I’m getting ready to go to CES right now. The big consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. A group of eight of us are driving a small bus down there and we’ll be reporting along the way. But one thing I’m going to look for is useful small gadgets. See all the really cool gadgets will get lots of coverage. But what about the small weird gadgets off in the Sands Hall? Even Engadget or Gizmodo don’t get to all of them and, even if they did, you’ll forget them really quickly because during CES week they post six gajillion gadget posts.
What’s an example? Our Dymo DiscPainter. We store a lot of stuff on DVD because we shoot so much video and photo stuff. Making our DVDs look cool is mondo fun, but also makes us look professional if we ever need to send out video, etc.
Because it’s pretty pricey, $250, you probably won’t read about it too many places but it’s easy to use and prints right on the CD/DVDs. I just did one with photos of Milan. Seeing his smiling face on the disc looks a lot cooler than just writing on a label. The Dymo DiscPainter is a small footprint, single cartridge USB inkjet printer that does high quality printing directly onto the media. Goodbye stick-on labels! The printer comes with an ink cartridge, a few blank inkjet printable discs, USB cable and software that lets you add any photo and text you need. Just prepare your photo in your favorite editor, crop it to a 5.25″ circle, import and print. It’s that easy. High quality images/settings take only three minutes to print. Pluses: Small footprint, fast printing, great quality, easy to use. Minuses: A bit pricey. Printer is around $250.00. Ink is around $40.00.
Anyway, do you have any favorite gadgets like the DiscPainter? Ones that are a little more off the beaten path?
Scobleizer 
Have Fun! Can wait for the video posts… Are you going to create a friendfeed room for the video and such?
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Have Fun! Can wait for the video posts… Are you going to create a friendfeed room for the video and such?
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Everyone needs one of those usb hard drive adapters. For $15 you get a cable that’ll plug into just about any hard drive (IDE, SATA, 3.5″ or 2.5″) and turn it into an ad-hoc external drive. Great for pulling stuff off old drives, transferring data to new machines. Not something you need everyday but when you need it, it sucks not to have one.
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Everyone needs one of those usb hard drive adapters. For $15 you get a cable that’ll plug into just about any hard drive (IDE, SATA, 3.5″ or 2.5″) and turn it into an ad-hoc external drive. Great for pulling stuff off old drives, transferring data to new machines. Not something you need everyday but when you need it, it sucks not to have one.
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i have the discpainter! i saw it at siggraph and thought it was pretty cool. it is fast and the quality is great. considering i have gone through every cd/dvd printing method and have wasted tons of time and had lots of aggravating moments, i didn’t mind spending the money to get something that finally worked well.
have fun at CES – – i am jealous but will folllow along from home – – so please make sure you keep us in the loop on what’s happening!
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i have the discpainter! i saw it at siggraph and thought it was pretty cool. it is fast and the quality is great. considering i have gone through every cd/dvd printing method and have wasted tons of time and had lots of aggravating moments, i didn’t mind spending the money to get something that finally worked well.
have fun at CES – – i am jealous but will folllow along from home – – so please make sure you keep us in the loop on what’s happening!
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Nice website. Looking forward to the video posts. And, I agree with William in that everyone needs one of those USB Hard Drive adapters!
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Nice website. Looking forward to the video posts. And, I agree with William in that everyone needs one of those USB Hard Drive adapters!
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Saving car stereos one painted disc at a time!
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Saving car stereos one painted disc at a time!
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I can not live without my Yada Direct Charge Bluetooth headset and car charger. Hope to see you at our booth so you can check out our latest designs…North 307
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I can not live without my Yada Direct Charge Bluetooth headset and car charger. Hope to see you at our booth so you can check out our latest designs…North 307
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Useful for a few personal one-offs, really needs to be automated, not gonna replace a Medley 2 or Aleratec RoboJet, but nice end-user toy of sorts, if don’t need thermal or silkscreen. As for me, the PF-3’s 4800 x 1200 makes my heart skip faster.
Guess not much demand for your dvds, cause I certainly wouldn’t want to do 500 dupes/prints with that sucker, which just gets the HCL-8000 / PF-3 warmed up. They are in that high-prosumer end-userish market, just not sure that’s much of a draw, when Epsonifed DVD 600 dpi disk printers go for $80 or less. Small compact, Appleish slash waReZ KiDDe d00d!1! market really, guess some hook, maybe.
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Useful for a few personal one-offs, really needs to be automated, not gonna replace a Medley 2 or Aleratec RoboJet, but nice end-user toy of sorts, if don’t need thermal or silkscreen. As for me, the PF-3’s 4800 x 1200 makes my heart skip faster.
Guess not much demand for your dvds, cause I certainly wouldn’t want to do 500 dupes/prints with that sucker, which just gets the HCL-8000 / PF-3 warmed up. They are in that high-prosumer end-userish market, just not sure that’s much of a draw, when Epsonifed DVD 600 dpi disk printers go for $80 or less. Small compact, Appleish slash waReZ KiDDe d00d!1! market really, guess some hook, maybe.
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I have a Canon Bubble Jet Printer with the a little tray that allows me to print on a CD/DVD directly as well. The Printer Comes with the appropriate Software to label Discs already.. and I payed around $70 about 2 years ago. It does the Job I guess and within 2 minutes your disc is just so much nicer than with LightScribe.
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I have a Canon Bubble Jet Printer with the a little tray that allows me to print on a CD/DVD directly as well. The Printer Comes with the appropriate Software to label Discs already.. and I payed around $70 about 2 years ago. It does the Job I guess and within 2 minutes your disc is just so much nicer than with LightScribe.
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Gadgets and CES have provide an interesting history lesson for marketers. Can you remember when Comdex wanted to steer away from all the gadgeteer exhibitors that started emerging in the late 1990’s? If they had embraced and gone with the flow instead of paddling against it Comdex might still be thriving today insead of pushing up daisies in the cemetary of good marketing ideas that couldn’t cope with change.
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Gadgets and CES have provide an interesting history lesson for marketers. Can you remember when Comdex wanted to steer away from all the gadgeteer exhibitors that started emerging in the late 1990’s? If they had embraced and gone with the flow instead of paddling against it Comdex might still be thriving today insead of pushing up daisies in the cemetary of good marketing ideas that couldn’t cope with change.
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