Fun tech accessories

Technology can be fraught with problems at times that it's good to have a source of amusement close at hand no matter how light it may be. I've been having some stressful mouse and keypad problems with my notebook PC yesterday when I noticed four objects lying around the table that made me smile. I have almost forgotten about these tech accessories that managed to insert fun and humor in technology which, today, is stressing me out.






First is this "Any Key" keyboard key.




Remember how programs would often ask us to "hit any key"? Somebody somewhere thought why not have a dedicated key to play that "any key" role? The result was this yellow Any Key which can be snapped on any key in a standard keyboard. I forgot exactly where I got this, but it must be from a science and tech store in San Jose or San Francisco.



Second is this rubberized 2.5-inch tall Kung Fu Panda that is actually a USB drive.

HP gave away this cute USB item during one of its regional press briefings and it's been wearing that smirk on its face as it stands in that pose on my table probably for over two years now.




Then I have this USB hub shaped like a man.

This smiling little guy with arms and legs that double as USB connectors is particularly useful when I'm using a relatively old machine with limited slots for USBs.




Last but not the least is this crunching dog.


I got this from a store in Akihabara, Tokyo. I thought it's a real USB and was disappointed to learn after buying it that it's really nothing but a toy. The dog automatically does fast crunching when attached to a USB slot. It came in a box that was all in Japanese and the store clerk only speaks Japanese, so there's really no way for me to tell then if it offers some storage or not.

Comic relief that is what they are. Little reminders that everything has a light side, even technology which can get hairy at times.

My dog named Google

I have a dog named Google. He is a black Labrador Retriever that is a little over a year old. He is rambunctious bordering to crazy. He barks my ears off, he eats my slippers, he terrorizes my cats, and he salivates a lot. When he's not doing any of these, my Google takes a stab at being affectionate bordering to sweet. He cocks his head to the side, he blinks his little eyes, he wags his tail, and he waves his front leg to give me a high-five.


I named him after the leading search engine because he is a natural retriever, in four legs at that! Of course, there's Lycos, an older search engine that really uses a black Lab for its logo, but I liked the sound of "google" more. Maybe when Google gets a son I'll call it Lycos. For now, I call up Google whenever I'm looking for something that's not in the Web. Something that only my animated version of Google would find happiness in retrieving and destroying, like a shoe or a rag. In my offline world, the name Google takes a whole new form and I can't say I don't love it.

P.S. A more current photo of Google, who is now larger and naughtier, to follow if he allows me to take his picture without him threatening to eat my camera.

Rewind No. 1: Easy Call Pagers

Before I had my first mobile phone, I first owned a pager. Most kids today won't probably know what a pager is and might find the concept ridiculous; and that is if they would even allow themselves to know what it is. But it was hip to have a pager in the '90s. Easy Call and Pocketbell were the dominant industry players. They were that era's Smart and Globe of today.


I still remember the excitement in our office when pagers were assigned to writers so that we could send instant one-line updates to whoever needed it in the office or in the field. I forgot now how long was a pager-user-number which we had to give to message handling specialists, as they were called, along with the message that we wanted to send to the owner of that number. Unlike today's SMS which allows us to compose and send our own text messages, back in the paging days we had to call up Easy Call or Pocketbell message handling specialists and carefully dictate to them our message/s. They would be the ones to send it to the party we want to reach. How straightforward and instant was that?

Oh, I remember that they were also called "beepers". When pagers beeped, people would immediately take their units off the holsters which men usually clipped to their belts while women have them attached to their bags. By pushing one of the three buttons, users can read their message/s that scroll across the pager's tiny green screen. It seems so crude now, but the pager served its purpose well until the advent of SMS or texting via mobile phones.

This old print ad by EasyCall Communications Philippines Inc. (ECPI) puts me in this nostalgic mood and made me wonder what happened to this company. A quick online search took me directly to ECPI's website that confidently states how the company managed to change with the times.

Currently, ECPI offers Internet services that include Internet Access through dial up or leased line connections; Dedicated Access Service Features – domain name registration, configuration of customer premise equipment (“CPE”); leased lines installation and end-to-end circuit testing; Web Based Solutions – website development, web hosting, web applications development and Internet Data Center – 24 x 7 co-location services.

Through partnerships, Easy Call also now engages in call center operations and IT-related outsourcing services.

Pocketbell, on the other hand, also left the paging business and went into Internet services. Owned by Philippine Wireless, Inc., Pocketbell seemed to have reinvented itself "as the service provider of the SMS/texting service innovation called TEXTWISE, a prepaid international text service that allows subscribers to send international bound messages for only P5.00 per text abroad." I don't know how current this data is, but it's the best online data I found on this company so far.

Today, a simple mobile phone with basic color screen won't cut it for most of us. We have become gluttons and oversharers of information, making high-end smartphones almost the de facto standard in handsets today. The old days certainly got their own charm, but I can't go back to that time when we would say "Page me" instead of "Text me". Cannot.