My set ritual before going to bed each night is as follows — turn out the lights, plug in my iPhone, take off my glasses and attempt vainly to nod off. Step two in that process can be a bit of a crapshoot in the dark, but the folks at Scrap Pile Labs have recently kicked off a new Kickstarter campaign for a product called the CordLite that just may come in handy.

As the name sort of implies, the CordLite is a dock connector cable for iDevices that, well, lights up thanks to a pair of forward-facing LEDs. It’s a very simple concept, but the thoughtful execution is what make this project worth keeping an eye on.

Perhaps the niftiest thing about the CordLite is how you actually fire up those lights — the dock connector’s aluminum body is entirely touch-sensitive, so the lights engage whenever someone goes to plug in the cable. Meanwhile, a pair of indicator lights run along the top of the dock connector so there’s never any confusion as to which side is up.

Pledging $25 locks you in for one of the first CordLites to roll off of the assembly line, so you’d best shell out the dough if you’re interested — after the Kickstarter campaign ends, the price will jump up to $35. Not a bad deal for night owls, especially considering that Apple’s own dock connector cable is nearly $20 without a single frill to go with it.

Though the CordLite is Apple-only for now, Android users shouldn’t feel too left out. The team also has a light-up micro-USB cable in the works, though I suspect we won’t be seeing those out in the wild for a little while yet.

along-the-top · connector-cable · cordlite · dock · dock-connector · gadgets · iphone · kickstarter · lights · mobile · niftiest · project · thoughtful

“Entering terminal count autosequence. 60 seconds to engine fire. #DragonLaunch,” Tweeted Elon Musk as his space company was less than a minute away from it’s historic flight. But the launch didn’t happen. Nothing happened as Long-time NASA commentator George Diller counted down the seconds, “3..2..1……We’ve had a cutoff. Liftoff did not occur.” Musk tweeted 11 minutes later at 5:06am EDT, “Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days.”

The SpaceX Flacon 9 rocket was literally a half a second away from launching. NASA is still inspecting the engine but early reports, tweeted by both Musk and NASA, state that the chamber pressure on engine 5 was abnormally high, causing the rocket’s onboard computer to abort the launch.

SpaceX was on the cusp of making history and becoming the first privately owned institution to dock a capsule with the International Space Station. Only governments, the US, Russia and Japan, have so far accomplished this task. Space X is hoping to take over the transport duties from NASA starting first with cargo but eventually shuttling personally between terra firma and the ISS.

This isn’t SpaceX’s first space rodeo. The company has been launching its Falcon rockets since 2006 although the first flight of a Falcon 1 failed a few seconds in. The rocket on the launchpad today, a Falcon 9, saw a successful first flight in 2010.

Today’s launch, while cut short, will likely (hopefully) just be a footnote in SpaceX history. The company is set to try again in the coming days. The next launch attempt will come on May 22 but it could be pushed to May 23 according to some reports.

falcon · gadgets · george-diller · historic-flight · international · japan · launch · launchpad · privately-owned · russia · space · spacex · startups · transport

While, arguably, you’re not going to convince many kids to give up their Topps or Pokemon cards for these things, it’s nice to know they exist. They’re 3D Printer trading cards featuring some of the best 3D printers in the world. You got your Makerbot Replicator, your UP! Printer, and your Printrbot Plus. You got stats on there, a little trivia, some pricing information and then you can trade with your friends (“Awwww man, I need that Reprap clone!”)

You can check them all out here or see them in person at Maker Faire in SF this week. Sadly, they’re not actually printing these things but if they did I’d totally buy a pack.

The impetus? They came to creator Shawn Wallace in a dream:

cards · diy · featuring-some · friends · funny · introduce-some · maker-faire · person-at-maker · printer-makers · printer-trading · printing-these · printrbot · seekonk · topps

Is The Avengers worth your money? Do the disc-blasting Nerf guns leave a welt? How do you pull a Pebble and reign in $3 million on Kickstarter?

In this week’s TC/Gadgets webcast, we answer all this and more. John and Matt argue over the value in one of this summer’s tent pole movies, The Avengers. John finds it boring, while Matt thinks “it’s fun for everyone.” And while I can’t say I’ll be buying a ticket to The Avengers any time soon, I can say with great certainty that I’ll be at one of the opening day showings of Prometheus.

Who doesn’t love space, right?

The gang also discusses Nerf’s disc-blasting guns, and how they may or may not be used at this weekend’s Disrupt Hackathon. Last year we saw a raucous group of hackers start an all-out war with bungee darts. None of the TC editorial staff was injured (nor were the hackers), but this year we’ll at least have some Nerf Vortex and Vulcan guns slung over our shoulders. You know… Just in case.

In the words of the recent Game Of Thrones trailers, “War is coming.”

Finally, but likely most importantly, Matt, Chris, John and I offer up some tips as to what we cover on Kickstarter. Matt is done with iPad cases, and though I echo the sentiment, I’ll probably be more willing to make exceptions than he. John prefers the “little tweaks” to things we already use and enjoy, like the automatic bike light that knows when you’re moving.

I encourage a strong video, as marketing is a huge driver of any business. But the geeky stuff has its place too — Chris thoroughly enjoyed the electron microscope project that significantly reduced the cost of looking at really, really tiny things.

automatic-bike · avengers · avengers-john · editorial-staff · gadgets webcast · hackers · kickstarter · money · shot-2012-05-18 · summer · the avengers

Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter.

This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience.

The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in.

It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project.

Project Page

api · arduino · diy · editorial-staff · great-solution · hackers · money · simple-circuit · turn-notifies

100-milliards · bourse · entre-vendredi · facebook · harvard · huit-ans · pour-une · table-border · vrier-2004

In this first installment of Gadget Of The Week I decided to try something a bit different. Rather than focus on some obscure cellphone or wonky laptop, I decided to take on one of the biggest questions in the average small and home office: which juicer should I buy? After trying a number of juicers – and investing in a few – I’m pleased to report that the Omega J8006 is definitely worth the investment.

I am what they call, in the medical literature, a fat and lazy blogger. There’s nothing I love more than scarfing down cookies as I sit at my computer. With that in mind (and inspired by Brian Lam’s article at The Wirecutter), I decided to try my hand at juicing.

I began by picking up the $99 Le’Equip model which uses a swiftly rotating blade and an ejection system for squeezing the juice out of almost any fruit or vegetable. The price was right – under $100 for a fairly sturdy juicer is good – and the reviews were excellent. I also tried the Breville models but those didn’t support the juicing of greens as readily. Obviously there are more (this dude made 290 videos featuring all of his favorite) but I was going for the lower end.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s important to understand the various aspects of juicing that are important to the average consumer. There are multiple types – the Le’Equip is an ejection system that uses centripetal force to push out the juice out of a spout. Then there are masticating juicers. These juicers either use a worm gear or two larger gears to chop food into finer and finer bits. These bits are then smashed to render the juice. They move much more slowly than ejection systems and, in turn, work a bit more efficiently.

What does juicing do for you? The science is still out (and many nutritionists state that juicing isn’t much better than eating a bunch of vegetables and the process removes much of the fiber, rendering the juice less biologically useful) but I personally find that after a big glass of kale, cucumber, and maybe a lemon or apple, I’m less hungry and less inclined to sit at my desk idly snacking on Bugles. I would never eat, say, a head of kale by itself. Juicing takes the tedium out of veggies.

Working with the Le’Equip was quite enjoyable although it tended to spray pulp out of its back end and spit juice out of the top. The speed of the blades – while excellent for rendering juice – didn’t allow for much control.

That’s when the Omega came into my life. This massive, heavy juicer – more a home motor than a real juicer – takes it slow and steady. You feed veggies in, they’re slowly masticated with the thick, 80RPM rotor. As the food moves through it is chopped up and squeezed out into a plastic cup while the pulp falls into another cup. Clean-up is simple. You take the juicer head off, move it to the sink, and uncouple all of the pieces. Then, with some soap and water, you can just rinse off the four pieces and clean the metal screen. You can also run the gear through the dishwasher.

The device also makes nut butters and can extrude pasta. You can even use it as a slow food processor.

The bad news? At $299, you’re really going to have to be into juice to pick this thing up. However, compared with the swiftly moving and messier “cheaper” models, I’m very pleased with the 8006′s performance. If you used this in an office, for example, you’d have considerably less to clean up and the system is far more durable than other machines I’ve seen. No one wants to clean up a scrim of flung orange pulp off of the kitchen wall, which is why the 8006′s slow-moving auger is a much better choice.

Has juicing helped me lose weight? Not yet, but here’s hoping. Does it make me feel a little better and less inclined to eat junk. I think so. And anything that can keep my fat face out of a bag of M&M-laden Chex mix is the thing for me.

Click to view slideshow.

average · food · juice · juicers · life · medical · take-the-juicer · thing

Yeah, it’s not $99 and it’s refurbished but it’s still a TouchPad. The tablet was once heralded as an iPad killer. Now, I’m not sure if it could even kill a Notion Ink Adam in a head-to-head sales battle. But still, thanks to an honestly smart move from HP, the TouchPad and webOS is valuable to some in the development community.

But you better act fast like previous TouchPad offers. This deal is up on Woot, where the Amazon subsidiary only has a limited number of items. The price is $195 for a 32GB WiFi TouchPad — not a bad deal for a slightly bulky tab capable of running Android.

HP debuted the TouchPad as a true iPad competitor when it hit stores last summer. But for $500 it was a tough sale even though it was a capable device. Consumers apparently agreed as HP killed the product after just 49 days and eventually cleared out the remaining stock with a $99 firesale. Since then, HP released webOS to the open source community and essentially gutted the departments. This Woot sale might be the last time you can grab an HP TouchPad.

amazon · average · development · honestly-smart · life · like-previous · limited-number · medical · subsidiary-only · take-the-juicer · the-development · touch

This is the age of thinking thermostats and, not to be outdone by a well-known circular model, hardware startup Ecobee has released the Smart Si. It is a smart thermostat with small color screen and a web interface so temperature wonks can update their heating models on the fly.

The Smart Si is not quite as sleek as the Nest but offers more accessible settings – think of this as the Linux to Nest’s OS X. The web interface allows you to see your home’s current status, set a vacation profile, and view reports on your system’s performance including HVAC and heater usage.

The system pulls in weather alerts as well as alarms from your home system and you can chart and graph all of your performance parameters. Arguably, I doubt many will get very intense with this stuff, but it’s definitely available.

Ecobee has been around since 2007 and the introduced one of the first Wi-Fi-enabled thermostates. This is their effort at building a high-end thermostat but the company has plenty of experience in the space. The company also recently announced wireless Smart Plugs that allow you to control electronics in your house using the ZigBee networking standard.

The Smart Si costs $220 and is available now for pre-order.

Product Page

alerts-as-well · gadgets · house · introduced · linux · nest · product-page · quite-as-sleek · smart · smart si · startups · the-introduced · weather-alerts

HP is reportedly going to be announcing massive layoffs next Wednesday. Conflicting reports state somewhere between 25K and 30K jobs, between 7% and 8% of HP’s global workforce, could be eliminated in an effort to absorb losses from decreasing demand for the company’s products and services. The cuts could happen over the next year, rather than a mass layoff, according to AllThingsD who also state that the total number is still undecided.

Wall Street is reacting positively to the news. HP’s stock price dropped shortly after the news but quickly recovered and started climbing with word of the restructuring. During the writing of this post, the stock price dropped slightly but is still up for the day.

If true, this is the latest of new CEO Meg Whitman’s drastic changes within HP. When she took over for Leo Apotheker, she nearly immediately announced that HP would not spin-off its PC division, the Personal Systems Group, as Apotheker once considered. Instead, Whitman’s team combined the PSG with the profitable Imaging and Printing Group.

The layoffs will reportedly be announced alongside HP’s quarterly earnings. Whitman will, at least per AllThingsD, deem the layoffs as necessary to make much-needed investments. Rather than just cutting people, the company will cut its workforce and then reinvest across the company.

This comes as HP is struggling to regain its dominant position in the PC and services world. While still on top per the numbers, competitors, including Apple, are racing forward with hot products. This is something that Whitman previously acknowledged to the company, predicting that Apple might surpass HP this year, but 2013 will be the year HP employees can once again celebrate — except for the 30K about to get pink slipped.

apple · drastic-changes · dropped-shortly · enterprise · gadgets · news · over-the-next · personal · printing · profitable · whitman · writing · year