Crapgadget: "Wow... just, wow" edition
By Darren Murph 
posted Mar 13th 2009 7:34AM
posted Mar 13th 2009 7:34AM
Read - Buffalo USB Speaker
Read - MP3 Pen
Read - USB Bamboo Fountain
Read - Mickey Webcam
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Well this just seems unfair Engadget. I mean, at first glances does this product at least not strike you as "usable"? Maybe you don't like it because you're not the "intended target demographic"?
No benign excuses to cook up for this small non fruit based company for their crappy gadget?
I couldn't agree more Mr Tes. Die hard Buffalo Bills fans around the world may appreciate the styling of this little gadget.
I'm not sure wether I should concur or not. Certainly, a part of me would decidedly love not to. The speaker is probably crap and the fact it is actually pointed downwards renders the front design useless because any sane person will turn it upside-down in favor of sound quality and volume. Then again, it's still a reasonably compact rechargable active speaker with a Li-ion battery, which might be pretty useful for DIY/hobby stuff (e.g. working with unamplified radio signals on the go, etc.). If said battery is of decent longevity, $14 doesn't seem that much of a horrible price tag.
"intended target demographic" = Buffalo Springfield fans
both of them
"Blue LED indicator on horns and eyes"
Blue LEDs are the metaphorical icing on any Crapgadget cake.
Actually, I'd like to retract my previous statement as I now realise that Buffalo G fans (in addition to Buffalo Bill and Buffalo Springfield) would be delighted with this speaker.
I think they forgot to include the new iPod Shuffle -- now that's a CRAPGADGET for sure!
In addition, to be fair, the poll as presented is horribly biased. It portrays the buffalo speaker alone in this single post, with the other gadgets linked elsewhere. This can, and certainly will, cause bias. In short, crap poll.
The bamboo fountain is actually kind of cool. Circa early 2000's but cool.
And the site says it's made from a polyresin, so where are the mold and mildew coming from?
I get what you are saying, but I believe we are still very much in the early 2000's :)
Nice to see the MP3-pen getting deservedly low score here -- while the "learn Mandarin" aspect is certainly niche functionality, it _is_ functionality, not crap, and the MP3 player is a _logical_ combination of function.
My only real objection to it (besides that I don't want to learn Mandarin, and my MP3 player needs can be met better by dedicated devices) is that you probably wind up speaking the Mandarin equivalent of Engrish and make yourself a universal laughingstock.
Funny learning!
Um Mandarin is probably the most beneficial language to learn after english.
More so here, given that much of Engadget's life and blood (ie. gadgets) are made in countries that speak Mandarin...
Yeah, but it's not Apple's idea so it's stupid. Now THIS is Apple's idea...oh wait
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9jKAiUEgXE
No, either C or Lisp is the most beneficial after English. ;)
Depends -- there's actually a good argument for French. Mandarin is spoken in China, and as a second language in nearby countries. That's a lot of people, to be sure, but not much area.
Because the French (like the English) went on a colonial spree a while back, there's all sorts of places around the world where you're likely to meet up with French speakers, so it might be more useful, and it should be a lot easier to pick up (for native English speakers).
(I speak neither Mandarin nor French, but do know a good smattering of computer languages...)
@Benson:
What are your feelings on Perl? I don't know Lisp, but I've experience in a fair few other languages and find Perl to be both the most fun and the most useful (there have been so many occasions where 10 minutes of Perl has saved me hours of pain).
Thank you evan, Fred, and all other responders for pointing out this gross error in slamming the Mandarin dialect. I have several friends who are international travelers (teachers, businessmen, military and missionaries) and they all tell me that English is the most important international language, but Mandarin is absolutely second in importance and continuing to grow - especially in the international business community.
For a company based in NY I am disappointed in Darren's apparent ignorance of the international community. But whatever, I guess it's just a tech blog for geeks - who cares if it's accurate... oh wait.
@j_g_puff:
Never really saw the point of perl in practice -- you can do most of the q&d stuff just fine with any modern shell, awk, and sed. The bigger apps that sometimes get written in perl are, IMHO, just as handily written in a "real" language (usually I'd recommend a Lisp of some sort), and will be more easily maintainable.
Of course, I have _very_ limited perl capabilities -- perhaps if I was as good with it as with lisp, bash, and awk, I'd find some stuff it's better for. It looks ok, from what I've seen, but since I don't see the point, I haven't made time to really mess with it. (Maybe I'd think awk was the useless thing, if I'd picked up perl first!)
But I dislike Python (just one more attempt from the parenthesis-haters to stumble backwards into lisp-like features), and _everyone_ knows Python's the greatest thing since transistors, so my judgment is suspect on all this. ;-)
I happen to, erm, like the bamboo fountain.
Same here!
"that's totally beneficial in more than three locations on Planet Earth."
Mandarin is the highest ranked SIL Ethnologue language, which means that it's the language with the most native speakers (873 million) in the world. China is one of the fastest growing economies. If anything is a useful language to learn next to English, it's Mandarin Chinese.
But sure, be a dismissive jaded douchebag and act like it's a meaningless language that's only spoken by a bunch of farmers in remote huts.
No offense, but I think that's a harsh generalization and rather naive assessment. IMO, not the amount of native speakers is of interest but the distribution and global density of them in order to render a certain language *internationally* significant. If you do not plan to devote a significant part of your work/life/leisure time/whatever to China, there is probably a dozen of languages you are likely to profit more from
(one way or the other) by "blindly" learning them. For instance, learning French and Spanish seems useful, if you're simply interested in covering the largest possible speech area (South America, large parts of Africa) with the least effort.
Also, I recently saw an expensive MP3 player that was barely any smaller than other MP3 players in the same category, but it was more expensive, didn't have any buttons and replacement headphones cost $50 or more. Maybe a good idea for the next Crapgadget column? I think I can find you guys a link to the product page if you want.
Yeah, it had ridiculous controls too. Actually, just one button. And they expected users to remember a morse code like control scheme to operate it.
+1
Anyone else notice the name of the website that the webcam is listed on? Gizfever...what is that?
And the cam comes with a sucker...namely you for buying somethng from a website with name like Gizfever....hehe Giz.
the buffalo speaker freaks me out, i'd hate to have that THING staring at me.
the bilingual pen is not a crapgadget at all, from what i saw in the promotional video it's an excellent way of learning pronounciation, i think it's very innovative. i have no idea how it recognizes which sentence it's being pointed at.
the bamboo fountain looks ok if you find that kind of stuff relaxing. but maybe water and electricity are a bit too close together
the mickey webcam thing's page doesn't load
clearly the crappiest gadget is the buffalo speaker
Cow... just, cow
I like the buffalo speaker
Actually for those of you arguing against mandarin being useful.... your wrong. Mandarin is considered the language of business for Asia, much Like english is the language of business throughout the rest of the world.
WOW
Wow, the webcam wasn't that bad. Scroll to the bottom of the page and check out the pink "Apple Smart Warp" or the fake Lego's iPod dock!
That Chinese teaching pen is freaking gi-nourmous! I can't imagine trying to get that through airport security in my carry on. The useful application is if it has the menu of my favorite Chinese food place loaded and can teach me to order those off menu items that only people "in the know" can order.
I think the sound of water trickling all day would make me have to go to the restroom a lot more often. Not a good investment.
I think I got one of those buffalo USB speakers in a Bag of Crap from a recent Woot Off! Mine had evil red LEDs instead of blue. ;-)
None of them are 100% useless crap. Except maybe the article.
This is actually stupider, and it was on the same page:
http://www.gadget4all.com/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00574&cat_id=013&dept_id=003
+1.
Those sheep speakers are definitely crappier. At least the buffalo head has enough room to fit a decent-ish speaker. These small buggers just cannot deliver. You're better off using your notebook's integrated speakers - unless you don't mind the roaring laughter of passersby and hold one to each ear.
What's crappy about the pen? It looks no different than products by Leapfrog and seems like a legitimately good learning tool to give a young Chinese or Chinese-American child.
The only crap I see is this post by Darren. The buffalo speaker is the closest thing to being considered crap.
Ooh nice. A buffalo. But can I get one in moose or maybe reindeer?
I first read it as micky malfunction webcam....
Settle down, everyone, about Darren Murph's commentary on "Mandaran." Darren is an American. Did you really expect an American to know that Mandarin is the most common language spoken in China?
Me, either.
And you making generalizations about Americans is somehow more sophisticated than his generalizations (and misspellings) about Mandarin speakers.
Wow, the hypocrisy is just overflowing the proverbial bucket here.
-1 for massive amounts of undeserved arrogance
Where is the ipod shuffle?
Heh
I thought the buffalo speaker was kinda neat actually, my vote goes for the mickey webcam -.o
What the hell.. all I can say
hey, where is the shuffle?
Hats off to all you guys commenting! your comments are the only things worth reading on this website!
Keep it up Fellas!
The buffalo speaker is truly extra-awesome. Only when I own such a totally amazing work of art such as this will I be whole.The Language Pen, on the other hand, looks like Suck Personified. The ad copy doesn't help it....
i liked the fountain haha
Mr Murph,
What an idiot you are. The fact that you are a writer and a tech blogger no less goes a long way to describing your capabilities as an individual in general.
I learnt Chinese. So I could be a self made man and not a douche that has to work in NYC for a company and write on a blog all day for a crust while thinking that the universe is limited to English and the USA. Yeah - good future buddy.
The cow - well guess what Lunar year it is?
Chinese is the most important language to learn after English. Are you just pissed off like most other (formerly) over paid and poorly skilled USA tech heads that are losing more and more jobs to the region?
Reading your diatribe is where you should first look for the answer. That along with your skanky arse, I need a sheep dip adn a bath, poorly spoken editor in Chief that is also a closet anti China racist - quite funny coming from someone with a name like Topolsky and a uncanny resemblance to an ethnic and religious heritage that has had its (un)fair share of being singled out.
Advice. Go and get a real job and leave the geopolitical commentary to the experts. Maybe learn about the world, and do something of actual importance and real value output as opposed to writing about products that you could hardy design, manufacture or market any better.
You are a writer. You are a blogger and for tech too. Are you seriously thinking that you are in a position to put down others? You ONLY speak English, yet you seriously think you're in a position to put down others that may want to learn (basic economics - no demand - no enterprises will design a product to meet said demand).
Then again, I do need some light reading before bed or trips to the urinal. How you have come to manage to take yourself so seriously shows just how deluded you are. Go vicariously play with some USB device - the world REALLY needs that only-Mr-Murph-can-provide output. Yeah - your job and future is secure and rosy. Keep bagging out the others who are actually in the arena trying.
Drop kick.
RF.
How do you know he "ONLY" speaks english? And to call the guy a racist because he has no interest in another language is ridiculous! I don't want to learn Mandarin either but that does not mean I want the Chinese to be offed.
Get a life and as always if you don't like it, don't read it!