February 8, 2008

A Better iTunes?

I managed to fall asleep last night after listening to ""Guided Relaxation (Garden)" twice. I kind of love it, actually -- you can hear traffic in the background at a couple points. (Can I find a traffic sound podcast?)

My dissatisfaction with iTunes as a podcast manager makes me wonder how Panic's Audion would have handled them -- which I never used, but enjoyed reading about, and now wish I could use.

Posted by mary at 10:14 PM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2007

OMG!!! OMG!!! Apple Finally Reveals its Handheld Aquarium!!

The rumors finally panned out, and Steve Jobs revealed the first Apple handheld time-telling aquarium yesterday. I have so many questions: How do they manage to fit those fish into that thin casing? Can you get different kinds of fish? How do they make it so it won't leak in your purse? If you unlock it, do the fish pour out? How do you feed them?

But most of all, I want one. It's soooo much more elegant than the MacAquarium.

$499 may seem steep, but figure you'd spend probably about $500 on a 40 gallon tank alone (never mind the fish and plants), and there's no way you could take that with you on the road, so I say, it's worth it.

Posted by mary at 7:55 AM | Comments (3)

November 21, 2006

Kegel Remotes: Put Your Vagina in Control

Lyza noted with some contempt that Intel may be offering up a remote control for women.

Personally, I'm all for more remote controls as well as rampant niche marketing -- but it does beg the question of what would make a remote truly for women and only women. What separates women from men? The girls from the boys?

Breasts? Men have them, too.

A fondness for pastel colors? I don't think anyone likes pastels.

A love of chocolate? Kittens? Dick? No, no and no.

Vaginas are the only hard and fast answer.

This means that the remote control truly meant for a woman would be controlled by the vagina. This would be great. I'm imagining something like TV motivated Kegel exercises, which already use little weights (I found a kit at the Salvation Army once -- I'm still kicking myself for not buying them.). As you operated the remote control, you'd also be improving your control over your urine and stuff. The remote would have to be redesigned -- but TiVo is already on the right track.

There are plenty of devices out there which aim to control (or at least influence) the vagina remotely, but this would give your vagina the control, in more ways that one.

Kegel Remotes: Put Your Vagina in Control

P.S. Have you noticed how the word "vagina" has gotten kind of trendy? I first noticed at Go Fug Yourself. Probably it was the "Vagina Monologues" or something. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying.

Posted by mary at 8:46 AM | Comments (1)

March 23, 2006

iBunnies! Prototype of My Latest Great Idea!

It's not all that often that I get around to making actual prototypes of my ideas, but I liked the iBunny idea so much that I gave them away for Christmas, and I'll be putting these for sale on eBay soon. The idea is, cute fuzzy covers for your iPods. I made them for laptops, too. I have been trying to come up with a good name for them -- for awhile I was flirting with "I Wuv My Waptop" but that only worked for the fuzzy laptop covers. And the fuzzy iPod cases make more sense. Anyhoo, they are cute -- actually, the ones I made for Christmas were a little more cute, but I lost my pictures of those in the Hard Drive Failure of Ought Six. You put your iPod in them and then a little elastic strap wraps around the tail to keep them inside.

That's it!

Posted by mary at 5:12 PM | Comments (4)

Many iBunnies

Posted by mary at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)

iBunny Butts

Here's a backview of two ...

Posted by mary at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

Handster PDA

Cousin Nathan recently reminded me of the Hipster PDA and improvement over the actual (and the soon-to-be-if-not-already-defunct actual PDA). This made me think of the logical next step, which is the Handster PDA (I'll have to think of a better name, since this one is, of course, already taken).

Now, if I could only patent "a method of writing reminders in ink on one's own hand" -- which, given the leniency of the US office, is not as ridiculous as it sounds -- I'd be a billionaire!!

Better yet, how about a dogster PDA? In which you shave a reminder on the side of your pet? Or maybe implant a series of LCD lights that could be programmed to spell out things like, "CALL YOUR MOTHER." Possibly even as directed by your mother herself using the internet and Bluetooth. Now THAT would be great.

Posted by mary at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

Venn Diagram

This diagram isn't really very accurate, but after conversations with Chris and Heide (who's making a documentary about AS and things like that in her family) and my friend Donna (whose son has ADD and loves games) and now working on this latest book idea I've been thinking about the connections between computer nerds and gamers and those mental issues/differences that make them socially awkward. And I love Venn diagrams so here is one attempting to illustrate some of the overlap between savants, virtuosos, those with Aspergers and computer nerds. (After briefly noodling around I decided I'm not going to get into all the websites and debates over autism and stuff -- that's actually partly what Heide's film will be about and I'll leave it to her).

Anyway, I know this isn't very accurate -- for instance, shouldn't perfect pitch (I'm thinking of those people who can hear a song and sit down and play it right the first time -- I've seen them on 60 minutes more than once now) be where music and austism overlap? And band geek -- shouldn't that be where computer nerd and music overlap? And is that really where asshole belongs? How many circles can you have in a Venn diagram? Well, I encourage you all to make your own undoubtedly more accurate versions.

And now back to the book propsal.

**Update**
slashdot today had something to say about and linked to a couple articles on Asperger's/nerds - a little old, but still interesting. This one in Wired seemed to sum a lot up. I particularly like the theory that in olden days of yore, nerds wouldn't have been breeding but, "in the last 10 years, geekitude has become sexy and associated with financial success."

On a completely unrelated topic: Chris's Meta-Venn is brilliant!

Posted by mary at 11:51 AM | Comments (3)

May 18, 2005

World of Warcraft Therapy

So, I'm playing World of Warcraft these days. I'm a level 11 Night Elf named Settee, and we're trying to work up to creating a guild called "The Living Room" based on furniture -- the furniture naming convention was Chris's idea, the Living Room guild was mine. I need to chose a trade. I can chose between being an engineer (and make robotic chickens and stuff), or a leatherworker, or a tailor, or a blacksmith, or an alchamist or an enchanter.

What I really want to be is a therapist. I think it would be awesome if you could chose that. You'd have to train first to get your credentials. And the other players would have to use you because they'd have an added bar called (Pete's idea): "Angst" and when it got too low they'd have to get therapy.

Pete also pointed out it would be best if you could only counsel people that were the same level as you. And I thought maybe if a therapist of a higher level counseled someone of a lower level maybe they'd both end up WORSE off.

You could combine it with alchamy and make drugs for people,too. (I thought crack dealer would also be a good profession.)

You could do couples therepy for parties or guilds that aren't getting along.

And I was thinking you could even do real "e-therapy", since you have the chat windows. You could talk to people about their problems with their parents or wives, or even do couples therapy. Online thereapy seems to be fairly robust on the web, so massively multiplayer online game therapy just seems like the next logical step.

Shane and Arne were also thinking you could have a self-help series: "Taking Your Career From Level 1 to Level 60 in 2 weeks" etc. (with lovelife, weight loss, etc.), which would maybe be a book series using WoW as an analogy catered towards the WoW crowd, or maybe you'd do it within the game.

This is one of those things where I'm pretty sure it probably exists in this world of avatars and such -- there are references to avatar therapy, but I think there's more than one meaning of the word avatar.

I think I may go be a leatherworker. Either that or an engineer. Pete's being an engineer, but maybe we can have two. We've got a game date tonight -- Armoire, Settee, Ottoman, Chaise and Catafalque (what, you don't have a catafalque in your living room?).

Posted by mary at 1:54 PM | Comments (3)

October 31, 2003

Erika's Great Idea: Customized Alarm Clocks

How about customized alarm clocks, where you choose the sound most likely to
wake you up from a death-deep sleep with every nerve zinging? In my case it would be the gulp-gulp-GAAK of a cat throwing up on the carpet next to my bed.

[Link courtesy of Mary]

Posted by mary at 12:04 PM | Comments (1)

September 25, 2003

Promotional Laptop Cases

Originally this idea was to just have cute laptop cases that would allow you not to have to use ugly laptop bags. Here, I'll just put the original idea down so you can see how the world catches up with me:

"Lap-Top Wrap." Water-resistant fabric and foam wrapper for laptops, allowing you to put your lap top in any bag without worry. Fabric could reflect consumers' "cultural milieu" with vintage tablecloth patterns, kente cloth patterns, Guatemalan weaves, sports-oriented designs, conservative pin strips, etc. and/or be emblazoned with company names and given away free at trade shows. Would make "any bag a lap top bag" and would help us all avoid the ugly Targus blight. An anti-theft & style conscious product.

Since then, Timbuk2.com now makes some pretty cute laptop sleeves and Chris showed me some other vaguely sylish ones in one of his geek catalogues, and sure enough, they are sized so that you can stick your laptop inside a normal bag, which was a pretty important innovation.

BUT -- my idea was based on having used a FedEx padded envelop to carry my laptop, and it occured to me (and still does) that you could manufacture really cheap little bags made of the same materials that would make GREAT promos, plastered all over with logos or what have you. Much better than, for instance, actual shoulder bags, because they would be a lot cheaper, and much more visible than pens or what have you. And a lot more original than T-shirts (see entry on T-shirts for why t-shirts are politically problematic).

It's one of those things that actually needs to be kind of cool in execution -- I mean, you'd have to actually have neat graphics and stuff or no one would carry them.

Posted by mary at 10:47 AM | Comments (1)

August 4, 2003

Great Idea Classic: More Remote Controls

Electronic Device: "PedRemote." Footpedel remote control for the television allowing hands-free channel surfing, two-fisted beer guzzling & potato chip eating, but also breast feeding and other legit two-handed activities. Sold at Sharper Image or maybe Sears and Radio Shack if we get desperate.

"Prestige Remotes." Solid gold universal remote control encrusted with diamonds, rubies, etc. for very high end consumer, sold through Neiman Marcus to appeal to person who doesn't want to have to hide their remote when important company comes. Also, fake gold, plastic jewel remotes. The Barbie remote. The transformer remote (turns into a dinosaur/robot). The vibrator/kiegal (sp) exerciser remote. The thighmaster remote. The butt-controlled remote. Think about WebTV tie-ins (did WebTV die or what?).

Note that after I posted the "PedRemote" idea to halfbakery.com, which has a lot of remote entries, I was informed that these already exist.

Prestige Remotes in solid gold are, I think, not yet around. But Chris's brother worked on some super-duper remote, and then Maureen Dowd wrote about some kind of mega remote the other day -- anyway, my point is, I think these ideas are pretty tired.

Posted by mary at 9:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2003

Classic Idea: Super Jet Air Scoop

An after-market product for cars without air conditioning, it would replicate the highly effective triangle wing-windows that old cars used to have.

It would be a piece of clear plastic that you'd put in the window that scooped the air at you for extra cooling. Would be sold at gas stations or given away with advertising logos on them so that when you looked out the window you'd see "ARCO" or whatever. Would appeal to the ever-growing market of working class/working poor people with crappy beaters, and now more and more of those old beaters have broken air conditioning and no wing windows. Sell for not too much. Liability issue, however, as we'd have to make sure they wouldn't fall out of the window and break someone's windshield behind you.

My mom's boyfriend actually made me a prototype of one of these which I used on a trip to California a few years ago. The problem was it was made of metal, and it was kind of scary because it had really sharp edges and I kept having visions of what would happen if it flew through the air and hit the person in the car behind me. SLICE-OH! Is what I figured. Right through the windshield and into the face. So I took it off. But it worked pretty well for cooling me off.

Those old wing windows worked great. Supposedly they stopped making cars with those wing windows because they made cars easier to break into, but I suspect darker motives.

Posted by mary at 4:48 PM | Comments (0)