Geek Shaykh - Office Gadgets

Issue 79 April 2011

Our Geek Shaykh presents a range of gadgets to make your office environment more exciting. 

I love my Cinemoffice

MiLi Power Projector

phone case malls  

The appropriate time to use this gadget should be at the end of a long, stressful but productive day. You can share videos, photos, podcasts or anything else that you might happen to have on your iPhone, with your closest colleagues. It can project a screen size of up to 70 inches, and is battery-powered so it can be used anywhere. The bulb has a life of 20,000 hours too—so it will last you until the iPhone 37!

 Fotunately, it can also be connected to a range of other multimedia devices through the USB port, and DVD players through the AV-in socket.

 Definitely something that will be useful in more than one context as you can use it for either business or entertainment purposes. Maybe it won’t be used as frequently for PowerPoint presentations as watching movies, though...
£199.99
www.beambox.co.uk

WHY You can tell the boss that you’ll be showing motivational videos

WHY NOT Work productivity may be adversely affected

World Wonder

Levitron Ion

See the Earth the way it was intended to be seen from outer space. This gadget realistically simulates the way our planet is physically suspended. Your boss will love it, as it probably fits in with your company’s plans to move into the global market.
The stylish, mirrored base uses electromagnetism to allow the globe to levitate and rotate above it. It runs off a power supply, so there’s no need to worry about it running out of batteries and seeing the world crash down in front of your eyes!
£49.99
www.innovatoys.com

WHY Visitors to your space will look at it in awe and will then look at you in awe
WHY NOT You may hit it off in a bout of office rage after an evaluation meeting

The Mess Magnet

Bendi Light Up Keyboard

By far the mother of all keyboards; this keyboard is waterproof, has a charming turquoise glow, and it’s bendy. This basically means that you will no longer face a battle to dislodge crumbs or die from electrocution, as it is waterproof, which also means that it’s washable. The fact that it’s bendy means you can simply roll it up and tuck it away into your bag to take wherever you need to use it.
£29.99
www.iwantoneofthose.com

WHY It solves many of the deficiencies in the design of ordinary keyboards

WHY NOT Even if your keyboard stays clean, the rest of your work area may not

Mightier than the Sword

The 13-in-1 Multi Tool Pen

This unique writing tool is basically the law-abiding citizen’s Swiss army knife, whose natural habitat is the desk and chair. So, what do you get apart from  the obvious stainless steel ball-point pen? A hole- puncher; a stainless steel file; a short cutting blade; a flat screwdriver; a nail clipper; a wire sleeve remover; an ear pick; a cutting blade; a tweezer; a Philips screwdriver; a stainless steel fork and a saw.
£9.99
www.firebox.com

WHY You will find a genuine and proper use for each of its functions
WHY NOT It could prove to be a bit cumbersome for writing purposes 

You’re through to technical support, how can we help you?

I had recently realised that my trusted Toshiba laptop had come to the end of its days, after it had taken to making whirring noises and was constantly over-heating; the last thing I wanted was to tell my boss was that I couldn’t come into work because of Toasted Skin Syndrome!

 A problem arose when I was about to dispose of the old machine. After storing my whole electronic life on there, it wasn’t enough to just move all the old files into the Recycle Bin; I had to remove all my personal data.

 Most people don’t realise that when you delete a file, all you are doing is removing the shortcut to it. Even after you format your hard drive, a computer specialist would still be able to recover most of your data.

 Darik’s Boot and Nuke is a program that can completely eliminate your data; it’s available completely free of charge from their website at www.dban.org

 Another option is to remove the hard drive from the machine, and physically destroying it. Please note, however, that whether you choose to hit it with a hammer or drill holes into it, you should always take the necessary safety precautions. One way is to wrap it in a towel so the parts don’t end up flying around your house.

 Rather than leaving your old machine for the bin men to collect, why not give it away? Donate A PC lists old machines on their website, www.donateapc.org.uk, and a charity will contact you if they can find use for it.  

Technostalgia - The Birth of QWERTY

From the outset, the QWERTY keyboard looks like it’s arranged in a completely random fashion. Other than the fact that you can spell ‘typewriter’ using just the first line—check it out, it’s true!—I really can’t see any relation to word processing. So, I decided to do some research into the area.

 All of the original typewriter layouts used an alphabetical order, but the keys would get jammed as commonly used letters were close to each other. In the 1860s, Christopher Latham Sholes, a Milwaukee newspaper editor, attempted various layouts before he arrived at the layout that we see today. When it was released to the mass market, people struggled to type as fast as they used to. The keys stopped jamming, so it was seen as a solution to the problem.  
In 1932, Professor Dvorak set out to create the ultimate typing keyboard. The five vowels and the five most common consonants made up the middle row; so 400 of the most frequent words in the English language could be typed without ever leaving that row. But no one wanted to learn the new layout and QWERTY still lives on to this day.
Ironically, one of the criticisms levelled against Sholes was that if he placed return springs under each key in the original alphabetical layout, the keys wouldn’t have got jammed and we would have stuck with the original design.
But then, we wouldn’t have been able to discover that ‘stewardesses’ is the longest word typed with the left hand, and ‘lollipop’ is the longest word typed with the right hand...