cassette tape

Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, and few things quite pluck at the heartstrings like the compact cassette--if you were born before the 1990s, of course. For those who like collecting bits of tech history, this novel idea for a chair would fit right into the collection.

A designer from quirky design house OOO My Design took a simple wooden chair frame, patiently fastened a bunch of old cassettes to it, and aptly named it the Nostalgic Chair. To top that off, she attached an actual Sony Walkman and a pair of headphones for the ultimate blast from the past.

Though we wouldn't recommend buying this chair for sitting, this piece of retro art can be yours for a relatively reasonable 140 euros ($198). … Read more

I was never a fan of cassettes; they were the MP3s of their time. Neither format ever sounded good to me.

Prerecorded tapes from the record companies were the lowest of the low. True, they were less expensive than LPs in the '70s and '80s, but you could make much better-sounding cassettes yourself by dubbing LPs to cassette.

Cassettes were only slightly more durable than LPs and were definitely subject to wear. Also, while the cassette you made might sound decent enough on YOUR cassette deck, there was no guarantee it would sound OK on anybody else's machine (tape … Read more

The music may be horrible, but if you rub a tape head over these ties you can actually hear jumbled sound collages recorded from the NYC metro system. This is possible because the ties are 50 percent audio cassette tape.

If you have $90 to spend on one of the ties, and you are willing to sacrifice an old Walkman for the project, you can make this a fixture of your formal wardrobe. Of course, walking around with a broken Walkman asking every one to rub you with it is not recommended.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

Apparently the nostalgia bug has a stronger grip on people than we'd thought, at least where the cassette tape is concerned.

Only a few weeks ago we posted an item about an MP3 player disguised as one of the old-school cartridges, complete with USB port, memory card slot, and headphone jack. Now we learn of the "Flexii Bluetooth Cassette Adapter," which can be used to connect wirelessly to a mobile headset, media player, or even a PC.

There are plenty of other Bluetooth devices that can provide the same kind of function, but this one is designed … Read more

Rafe and I enjoyed playing around with Muxtape yesterday (review), but were turned off by the uploader and potential limited life span of the service due to its lenient position on copyrights. If you're looking for a slightly more flashy experience, and one that works without having to upload 50MB of music from your hard drive, check out Mixwit. It lets you create gorgeous-looking Web mix tapes to share with others and pulls in media from various streaming services such as Seeqpod and SkreemR.

Maybe its greatest asset is that the players look like real compact cassette tapes, with … Read more

It's one thing for Sony to reminisce about the good old days when they ruled the music world, but at some point it's time to let go. That was our immediate thought, anyway, upon seeing this dual cassette tape recorder. That's right--tapes.

Akihabara News says many people still use them, though we'll have to take their word for it because we haven't known any since about 1989. It also has a CD player in case they want to experiment with some of that cutting-edge stuff, as well as an AM/FM radio. We're still … Read more

First, there was the USB turntable. Now the ubiquitous USB format is going down memory lane to fast-forward ye old cassette deck into the digital future.

If you still actually own a box of moldy cassette tapes somewhere in the home and have warm fuzzy memories of care-free youth spent listening to hissy romance mixes, this gadget from Firebox oughta make it easy to reminisce. It converts those compilations into a digital format that's easier to archive. For the full retro effect, the gear even looks like the original 1980s deal, complete with tape counter and metal/CrO2 tape … Read more

What do you do with a bunch of old cassette tapes when you can't bear to throw them out? Make iPod cases out of them, of course.

The green people at 45 iPod Cases, which originally made a name for themselves by recycling old 45 records for the media player, is trying to do the same with cassettes for the Nano. We don't think they're as aesthetically successful as the vinyl retro look, but they do deserve some points for ecology's sake.

The retro craze is still going strong, especially with gadgets like a flash drive disguised as a mix tape, and devices that will let you transfer tunes from old cassettes to MP3s. But here's something that kicks it up a notch--an MP3 player inside an actual cassette tape. You have all the benefits of an MP3 player--an SD card slot, music and volume controls, an on/off switch, and a USB charger--but in a decidedly retro cassette tape. And this is the crazy-cool part: This cassette MP3 player can be used like a normal cassette in a regular … Read more