Retro

For a while, there seemed to be no end to the incredible shrinking of cell phones. The tinier your handset, the cooler you probably thought you looked around 2001 or so. But the trend has slowed, thankfully, and in some circles, there's a backlash against handsets that required toddler-size hands and heads to talk comfortably.

Take the Yubz retro handset, for instance. It's the same design from many millions of dial and push-button telephones in the 1970s and '80s, before cordless became king. The earpiece would fit snugly between your ear and shoulder as you walked several feet … Read more

Instead of talking about the digital home today, I thought it might be fun to relive the days of old and help us all develop a greater appreciation for the 'digital' in digital home.

Some people have asked me what the digital home is and what makes it up. Sometimes I'll go with the obligatory, "Well, imagine a home that's full of the most advanced technology money can buy. And in the process, imagine your home making your life just a little better. That's the digital home." Other times, I'll try a more direct … Read more

It's been raining '80s nostalgia gadgets around here lately. Between the Lasonic iPod boombox, Plusdeck EX cassette ripper, Speak & Spell speaker mod, and buckets of Transformers tschotkes--we're just waiting for Prince and John Cusack to pull up in front of CNET in a Delorean.

Here's another gadget to throw on the '80s retro-tech heap. The Suck UK Mix Tape USB is a Flash thumb-drive cleverly masquerading as a vintage Hitachi cassette tape. No word on pricing, but the product is poised to launch in the UK in September. But why wait? This looks like a totally … Read more

This whole thing started weeks ago when fellow Craver Tim Moynihan posted a story on a vintage NES game controller and cartridge that had been modded into an MP3 player and portable speaker. Not to be outdone, I realized that my homebrew MP3 player, the Little Professor, needed an equally nostalgic portable speaker system. A quick look through my closet produced the most worthy candidate imaginable--a malfunctioning vintage Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, manufactured the same year as the Little Professor--the year of my birth, 1978. Excellent.

Transforming the Speak & Spell into a portable speaker system wasn't nearly … Read more

In a move that just might reignite Mr. T's breakdance career, Lasonic has announced plans to update their classic '80s full-size boombox design to meet the demands of the iPod-toting modern world. That means no more flipping tapes over between headspins and popping routines. It also means that you can fit the soundtrack to Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and several Africa Bambaataa mixes onto your Nano to keep the party rockin' 'til the break of dawn.

Wondering if this thing has a mic input so you can bust your rendition of "Rapper's Delight"? Of course … Read more

We just couldn't pass up showing you this how-to video from Carnegie Mellon University's Robot 250 program.

As part of the lead-up to Pittsburgh's 250-year anniversary--a city with strong roots in robotics--the Heinz Foundation, Intel and the Grable Foundation are sponsoring a series of events from Carnegie Mellon to educate citizens on robotics and their city's robotic heritage.

In addition to opening up robot-building to students for education, average citizens and artists have been invited to participate in various events that will run through 2009.

The robotic cucumber hand comes from an event hosted by a … Read more

One of the tragic victims of the cell phone's widespread popularity are good, old-fashioned timepieces. Everyone has a do-it-all, pocketable device that makes calls, tells time, and surfs the Internet, so clocks and watches have fallen by the wayside.

Thanks to these retro Nixie Tube Clocks and DIY kits, you can reclaim time-telling in the name of the clock. Not only that, you can also bring your desk's fashion sense back to the glory years of the standalone timepiece.

These hand-made clocks and clock-making kits display the time with old-fashioned glowing orange numbers in Russian Nixie tubes. According … Read more

For bored campers accustomed to whiling away those tedious nature-filled hours downing cheap beer or playing Scrabble, we've found the perfect reason to never leave the tent.

Trevor Baylis, creator of the first wind-up radio, and the amazing electric shoe, has introduced the first wind-up MP3 player. Available at the end of August with a price tag of $350, the Eco Media Player seems like an attention-deficit camper's dream come true. The wind-up media player has a 1.8-inch color screen and a lean 2GB of memory that can be expanded using an SD memory card. Like a … Read more

Maybe it's a function of getting older or frustration with bad design (probably both), but some of us at Crave have been drawn increasingly to retro looks of late, as long as they're done right. But we don't often see the concept applied to cameras, which is why we were especially taken with the "Rolleiflex MiniDigi."

On the outside, this throwback item is almost a dead-ringer for the Rollei's "Twin Lens Reflex" models made in 1920s Germany, according to Technabob, but their innards have gone digital with 3.1-megapixel photography. And although … Read more