immediately asked what every 9 year old would.

"Can we fly them?"

Even then, I knew it was unfair and irrational to feel cheated when the answer was no. He'd put countless hours into building and perfecting these beautiful things, and explained that the two times that he'd taken them out, they'd crashed And been shattered to smithereens.

But I was 9, and it all seemed horribly unfair at the time. I would never get to know what it was like to be at the helm of a something that was flying effortlessly above.

So, 15 years later, when the prospect of getting an RC plane up in the air for under $50 became a possibility, it's easy to understand why I jumped at it.

Jon felt the same, and there was no time to order and have them delivered while he was here in NY, so we went out and made our purchase.

I remembered seeing a shop wit all sorts of RC planes and boats in the window somewhere near my work, and indeed we found one on 30th and 8th. The proprietor was a bit brash, but after listening to his spiel for a while, we walked out happy in our purchase of 2 MegaTech Firefly's.

The color choices were green and orange. This is "always wearing at least some orange" Jon we're talking about here, so it's no surprise that I got the green one, and its neon glow appealed to my late nineties design sensibility.

We immediately took them up to central park and few them around in sheep meadow. Jon's transmitter was bad, so it would only fly about 20 feet before spiraling to the ground in "safe landing" mode, but mine climbed and climbed up into the sky.

They work much like the mini-RC cars, charging off the transmitter and making 4-6 minutes flights off of a 2 minute charge. They're amazing fun and I think I've got the RC bug. Even with their limited controls, there's something about the feeling of flying that's incredibly freeing, and there's no denying the satisfaction in realizing a childhood fantasy.

We exchanged Jon's faulty model right after going to the park, (American Hobby Center was slightly grumpy but ultimately very accommodating) and will probably break them out again tomorrow. I can't wait! Ahh the beauty of delayed gratification.

1:22 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Hitachi's Strange Educational Marketing

Hitachi has produced a very weird "School-House Rocks"-type animation to promote their new perpendicular data storage method, which they claim may increase the current space limit on their hd's (specifically their space constrained microdrives) 10 fold.

I've never seen disco-dancing bits before. This one just has to be seen to be believed.

I'd love to know the back-story behind this video. I wonder if some of they guys working on the drives just got bored one night. It's very similar to the HomeStar Runner video for the Bare Naked Ladies "Experimental Film"

11:00 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

likeAbike = Awesomely simple bike + walking training for kids

I just saw this incredibly simple but brilliant gadget and had to mention it here. It's basically a bike with no pedals, low enough to the ground so that kids can use their legs to push off and balance. It's not quite a scooter, not quite training wheels. Like their site says, it's simply "likeAbike."

I didn't really "get" it until I watched the video, and then I wanted to get one for all of the couples with teeny-tots we know.

From the site:

A LIKEaBIKE has no pedals. When first trying to ride, kids play with their LIKEaBIKE as they would with a hobbyhorse. They become familiar with the saddle first, carefully sitting on it. Soon they start to walk with it, then run. In no time the little rider becomes more confident and by pushing off, picks up speed. If the bike starts to tip, kids instinctively regain their balance with their feet.

My only gripe is the hefty $279 price tag, but I imagine with a larger production run they could bring that down quite a bit. Either that, or they'll be an Ikea version in a few years. (Seeing as likeAbike lays out the prior art right on their site, I imagine this is fairly hard to patent.)

Link lifted from a conversation with Adam, who helped design the site

12:50 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

"My Preciousssss" or "Making the Dell 2005FPW work under Linux"

I've gotten the Dell 20.1" Widescreen Flatpanel home and holy god is it gorgeous. I basically scored myself an Apple cinema display in black for 1/3 the price.

There were some headaches along the way and I figure that I'll log my work here for any googlers looking to get it running on Linux. For the rest of you, dear readers, I'll resume my normal ranting tomorrow (when the Incredibles finally gets here. What's the point of a preordering when it doesn't get there till the day after the release?)

---

Well, I'm staring at 1680x1050 pixels of linuxy goodness, so I can assure you that the 2005FPW does indeed work. The caveat is that since it uses a new (read non-standard) resolution, most videocards don't have the "modeline" settings for the native resolution built into their linux drivers yet. I have read about problems with the Intel i810 and other i8xx chipsets, and personally had a problem with the Via CLE266.

Although you can set the modeline in xorg.conf, it's worth noting that no amount of settings I could throw at the via chipset (which is the integrated videocard on my mini-itx board) would make it work. Some chipsets simply cannot handle this resolution or will not accept non-standard modeline without some crazy tweaking.

In the end, I simply threw a spare ATI rage 128 in a PCI slot, added the custom modelines, and voila, lots and lots of pixels. It seems that the ATI driver is quite tolerant of custom modeline settings. Read on for the xorg.conf lines you need to add to get this working.

Finally, if you're one of the unlucky few to get monitors with dead pixels or backlight "bleeding", don't despair. These anomalies are a normal part of the manufacturing process and Dell is quickly replacing defective monitors. Just call them if you have an issue, and be sure to keep your shipping packaging, as some people have reported pixels dying during or after the first few days of use.

If you've got a display with strange color problems and "blotches" and are ready to send the monitor back, try gently taking a paper towel and dragging the LCD "gel" that makes up the screen into the thin spots. You may find that you can salvage the monitor yourself and save the hassle!

1:45 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

The Monitor I've Been Waiting For.

This is the monitor and price point I've been waiting for 3 years.

Bought.

Use the appropriate coupon code to get an AMAZING flat panel deal

Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor with Height Adjustable Stand - $487 After Coupon code JL6MK$330H9ZT4 (Exp 3/12 5:59AM CST or 2000 1999 more uses)

Stolen from Cheap Stingy Bastard where there's great deals on smaller monitors too.

4:53 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Choosing the Right Laptop

Now that PC's are plummeting down under $500, many of my friends are looking to purchase laptops. Perhaps not coincidentally, many of these same friends are living in NYC apartments and have no place to put big noisy doorstops otherwise known as PCs. I've always been a fan of being able to go in and fix problems myself, so I generally lean towards desktop systems, but I'm happy to do some research for friends.

Now, from one geek to another, what you "should" buy in a laptop will differ greatly. Arguments back and forth regarding speed, hard drive size, dvd burners, reliability, and more will get your recommendations from $700 to $3000. Finding the "sweet spot" where you're getting the most utility for the best value can be difficult, but or me, there is only one real requirement. The Screen.

Modern PC's, even pieces of crap like E-Machines, can handle just about anything you want to throw at them. Processors are insanely fast, even default low end hard drives are big enough, and memory is abundant. Everything has evolved so quickly that the normal user will never even touch 90% of their computer's potential. They just want to surf the web, watch some movies, and write a paper or two.

Even as a mega-geek, I'm firmly in this camp. I'm not rendering 3D or movies (and even when I do, I can start a render job and then go to bed), and most of the daily work I do takes place in a web browser, email client, or text editor. My main computer at home is a small-form-factor 1ghz machine that was originally going to be a MythTV box.

The only thing that hems me in when I'm working on a computer is the number of pixels on the screen. I need at least one web browser open to a decent size and a bunch of space around the edges so I can keep an eye on my other open programs and multitask efficiently.

1024x768, also known as XGA, just doesn't cut it for that basic daily work. You find yourself maximizing your web browser and all other programs and you become oblivious to other things going on on your machine, like IM windows popping up or emails coming in.

Most bargain laptops, regardless of screen size, come with an XGA resolution monitor. If you can find a good laptop with at least WXGA (or better, like UXGA, WUXGA or WUSXGA - more letters are better) for cheap, you're good to go.

I recently stumbled upon this deal. AMD Athlon 3000+, WXGA screen, DVD+-RW, for $900? If I had the cash, I'd own this thing already. Even if that laptop isn't available anymore or you want to go with a different vendor, I think the basic specs hold up well as far as what to look for in a great bargain laptop.

Anyway, until I have $1000 to throw around, I'll just have to drool over strongbad's new laptop. If you haven't seen it yet, start with the "virus" email.

3:31 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

I'd Forgotten about Headphones

I've spent the last 2 years listening to music on my computer speakers at work which are, admittedly, pretty crappy. They do the job though, and I can listen to them without bothering anyone else in the office.

Sara's new ipod made me realize that I've been hearing only the "top layer" of music; the lead vocals and loudest instruments, for quite a while now.

Strapping on my headphones for a bit has made me appreciate some of the music that's been sitting in my collection unplayed for a while, and I'm currently digging heavily on VNV Nation as ambient "New York Commute" music and even more enthused about the Garden State Soundtrack.

3:20 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 2 writebacks |

In Praise of the Tungsten E

News sites yesterday carried word that new models of the Palm wouldn't feature OS6 despite earlier promises that they would.

The major benefits of OS6 are supposed to be multitasking and multimedia support.

Right now, I'm listening to mp3's on my SD card and typing using my wireless keyboard. Meanwhile, my calendar application pops up a reminder to get fixings for dinner tonight. I'm doing all of this on OS5 with the economy model palm, the Tungsten E.

Don't listen to the hype. Unless you're one of the people who will actually use WiFi or bluetooth support for your palm, just get the tungsten E. It's more than enough machine for anything your need your PDA to do.

3:10 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

It's a crime that I haven't blogged this yet

I really can't believe I haven't found a free moment to blog about this yet but I blame pokerroom.com and their free, Linux friendly Java client and No Limit Hold 'em tables.

When Jon was in town a few months back, he and I went exploring in the giant Toys R' Us in Times Square, the one that extends up AND down a full 3 stories in each direction from street level and has among other things, a Giant animatronic T-Rex and a Ferris Wheel inside. I have, of course,seen all these things before but it's always fun to poke around in there and see whats new, especially because Jon and I have visions of one day becoming DIY toy designers and making our fortunes.

While we were walking through the "Center display" where they feature the "latest mass marketing push" item we were stopped by a man dressed in a cross between a wizards robe and a "king" costume, deftly spinning the iTop. Of course I was impressed, mostly because the technology behind the thing had to be both pretty advanced and pretty cheap. They were selling the little device for $10.

I picked up the top and gave it a spin, and was immediately hooked. It was counting the number of times I spun it and displaying it in real time using the single row of 8 LEDS on the top. As the top whipped around, it flashed the lights in sequence, spelling out words and numbers.

Jon and I took several turns trying to beat the best score, but eventually we ran out of time and had to go.

A few months passed and I had all but forgotten about the iTop (I hadn't bought one since I was saving for the wedding) and I found myself needing to buy presents for my Groomsmen. I don't know about you, but I have no need for an engraved money clip. What I do have is an endless appetite for fun desk gadgets and challenging games.

When it came time, I bought one of the iTops for each of the Groomsmen and included them in a bag with The Open CD (which includes lots of open source tools we used to put the wedding together, like Scribus and Open Office) and a CD with all the mp3s we played at the wedding. I was worried what they would think about they toy, if they would like it as much as I had and if it was appropriate.

It turns out that I was worrying for nothing! By the end of the rehearsal dinner, we were all sitting around, trying to beat the best score and trying all sorts of surfaces to get the best spin. I think we'd just broken 900 when we finally went to bed.

The guys spent tons of their downtime playing with the tops, and by the time the wedding rolled around, they had figured out how to keep it going indefinitely by brushing their hand quickly along the edge, and had invented a new game where you spun it in the air to see how many times you could get it around before you caught it. The iTop was a hit!

The day after the wedding, we finally got home to Astoria to find a message on my cell phone. I listened to the panic inducing message nervously, as many friends were driving home that day, and with the tone of the message, I was worried that someone had been in a car accident.

"Ten" the voice on the message screamed. A chill ran down my back. I was confused by the message, but the voice was hard to read. Who was it from?

"Fourteen!" The message continued, again in that slightly panicked yell. I was sweating now. I didn't know if I was listening to a prank, if something horrible had happened, or what.

"Ten-Fourteen! 1014, new record on the iTop! Just had to call and tell you. We're up at college safe. Have a good trip."

Rye hadn't been up at school more than a few hours before they'd broken out the iTop and shattered the standing single-spin high score. He had called me out of excitement! I let out a sigh of relief and laughed. What a great little gift that had turned out to be.

Little did I know that in the week were on our honeymoon, Ryan's friends at college would make our standing records look paltry, inventing new ways to spin the top and spurring us to break the contest into separate events like the "Snap" method and the "Indian fire" method.

Meanwhile, back out in California, Jon was experimenting with different materials to spin on to try to get the best spin out of his and up in Rochester, Doug was showing his (slightly wonky one) off with his work buddies. I don't know, maybe we're all geeks in the same way, but for $10, that's one hell of a toy to me.

Way to go Irwin toys. Toys R' Us seems to be having trouble keeping them in stock in their NYC store, so I don't know if they're having trouble keeping up demand or they're just flying off the shelves. Either way, its good to see such a great product selling well, especially without a major advertising push or paying for a license to brand it with some kid-friendly logo.

If you buy an iTop:

• Beware that some of the tops are slightly off balance. So far, 2 out of 7 were just a bit wobbly. For $10, it's well worth the risk, and it's still a fun toy, but you might not beat the world record with it. Also, watch the packaging to make sure the "battery seal" is sill intact in back
• Check out the "secret modes". Switch to mode 1 and then hold both the play and mode buttons for 5-10 seconds. The flashing modes will do cool things like draw patterns and display a compass.

3:21 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Artbots show in NYC this weekend!

I want to be these guys when I grow up.

I don't usually like to repost stories from BoingBoing but this crazy "build your own wacky robot and show it off" art show is going off in Harlem this weekend.

If you're an electronics geek and in or near New York this weekend, this is the place to be. With luck, I'll be there asking tons of questions about how they did stuff, as research for a new project I'm working on.

More details on the "project" after I clear it with my lawyers...

It.s an ArtBots invasion in Harlem! The Third Annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show will take place on September 17, 18, & 19 from noon to 6:00pm at The Mink Building on 126th Street & Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem. Featuring the work of 20 artists and groups from seven countries, the show celebrates the strange and wonderful collision of shifty artists, disgraced engineers, high/low/no tech hackers, rogue scientists, beauty school dropouts, backyard pyros, and industrial espionage that has come to define the emerging field of robotic art. Participants include robots that sketch, carve, float, wiggle, hum, ring, grow, wander, and sing, as well a number of works the form and function of which are not yet well understood.

2:01 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Cool New Car-Radio-Like LCD Case

Ryan just sent me a link to http://www.colorcase.com which has this awesome LCD readout. I've always wondered why we waste screen real-estate for information that's so readily translated into LCD-friendly numbers and symbols

Rye:

i think i got it. aside from this one particular one.. the whole site is full of fun toys...

control 4 diff fans?

Scour that site. It's awesome.

10:02 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Cockamamie Gadget Ideas

Every once in a while I see something and think how marketable it could be if just tweaked a little bit and put in a bevy other other devices.

I believe Nokia has hit on just such a goldmine with their "Light Writing" phone for midair messaging. A small row of LED's and a cheap accelerometer allow you to "write" in the air by flashing the diodes in sequence.

The technology is nothing new - LED signs work on the same principal, scrolling the words across many rows rather than moving one row along.

Two ideas came to immediately after seeing this. First, why not make the display bigger. Imagine a jump-rope full of LEDs drawing 6' pictures in the air at raves and flashing messages at protests as the owner spun it around.

Second, with all the blue LED's on the highway already, why not use this same technology to write in the air as you pass bystanders and other vehicles. It'd certainly be at least a somewhat better use of the technology than just lighting up blue and going back and forth like night rider.

Come on, if you're already taunting the cops with your pimp-mobile mods and blue lights, why not go the whole distance and be able to key in "eat my dust" as you fly by at 120mph, "Out of my way" as you pass those slowpokes doing the speed limit, and then "Ouch!" as you slam into the guardrail.

Ridiculous as it seems, I bet this is on Pepboys shelves by this time next year.

2:30 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 2 writebacks |

Honda VS Harley in Two Markets?

Looks like one of the big bike makers is finally stepping up to the plate to take on Harley-Davidson.

At least as far as the general population knows, Honda has almost exclusively made bikes known as "crotch rockets," road speedsters more likely to attracted racers rather than the archetypal "biker."

Meanwhile, Harley-Davidson has spent decades carefully managing and cultivating it's "bad" image, which has earned them a fanatically dedicated consumer base and the ability to charge obscene amounts for the privilege of owning a "hog." It will be interesting to see if the squeaky clean Honda can compete in the same market by making good looking cruisers that cost a whole lot less.

Conversely, and perhaps, not coincidentally, Harley is now looking to expand into the Asian market where the burgeoning economy is just beginning to afford it's population the luxury of owning bikes like Harleys. A partnership with Zongshen, China's leading bike maker, is reportedly in the works to make this happen.

5:36 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Matsushita's "Sleep Room" for Insomniacs

Boing boing is running a piece about Matsushita's new and pricey "Sleep Room" for Insomniacs.

Essentially, it's a really comfortable flat surface in a room that lulls you to sleep.

Yeah, I've already got one of those. It's called a BED. My problem isn't that I can't sleep when I'm there, it's actually getting in it!

In all honesty, although this thing sounds pretty nice, I'd be interested to hear how many insomniacs think it would change anything about their habits, or if their sleep-dep routines would keep them away from their "Sleep room" just as it does their "Bed room."

5:11 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Covet

I'm generally not one to let my technolust drive my purchases.

I've got a 1.4ghz PC, and that's just fine.

Ancient ATI 128 Graphics board? Works for me.

15" 1024x768 monitor...Hang on a minute.

I've been working on an LCD generously bartered from my old place of work, since we live on the 3rd floor, right next to the power lines, and their 60Hz magnetic interference, which screws up all CRTs. The problem is, this thing is such a postage stamp that I'm limited to working in 1024, where I can't see anything but the window I'm working on, and forget doing anything like art or video editing on it. I can't see the images under my tools!

Now I find myself drooling over this:
The Ultimate LCD : Samsung's 240T 24 Inch Wide-screen Display

24 inches of 1900 x 1200 wide-screen bliss. Wow.

I'm going to need to get myself a "decent but fairly cheap" flatpanel pretty soon, or I might do something rash... Hmm... Maybe just another 15" for dual monitor.

1:23 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 2 writebacks |

Doggles? Hahahahha.... Eh... Whoo...I mean. Ahem.

What are these? I mean really, what purpose do they serve? I've never seen a dog squinting at the sun as we do - hell, they ride down the highway at 70mph with their eyes and mouth open and seem to love it. These just seem silly.

Ahh well, I couldn't resist the cute.

12:35 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |

Inventions

Last night, I was trying to get to sleep (why is that so freaking hard to do lately? I used to hit the pillow and then Zzzzzzzz) and I started thinking about various things my father claimed to have 'invented'. Although completely unverifiable because the ideas stayed in his head, the list is quite impressive. My mother has corroborated some of these claims, admitting that he did, in fact, think of it first.

• Tethered pacifier for babies, so when they spit it out it just hangs around their neck instead of hitting the floor.
• Screw tops for soda bottles, when they still needed a bottle opener
• Flip-tops for toothpaste, upon seeing the flip-top brilliance of Hunts Tomato Ketchup. It took them years to do this after he thought of it.
• Coining the term "Whiz" when referring to urination

I know there's more, but I can't think of them at the moment. Anyone else have crazy "My father invented..." stories?

For posterity, here's some of the things I myself claim to have "Invented," although the ideas will stay lodged in my brain until someone else patents them and bets the farm on the idea. I wonder, is there something like a GPL for patents?

See more ...

1:03 pm | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 1 writebacks |

Almost Instant Gratification

Well, pretty much because I have the coolest boss on the face of the planet, I have a new Palm Tungsten E today, and I'm sure I'll be posting here about the ridiculous things you can now do on a Palm well into the future.

See more ...

11:23 am | permalink | /technology/gadgets | 0 writebacks |