Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we spied this cute LEGO chibi bot, created by a father from his son’s drawing; two analog disk dial watches; free iPod Touch 8GB with back-to-school Macs; Lucasarts’ nonsensical claim that old adventure games can’t be ported to the Nintendo DS (who wouldn’t play Day of the Tentacle DS?); Andy Baio’s digitizition of a documentary about computers from 1992, The Machine That Changed the World; a travel scale for luggage that’s also good for fishing; a microwave case mod; and Starwood’s new shi-shi (chi-chi? shee-shee?) “Aloft” hotels bestrewn with gadget plugs and media routing.
Then we talked about mini-notebooks: Brownlee rounded up all the new subnotebooks announced today, including new Asus Eee models, the MSI Wind, a new Acer contender, and whispers of a Sony model. Canonical showed off Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a version of the version of Linux specifically tuned for the little laptops. And Raon showed off a new subnotebook that might as well in tossed into the whole murky sub-class.
But what of seething, you ask? Well, Time Warner Cable said they’re going to start metering bandwidth over 5GB a month. (Yup.) I reviewed a cheap solar charger that doesn’t even hold a charge. And a study showed that 95% of returned gadgets work fine, which you can interpret in a number of ways: dumb customers, poor interfaces, buyer’s regret.
Fortunately, it was mostly a playful day in Gadgeton: someone designed a moon RV for lunar retirees; a woman built a wall of radios; someone built a space donut thing that…does things? (This one confused even me.) Oh, and what was almost my choice for post image: a homebrew ceullar automata synthesizer.
Not all was whimsy: a snorkel for swimmers got high marks; a strange white lozenge case for your gadgets was given a casual, disinterested glance; the Optimus Popularis was teased, which may be the slightly more affordable cousin to that keyboard with all the tiny monitors built-in each key; someone built a secret compartment that hides as an air vent.
In underrated news, Google announced its Android phone OS will be 100% open source. (Freedom + design = swoon [Also, “;,” or “desdom”.]) And Starbucks said if you’ll promise to buy one cup of coffee a month, they’ll give you a taste of free Wi-Fi. And, as per usual: deals.