I remember when I was a kid and I still believed in Santa, there was always that buzz of excitement and anticipation when Christmas morning arrived. The thrill of rushing down the stairs and finding out what surprises Santa left, is just too much excitement for some. For me, it meant a tumble down the stairs one year. It didn’t really matter if my leg was broken was broken though. I had to make it to the Christmas tree at any cost.

Whilst the story you just read may seem unrelated it’s actually more relevant than you may think. A couple of months ago, I got in touch with Roberto Hoyos of Throwboy Pillows – the creator of the Icon Pillow Collection to ask him about his unique range of products. Taking the idea of creating a range of pillows that take the shape and design of some of the most recognisable icons on the Mac.

In the collection, you will find the Finder, Dashboard, iTunes, iPhoto, iChat and Photo Booth icons. Each can be bought individually at $29, or you can get the whole set for $149. Roberto individually handcrafts each of these pillows with locally sourced materials in his Seattle studio.

Each pillow has a fleece casing and is filled with polyester fibres, giving a nice soft feel that will retain their shape long after you take it out of its packaging.

The Throwboy Pillow collection is a fantastic gift for the geek who has everything else, or perhaps even a gift for yourself. The quality of each design is exceptional with authentic details in the design mirroring those of the software equivalent. Take the Dashboard icon pillow, you’ll find the intricate detailing of the individual icons that go around the outer edge of the pillow. Then there’s the classic Finder pillow – my favourite out of the collection (although the iChat one does come in at a close second).

Plush, comfy and soft. The Throwboy Icon Pillow Collection is a fantastic idea that has been executed with care and detail. What makes these pillows so good is the detail and the authentic design that Roberto creates himself. That makes it all the more worth it – that Roberto put his own blood sweat and tears into creating each of the pillows as opposed to some factory in the far east churning these out hundreds at a time.

Show your love for your Mac, and get a Throwboy Pillow today by visiting www.throwboy.com

Whilst the iSight continues to live on inside the bezels of iMac’s and MacBook’s, there will be some who still cherish the original Firewire web camera from 2003.

Back in the days when I had a PowerBook G4, Apple hadn’t yet built in iSight cameras that are now found across the range of portable and desktop Macs (excluding the Mac Pro and Mini). Instead, Apple sold an external Firewire camera with built-in mic. Embellished with industrial design that Apple is famous for, iSight was finished in an all-aluminium body with the trademark dotted-grille that you find on the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. It was a unique design from both an aesthetic and technological perspective. Webcams at the time were big ugly plastic things that didn’t do a very good job of picking up video or audio.

The cylindrical design sat horizontally on a stand, on a latched monitor mount or magnetic holder so that it could sit on top of Cinema Displays. The ball socket which attached to the stand would also allow you to tilt the camera up and down for optimum positioning.

iSight also has a built-in lens cover that was operated by turning the dial that is designed in to the exterior body. This ensured that the camera was powered down and the lens was covered when you wanted to make sure for definite that no one is watching.

iSight camera specification:
3-element F2.8 Autofocus 50mm – inifinity lens
54.3-degree viewing angle
1/4-inch CCD

Even today, I continue to use my iSight for video chats since the camera on my MacBook Pro is usually looking on a side angle when I’m working on an external screen.

Just like the day I first got it, getting the camera to work with iChat, Skype or iMovie is seamless. You just plug it in and it works straight away, although it has become a little bit more difficult of late. The new unibody MacBook Pro doesn’t come with a Firewire 400 port and the iSight only works with Firewire. So to get it working, I daisy chain the iSight in to my Cinema Display which then connects to my MacBook Pro using a Firewire 400 to 800 cable. Why not just use the 400 to 800 cable on the iSight? Because the cable-end is too large for the iSight stand.

The 640 x 480 resolution is a bit dated now but still offers a crisp and clear picture for video streaming. Apple put a decent mic in the iSight for exceptionally good audio clarity which has withstood the test of time, as even my USB desktop mic can’t rival it for sound quality. Apple achieved this high quality audio by including two microphones to improve background noise cancellation.

I wish Apple had continued making the iSight but I guess it doesn’t make sense to do it any longer since third-party alternatives are widely available and most of the Mac range includes one for those who care about having one anyway.

Nonetheless, my iSight will always have a home in the Bookcase.

The robot you see in the video above is the Tomy i-Sobot. Yes, it’s a toy. But it’s one of the most sophisticated toys . It’s the type of technology that we all would have loved to of had when we were kids.

This 16 cm tall toy robot has an unprecedented 17 servo motors that allow it to mimic human movement and maintain balance as it performs its balancing tricks like flips, headstands and exercise movements.

I reviewed this robot for TechCast Reviews back in September 2008 and was very impressed with how articulated it is and the massive range of pre-programmed functionality that allows its ‘master’ to get going straight away. It also comes with some limited voice recognition capability so you can shout out some commands to make it perform a set of programmed movements.

The i-Sobot is controlled with the bundled remote through a series of key combinations which are listed in the manual. The key combination requirement to get i-Sobot to move is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of it since most of the time you’ll need the manual nearby to look up the commands.

“For the real eye-candy though, you need to select the special action mode, where you can get a range of programmed sequences that i-Sobot can perform. From balancing on its head whilst waving its feet in the air to performing t’ai chi, i-Sobot will leave a smile on anyone’s face when they see what it can do for the first time. For a party trick and a quick laugh, there’s also the tropical dance routine that will be popular with both the younger and older generation. Perhaps a joke or two when you’re feeling blue may also be ideal, not a problem with i-Sobot.”
- TechCast Reviews, September 2008

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