Geek Treat of the Week Let’s get the negative out of the way right from the start: the iCade is a bit on the crap side.
But then that’s kind of how it should be.
Ion’s iCade: beep, beep, beep…. schboom
As if you couldn’t guess from the pics, the iCade is an iPad stand that mimics the arcade game cabinets of yesteryear. Like them, it’s made out of cheap chipboard with big plastic stickers on the front and sides that are easy to peel off. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew’s Review Notes I have a lot of sympathy for people who steal their technology from the hearse, just as its driving through the gates of the great technology knackers’ yard.
While it is obligatory to be savoir faire with the latest in design and innovation, when it comes to my personal spending I’m right there with the laggards, on the extreme right of the Technology Adoption Lifecycle.
You’ve heard of Early Adopters, and maybe Happy Hour Adopters. I’m a Last Orders Adopter. I made good use of a Palm long after everyone else had sold theirs. I used OS/2 when it was well and truly doomed; BeOS when it had secretly been de-emphasised by Be Inc in favour of kitchen appliances – the dot.com-version of the fondleslab. Read the rest of this entry »
Review It’s been hailed as the greatest anime ever. While I think you have to go some before you can top Pokémon 4Ever, (no seriously, I prefer My Neighbour Totoro) there’s no denying Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira is a milestone of a movie.
Akira: worth another spin in this UK Blu-ray remaster release
Back in 1989, its international release found a new audience for Japanese animation. Western audiences were wowed by its visceral, ambitious vision and graphic nature. The film has occupied a unique pop culture niche ever since. Read the rest of this entry »
This Old Box Ten years ago on Sunday, Apple called it quits on one of its oddest products ever, the G4 Cube. The Cube was a strange and wonderful machine that continues to fascinate today – but it was widely perceived to have failed. Some people thoroughly enjoyed the failure, thinking it served Apple right.
Dull people will always cheer a bold experiment that goes wrong. After July 2001, Apple‘s design team never again attempted anything as daring or distinctive. It has produced beautiful designs, and unarguably influenced consumer technology design more than any one else. Read the rest of this entry »
The ‘internet fridge’ is a much-loved staple of futurologists. In some rosy and not-too-far-off future, many kitchens will have one, magically replenishing itself so that you never need run out of black pudding or milk.
When you’re low on such essentials, the fridge will automatically order new ones from the supermarket, and fresh supplies will arrive in the nick of time.
Or perhaps it’ll tell you what you can make for dinner, based on your dietary preferences and what it’s containing, taking into account when things need to be eaten by.
Never again will you find a decomposed cucumber lying forgotten at the bottom of the salad drawer.
That’s the theory, at any rate. Clever appliances can help us eat better, reduce waste and make life simpler. So why aren’t our kitchens – and the rest of our homes – full of intelligent connected appliances?
‘Buy some milk on your way home’ LG’s net-connected refridgerator. Always find me in the kitchen at parties
While a fridge that automatically orders food might sound interesting, actually making one that works is fraught with difficulty. Many of the technologies used to work out what’s going in and out – RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chips, for example – make more sense in a warehouse than they do in a kitchen. Read the rest of this entry »
