Gizmodo: stick

An Alligetter Tool For Getting Things Out Of Drains, Garbage Disposals

Jason Chen — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:00:00 EDT

This Alligetter LED tool isn't just a lousy pun, it shines a light into dark (and small) places where you couldn't normally see or reach. Places like drains, or garbage disposals, or behind the couch.

We'd not only use this to avoid putting our fingers in dangerous places, but dirty ones too. Dropping a ring in a toilet while the toilet is occupied is horrible, but now it can be one level less so. [Wireless Catalog via Nerd Approved]

The Plain Old Stick Enters Into Toy Hall of Fame

Sean Fallon — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:40:00 EST

A plain wooden stick was entered into the National Toy Hall of Fame yesterday along with Baby Doll and the skateboard. These toys join 38 other classics like the bicycle, Mr. Potato Head, Crayola crayons, and the Atari 2600 video game system. So why the stick? Well, it has been a staple of imaginative play since time began and, as one curator noted, "it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs — especially dogs — playing with it." Originally, the title of this post was "Stick Enters Toy Hall of Fame, Cardboard Box Snubbed." However, I discovered that the cardboard box was inducted in 2005. It's a good thing too—overlooking everyone's favorite fort would have caused an outrage of epic proportions. [CNN via Boing Boing]

Super Talent 8GB Flash Drive is World's Smallest

Haroon Malik — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:34:00 EDT

The chaps at Super Talent are not only incredibly modest, talented and super, but they must also be fantastically tiny to have put together the world's smallest 8GB flash drive. (Flawless logic, I'm sure you'll agree.) Retailing at $35, the price is pretty reasonable, at least until you drop it into your chest hair and lose it forever.

Buying continual replacements is quickly going to create a massively expenses bill, so we say, just stick with this alternative instead. Sure, it may not be miniature and cool, but at least it's big and ugly. If that isn't a selling point, having physical characteristics in common with your flash drive should have you sold. [Oh Gizmo!]

Glowing Mountain Dew Trick is a Hoax

Charlie White — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:20:00 EDT

We had our doubts about that Mountain Dew that glowed like a lightning bug when the guy in the video you see here added a bit of baking soda and peroxide. Sho' 'nuff, it turns out to be a hoax. The intrepid mythbusters at Snopes.com (in addition to many of our Giz readers) tried the trick and applied a bit of keen scientific expertise to the problem, and discovered it to be false. Sorry to get your hopes up. As for this video, well, the guy must be palming some glow stick goo and slipping it into the bottle, or it could be a simple edit or off-camera substitution. Anyway, it was fun while it lasted. [Snopes]

The Wii Billiard Accessory

Jason Chen — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:20:53 EDT

Wimote light guns, powergloves and more light guns we can see, but a billiard attachment? That's right, for the low, low price of $13, you get a five piece screw-on pool cue attachment that will make jabbing at the air that much more pleasurable.

Plus, when you're done playing pool and want to switch to tennis, the gigantic pointy stick will make your swings even more deadly to your opponents.

Product Page [GoldneShopvia DCEmu via Kotaku]

Sony Pro-HG Duo Media is the New King of Memory Sticks

Jason Chen — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:00:32 EDT

By going to an 8-bit parallel interface from a 4-bit parallel interface, these backwards compatible Memory Stick Pro-HGs give you twice as much transfer rate, which in turn gives you up to 30MB/s (or 240 Mbps). Why is this important? Because the newest top of the line camcorders will be using this soon to take advantage of the faster recording and shorter data transmission times. Plus, with the right card reader, you can probably use this as a ReadyBoost drive in Vista. – Jason Chen

Press Release [Sony]

iMono Flash Memory Card and SIM Reader: Pocket-Sized Polyglot

Charlie White — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:49:19 EST

The multi-readers get smaller and smaller, and this iMono SIM card packs more versatility into a small form factor than we've seen yet. It handles a veritable alphabet soup of flash memory cards, including miniSD, all types of Memory Sticks, microSD, SD, MMC Card 4.0, MultiMedia Card, MultiMedia Card Plus, RS-MMC (MMC Mobile), RS-MMC4.0 (MMC Mobile 4.0) and MMC micro. It also reads cellphone SIM cards. Plus, there's no cover to lose.

I picked up a reader similar to this in Singapore recently, and it's functioned well enough to find itself a permanent place in my road warrior's bag. Not a bad deal for $19. – Charlie White

Product Page [USB Geek, via TRFJ]

The Lighting Stick

Jason Chen — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:15:43 EST

If a standard halogen floor lamp is too boring for you, take a look at this Lighting Stick. It's a stand-up model that blasts light onto a wall with numerous LEDs.

You can set the lights to one solid color—Murderous Red for example—or have them cycle between colors like a rave in slow motion. Except in this case you won't wake up the next day with a roofie hangover and torn underwear. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Ecocentric via Shiny Shiny]

Moppel Stick Figure Lights Are Cute But Give You Myopia

Jason Chen — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:30:52 EST

Sure, these Moppel Stick Figure Lights are cute in only the way that a stick figure light powered by USB and AAA batteries can be. But how good are they really? You can take them on business trips and stick them on the side of your car, but a light that runs for 100 hours on only 3 AAAs can't be that powerful, right?

We'd recommend you save your $25 and head to IKEA to buy a real light instead for $9, and take the other $16 and buy a bunch of stuffed animals. It'll do the same thing, plus save you money on optometrist bills. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Lights and Knives via Technabob via SCI FI Tech]

Psychic USB Drive From Japan

Jason Chen — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:00:08 EST

Japanese company Princeton has deposited some rather anemic 256MB~1GB thumb sticks onto the land of Japan. To make up for the lack of storage, they're branding this with the "Seven Angels" label and including software that's based on the Psychic abilities of Masako Mitaki. This lady's apparently a big psychic over there in Ashcraft land.

I don't think any US company would get away with this here, but I guess the equivalent here would be to feature Miss Cleo on an IOmega Zip Disk. Let's hope this post preempts any companies that were considering it. – Jason Chen

Buy a psychic USB key to discover your future! [Akihabara News]

MadCatz Xbox Live Arcade GameStick

Jason Chen — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 18:15:18 EST

If you're an Xbox 360 arcade fan you must remember that Mad Catz Arcade GameStick we showed you a little while ago. We've some more details on this controller, which is meant to control all those classic games like Galaga, Street Fighter and Frogger.

The controller itself has a main stick, a smaller stick (corresponding with the right analog) and the same number of buttons as the 360. It'll work on any 360 game, and can even be plugged into your PC for Windows games. It'll retail for $49 in about a month. If you're looking for the authentic retro experience, this should fit the bill fairly nicely.

Hit the jump for package shot.

– Jason Chen

Product Page [GameStop (price is wrong)]

Exclusive Grope: Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick Transforms Laptops into HDTVs

Louis Ramirez — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:51:14 EDT

We love us some HDTV, so when Pinnacle gave us a first-hand look at their new PCTV HD Pro Stick we were all over it. A smidgen thicker than your average thumb drive, the Pro Stick delivers free over-the-air HD programming straight to your PC via a USB connection. It comes with a portable antenna so you can use it with your laptop when you're on the road and it also comes with an A/V adapter that'll let you hook up a cable/satellite set-top box straight to the Pro Stick. If the thought of being able to watch over-the-air HDTV from your laptop gets your juices flowing like it does ours, click on and ogle at our first-hand pics. – Louis Ramirez

Installation is easy though it does take awhile (a good 10-15 minutes). Once we had the player running, our only gripe was with lip synching. Oftentimes what was spoken on screen wouldn't match up with the actors' lips, giving everything we watched an old Japanese karate movie feel. Otherwise, reception and quality was excellent.
Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick

Package contents (all nice and fluffy)

PCTV HD Pro Stick (sexy in black)

PC Pro Stick, meet your master (remote control).

A/V adapter meet PC Pro Stick meet remote

USB extender, antenna, A/V adapter (up top) PC Pro Stick, remote (left to right)

A/V adapter connects to Stick via mini USB port

Remote control with PC Pro Stick (BFFs forever)

Each button has a different shape and they're spaced just right for our manly-man hands.

Sexy Stick-on-laptop action

Install screen

Channel scan takes awhile, but not so bad.

Player with interface (Looks like rain for NY)

Success! (name the video for bonus points)

Mad Catz Xbox 360 Arcade Stick Available For Preorder, Ships 12/1

Jason Chen — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:15:00 EDT

GameStop has the Mad Catz Xbox Live Arcade stick up for pre-order now, after yanking it down when it was leaked before. Mad Catz told us the price was going to be $49.99, but it looks like it's $59.99 now.

With all the classic games—Frogger, Street Fighter 2, Galaga, Pac Man—this stick seems almost necessary to play old games like they were meant to be played. – Jason Chen

Mad Catz Xbox Live Arcade Retro Stick [GameStop via Kotaku]

OCZ's Tiny 1GB USB Stick

Jason Chen — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:28:20 EDT

Not quite as small as the Sony Drives, which are pretty much just a thin sliver of circuits and plastic these OCZ Roadster drives are pretty darn close. The drive consists of a little hook for a lanyard or your keychain, a USB port, and a folding plastic cover. It's shorter than the Sony drive, but has more girth—which is what women prefer, apparently. – Jason Chen

OCZ releases super small USB key [The Inquirer]

Verbatim USB Thumb Drives Force Security Down Your Gullet

Jason Chen — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:45:27 EDT

If you're going to store your passwords, photos, documents, and music on your thumb drives, you might as well do so securely with the Verbatim Store 'n' Go Corporate Secure USB Drives. These drives come in 1 to 4GB sizes, use a SHA-1 Hash to obfuscate your password, and require entering in your password every time you want to access data. If the wrong password is typed 10 times in a row, all your data gets erased. Harsh.

The drives have a read speed of 23MB/s and a write speed of 14MB/s, so it's no turtle. Prices range from $79 for the 1GB stick and $269 for the 4GB stick. Not a big investment when you consider the money lost if your competitors get their hands on your product info. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Verbatim via Digital Trends]

Pasha De Cartier USB Memory Stick

Jason Chen — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:20:01 EDT

We suppose if you were going to buy a USB Memory stick, you'd probably buy one like the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium with its special launchpad and other productivity improvement apps. But, if you're more into having one of these as a fashion statement, look no further than the Pasha De Cartier USB stick. Made of stainless steel and engraved with the same numbers as the Pasha watches, this USB stick will both hold your data and make you look like a guy with too much money.

We're not sure how much this costs exactly, but it's probably too much. – Jason Chen

Pasha De Cartier USB Memory Stick [Sybarites]