Hasta La Gadget!

"No drinking or Smoking Over the Table". So reads the annoying sign in any bar with a pool table, a killjoy message which destroys the whole point of playing the game.

Perhaps these grumpy bar-owners should consider instead the G-1 from Nottage design, a pool table with a glass bed and a transparent, waterproof (and beer proof) resin coating. This resin has been named Vitrik, and appears to be only mentioned by Google in relation to clear pools tables.

Vitrik, says Nottage, replicates the characteristics of a felt bed, with the bonus of being wipe-clean. Vitrik is not to be confused with Vitrix, "the most powerful natural testosterone booster the world has ever seen".

The price for this lottery-winner’s monstrosity? A mere $40,000 Australian, or US$25,700.

Product page [Nottage via Uncrate]

The Arsenal English soccer team will offer live wireless streaming of game highlights to fans’ Sony PSP gaming systems by next year, a club official declared this week.   

The system has been tested over the last two seasons and it has received a good enough response that the team is going forward with the full implementation.

Sony has developed software that enables the gadget with multiple video replay options, as well as feeds of live stats from the game and around the league. It is also working on adding an in-game social networking angle. This will hopefully enable a fan to not only keep track of the game’s key moments but to crowdsource his way to find the nicest ladies in the house.         

For now, it’s not clear whether the team will offer PSPs for free or for rent, or whether they will be only available in certain sections of the Emirates Stadium. Another important question will be whether a Sony PSP owner will be allowed to bring in his own PSP or will be forced to use one provided by the team.

Taking into consideration the money-grubbing brazenness of big-time sports teams, with their status-conscious VIP areas and income disparity regulations, my guess is that Arsenal will force fans to use in-house PSPs. (Don’t get me started on this topic: Many NBA teams, for example, don’t allow you to bring in any food snacks, essentially forcing customers to buy their overpriced and under-nourishing ‘foods.’).         

The ‘Gunners‘ of England’s Premier League are one of the wealthiest teams in European soccer, so it isn’t a surprise that Sony would want to implement new tech in their modern Emirates Stadium.         

The stadium currently uses huge HD screens to help follow the action and its roof is laced with Sony SNC-RX550P cameras (right) that monitor every aspect of the field (as well as the stands). Those cameras are used along with a digital camera monitoring system called ‘ProZone’ to create up-to-the-minute game analysis sent to the coaches and security details. The data is pushed through a secure IP infrastructure controlled by stadium technicians.

But Arsenal isn’t the only major team working on in-game wireless feeds.

In late 2006, Cisco Systems announced a deal with Major League
Baseball’s Oakland Athletics to create a network supporting data,
voice, video and wireless services for their new stadium. Some of the
features expected include smart location-based services and live video feeds in wireless UMPCs. The gadget-software combo would
provide Cisco and the team with real-time personal insight
into consumer preferences and could eventually lead to additional
revenue services.

Of course, the Cisco-Athletics Stadium has yet to be built, so we can’t test the tech just yet.

But if Arsenal and Sony follow the plan set forth by Cisco and the
A’s, expect the neat experience of following the game on your
PlayStation portable to be accompanied by a few advertisements offering
expensive snacks available in the stands, like $15 beer.

Hey, you gotta
love sports right?

Photos: Arsenal, Pocket-Lint, Sony

The Riiflex is a dumbbell for the Wii. Coming in 2lb or 5lb flavors, it adds some real weight to a Wii Fit workout. Or rather it will. The reason those product shots bear the mark of a bad 3D render is that the Riiflex doesn’t yet exist.

Ugliness and vaporware status aside, these seem pretty neat. As we know, Wii Fit doesn’t really make you that fit, although the games are certainly fun. Adding some iron to the controller should fix that, pumping up your biceps in no time.

If you like, you can place a pre-order. Better, just grab the old, discarded dumbbells from the basement and tape the Wiimote to them. Free, and without the really quite tortuous name of the Riiflex.

Product page [Riiflex. Thanks, Paul!]

A professor of computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon is combining her mutual love of football and wireless technologies in a project that could lead to a sucker-free future devoid of referrees and missed calls.

Dr. Priya Narasimhan is embedding GPS and accelerometer systems in footballs and gloves in order to improve the accuracy of officiating. If she succeeds in her goal of ultimately placing the tech into the ranks of pro football, it’s going to be that much harder to blame the ref for a blown call.

But it might finally lead to accurate play-tracking down to millimeters. Some of the applications of the remote sensors include measurements of real-time ball handling grips, detailed ball trajectories, and its speed and relative position on the field. This could also help teams determine which players are better at safely cradling the ball during a run.

According to Dr. Narasimham, the technology is still in its nascent stages. However, the balls already have the technology to able to determine time of posession and automatic first down markers (the dudes who carry the chains should start filling out their resume right about now.)

The special gloves are embedded with 15 wireless touch sensors throughout the fingers and the palm and run up to a wireless pod on the back of the arm. They measure which parts of the glove are touching the ball at all times and this can help measure the correct hand positioning of a player when receiving a ball.

As for the footballs, they were opened up to place a GPS chip and an accelerometer inside and then were filled with upholstery foam for cushioning. The current chip sends the tracking data once per second and is accurate up to 30 feet.

For the next iteration of the project, Prof. Narasimhan and her team
are working on a new embedded chip that sends information four times a
second and will make the GPS more accurate by placing permanent
receivers near the field to determine its position.

One of the doctoral students working on the project envisions the
data being displayed on football broadcasts with the same type of
liberty as defense line formations are now. While knowing the minute
technical hand position of each player might appear like it would be
too revealing (or unnecessary), it’s good to remember that a lot of the
analysis and visual examples now used by broadcasts and video games
used to be regarded as either taboo (too much information for the other
team to exploit) or ‘too inside’ to be appealing.

But in the last 15 years, pro football has quickly adopted growing
technologies for the benefit of the game, such as projected first down
lines, instant replay, and radio helmets. So it is likely something
like this will eventually make its way to the game. It’s just too bad
they can’t institute this tech in time for this year’s NFL playoffs.

Photo: Andrew Rush/CMU

ESPN’s Sports Guy, columnist Bill Simmons, recently picked the DirectTV Sat-Go portable satellite TV as his top pick of available Christmas gadgets for men.

Judging by the other possibilities that can easily replace the Sat-Go at a cheaper price, we think Mr. Simmons should have consulted his own VP of Common Sense before making such a recommendation.

The DirectTV Satellite-to-Go is an all-in-one rig that comes packed with a 17-inch LCD, a DirectTV receiver and antenna, and folds into a single briefcase. The idea of the gadget is actually quite great if you want DirectTV available to you at all times, especially during stadium tailgate parties before a game.

But it has two huge negatives that make it impossible to recommend: The rig is almost thirty lbs. (27.2 to be exact), and costs $1000. I’m the owner of a 10 lb., 17-inch laptop and I can hardly use it as a portable device without hurting my back, and I’m healthy. I can’t imagine carrying something three times as heavy more than a few times a year.

This brings me to the other reason why it’s a bad choice: The Sat-Go is a mainly a tailgate gadget and unless you tailgate every weekend, the price isn’t worth it. You can get the biggest monster package DirectTV offers (over 200 channels in high-def) for about $500 a year, and then use a Sling (~ $200) to send the signal over to your laptop anywhere in the world. And you won’t have to pay your physical therapist and you’ll be able to surf the web as well.

If you’re a huge NBA or NFL fan, you can also pick up nice subscription plans that allow you to see every single game you want on your laptop while traveling. The NBA’s League Pass Broadband gives you 900 games a season for only $100, is PC and Mac compatible, and won’t take up too much of your computer’s memory.

So waybe if the Sat-Go was an all-in-one PC, with a slide out keyboard, I might think about . . .  nah, I still wouldn’t get it.

Thankfully, Simmons didn’t blow it completely with his full Christmas wish list. He also picked the Netflix Roku Player (one of Wired’s favorites this year), cheap Blu-ray players (from $200-250), the complete set of The Wire ($140), and some quality books like Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up (~$15).

For those not familiar with Simmons, he is known mainly for an irreverent comedy style that mixes detailed Boston homerism with strange shorthand memes. Such memes include the VP of Common Sense (with the idea that the average fan can make better management decisions than closed-off executives), and The (Mike) Tyson Zone (when someone reaches a status of such absurdity that anything they decide to do, like hatching purple baby dinosaurs, is deemed ultimately possible). Michael Jackson and Britney Spears are other characters in the Tyson Zone.

So maybe Simmons will give us a call next year before adding gadgets to his Christmas wish list. That way, we’ll save the poor housewives of America from giving their husbands a wholly unnecessary item. What do you say Bill?

In the meantime, I’m going to spend the Christmas holiday making irreverent predictions about sports. Here’s one: In 2009, no one will watch the N.E. Patriots or the Boston Celtics win a championship on a DirectTV Sat-Go.

B.S. Photo: David Shankbone/Wikipedia

See also:

• Aces Wild: IT Exec Builds RFID-enabled Poker Table
• Our Favorite Cyber Monday Deals
• Gadget Lab Podcast #55: Black Friday TV Deals Come Early
• Product Reviews: Roku Netflix Player
• Gadget Lab Discusses Back To School Gadgets in the Washington Post

Gadget Lab 2.0: Jose Fermoso’s Twitter feed; Gadget Lab on Facebook.