Awesome Stuff: Simple And Small Stuff

Innovation

from the keeping-it-simple dept

For this week’s awesome stuff we’re back to discussing some crowdfunding projects, and this week, we’re keeping it simple. Here are a few simple, small projects, some potentially more interesting and useful than others.

• Nope! It’s no longer paranoid and crazy to want to cover up the camera on your laptop any more. Most people just use some black tape. Hell, the EFF even sells special camera cover stickers that are totally worth buying. But if you’d prefer not to use sticky tape, there’s now another solution, that looks a bit more elegant: Nope: a pair of magnets designed to cover the camera, but also easy enough to slide out of the way when you do need the camera (and without leaving any sticky residue. The magnets are supposedly weak enough not to cause problems for the computer but you might want to confirm that before diving in.
• Openmix Simple, straightforward and small: it’s the Openmix, the world’s smallest audio mixer. It’s pretty no frills. The tiny device has a dial, two audio input plugs that you can accept any smartphone or mp3 player, and you spin the dial back and forth to crossfade from one audio source to the other. There’s also an outbound jack so you can plug in a speaker, and a third input if you want to insert effects or something via a DJ app. It’s not fancy. It won’t do amazing things, but as a simple device, it looks pretty neat. Of course, it also looks like it’s nowhere near hitting its goal with just a little time left.
• Gyzmo A simple wireless remote for your mobile phone, called the Gyzmo. Three buttons that you can program to do a specific thing on your phone, letting you have your phone do something specific without having to grab the full phone. Originally designed as a sort of “panic button,” the designers are making it programmable so you can do other things remotely as well.
• NoPhone Okay, this last one is just for fun, but it is simple. As the NoPhone folks explain, it’s a “technology-free alternative to constant hand-to-phone contact that allows you to stay connected with the real world.” In short, it’s a 3D printed slab of nothing, in the shape of a phone, for those of you who now feel like you always have to be holding something smartphone-sized. There’s also a “selfie-upgrade” which is a mirror sticker. They note that while it doesn’t have bluetooth, if you drop it in the toilet, it won’t die. It’s also not carrier locked.

That’s it for this week.

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