Rob Beschizza

Somebody should make a phone like this

The Sinclair Sovereign, a pocket calculator
from 1976. [Planet Sinclair]

Rob Beschizza

48Cake

I like Rob Brennan's cake. [flickr]

Rob Beschizza

The original IBM Thinkpad

From Continous Lean, via Daring Fireball.

Rob Beschizza

Thumbdrive in a cassette tape

Put your sounds on the stick, put the stick inside the ancient-looking cassette tape, then scrawl all over it for verity's sake. 6 different designs, one overwhelming wave of nostalgia. [Suck UK] Thanks, Xeni!

Rob Beschizza

KONG vs. New York reincarnated in flash

Man, these games sucked.

Steven Leckart

Kool-Aid Man Is Giving NSFW Tours In Second Life [Wow, There's Still A Second Life?]

Kool-Aid Man has been tearing it up over in Second Life. So much so, he's now offering free guided tours for anyone willing to dive back into Second Life.

Of course, it's not really Kool-Aid man, but an avatar created by artist Jon Rafman. Still, seems like it could be quite a trip, especially since homeboy is known for busting through walls wherever he goes.

Warning: The above video features NSFW moments; mostly around 08:00 when Kool-Aid Man visits a sex club, then a strip club. See, I told you dude gets wild.

[via Beautiful Decay]

Steven Leckart

"Sorry, sir, but Twitter is down... Yes, again."

August 17, 1955.

photo from Adolph B. Rice Studio via The Library of Virginia

Steven Leckart

IBM Tape Drives (1965)

Steven Leckart

What's This Guy Driving?

The Tri-Magnum is a fuel-efficient, reverse trike built from a motorcycle, usually a Kawasaki KZ900 or Honda Gold Wing. As evident by the design lines (not to mention the driver's 'stache), this three-wheeler was developed decades ago. However, you can still buy inventor Robert Q. Riley's $95 guide on how to build your own Tri-Magnum for $3,500, not counting the motorcycle.

Since the early 1980s, Riley's refined his reverse trike design quite a bit. The XR3 plug-in hybrid is essentially a re-tooled version of the Tri-Magnum.

After the jump, check out more photos of each vehicle...

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Steven Leckart

Power On Self Test: Dead Format Device

[via walking on glass via fiction romance]

Steven Leckart

Retro Mega-Fridge: Huge, Red and $10K!

Forget hacking an ice box for energy-efficiency. Go big or go home with this roughly-$10,000 all-in-one from Meneghini.

[via Unplggd via Freshome]

Steven Leckart

More Video Games Should Look Like This.

Lisa Katayama

Vintage gas pumps

Gas stations were so much more charming back in the day.

Steven Leckart

Contest Winner!: Fighting Space Chicken

Well, I really had no idea so many BBG readers would want to get their hands on my fighting cock bot.

In the end, the winner was a reader by the name of Paul (aka Misterfricative), who won us over with a beautiful, succinct jingle.

Interesting side note: Paul lives in Taiwan, where the fighting cock bot was constructed some 20 years ago. Apart from the fact his tune is fantastic, the notion of returning the bot to its homeland certainly influenced our decision.

And without further adieu, here's the bot-winning song:

Enjoy the cock bot, Paul. And remember, "Never let a child swallow the bullet."

Of course, other BBG readers submitted some wonderful entries. Below are a few of the highlights. Thanks to everyone who entered!

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Rob Beschizza

Pixels

Enjoy 8bit Today's roundup of early August's 8bitty action.

Pic: Thus I Have Heard, by Skurwy87

Steven Leckart

Tron-Watch '09: Blue-Green LEDS!

Behold, the Cobra XRS R10G radar detector. The design should look sort of familiar — it's copping Tron. Maybe not as much as this concept bike we spotted, but close enough, no?

[via Wired]

Rob Beschizza

Twelve Vintage Walkmans

Vince Veneziani points us to a dozen of Sony's classic cassette players. Some of them are pretty unremarkable, but this one--the first--is one of the best. [Oobject]

Steven Leckart

Mini Cooper Thumb Drive

This mini 1959 Mini Cooper holds 4GB.

[via Akihabara News]

Rob Beschizza

The ugliest mouse ever

Vaguely reminiscent of oil crash concept cars--and about as easy to move places. [Engadget]

Steven Leckart

Official KISS Army Makeup

Each set comes with "creme makeup, brush, sponge, puff, powder and detailed instructions."
$50 for all four characters: The Demon, The Starchild, The Catman, The Spaceman.

Still, I'm not sure these are quite as awesome as the 1978 "KISS Your Face" kit from Remco.

Steven Leckart

A Visual History of Cosmetics Gadgetry

Like the mobile phone, cosmetics is a fantastic example of a product category where the main design constraints are mobility and pocketability. From efficient, easier-to-use lipstick tubes to more compact compacts, we've proposed, then invented some pretty neat/wacky/seemingly-obvious/ingenious stuff for carrying, applying and removing makeup and other cosmetics.

Pictured is a patent for an eyebrow stencil kit from the late 1980's:

For the purpose of mobility a pair of wing shape stencils is connected by a nut and screw passing through the elongated slots which allows the stencils to move horizontally and vertically. This procedure allows the adjustment of horizontal distance and an angle of the eyebrow cut-outs simultaneously.

Seemingly helpful. I don't know why all eyebrow pencil pushers don't carry these today.

After the jump, check out inventions dating back to the late 1890s...*

*Note: this is by no means a complete history, just stuff I found intriguing. If you've got any particularly fun ones I missed, please leave info/links/suggestions in the comments.

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Steven Leckart

Contest: Win My Fighting Cock-Bot

I stumbled on this Fighting Cock-bot at a junk shop in San Francisco that was having an everything-must-go sale. The box is dated 1986 and indicates the robo-chicken was manufactured by the Chi Land Plastic Manufacturing, Co in Taiwan.

Aside from stumbling on a .gov that lists the manufacturer, I haven't had much luck tracking any more of these down online. (Feel free to Google "fighting cock" and let me know if you find one.)

Battery-operated, the 12-inch toy is supposed to fire little plastic discs ("bullets") that you store in little plastic "eggs." To be honest, I don't really care what the thing does.

The packaging is what sold me on it [sic for everything below...]:

• Head with colorful lamp

• Chest with colorful lamp

• Attached with 2 eggs. There are 12 bullets in each egg.

• Walkable feet for advancing

• Wings can wave and shoot the bullet.

• The cock can turn it body for 360°

• Never let a child swallow the bullet

Enter To Win:

Get creative. PhotoShop the art (here's a larger version). Create an original painting, drawing, watercolor of or inspired by the Fighting Chicken. Write a song. Shoot a video of yourself singing said song. Create a claymation music video for said song.

Post a link to your stuff in the comments below or email me: steven AT boingboing DOT net ; The winner will be chosen based on the merit, effort, and originality of his/her creation. Go nuts.

...And remember: never, ever swallow the bullet. Unless, of course, you are an adult.

Steven Leckart

1975 Electronic Master Clock System

Patek Philippe's "Electronic Master Clock System" from 1975 is a real gem. The unit features independent minute and seconds comparators, and displays the time in five different cities, including New York, Tokyo and Buenos Aires.

Interested?

This one went for £4,800 via Bonhams.

[via Mr. Jones]

Steven Leckart

PARC: Un-fumbling the Future

In 1983, my former professor and friend Howard Rheingold read an article by Alan Kay. Immediately, he wanted to experience the Alto and the future of networked minds. He started calling PARC on a weekly basis. Nothing. Then when he called back to remind HR of his existence, he was given an immediate assignment: write a last-minute speech for a Xerox executive.

With that, Howard had landed himself his "dream job" at PARC as an in-house writer. Howard's gig involved interviewing researchers and scientists about their work with interfaces, LAN, etc. Super cool in retrospect and at the time, I'm sure.

He goes into great detail in his book Tools for Thought (pictured), which explores batch processing, the 1960s, time sharing, and more at Xerox PARC. Howard's insights into the successes and failures of Xerox PARC are well worth a read.

Here's how he framed PARC's trajectory and missed opportunity in his Wired article from 1994:

Personal computers did not spring naturally from the computer industry. They were deliberately realized by a radical fringe, against all the force of the day's accepted wisdom... These zealous wizards handed Xerox an astounding lead in information technology in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade, Xerox watched as upstarts like Apple and Microsoft grew wealthy off Xerox's discoveries. Neither Apple nor Microsoft even existed when the first Altos were designed in the early 1970s; by 1990 either company could have bought Xerox. The tragicomic Xerox saga is recorded in Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander's Fumbling the Future.

Here's the question he ended his 1994 article with:

So how will PARC guarantee that this time they won't fumble their new future? Three ways, says JSB [John Seely Brown]. "One, we are more careful about intellectual property. Two, we are working smart - looking for entrepreneurial partnerships to develop ideas quickly. And three, Xerox has radically repositioned its organization so that its corporate strategy is shaped and informed by PARC and PARC is being shaped and informed by corporate strategy."

And, of course, here's what eventually happened:

By 2002, PARC became in independent research business with the ability to license its own patented tech and discoveries to other companies, institutions, and start-ups, especially the recent wave of alternative energy upstarts. While there are still ties to Xerox, PARC's profits are entirely its own. What's more, I'm told revenue is even split up among PARC employees.

Lessons learned.

Steven Leckart

PARC: What's w/the Shagadelic Carpet & Beanbag Chairs?

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Rob Beschizza

Kid swaps iPod for 30 year old Walkman

"It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. ... I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured."

Photo: WhineAndDine 

Rob Beschizza

If you have any questions, please ask the angel

Browsing computer files in the near future of 1994 shall involve VR headsets and orchestral electric guitar licks.

Joel Johnson

Ghostbusters and the Angel of NYNEX

Geoff Manaugh:

Thing is - spoiler alert - halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn't a phone system at all: it's the embedded nervous system of an angel - a fallen angel - and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan.

Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first.

Rob Beschizza

The Notificator

Modern Mechanix via The Tweney Review.

Joel Johnson

HP releases classic scientific calculator emulators for iPhone

That's not a picture of an old HP 15C Scientific Calculator—or rather, it is, but only as it appears as an application for the iPhone or iPod Touch, available now in the iTunes App Store for $30.

Too expensive? You can get the HP 12C Financial Calculator model software for only $15.