Hasta La Gadget!

If a gadget is on sale in Urban Outfitters, it’s a fair bet that its a piece of junk. The curious combination of good clothes and crappy novelty gifts is obviously aimed at ironic impulse-buyers, but the Crosley Radio Revolution is possibly the weirdest thing yet.

The Revolution is a small, portable, battery-powered turntable. Yes, a turntable for playing records. It comes with the requisite retro-styling and 1950s colorways, but just who will buy it? At $180, it is too much to buy as a joke gift for a friend who maybe still has a couple of LPs on the shelves. But it’s doubtlessly tinny built-in stereo speaker and lightweight tonearm aren’t going to do it for the real vinyl junkie: if you’re still buying grooved disks then you’re probably an audiophile or luddite. Either way the Revolution is not for you.

The Revolution does at least come with a USB-cable and software for ripping records to a computer. I imagine scouring rare-record dealers’ stores with one of these and a netbook or even iPad and quietly copying tunes in the listening booths.

Even if you do want this, you should avoid Urban Outfitters anyway. They might have an exclusive on those muted colors, but they also have an exclusive on that price. Buy on the web or slip over to JC Penny and you can have the black one for $30 less, at $150. Coming “soon”.

Revolution product page [Crosley. Thanks, Jenny!]

See Also:

• And Vinyly Presses Your Ashes Into Vinyl When You Die
• Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin
• Numark NS7 Turntable
• McIntosh MT10 turntable
• With IPod, Who Needs a Turntable?

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

The RCA Studio II is already a pretty rare sight as is, but rarer still is a detailed look inside what’s been described as one of the worst game consoles of all time. Thankfully, the folks at iFixit have now come through once again, and followed up their dissection of the Magnavox Odyssey 100 with a teardown of the circa-1977 “Home TV Programmer.” In addition to an abundance of beige, the team also discovered a considerable amount of solder that’s characteristic of 70s electronics, and even a few surprises like some white chip packages that are rarely (if ever) used these days. Hit up the link below for the complete blow-by-blow, and keep en eye out for even more vintage gadget teardowns during the rest of the week.

iFixit goes beige with RCA Studio II teardown originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh man, the iFixit crew just hopped up another step on the Stairway to Awesome. They have opened up and explored a Magnavox Odyssey 100, successor to the world’s first home games-console.

Kyle Wiens and his nerdy team are better known for flying around the globe to buy brand-new Apple products in order to tear them apart, photographing and detailing the internals for our voyeuristic techno-pleasure. The Magnavox teardown marks a week of more retro autopsies, and reveals surprising circuit designs and even some analog controls inside the 1975 console.

The case is held together with a single flathead screw, easily removed, Once inside you see not only a circuit-board but also a mess of wires and components. This, according to the know-alls at iFixit, was because Magnavox wanted to ship the console fast, and wasn’t sure that Texas Instruments would have the chips ready on time. There are also pots (potentiometers) which can be twisted by the user to adjust the positions of the on-screen goals and walls of the two built-in games, tennis and hockey.

We’re looking forward to seeing what other historical devices iFixit will be ripping open this week in celebration of its new line of game console repair manuals. I have my fingers crossed for a Vectrex, if only to see just how they managed to cram such a big wad of amazing inside.

Magnavox Odyssey 100 Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Kyle!]

See Also:

• Gallery: Sega Genesis Teardown
• Punked: iFixit Tears Down 'Apple Tablet'
• Photos: iFixit Rips Open iPad 3G
• Mr. Fixit Goes Open Source With DIY Repair Site

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Search for an iPad case on Etsy and the choices run from leather to moleskine-lookalikes and felt. But Jonas Damon, a creative director at Frog Design, wanted something that could take the sleek, slab of glass that is the iPad and house it in a case that looks like it could have jumped out of the set of Mad Men.

So Damon transformed a fruit crate into a retro iPad charging dock. The dock takes the form of a 1970s or 1980s era television, complete with the cathode ray tube housing at the back, he says.

“I sought to enrich the iPad with something I have an emotional connection to– the home appliances of my upbringing,” says Damon on the Frog Design blog. “This lo-fidelity design language is very appealing in contrast to the gloss-black slick design trends that are currently the norm.”

Damon says the “lack of personality” of the iPad has helped people to create their own enclosures.

“In this sense, industrial design, or folk-industrial design, is thriving,” he says.

Check out more photos of the wooden iPad dock:

Encased in its wooden enclosure, the iPad looks like an old TV.

A side view of the wooden case. The back is designed to mimic the housing for the cathode ray tube.

The wooden iPad dock includes interesting detailing on the front.

Photos: Frog Design

Back in 1979, the Papermate Erasermate was introduced to the world. It was a pen with “erasable” ink, and existed mainly to scare people who wrote a lot of checks. As far as I could tell, the trick was entirely in the attached eraser, a block of rubber so hard and rough that it could have abraded a knuckle-tattoo from the fingers of a prison-lifer. It was, in its first incarnation, junk.

Sharpie, the, erm, sharpie company, has just reinvented the genre. Instead of making an erasable pen, it has made a non-erasable pencil. How’s that for smart thinking? The Sharpie Liquid Pencil contains an “ink” made from liquid graphite and lays it down just like a pen. Once written, you have three days to think on the validity and weight of your words. During this period you can erase it just like pencil-marks. After the three days is up, the pencil lines will turn to ink and remain inscribed forever.

According to the Sharpie Blog (yes, Sharpie has a blog) the new liquid pencil will be in stores from next month, September 2010. A quick look over at Office Depot shows that a version is already on sale, at $5 for two pens and six erasers.

If I ever actually wrote with pen (or pencil) and paper anymore, I’d be sold.

Introducing The NEW Sharpie LIQUID PENCIL [Sharpie Blog via Tim Carmody’s Twitter]