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Sorry for the delays in posting — I’ve been wrapped up in a project that has kept me from the blog!
But, without further ado, let’s continue the USB weirdness that I posted last week. My artist friend El Rey has continued to hunt the aether for the strangest things on earth that you can plug into a USB port, and has uncovered the following gems:
- the Hello Kitty USB hub (pictured above)
- a USB electric toothbrush
- the ever-toasty USB electric blanket
- and the USB desk fan.
The desk fan I can sort of imagine being useful, but the other stuff? This has got to be some sort of Japanese overcrowding thing. Most of those products are solely Japanese, and outside of their gadgetomania, in urban areas everyone lives in such tiny apartments that your toothbrushing may, in fact, take place within arm’s reach of the computer.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”
“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912
“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex
» visit the Collision Detection archives
May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM
From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.
July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S
July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM
My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.
June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM
On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.
June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM
I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives.
According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable!
» see all of my photos on Flickr
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A long German word for "noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history"
