Retro

I've shared many an Instagram image by handing my phone over for someone to view. They always squint and angle the screen, then hand it back. If I could magically make them bigger, sharing Instagrams in real life would be a lot more social and lot more fun. That will soon be possible with Projecteo, a tiny projector designed just for Instagram.

There's a bit more to this than just Instagram + projector. Projecteo is really a miniscule 35mm slide film projector. You pick out your favorite Instagram images, Projecteo puts them on slide film, and then mails it to you. … Read more

Bob Dylan famously sang that the times they are a-changin' -- but little did he know just how much. So much, in fact, that a MIDI-controlled orchestra made of old consumer electronics can now play one of his all-time classics.

Chris Cairns of production company Partizan teamed with creative firm Isthisgood? to turn old Brother photocopiers, scanners, fax machines, printers, hard drives, and modems into a full-scale scrapheap symphony with a penchant for folk.

They soldered, reprogrammed, hacked, and rewired 97 printer relics destined for the landfill and even custom-designed their own circuitboard that could control all of the printers from one main computer. … Read more

Industrial designer Kotaro Shimogori has taken to crowdfunding site Indiegogo to raise funds for a Bluetooth-powered appliance that functions as a physical extension of your smartphone's notifications bar. But if you lived through the 1990s with me, you probably recognize Dr. Blinky for what it really is -- the resurrection of the pager with a 21st century spin.

In a nutshell, Dr. Blinky connects to an app on your Android phone (the iOS app is in progress) that you can configure to blink whenever you want to be notified of a new call, text, e-mail, or whatever. Dr. Blinky can also be set to blink in different patterns for different types of notifications. … Read more

Somewhere under Aspen, Colo., a time capsule containing Steve Jobs' mouse has been sitting and waiting to be unearthed. Since 1983. And no one knows where it is.

That's what blogger Marcel Brown wrote this morning, explaining that the time capsule, known as the Aspen Time Tube and buried in conjunction with the 1983 International Design Conference there, is lost and those looking for it are facing considerable odds against success.

According to a 2010 article in the Glenwood Springs (Colo.) Post Independent, the Aspen Time Tube was buried in June, 1983, and contained a number of items, ranging … Read more

Visitors to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, will soon be able to check out a massive new World War II-era battleship gun.

The 16-inch gun, originally mounted on the USS Missouri, saw significant action during World War II, and according to the National Park Service, is featured prominently in photographs of the Japanese surrender ceremony that took place aboard the Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945. It will soon be installed in Battery Townsley, in the Marin Headlands area of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Weighing in at 120 … Read more

Face it, most of today's shiny new gizmos will be hopelessly out-of-date in a few years and taking up space in landfills not so long after that. The iPhone 5 may be a marvel of engineering and marketing genius, but like iPhones of years past it's doomed to be cast aside when legions of Apple fanboys and girls stand in line to buy the iPhone 6 sometime next year. And so it goes.

Four years ago I wrote about my friend Gene and his Linn LP 12 turntable, the one he bought 30 years earlier.… Read more

If you used to build with toy bricks and play 8-bit video games, check out these $250 Hal Pixel sunglasses from Protos, with aesthetics inspired by Lego (or perhaps Minecraft terrain).

Fortunately, the glasses don't crumble easily like those Lego sets my friends would accidentally step on. … Read more

The phrase "immersive experience" gets bandied about quite a bit, but it's often an overstatement -- unless you happen to be in a room completely surrounded by a fully playable Ms. Pac-Man game.

Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy, got to experiment with a variety of video games for the recent Babycastles Summit at the Museum of Art & Design in New York.

Takahashi's new take on Ms. Pac-Man involved projecting it onto the walls and ceiling of a room. It looks like what would happen if Tron and Ms. Pac-Man got together, minus the glowing skin-tight suits.… Read more

Turning light switches on and off is a necessary, but dull, part of our lives. It doesn't have to be like that. With a $29.99 Power-Up Arcade Light Switch Plate from ThinkGeek installed, turning on the living room light will become a retro-gaming adventure.

A bright red joystick turns the light on and off. The switch plate makes classic "pew pew pew" noises when you press the buttons. This will allow you to pretend to play Space Invaders in the dark of your bedroom at 3 in the morning. … Read more