Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung’s stick mimics telephone recievers of old. Photos Pocket Lint

According to Samsung, phones are now officially too big to use to make calls. Its latest accessory is a tiny phone receiver that you lift up to your ear to make a call. It’s a little like a Bluetooth headset, only it’s not a headset (despite the name — the Slim Stick Type Bluetooth Headset).

The HM5000 (its robot name) pairs with up to two phones simultaneously and has a microphone and a speaker in its slim, sleek bar-shaped body. There’s also a clip so you can tuck it into a front pocket just like a pen. A vibrator will inform you of incoming calls.

It seems ridiculous, although at least you can’t dorkify yourself by stowing it in your ear like any other Bluetooth headset. But Samsung is clearly thinking of tablets, here. The existing Galaxy Tab has been hacked to make phone calls, but imagine a tablet with voice calling enabled. You’d never hold that up to your ear, but this little bar would be ideal.

The headset/receiver was shown off by Samsung at the CTIA show in Orlando, Florida, so it may or may not make it into your local cellphone store. But even if it doesn’t, expect somebody to start making these. Imagine an iPad with a retro-phone handset and an on-screen, old-fashioned phone dial.

Samsung Slim Stick Type Bluetooth Headset hands-on [Pocket Lint]

Photos: Pocket Lint

See Also:

• Retro Dial-Style iPhone Phone Dock
• Retro Phone Handset Brings Back the 80s, Attracts Hipster Ladies …
• Bluetooth Retro Phone Handset
• Caller ID: Retro Rotary Phone Picture Frame Hack
• Retro Phone With Mod-Cons

This little camera is in fact a pencil sharpener

Sticking a pencil into the top lens of this tiny TLR camera feels like you’re sticking a pointy stick in somebody’s eye, but that’s ok, as that’s not really a lens. In fact, this isn’t really a camera — it’s a pencil sharpener.

The design is delightfully camera-like. You pull the top section out and slot the pencil in. To adjust sharpness (pun in original) you move a small lever, and to actually do the wood-shaving you turn the film-winding handle on the side.

Back when I was a young schoolboy and still knew how to use pens, pencils and paper, I would have loved this sharpener, made by Chinese stationery company Deli. I would also have liked its $15 price, which is small enough to make this an impulse buy.

Vintage Camera Pencil Sharpener [Kikkerland via PetaPixel]

See Also:

• Drill-Mounted Pencil Sharpener: What Could Possibly Go Wrong …
• Eight Cylinders of Pencil-Sharpening Action, And a Pizza Cutter …
• The Forensic Disassembly of a Pencil Sharpener
• Gory Doll's Head Pencil Sharpener
• Pencils

Brace yourself. You’re about to be guided to the best website in the history of the universe, and if you dare doubt it, your universe may very well be ripped to shreds. Every so often, a new and improved reason for surviving emerges on the world wide web, and it’s safe to say that Pica-Pic fits the bill. For all intents and purposes, it’s a drop-dead gorgeous portal for accessing retro handheld games — the very vessels that carried you through your childhood. Simply toggle through the myriad options with your left / right arrow keys, and then mouse over each game to learn of the keyboard controls. Venture on down to the source link if you’re looking to occupy yourself for the next week month. Now, if only they’d build an app for porting this to the mobile side…

Pica-Pic brings retro handheld games back to life, purpose to the internet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sterolizer delivers music in a form that Jon Bon Jovi would approve of.

Jon Bon Jovi, the hair-metal legend, has been whining about digital music. Speaking to London’s Sunday Times, he said:

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it.

Well, Mr. Bon Jovi, you might like to check out the Stereolizer, which turns your iPad into a 1980s stereo, complete with twitching VU-needles, a big volume knob and a tape deck, so you can pirate your music the old-fashioned way.

Stereolizer tunes into internet radio stations searchable by name or country. You can also spin the dial to find radio streams, and you get authentic-sounding fake radio interference, just as you would with a real radio.

Press Record on the tape deck to capture audio for later, and then write on the tape to remember what you recorded (the handwriting-like labels are filled for you with the station name and date). You can also reorder the tracks, just like making a mix tape.

There are some redundant controls: The bass and treble controls do nothing, and trying to stick a pair of headphones into the on-screen jack is a recipe for disaster.

The app is a lot of fun, and just $2. That’s a lot less than a real 1980s radio and tape deck. I’m off now to record some old Bon Jovi tracks. The classics from when Bon Jovi actually made music that was worth listening to.

Stereolizer product page [Stereolizer. Thanks, Aurore.]

Jon Bon Jovi slams Steve Jobs for ‘killing’ music [MSN]

Sunday Times JBJ Interview [Good luck finding it — it’s behind a paywall.]

See Also:

• Gallery of Vintage Sony Walkmans
• Carmen: Internet Radio On Your Car Radio via Radio
• Beautiful and Expensive Radio Probably Worth Every Penny
• Sad: Michael Jackson Auctions Off Neverland Gadgets

Hold on to your Zapper, because we’re about to blow some minds — this Nintendo Entertainment System has been outfitted with a USB port, and its Tetris cartridge transformed into an 8GB USB flash drive. Not only that, there are simple step-by-step instructions to craft your own online, so you too can slot, socket, mount and feel blissfully anachronistic all the same time. Speaking of time — it looks like we’ve finally got a sufficiently retro alternative to your Iomega ZIP drive.

NES becomes world’s least efficient flash drive (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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