Hasta La Gadget! Page not found

Jul 02

Commercial Free DVR – How can it Survive?

I watch a few less commercials on television these days. I just fast forward through them. In the old days commercials were when you went to get snacks or put the clothes in the dryer. I’m hard pressed to think of a television commercial that I have seen in the last 6 months that I was glad I watched. Maybe I just missed all the good ones, for all the things I really wanted… that would be my luck.

DVR’s have made it easy to just fast forward through those irritating blurbs about junk you don’t need, and they can condense your half hour shows into a quick 20 minutes, and now, The Dish Network is offering a brand new auto-skip feature on it’s DVR’s that actually lets viewers press a single button to eliminate all the major network commercials altogether, no fast forwarding required. Could this be the future of TV?

How will the TV networks stand for this? Another company, Replay TV offered a similar service and was promptly sued for offering a commercial skipping feature. The company has since filed for bankruptcy. As much as I LOVE the idea of skipping annoying commercials, it seems like services like these attack the very underpinnings that make TV a profitable business, after all, why else would TV networks be making all those intelligent and provocative programs for us?

I don’t know the future of Dish Network’s Hopper Feature, but television commercial viewership has to be way down already with the number of digital recording devices in most homes these days, does the fact that you can eliminate commercials altogether somehow make it worse than the fast forwarding that we’re already doing? I guess lawsuits will be inevitable. Could network television be in danger? I guess the real question is, how do you think they are going to make us pay?

[ Commercial Free DVR – How can it Survive? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Jun 27

Lower Risk Cigarettes – Would you Smoke again?

Posted in: Today's Chili

I guess I will remember for the rest of my life the day Susan and I snuck into the cellar and tried our first cigarettes, some stolen Lucky Strike non filters from her grandfather. I remember how cool I felt taking my first puff and how green I turned even before I managed to exhale. Susan became a smoker. I never tried it again, of course now I wouldn’t bother, why try to like something that could kill you… but what if it wouldn’t?

Phillip Morris, the biggest and definitely the most well known tobacco company, is poised to sell a brand new type of cigarette, that they suggest will pose a much lower health risk than traditional cigarettes, all by the year 2017. If smoking posed less of a threat, would you still try to quit?

Phillip Morris is currently developing three brand new products that would be sold under one of their already existing brand names such as Marlboro, and it seems like the best of their 3 new concepts may be a seemingly simple one, heat the tobacco rather than burn it, or generate some kind of aerosol that could still be inhaled.

These cigarettes are meant to provide the same feeling including the nicotine jolt that users currently get from their traditional pack of smokes, but without the direct path to lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema that currently comes from lighting up.

The heated-tobacco device should pass clinical testing soon and then production of these lower-risk cigarettes would probably start in around 3 to 4 years. This isn’t big tobaccos first foray into safer cigs… but 2 previous versions of so-called healthier smokes crashed and burned, if these new cigarettes really were safer, would you be tempted?

source

[ Lower Risk Cigarettes – Would you Smoke again? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Jun 26

QR Code Tattoos – it was Just a Matter of Time

Posted in: Today's Chili

Have you guys noticed QR codes turning up everywhere. Whats with these little suckers? They are on my groceries, newspapers, fast food packaging, they can be seen in shopping malls, on posters and on postcards. I guess we should have known it wouldn’t be long until someone started inking these codes onto their bodies.

Check out what may be the worlds first QR Code Tattoo, no longer are you stuck with a single image of the skull and crossbones you got in college, with a QR tattoo you can change what your body art links to, every single day, or simply animate your tag, by linking to a cartoon that imparts movement to your still life, make your skull sing, or that rose on your shoulder blade bloom.

The process is simple enough, tattooed in the location of your choice in the same way any other tattoo would be created and the QR codes function just as you would expect, allowing you to point your scan to anything you would like… a stock market ticker, breaking news report, social media status, joke of the day, or maybe just a picture of a different tattoo du jour… that could be ironic.

I suppose QR tattoos are slightly interesting, and I guess if I had thought about it, I would have realized they were coming, but then I wondered if there could be some real usefulness here, could doctors someday scan our tags for medical histories in case of an emergency? or could we permanently be marked with our identification or blood type. Will QR tattoos become commonplace or is this just a passing fad? Check out what most consider to be the first ever QR code tattoo HERE.

Source: www.llns.com

[ QR Code Tattoos – it was Just a Matter of Time copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]