The Useful And The Useless - Accessory Edition
Just when you think you have seen it ALL, you are smacked by something totally new! Well, after having brought you the first edition of The Useful And The Useless, which was aimed at applications and services, I hereby present you the accessory edition of the series: two accessories, one that will make you think “It is the silliest thing on earth, but i WANT it!” and the other will make you say “It is the silliest thing on earth. Period.” So let’s get on the action, shall we?
Mathmos Light Charm
IntoMobile’s Dusan has found what I might elect the coolest small gadget I have seen. It’s a phone charm that unlike other charms, looks stylish and is useful. When it’s attached to your handset, this lightbulb-shaped gadget will catch RF interferences and start blinking whenever you receive a new phone call or SMS, whatever your profile is: ringing or silent, vibrating or not.
This could be the perfect solution for people like me, who are always using the silent profile, with vibrate off, because even the vibration makes an annoying sound, especially in college classes. Still, I have to wonder about the amount of light that shines out of it, and the time the bulb keeps blinking. It would be a deal breaker if you could see the light from the side of your eye, at a 10m distance, but it would be great if you could only see it from 1m. If the first option is true, you’ll have to decide which type of public annoyance you prefer to cause: audible or visual.
In all cases, I think the Lightbulb can account as a stylish way of establishing your geek’iness, so I award it the “Useful” prize. You can grab a blue or white version for £6 at the UK Mathmos Store (different countries available, just click on the flag on the lower part of the page). If you’re more into lavalamp designs, you might want to take a look at the other Astro design, which is available in red and blue.
FM Radio Aerial
As you see, I am willing to tolerate a gadget as long as it looks nice, and doesn’t come off as totally ridiculous. This is the reason why I will NEVER be seen using this FM Radio Aerial. First caught by Steve on the N95 Blog (page is not loading now, but the address is right), this fugly thing has made its rounds on the blogosphere, even being dignified with an appearance on the Nseries WOMWorld site (slow day, guys?).
Granted, the idea is good: being able to listen to the radio on a 3.5mm-powered Nseries without the need to plug in the headset would be nice. But I’d use a headset and switch to loudspeaker, than risk being caught with something like this! Seriously, how the heck an über-fashionable high-tech N95 can couple with a huge black aerial antenna like this one? If I wanted a 1970 radio, I would’ve taken the enormous rusty non-functioning one my parents refuse to ditch!
I understand that many of us have moved to internet radio, but the ordinary FM radio is still a great entertainment solution for a lot of people. This thought brings me to the following. Note to accessory manufacturers: If you want to make an FM aerial that we would use without the fear of looking like we just came out of Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong behind us, then please do a much smaller one, in silver metallic color, give it a nice design, and then, just then, we might be tempted to give it a shot.
For now, I am trashing this in the “useless” category, and if you don’t agree, please send me your picture using it in public :p
Well, to me both fall in the useless category. As far as those charms are concerned, they are ugly on most occassions and remind me of the times when everyone had a 3310. A saw a lot of people with them that point in time however today they are history!
I completely agree on the N95 aerial thing. One thing which I dont see anyone talk about is that the N95 has HORRIBLE FM radio volume when it comes to the loudspeaker, this has not been fixed for a long time now. Nokia? So how in the world will the aerial even be useful?
The first isn’t a new concept at all. Back in the TDMA days I fitted my 6160 with an antenna that would flash as this charm does. In fact OVER THE YEARS i’ve seen many variations on this idea from desk holders to antennas. Even still they do have a certain amount of cool factor. While Vailbav might disagree about phone charms being passe these days given the number of people I saw using them and the number Nokia themselves gave out I think they are anything but passe.
I do agee about the aerial antenna however, any accessory worth anything should compliment not detract from the device it accessorizes. Unfortunately not everyone sees that, even worst actually makes such ugly additions. As much as the N95 costs there’s no way I’d deface it like that.
Hm, interesting, I never noticed it, since the only time I listen to FM is when there’s a bombing here and I want to know who was the victim and where it happened. In situations like this, I don’t really care about the sound volume of the radio
It’s not that I begrudge you complaining about the aesthetics of the antenna… but antennas… there is so much to learn and understand about antennas and radio frequency…
The thing of it is, that making the antenna shorter, or longer (since I haven’t looked at it, im just assuming that it’s an FM commercial band 1/4 wave) makes it less effective. At that point you may as well stick with the headphone cord as your antenna.
That aerial. Silly looking - oh yes. Potentially very useful - still oh yes.
I wonder if it would work with an N800 tablet. There it wouldn’t look half as daft and would actually solve a real problem.
zr, i understand the issue. I thought about it later, after writing the post, and I knew that it COULD NOT be shorter.
I think I’d better not have an antenna whatsoever than having something this long and this ugly.