Hasta La Gadget!

Question: Is it possible to graft the cables and electronics of a set of iPod inline-remote earbuds onto a pair of regular headphones, and still retain full functionality? Answer: Kinda.

Yesterday, I broke yet another set of headphones, this time yet another pair of my long-time favorite, the Koss Porta-Pro. These foldable headphones are lightweight, they sound great and they’re don’t cost much more than a pair of earbuds. They are also very delicate and I break them all the time. This time the cable wrapped itself around something and yanked. Result: dead cans.

Instead of tossing them, I thought I’d try to marry them up with the cable and remote from a pair of cheap but terrible earbuds. The goal was to make a pair of frankenphones with the great sound of the Koss’s, and the convenience of the remote. I had partial success, and made an interesting discovery along the way.

The first step was to chop off the useless parts of both. I popped open the Porta-Pros with a tiny screwdriver. There is an access panel glued over the solder joints and it is easy to pry open. Then I snipped and stripped the wires on the fully functional donor-phones (I have a broken set of Apple earbuds, but I wanted to make sure that I was working with fresh cables to eliminate one source of doubt).

Here came the first problem. Many headphone cables come stranded with filaments of nylon or some other thin cord. These are mixed in with the copper strands to add strength and stop stretching, but they also make these wires almost impossible to solder. The other hitch is that the two wires are pretty much intermingled in there, rather than in their own separate sheaths.

Before soldering (or rather, before searching the apartment for a soldering iron) I twisted the strands to make a test connection. To finish, you should take the cables right into the terminals on the earpieces, but this turned out to be unnecessary.

Why? Because no sound came through. Twisting the strands doubtless shorted something, but I have tried in vain to solder these kinds of cable before and it was beyond me. The soldering iron can stay under the sink or wherever it is for now.

But what was surprising was that the inline remote actually works. In fact, you don’t even need the earpieces connected. Plug in the jack and, like a decapitated chicken, things keep working even without a head. Play/pause and skip both worked great.

Which leads us to the real discovery of this otherwise failed experiment. Instead of buying a purpose made remote adapter, you could instead just use a splitter to plug both your headphones and a broken donor cable into the iPod. Listen through one, and control through the other. You can even run the remote section to an inside pocket or down your sleeve, something impossible when the remote is inline. And perhaps this would work with Bluetooth connected headphones, too. Conclusion: Partial success.

Photos: Charlie Sorrel

Games that once sold for $40-50 are now available for just $5 apiece.

(Credit: Direct2Drive)

A few weeks back I told you about Direct2Drive’s 5-year-anniversary sale, which was offering games like BioShock (a personal favorite) for $5 apiece.

I hope you’ve been checking the site every week since …

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

Sure, gScreen is slowly mastering the art of grainy video teasers with its dual-panel portable, but here at its CEATEC booth, Kohjinsha’s got quite a looker of its own, on display in a very clear and well-lit case. We’re looking at two 10.1-inch LCDs each capable of outputting at either 1024 x 600 or 1366 x 768 resolution, and if one is all you need, it’s a sliding mechanism to hide the other monitor. What’s more, the base of it swivels, although we didn’t get to see it twist behind 15 degrees so we’re not sure the extent of its flexibility. Powering the DirectX 10-compatible little guy is an AMD Athlon MV-40, along with a 2.5-inch SATA HDD, up to 4GB DDR2 memory, and Windows 7 Home Premium, all for a hair under four pounds. There is a bit of bulk in its height, about 1.7 inches at its tallest and 0.75 inches at its shortest, but that’s something we’re willing to live with considering the value we’re getting with the screens. The rep we spoke with says it’s still in prototype phase at this point with no price or release date on the books, unfortunately, and the battery life is something of a mystery — we can’t imagine powering two bright displays is doing its energy reserves any favor. Video after the break.

Continue reading Kohjinsha dual-screen swivel netbook prototype hands-on

Filed under: Laptops

Kohjinsha dual-screen swivel netbook prototype hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On Thursday, Popular Mechanics magazine will unveil its 2009 Breakthrough awards. Included on the list is a series of innovators, as well as a number of products, including this lawn mower, the Hustler Zeon, which is the world’s first all-electric, zero-turning-radius mower. It can cover an acre of grass on a single charge.

(Credit: Popular Mechanics)

Popular Mechanics magazine on Thursday will unveil its fifth-annual Breakthrough Award winners, an august collection of designers and products that could do much more than their share to change the world for the better.

From famous inventors like Dean Kamen to a flying car for the Third World to bacteria-powered batteries–and much in-between–the awards are meant to highlight technologies that will shape the way people around the world live and how they interact with everyday products.

Each year, the magazine’s editors scour the country for a worthy group of winners, and this year, in the end, Popular Mechanics settled on one leadership award winner, one next-generation honoree, eight Breakthrough innovators and 10 Breakthrough products.

“In all cases, there’s a really practical application that we see coming about,” said Jerry Beilinson, the magazine’s deputy editor, “so these aren’t theoretical scientific applications. (They’re going to) change the world and have a really positive aspect on people’s lives.”

Beilinson said that after five years of identifying technological breakthrough products and innovators, certain themes have emerged in the editors’ preferences. Among the most important, he said, is alternative energy and products and designers that push that category forward.

“If I look back (at the last few years of doing the awards), we looked at aviation and we looked at medicine,” he said. “But over the last few years, I think the things that have been clear themes that we’ve been looking at that have emerged (are) alternative energy and appropriate technologies for the developing world.”

And while the themes can be forward-looking, the individual awards celebrate a “moment in time,” he said.

“We’re sort of picking the moment at which it’s become real, and passed the threshold and seems like its worthy of an award,” Beilinson said. “But most of these kinds of things do take some time to develop.”

For this year’s Breakthrough Leadership award, Popular Mechanics honored Dean Kamen, an inventor with more than 440 patents who may be best known for creating the incredible but commercially disappointing Segway personal transporter.

…

Originally posted at Geek Gestalt

Without a doubt, the military is home to some of the best gadgets. Fortunately for us, the non-lethal stuff often makes it into the hands of consumers after companies finish milking the government of its R&D budget. Case in point: this electricity-generating backup. Designed for the military, the kinetic energy pack is suspended on a rail that generates electricity as you walk. The power generated will charge a standard US Marine-issue lithium ion battery pack or can be directly routed to whatever device you want to charge. The obvious benefit would be limitless power in the field freeing troops from carrying extra batteries on long missions. A power meter on the shoulder strap lets you monitor performance while a three-stage resistance device lets you regulate the power output. A braking mechanism lets you lock down the pack when you want to keep the pack steady. Otherwise, it looks like it’ll generate about 8 watts of power while walking or 44 watts of power when running. Do want. See it in action after the break.

[Via besportier]

Continue reading Power generating backpack is a gift from the gadget gods, Uncle Sam

Filed under: Wearables

Power generating backpack is a gift from the gadget gods, Uncle Sam originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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