Category: Technology

Weird shopping at Woot.com

Since this is the shopping season, I thought I’d mention a few different thing on the Web that are interesting. One I ran across a while ago is Woot.com. This is kind of like a clearing house for merchandise, as near as I can tell. At 12:00 midnight eastern, they put an item of for sale. They call this a “Woot”. Sometimes the deals are pretty good. Sometimes they’re just “ok”. For example, today’s Woot is a Dream’eo Enza 20GB Portable Media Center, which they are selling for $129. I suppose if you’re looking for something like that, that might be quite a deal. (I passed it up). Anyway, it will either sell out before the end day, or it’ll just remain there until midnight rolls around again. Then there will be a new Woot for sale.

Ever so often, they have a “Woot-Off”. A Woot-Off works basically the same way as Woot usually does, but instead of waiting until midnight for a new item to show up, they’ll put a new Woot up for sale as soon as the last item is sold out. What makes this interesting is that you can get some really good deals on things, but you have to be quick.

Sometimes during the Woot-off (and during “regular” days, for that matter) they’ll sell grab bags for one dollar each. You can buy up to three, and you’ll be charged $5 for shipping. They call these grab bags “Random Crap”. Customers on the message boards generally call them a BOC (Bag of Crap), but make up new names using those initials: Bandoleer of Carrots, Bunch of Cartoons, Barrel of Chimpanzees (etc). These things sell out VERY quickly. People post pictures of what they get on the message boards, and sometimes it’s hilarious. People have received stuffed dogs with rainbow afros, strange monkey sculptures, and beaded flag vests.

So, why do they sell out so quickly? Sometimes people get things that are a lot better than that. When I did this, I received a Thermos Pub mug & a camera bag (I think nearly everyone got those), a couple of Gel pens…. and a Geneva Elite Watch! The watch works, and from what I’ve been able to tell, it’s worth about $40 or $50. Other people have recieved a RoboSapien, a Roomba and even a 61-inch television! In fact, when those went out, two people got televisions.

Now, you don’t always get something great. Sometimes things that come are broken. Sometimes you’ll open a box that says “laptop”, only to find a broken laptop power supply. But it is “Random Crap” after all.

Woot.com definitely does not take itself seriously, and it’s worth seeing what goes on there even if you don’t buy anything.

Smart Rooms and Home Automation

I’ve been interested in “smart room” technology and home automation for quite a while now.

A few years ago at work, I had the opportunity to write some software to implement a smart room. When it was done, I was able to control things in the room with my voice, use an iPAQ to control things in the room, and ask the room questions.

What kind of questions? It was pretty simple, mainly things like what the current time was, and what the weather was in cities throughout the US. It knew about 1500 different cities in the US, and would say the current weather conditions using a synthesized version of my voice.

My wife wrote some RFID software over in her department, and I was able to use that to control what type of music played when you entered the room. If you like Jazz, it would play Jazz music when you walked in. If someone else liked Classical music, it would play that when they walked in. If you both were in the room at the same time, it would switch to something you both liked — Blues, for example.

I wrote this all up in another page, so if you’re interested, check out my smart room page. I also started a Jini project for home automation that’s now hosted over at Java.net .

What’s Apple up to?

Speaking of mysterious new devices….

Apple will announce something “new” next week, according to the invitations that some chosen few have received. There’s a picture that’s circulating which looks like a small cube. The person that took it says it measures 8x8x8 and has a bunch of ports on the back.

My guess is that it’ll be a device that you’ll connect to your TV, will have a wireless internet connection, and the ability to download movies right to it. I don’t think they’ll go the TiVO route, since there’s still a lot of shakeup about to happen in that market.

People have been going “gah-gah” over the ability to have TV shows on their iPOD…doesn’t it make sense for Apple to introduce something that people will be able to use in their living rooms?

Any other guesses?

Microsoft “Origami” to debut March 2nd

There has been a lot of speculation on what Microsoft “Origami” might be over the last couple of days. The website http://www.origamiproject.com, has a weird little flash movie that doesn’t really do anything more than add to the mystery of what it might be.

A few years ago, National Semicondtor came up with a device named “Origami” which was a small handheld that could be opened and turned in a variety of different ways, depending on how it would be used.

The device that was talked about back then was a phone, pda, MP3 player, e-mail device, and video conferencing tool.

Stamps with moving pictures

You may have heard about “electronic paper”, a technology which uses electrical charges on individual elements within the “paper” to display text and images.

Another new technology now brings moving pictures onto stamps.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Minority Report”, and remember the scenes where the advertisments were moving, even though they were on flat posters, you’ll get the idea of what they’re doing….. except on a much smaller scale.

It’s coming folks… It’ll probably take a few more years, but pretty soon you’ll be bombarded with ads on cereal boxes, moving around to get you to buy that box.

Sure hope there’s an easy way to turn those off.