electron zoo

Against what you might call my “better judgment”, I’ve been geeking out on yet another new PDA lately. I didn’t think I would ever learn to love (a PDA) again. Boy was I wrong.

Know thyself. Consider the twelve-step journey to gadget enlightenment.

1. First encounter. A store, a friend, or an acquaintance has that cool new gadget. Huh.
2. Interest. You’re curious. You observe or ask your friend about their gadget. Hmm.
3. Enthusiasm. What a neat gadget! But you don’t need anything like that.
4. Research. You learn the jargon. You find out that the X879 (or whatever) is nice, but it’s not compatible with 802.11b (or whatever) so the X977 (or whatever) is the model that’s right for …
5. Rationalization. Maybe you don’t need that new PDA (or whatever) for PIM (or whatever), but it could help you with [insert newly-invented, non-critical task here].
6. On second thought … you really shouldn’t be spending your money on that kind of thing.
7. Breakdown. (What are credit cards for anyway?) You suddenly buy it and you don’t look back. You at least pretend to have no regret about your well-informed and practical purchase.
8. Exploration. You have that gadget in your own sweaty palms. You spend a late and wild night messing around with it. You are bleary-eyed in the morning.
9. Zeal. You bring it everywhere. You talk about it constantly. It’s just what you always needed. How did you ever get by without it?
10. Oops. You leave it somewhere. Or break it. Or keep forgetting it at the office. Or whatever.
11. Oops again. Maybe you didn’t need that gadget after all. Your life is just as great without it. Better even.
12. Well, things might be a little better if you had the newest cool new …

Repeat. Shuffle. Repeat.

I was absolutely tickled to read that PEZ would soon be distributing an MP3 player that looked like a PEZ dispenser! To me, this means hardware hacks are going big time, having recently inspired an Altoids MP3 player and now an MP3 PEZ dispenser based on a blogger’s vision. As Napoleon Dynamite would say, that’s “friggin sweet!”

Next, hackaday.com’s Jason Striegel predicts the latest bicycle wheel “persistence of vision” laser light hacks will become the next “spinners”, and we’ll all be thinking WTF as we watch laser lights reading “Jesus Saves” spinning on the tricked out cars in our neighborhoods.

Well, uh, I can’t pretend I’m going to be thrilled with this development, but at least I’ll be able to say, I told you so.

I was powerless on vacation in Washington last week — well actually, it was just my camera. Too prophetic that I posted about double-checking on my chargers just last week, huh?

But let’s say you’re on a week-long vacation and you leave the charger for your super-cool, ultra-portable, beloved digital camera at home. If you need help deciding whether to simply purchase a new charger while you’re out of town, I can help.

Just review this easy-to-follow questionnaire:

1. Do you have lots of unneeded money ($20-80 US) to spend on something you already have at home?
2. Would you like to spend a half a day of your short holiday bouncing around an unknown town in order to locate a rather obscure, proprietary device that is not likely to be in stock at most retailers?
3. Do you happen to be an a burgeoning metropolis that boasts multiple well-stocked electronics or digital camera stores?
4. After you’ve located a charger for your digital camera, would you like to spend a few hours indoor juicing up your camera?
5. Are you totally friggin nuts?

Did you answer “yes” to all of the above questions? Great, then I suggest you go out and get a new charger for your digital camera right now. But why take a vacation in the first place? Couldn’t you have just as much fun sitting around your darkened geek lair installing new software on your Palm OS wristwatch or something? (Okay, maybe that’s not fair. You could just be wholesomely watching TV on your wristwatch instead, you nerd.)

Since I failed my own simple five-point survey, I just smacked myself in the head a few times when I realized I’d forgotten my charger. Damn. Just thinking about it made me smack myself again. Damn.

So I went to the five ‘n’ dime and got me one of those old-timey disposable film cameras. Cost me a whoppin’ four bucks, it did. Whoo-wee. Now I can get my pictures developed onto shiny paper and I can send ‘em to my kin using an envelope and a stamp.

Or, I can send the camera to be developed at a service like Snapfish, which will put the photos on the web and send me prints. It’s a good option, but they also charge you if you want to download hi-res prints. And if you use their site to send photos to folks, they have to register for a free account on Snapfish — but is giving away one’s email address really “free”?

But instead, now that I’m home and have been reunited with my good ol’ digital camera charger, I’m taking care of my photos the real old-fashioned way: I haven’t had the film developed at all, and I probably won’t for weeks. And probably, just like the good ol’ days, it won’t bother me a bit.

The biggest recent story in the crossover news category of celebrity gadgets is Paris Hilton’s hacked Sidekick 2. I know, this is so a couple of weeks ago, but hey, I’ve been busy.

First off, as a gadget fan, I think it’s sorta cool that she has a Sidekick. It makes me think she’s a bit of a gadget affectionado when, according to a New York City blogger who chatted with her on the street, she tells strangers all about her (diamond-encrusted) Sidekick 2, saying “it’s way better than a Blackberry”. I can relate. (Although part of me wonders if that’s because you can’t get a diamond-encrusted Blackberry. Or perhaps because advertisements for Blackberrys don’t heavily use bright magenta like T-Mobile’s Sidekick ads do. But I will give her the benefit of the doubt — for now.)

But what actually interests me about the story isn’t Paris Hilton’s rich-party-girl star appeal or the Sidekick 2, it’s actually the lamest bit, being these lame, lame, lame “secret” questions that are supposed to keep our highly sensitive information secure. In the case of Paris Hilton’s supposedly secret answer that she kept with T-Mobile, the answer was Tinkerbell. For all you Celebrity Jeopardy fans, please answer in the form a question. “What’s the name of your favorite pet?” Ding.

What’s next? How many ID theives are trying to get into Chelsea Clinton’s personal accounts with her mother’s maiden name (Rodham, as in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) or wait a minute, don’t around five hundred people your age know exactly where you went a elementary school — because they were there too?

Next time someone gets “hacked” because a stranger guessed that their favorite color was purple, maybe they should point a finger at the telecom companies for allowing such insecure information to govern our privacy.