Hasta La Gadget!

This is the precursor to Apple’s iconic white earbuds, a symbol so, erm, symbolic that despite there being no white iPods on sale anymore, Apple has yet to replace them with something that actually matches the machines they accompany.

If you are under, say, 30 years old, you probably won’t remember the the single white (or ivory) earbud, which was then called an earphone. It was a low quality plastic earpiece which usually came bundled with a transistor radio or even a whole “music center”. In this manner it was kind of the USB cable of its time — while you could buy them separately, there wasn’t much point as you would acquire a drawer-full of them over time.

Their main use, as far as I know from both experience and TV comedy shows, was for men to listen to football games (that’s the football played with the feet, or “soccer”, not the US “foot”ball played with the hands) in church during Saturday afternoon weddings, inevitably shouting out loud when a goal was scored.

I had one which came with my portable radio but it was pointless. The tinny sound actually hurt my young ears and pretty much everything back in the 70s that made a sound came with a big, heavy, half-decent speaker built in.

So you kids don’t know how lucky you are, with your pocket-sized gizmos and stereo earbuds. In my day, etc. And get off my lawn!

Pre-iPod Shiny Plastic Earbud [Retro Thing]
Photo credit: Retro Thing

How long is a piece of string? If you measure it with the Cassette Tape Measure it is anywhere form zero to 120 minutes long. As the blurb advises, “Measure twice, rock once.”

In fact, you can measure real distances, in both inches and centimeters, with this $8 tape. And while it is certainly too bulky to be practical, those with a passion for the retro, or those who simply must buy every single USB drive, iPod case or belt buckle fashioned from old analog cassettes, it is yet another wonderful doodad for the junk drawer.

And while we’re on the subject, just what is it about the cassette tape that makes it so popular as a plastic casing for so many retro-trinkets? We’d guess nostalgia, but it could just be the endless opportunity for pun names, such as the Cassette Tape Measure. And so may we proudly suggest the Cassette Tape Worm, a small box containing the dormant larvae of the cestoda, aka the 1960s’ favorite apocryphal slimming pill.

Product page [Gama-Go via DVICE]

See Also:

• Retro-Style Cassette Tape USB Hub
• Cassette Tape Belt Buckles
• Retro Cassette Deck Will Hook Up to Almost Everything
• Lamps Made From Old Cassettes Exude Warm Retro Glow
• Useless Car Cassette Deck Makes Perfect iPhone Holder

Okay, so maybe this here mod isn’t nearly as extreme as shoving an entire PC into the case of a classic Game Boy, but it’s still pretty fantastic in its own right. Completed at some point during the dog days of summer, the 80GB Game Boy had its innards stripped and replaced with parts that enable a 2.5-inch 80GB SATA HDD to operate beautifully as a standard USB hard drive. The display you see here is (unfortunately) an illusion, as it’s simply a professional-looking still insert that merely gives the impression of it paying Game Boy titles while offloading spreadsheets. Now, if someone could figure out how to make it pull double duty…

[Via technabob]

Filed under: Handhelds, Storage

Original Game Boy repurposed as external hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember we told you that Nikon’s Coolpix S1000pj was the “the first that we know of in a consumer camera”. We were wrong. Way back in 1959 you could buy the Zoom Cine-Twin, a honking great 8mm film camera which ran on D-cell batteries which was billed as the “World’s first movie camer and projector combination”.

Not only was it big, it was expensive. According to Retro Thing, the camera was sold in jewellery stores instead of camera stores. There were more innovations too, especially in the later zoom model (pictured). The zoom lens had a companion zoom viewfinder, and there was a built-in exposure meter.

Now, the trouble with a film-based two-in-one is that, unlike the digital Nikon, you need to remove the film, process it and then put it back in. Hardly convenient. In fact, very inconvenient, making the camera bigger and heavier, and more delicate than a standalone 8mm camera.

This wasn’t even the first, either. Retro Thing mentions the “cinematograph” of 1892, but really, any still film camera is also a projector. You just leave the back open and shine a strong light through there. Now, sit back and enjoy this ten-minute demonstration from camera collector Kerry Decker.

New Nikon S1000pj Not First Camera/Projector Convergence [Retro Thing via the Giz]

Those poor, poor speakerless iPod Nanos, Minis and the like — how long have they had to suffer without a set of ultra-awesome speakers to give life to their music? Sure, there’ve been plenty of pretenders for the crown, but nothing quite as elaborately detailed as this Retro Cassette Stereo Mini Speaker. You read that right folks, stereo — that means two, count ’em, two sweetly ornate sources of utterly unimpressive sound. Has the iPhone 3GS got an app for that? ‘Course not. Read link details the full features, such as blister packaging (always good to know), and provides you with the means to acquire one in exchange for $32. Most righteous, no?

[Via Gear Diary]

Filed under: Portable Audio

Retro Cassette Stereo Mini Speaker gives a (tinny) voice to iPods originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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