Monday, September 30, 2013
How gadget accessory
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Record a Concert on the Sly With This Stealth Taper Rig
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Vodafone R208 is perfect gadget for tethering multiple devices to internet
Gadget Casualties: 53% of Brits have attempted to fix their own broken gadgets
Friday, September 27, 2013
This Handy Case Turns Your iPhone Into a Toolbox
Google Glass is the UKs most wanted gadget
FAA Change a Big Win for Gadget
A 28-person committee created by the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, in the U.S. is proposing new changes that could be a big win for flyers who use personal electronics. The committee is suggesting that the FAA change its policies to allow flying consumers to be able to use most consumer electronic devices during the critical takeoff and landing phase of a flight.
This is a big change from current regulations that prohibit the use of any electronic equipment during takeoff and landing. Approved personal electronic equipment must be completely powered off during this stage of flight-airplane mode won't suffice-and consumers can power on those gadgets after the plane reaches 10,000 feet or higher.
Even devices without wireless cannot be used, which means if you're a reader of e-books, you cannot use your e-reader while your friend with a paperback can continue reading through the entire flight.
The decision will likely be welcomed by actor Alec Baldwin who made headlines when he was kicked off a United Airlines flight for refusing to turn off his phone as he was in the middle of playing the game Words with Friends.
The aviation policy change isn't expected to go into effect until 2014. The issue with the use of consumer electronics device had sparked a lot of opposition in the past from makers of gadgets to members of Congress. As the sole device-maker on the comittee, Amazon is championing the change.
'We've been fighting for our customers on this issue for years - testing an airplane packed full of Kindles, working with the FAA, and serving as the device manufacturer on this committee,' Amazon's Drew Herdener told the Associated Press. 'This is a big win for customers and, frankly, it's about time.'
How the Kindle Fire's 'Mayday' Feature Will Help Amazon Sell More Stuff
Amazon's Mayday tech support for Kindle Fire HDX puts a tiny helper on your screen when you need it most. But the exchange between you and Amazon does more than help you figure out how to download the latest Justin Timberlake album. It could dictate the future of Fire OS.
Amazon released its Fire HDX line of tablets with a faster processor, better screen, and features aimed at helping you consume more content from the online retailer. But it also changed the way tech support is handled on a mobile device. Mayday places a tiny video of an Amazon employee on the tablet to help you solve whatever issue you may be having. The support personnel can even see and draw directly on your tablet if you let them.
While the practice of logging user issues and using the solutions to shape future OS development isn't a new idea, it's a concrete example of how the online retailer is playing more than just a specs game when it comes to hardware. By offering free, 24/7, 365-days-a-year tech support, Amazon is stepping up its game as a consumer- and retail-focused company.
For Amazon, selling hardware is a side business meant to push its other services. The company roughly breaks even on the sale of its Kindle Fire tablets. 'We want to make money when people use our devices,' Bezos told WIRED, 'not when people buy our devices.' And to keep people using those devices the company is making sure it's ready for an onslaught of support calls.
Bezos says that thousands of tech support employees will be ready to take your video calls when the Fire HDX ships. All of those employees will not only be helping new tablet owners, they'll also be logging every question, problem, and issue that gets thrown their way. All that data can be used to determine if something in the OS need to be moved or adjusted during the next update.
Using tech support calls to dictate future releases isn't groundbreaking. If a company isn't using that information from its customer service team to adjust its products, there's a good chance that product won't be around much longer. But Amazon's gains are about more than just making sure you can find a setting. Amazon wants you to buy goods from the Fire OS. By fine-tuning the OS based on customer feedback, it can help you buy those goods faster and easier.
It's OS design by committee - a committee whose feedback could lead to a better buying experience. If Amazon learns from your support calls that it if adjusts a feature it'll sell more products, all those free tech support calls will be worth it.
Jeff Bezos told WIRED that because the company controls the whole 'stack,' from hardware and software to cloud services, it can offer customers a helpful feature like Mayday. But that help goes both ways. With every call, you're telling Amazon how to be better. And getting better at selling to you is exactly what Amazon wants.
Roberto is a Wired Staff Writer for Gadget Lab covering cord-cutting, e-readers, home technology, and all the gadgets that fit in your backpack. Got a tip? Send him an email at: roberto_baldwin [at] wired.com.
Read more by Roberto Baldwin
Follow @strngwys on Twitter.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Zubie's connected car gadget will make you and your family better drivers
[ Full disclosure: Zubie chief executive Tim Kelly is also the father of VentureBeat reporter Meghan Kelly.]
The race is on to make our cars smarter. Car makers are exploring connected systems, and a bevy of startups aim to take advantage of the rise of smartphones and ubiquitous cellular access.
Enter Zubie, a company that has a gadget to track your car's diagnostics and trip data, which relays all of that information to your smartphone. The gadget, the $100 Zubie Key, takes advantage of the onboard diagnostics (OBD) port, which is in all cars built after 1996.
Zubie's big innovation is in its connectivity: Rather than relying on Bluetooth to talk to your smartphone when it's in range, the Zubie Key sports a cellular connection, which opens up the ways you can use it.
Families, for example, could purchase several Zubie Keys to keep track of all of their vehicles. It can provide some peace of mind for parents, since the Zubie Key can detect a vehicle's current location, trip history, and potentially troublesome events (like instances of hard breaking, rapid acceleration, or the first time your child drives at night).
'Our mission is simple: We want to make driving safer, easier, and less expensive,' said Tim Kelly, Zubie's chief executive, in an interview with VentureBeat.
The company was originally incubated by Best Buy, and Kelly came on to lead early this year after his stint as Network Solutions' CEO (which included a $405 million acquisition by Web.com). Kelly also led Sprint's mobile division, which puts him in a decent position to understand the complexities in releasing a cellular-connected gadget.
In addition to trip-tracking, Zubie can also send alerts when your car needs repairs. (No more guessing why your check engine light has turned on.) The company claims that its service will also get smarter the more you use it, similar to Nest's learning thermostat or Google Now. Zubie also provides a driving score for each driver based on 30 metrics, like acceleration, speeding, hard breaking, and more. It's a quick way to get a sense of your own driving habits.
Zubie officially launched nationwide yesterday after announcing last week that it raised $8 million in first-round funding form OpenAir Equity Partners.
Buyers of the $100 Zubie key get one year of Zubie's T-Mobile-powered wireless service, but you'll need to pay $100 a year for additional service. Other connected car services like OnStar typically cost around $30 a month, so Kelly believes Zubie is offering a much better deal.
We've seen many devices try to take advantage of your car's OBD port over the years, but they typically involved periodically yanking out the gadget and connecting it to your computer. NYC startup Dash recently made a splash with its OBD gadget and attractive app, but it relies on Bluetooth to talk to your phone. Zubie's cellular connectivity makes it the most seamless way to access your car's diagnostic information, without much effort on your part.
Navin Ganeshan, Zubie's vice president of product management, showed me his family's Zubie-connected fleet, which consists of cars all over the country. He was able to see specific trips his kids in California took, and he also had an alert for something that needed he needed to fix in his own car.
Zubie's iPhone app is admittedly rough-looking at this point, but the amount of data the company is able to gather impressed me. Zubie says an Android app is on the way.
Looking ahead, Zubie is planning to offer extensive repair intelligence, so you can get a sense of how much a repair will cost in your area, offers and discounts if you choose to make some of your data available to companies, and theft and tow monitoring.
This Gadget Is a Handheld "Power Plant"
If you're frustrated with the poor battery life of your devices, and you're always hauling cords around to charge everything, Nectar could be your solution. Developed by the team at Lilliputian, Nectar will charge any of your USB 2.0 compatible devices on the go - giving you two weeks to a month of power in one portable, recyclable power pod. In other words, you no longer have to search for wall plug-ins at cafes, or disable apps on your phone to save battery life. With Nectar, you are completely self-reliant.
We spoke with Mouli Ramani of Nectar about the product's exciting future, the technology behind the device and the impact Nectar will have on consumers.
Q&A With Mouli Ramani, VP Marketing and Business Development at Lilliputian How did you get involved with Nectar?
I actually had sold a company, previously, called Polychromix (we sold that to Thermo Fisher), that made optical telecommunications equipment. The company's specific area of expertise was a type of processing called MEMS, microelectromechanical systems, and because I had done a lot of work with MEMS (and the core technology over at Lilliputian was, in fact, MEMs-based), they reached out to me. They pushed me pretty hard to join Lilliputian. I actually wanted to spend a good year skiing and playing tennis, but it didn't work out that way. You sort of regret those moments sometimes because you don't get those opportunities all the time. But it was a great move.
When I came on board to Lilliputian - and maybe it's a subtlety to the question - one of the things I didn't like about the company was its branding and its marketing, if you will. So I was part of the key drivers to lead, name and reshift the company to Nectar rather than Lilliputian Systems. We are in the process, basically, of going from Lilliputian to Nectar. That's how I joined them. That's how the name kind of came up.
Can you explain the silicon power cell technology that is behind Nectar, in layman's terms?
Absolutely. Think about something a littler smaller than the size of a nine-volt battery - that gives you a pretty good concept of the size of our silicon power cell. In that really small package, you literally have a power plant. The way we accomplish that is by using what is called a solid oxide fuel cell. 'Silicon power cell' is our term - our brand word around this product - but the core technology is a micro-solid oxide fuel cell.
How it works is like this: We pump gas (literally butene but it can be any hydrocarbon) into that really small package. We mix it with air, and our little 'secret sauce' inside, which then turns into electricity. We're able to capture that electricity and put it out on small thermocouples (or leafs) on the end of a battery. We drive whatever we want. So, unlike a nuclear power plant or a coal power plant, we are actually working with power that is good for cell phones, digital camera, laptops - really for any consumer electronics. That's the focus.
The biggest advantage of our silicon cell is that it is really, really small and therefore portable. You can have power with you wherever you go. The second advantage is that it is very light - 10 times lighter and five times smaller than batteries - another feature that lends to portability. The third advantage is that, due to the small size and the silicon power cell, it can scale down costs very quickly and be made very, very cheaply.
That's the core technology. We've taken that silicon power cell and put it in our first product, the Nectar - but we also envision working with consumer electronics companies to integrate this into their next generation products. It's 10 times better than the technologies they have right now.
You say these can be produced cost-efficiently, so can you give me a price range?
The way that it works is that each power pod will give you two weeks of power, and they'll be available for about the price of two cups of coffee - $9.99. So basically the marketing slogan is, 'Two weeks of power for the price of two cups of coffee.' We are currently finalizing the overall cost of the Nectar device with our partners.
I was expecting the pods to cost more...
Yeah, most people do. There are companies (that I won't name) that sell inkjet cartridges or razor blades, and the prices on those make you wonder and feel really dirty. We're not following that model. We want people to use it. We believe in our model and in elasticity. The more people use it, and the more people love it, the more they will buy. And we've told our partners that's the way to go. We could price higher, but we don't feel we need to.
Where do you see Nectar having the biggest impact?First of all, I think it is going to have enormous impact on people who are sick and tired of running out of power on their phone. There is a huge number of people who lose power on their phones at two in the afternoon, or business travelers who have completely dead phones once they land, and have a bunch of emails or conference calls to get to. I think the biggest initial impact is going to be how this product liberates people from plugging in to the wall, and allows them to actually use their phones right away, at any time.
I know so many people who turn off their GPS, or people who actually turn off their advanced services, in order to preserve battery. There are even services that shut all of your applications in order to preserve battery life - which is ridiculous, because you bought your smartphone to use those applications. You want to listen to your music. You want to use your GPS system. I think that's the initial impact - those business travelers, those outdoorsy people, that university student. They make up one huge segment.
Secondly, I think it is going to revolutionize the consumer electronics industry. Right now, every single thing about your laptop, your phone, your digital camera - everything has gotten smaller and better. You've gotten bigger screens, touchscreens, more memory, faster Internet speed, faster antennas, more applications. Everything has gotten better - except power.
What do you think is Nectar's greatest challenge?
You're still living with a plug in your pocket. Right now, I'll bet that if you open your purse or your laptop bag, there is a plug/some kind of USB port to charge your phone. You are literally carrying one wire in this wireless world. And we're going to cut that last wire.
It will revolutionize the way the industry approaches power, and that's going to lead to entirely new waves of innovation. If I have to pinpoint an impact, I'd say that, on the consumer side, it is going to provide the freedom to use phones/devices the way consumers want to. From an industry perspective, it's going to take away the power of constraint and unleash a new level of creativity.
The difficulty in answering this question is that I keep an alphabetized list of my challenges, and I don't know which one is the biggest. Any senior executive that tells you otherwise is being completely dishonest.
How many items can you charge at a time?
What I honestly think is going to be our biggest challenge is that, right now, we are a pretty small company (relatively speaking). From a startup perspective, we are a large, well-funded company - but when we talk to guys from Google, we're a small company. Our problem is more operational. We have to scale our manufacturing. We have to significantly grow our working capital. In order to be the company we want to be, it's a big bet.
Can you explain the longevity of the charge a little more?
To put it into perspective, it isn't like we are a software company and we can just hire more designers, or people for the right code. We have to invest in property, land and equipment. We have to build MEMS-manufacturing labs. We are a capital-intensive company, so my challenge is to meet both our working capital needs and product capital requirements because, when we launch, we expect tons of people to buy it. We need to have factories ready to build it.
We have one USB outlet per port in our initial product. We already started designing the second version of Nectar, which has two USB ports. But even though we just have one USB port, you can charge more than one device at a time by utilizing a splitter. You can charge more than two units but, practically speaking, two is the right number.
'Two weeks to a month' is a little bit of a marketing statement. These things are kind of complicated. At a very technical level, a cartridge has 55,000 milliwatt hours of energy - which is a lot of energy. Take my word on that. If you wanted to charge your iPad, and then charge your phone, and then charge something else, you could deplete that cartridge in probably 12 hours if you wanted to. If you wanted to charge your phone once a month, it would last you almost two years. It's really a question of usage.
Image: Mashable
When we say 'two weeks to a month' of power, we're referring to the ability to charge your phone (tested on an iPhone 5) once a day for two weeks. But for people who charge their phone around 20% battery life (instead of when the phone is completely dead), like many people, the charge would last about a month. That's where those numbers come from.
At the time of this post, Lilliputian was unable to comment on the release date for Nectar.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
This Gadget Is a Handheld "Power Plant"
If you're frustrated with the poor battery life of your devices, and you're always hauling cords around to charge everything, Nectar could be your solution. Developed by the team at Lilliputian, Nectar will charge any of your USB 2.0 compatible devices on the go - giving you two weeks to a month of power in one portable power pod. In other words, you no longer have to search for wall plug-ins at cafes, or disable apps on your phone to save battery life. With Nectar, you are completely self-reliant.
We spoke with Mouli Ramani of Nectar about the product's exciting future, the technology behind the device and the impact Nectar will have on consumers.
Q&A With Mouli Ramani, VP Marketing and Business Development at Lilliputian How did you get involved with Nectar?
I actually had sold a company, previously, called Polychromix (we sold that to Thermo Fisher), that made optical telecommunications equipment. The company's specific area of expertise was a type of processing called MEMS, microelectromechanical systems, and because I had done a lot of work with MEMS (and the core technology over at Lilliputian was, in fact, MEMs-based), they reached out to me. They pushed me pretty hard to join Lilliputian. I actually wanted to spend a good year skiing and playing tennis, but it didn't work out that way. You sort of regret those moments sometimes because you don't get those opportunities all the time. But it was a great move.
When I came on board to Lilliputian - and maybe it's a subtlety to the question - one of the things I didn't like about the company was its branding and its marketing, if you will. So I was part of the key drivers to lead, name and reshift the company to Nectar rather than Lilliputian Systems. We are in the process, basically, of going from Lilliputian to Nectar. That's how I joined them. That's how the name kind of came up.
Can you explain the silicon power cell technology that is behind Nectar, in layman's terms?
Absolutely. Think about something a littler smaller than the size of a nine-volt battery - that gives you a pretty good concept of the size of our silicon power cell. In that really small package, you literally have a power plant. The way we accomplish that is by using what is called a solid oxide fuel cell. 'Silicon power cell' is our term - our brand word around this product - but the core technology is a micro-solid oxide fuel cell.
How it works is like this: We pump gas (literally butene but it can be any hydrocarbon) into that really small package. We mix it with air, and our little 'secret sauce' inside, which then turns into electricity. We're able to capture that electricity and put it out on small thermocouples (or leafs) on the end of a battery. We drive whatever we want. So, unlike a nuclear power plant or a coal power plant, we are actually working with power that is good for cell phones, digital camera, laptops - really for any consumer electronics. That's the focus.
The biggest advantage of our silicon cell is that it is really, really small and therefore portable. You can have power with you wherever you go. The second advantage is that it is very light - 10 times lighter and five times smaller than batteries - another feature that lends to portability. The third advantage is that, due to the small size and the silicon power cell, it can scale down costs very quickly and be made very, very cheaply.
That's the core technology. We've taken that silicon power cell and put it in our first product, the Nectar - but we also envision working with consumer electronics companies to integrate this into their next generation products. It's 10 times better than the technologies they have right now.
You say these can be produced cost-efficiently, so can you give me a price range?
The way that it works is that each power pod will give you two weeks of power, and they'll be available for about the price of two cups of coffee - $9.99. So basically the marketing slogan is, 'Two weeks of power for the price of two cups of coffee.' We are currently finalizing the overall cost of the Nectar device with our partners.
I was expecting the pods to cost more...
Yeah, most people do. There are companies (that I won't name) that sell inkjet cartridges or razor blades, and the prices on those make you wonder and feel really dirty. We're not following that model. We want people to use it. We believe in our model and in elasticity. The more people use it, and the more people love it, the more they will buy. And we've told our partners that's the way to go. We could price higher, but we don't feel we need to.
Where do you see Nectar having the biggest impact?First of all, I think it is going to have enormous impact on people who are sick and tired of running out of power on their phone. There is a huge number of people who lose power on their phones at two in the afternoon, or business travelers who have completely dead phones once they land, and have a bunch of emails or conference calls to get to. I think the biggest initial impact is going to be how this product liberates people from plugging in to the wall, and allows them to actually use their phones right away, at any time.
I know so many people who turn off their GPS, or people who actually turn off their advanced services, in order to preserve battery. There are even services that shut all of your applications in order to preserve battery life - which is ridiculous, because you bought your smartphone to use those applications. You want to listen to your music. You want to use your GPS system. I think that's the initial impact - those business travelers, those outdoorsy people, that university student. They make up one huge segment.
Secondly, I think it is going to revolutionize the consumer electronics industry. Right now, every single thing about your laptop, your phone, your digital camera - everything has gotten smaller and better. You've gotten bigger screens, touchscreens, more memory, faster Internet speed, faster antennas, more applications. Everything has gotten better - except power.
What do you think is Nectar's greatest challenge?
You're still living with a plug in your pocket. Right now, I'll bet that if you open your purse or your laptop bag, there is a plug/some kind of USB port to charge your phone. You are literally carrying one wire in this wireless world. And we're going to cut that last wire.
It will revolutionize the way the industry approaches power, and that's going to lead to entirely new waves of innovation. If I have to pinpoint an impact, I'd say that, on the consumer side, it is going to provide the freedom to use phones/devices the way consumers want to. From an industry perspective, it's going to take away the power of constraint and unleash a new level of creativity.
The difficulty in answering this question is that I keep an alphabetized list of my challenges, and I don't know which one is the biggest. Any senior executive that tells you otherwise is being completely dishonest.
How many items can you charge at a time?
What I honestly think is going to be our biggest challenge is that, right now, we are a pretty small company (relatively speaking). From a startup perspective, we are a large, well-funded company - but when we talk to guys from Google, we're a small company. Our problem is more operational. We have to scale our manufacturing. We have to significantly grow our working capital. In order to be the company we want to be, it's a big bet.
Can you explain the longevity of the charge a little more?
To put it into perspective, it isn't like we are a software company and we can just hire more designers, or people for the right code. We have to invest in property, land and equipment. We have to build MEMS-manufacturing labs. We are a capital-intensive company, so my challenge is to meet both our working capital needs and product capital requirements because, when we launch, we expect tons of people to buy it. We need to have factories ready to build it.
We have one USB outlet per port in our initial product. We already started designing the second version of Nectar, which has two USB ports. But even though we just have one USB port, you can charge more than one device at a time by utilizing a splitter. You can charge more than two units but, practically speaking, two is the right number.
'Two weeks to a month' is a little bit of a marketing statement. These things are kind of complicated. At a very technical level, a cartridge has 55,000 milliwatt hours of energy - which is a lot of energy. Take my word on that. If you wanted to charge your iPad, and then charge your phone, and then charge something else, you could deplete that cartridge in probably 12 hours if you wanted to. If you wanted to charge your phone once a month, it would last you almost two years. It's really a question of usage.
Image: Mashable
When we say 'two weeks to a month' of power, we're referring to the ability to charge your phone (tested on an iPhone 5) once a day for two weeks. But for people who charge their phone around 20% battery life (instead of when the phone is completely dead), like many people, the charge would last about a month. That's where those numbers come from.
At the time of this post, Lilliputian was unable to comment on the release date for Nectar.
Zubie's connected car gadget will make you and your family better drivers
The race is on to make our cars smarter: Car makers are exploring connected systems, and there are a bevy of startups aiming to take advantage of the rise of smartphones and ubiquitous cellular access.
Enter Zubie, a company that has built a gadget to track your car's diagnostics and trip data, and relays all of that information to your smartphone. Zubie's gadget, the $100 Zubie Key, takes advantage of the on-board diagnostics (OBD) port, which all cars built after 1996 feature.
Zubie's big innovation is in connectivity: Rather than relying on Bluetooth to talk to your smartphone when it's within range, the Zubie Key sports a cellular connection, which vastly opens up the ways you can use it.
Families, for example, could purchase several Zubie Keys to keep track of all of their vehicles. It can provide some peace of mind for parents, since the Zubie Key can detect a vehicle's current location, trip history, and potentially troublesome events (like instances of hard breaking, rapid acceleration, or the first time your child drives at night).
'Our mission is simple: We want to make driving safer, easier, and less expensive,' said Tim Kelly, Zubie's chief executive, in an interview with VentureBeat.
The company was originally incubated by Best Buy, and Kelly came on to lead early this year after his stint as Network Solutions' CEO (which included a $405 million acquisition by Web.com). Kelly also led Sprint's mobile division, which puts him in a decent position to understand the complexities in releasing a cellular-connected gadget.
In addition to trip tracking, Zubie can also send you alerts when your car needs to be repaired. (No more guessing why your check engine light has turned on.) The company claims that its service will also get smarter the more you use it, similar to Nest's learning thermostat or Google Now. Zubie also provides a driving score for each driver based on 30 metrics, like acceleration, speeding, hard breaking, and more. It's a quick way to get a sense of your own driving habits (and it's yet another useful features for parents).
Zubie officially launched nationwide yesterday, after announcing last week that it raised $8 million in first-round funding form OpenAir Equity Partners.
Buyers of the $100 Zubie key get one year of access to Zubie's T-Mobile-powered wireless service, but you'll need to pay $100 a year for additional service. Other connected car services like OnStar typically cost around $30 a month, so Kelly believes Zubie is offering a much better deal.
We've seen many devices try to take advantage of your car's OBD port over the years, but they typically involved periodically yanking out the gadget and connecting it to your computer. NYC startup Dash recently made a splash with its OBD gadget and attractive app, but it relies on Bluetooth to talk to your phone. Zubie's cellular connectivity makes it the most seamless way to access your car's diagnostic information, without much effort on your part.
Navin Ganeshan, Zubie's vice president of product management, showed me his family's Zubie connected fleet, which consists of cars all over the country. He was able to see specific trips his kids in California took, and he also had an alert for something that needed to be fixed on his own car.
Zubie's iPhone app is admittedly rough-looking at this point, but I was impressed by the amount of data the company is able to gather. Zubie says an Android app is on the way.
Looking ahead, Zubie is planning to offer extensive repair intelligence, so you can get a sense of how much a repair will cost in your area; offers and discounts if you choose to make some of your data available to companies; and theft and tow monitoring.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Protecting your gadgets has become more costly
Thursday, September 19, 2013
President Inspector Barack Clouseau Gadget Obama
LOS ANGELES, September 19, 2013 - The new narrative from President Obama's supporters is that their cunning leader saved the world by talking tough and convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin to give peace a chance.
The reality is that Obama's brilliance is just the 'Dilbert Principle' at work. The man who bungled his way higher continues to fail upwards. He should promote himself from president to inspector since his closest peers in the skills department are Clouseau and Gadget.
SEE RELATED: Obama's lack of priorities = bad judgment
Meet President Inspector Barack Clouseau Gadget Obama, a man who can trip over tall buildings with a single stumble and win a Nobel Peace Prize for flashing a winning smile.
'Inspector Gadget' is the cartoon version of 'Get Smart,' with Don Adams playing the lead imbecilic detective. Gadget pursues Dr. Claw with the grace of a twelve-toed ballerina juggling bowling balls. Gadget's underlings do all the hard work and Claw's associates are arrested. Claw always escapes as the police chief beams, 'Congratulations Gadget, you've done it again.' Gadget thanks the chief and says, 'Just doing my job' as his assistants fume.
At least Gadget is American. True idiocy requires taking somebody with the ultimate superiority complex and showing him to be a fool. That requires a Frenchman, played superbly by Peter Sellers. Inspector Clouseau commits mayhem, and in the end becomes the hero. His bumbling is so exhausting that it leads to his superior, Chief Dreyfus (the delightful Herbert Lom), having a mental breakdown.
Clouseau was a beloved Pink Panther moron, a hero to those unable to distinguish acumen with blind dumb luck.
SEE RELATED: Al Qaeda rises, the economy sinks: What progress, President Obama?
If Gadget and Clouseau could create a son, he would be Barack Obama. The only surprise in this rehashed story is that Obama is not fictional, even if his biography is.
Vladimir Putin is Dr. Claw, only more ruthless. He sees Obama and his supporters as the same 'useful idiots' that Lenin described American liberals to be. They are the nation of Doltistan, consisting primarily of two groups with little real world life experience: young people and academics.
The newest version of Doltistan has Obama ignoring a genocide in Syria for over two years. Obama waxes poetic while defiantly declaring that Assad must go. There is no explanation as to what will make Assad do so, just shoulder shrugs. Needing to be seen as 'doing something,' Obama declares that use of chemical weapons will cross a 'red line' that requires the use of force.
Assad shrugs his shoulders and does what world leaders do with Obama: treat him as unserious and ignore him. Assad uses the chemical weapons.
SEE RELATED: Obama goes on with economic speech after Navy Yard shootings
Obama wants to commit acts of war without calling it war. He wants to consult Congress while making it clear that he does not need to consult with Congress. He claims broad international support as the British government votes against him.
His Secretary of State John Kerry acted like an expensively coiffed Forrest Gump when he offered to hold off on war if Syria turns over all of its chemical weapons to the international community, and the gods who smile on idiots like Gump smiled on Kerry. The remarks were off-hand comments, not meant to be taken seriously, but Putin pounced and Russia accepted the offer. Within hours, Obama's speech about going to war was altered. He asked Congress to postpone a vote he asked for and knew he would lose. Like Gilda Radner, he told the world to 'never mind.'
Putin humiliated Obama, and Obama's supporters do what they always do: They declared Obama a genius. Like Clouseau and Gadget, he got what he really wanted all along.
Who will ensure that Syria's weapons are turned over? How will this Russian promise be enforced? Nobody knows.
Meanwhile, Assad gets more time to kill with impunity. The people he already murdered are freebies. Obama remains the darling of the academic class who prefer theorizing to doing. Hollywood continues to bathe in his glow. They manage to save the Obama narrative of brilliance that they desperately need to be true, lest they all end up being exposed as shallow and useless.
Putin dances in the end zone and spikes the football in Obama's face. Obama graciously thanks Putin for appreciating his 'flexibility' as our 'Get Smart' faculty lounge leader never actually does.
Meanwhile, the world continues to burn. As Gadget's boss would say, 'Congratulations Barry Clouseau, you've done it again.'
He certainly has.
Brooklyn born, Long Island raised, and now living in Los Angeles, Eric Golub is a politically conservative columnist, author, public speaker, satirist and comedian. Eric is the author of the book trilogy 'Ideological Bigotry, 'Ideological Violence,' and 'Ideological Idiocy.'
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