Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff Looks dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
Speaker 1: the tech editor here at how Stuff works dot com. And,
Speaker 1: as he often does on these occasions, sitting across from
Speaker 1: me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Oh, I wonder, wonder,
Speaker 1: wonder do do do do? Who wrote the Book of Love?
Speaker 1: Is that your way of telling our listeners that you
Speaker 1: love them? I love each and every one of you
Speaker 1: except for one person. You know who you are and
Speaker 1: what you did. But we're gonna talk about love and
Speaker 1: technology because you know what's coming up. Valentine's Day. Yes,
Speaker 1: some of us have that burned into our brains courtesy
Speaker 1: of are significant others and companies, green card companies, chocolate tears,
Speaker 1: people at the grocery store who put out the Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day goodies on December. Yeah, so, um, Valentine's Day, it's
Speaker 1: coming up. We might be wondering what the heck is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff doing about Valentine's Day? Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: We're gonna tell you about some tech that you might
Speaker 1: want to look into as a possible gift for your sweetie. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, would you like to start yourself or would
Speaker 1: you like me to give? I will? I will start
Speaker 1: with my my killer app, your killer app. Yes, this
Speaker 1: this is the gift that keeps on giving, and possibly
Speaker 1: one of the things that might give is a restraining order.
Speaker 1: It's the It's cute Circuits hug shirt. Now, the hug
Speaker 1: shirt is not new. This is actually a few years old.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing it when it first came out, and
Speaker 1: I actually had a nice long conversation with a coworker
Speaker 1: of ours, candas Keener, about the hug shirt, and she
Speaker 1: had her own perspective on this, which I only wish
Speaker 1: I could repeat. But um, but Candice is so much
Speaker 1: better at it than I am at then you rate.
Speaker 1: The hug shirt has a shirt that happens to have
Speaker 1: within it sensors and actuators, and they're located in strategic
Speaker 1: points on the shirt, including things like the wrists and
Speaker 1: the shoulders and lower back and parts of the torso.
Speaker 1: And the idea here is that when you buy these
Speaker 1: shirts and pears, and when a person on one end
Speaker 1: applies pressure to part of the shirt. The person wearing
Speaker 1: the other shirt will feel the pressure. And the way
Speaker 1: this works is that both shirts have Bluetooth transmitters in them,
Speaker 1: and the Bluetooth transmitter will send data to the person's phone.
Speaker 1: So you have to use your phone to send the
Speaker 1: data to the other person's phone, which will then send
Speaker 1: the data via bluetooth to their shirt, which will then respond.
Speaker 1: So I could give myself a hug and that data
Speaker 1: will be transferred over to my significant other, who will
Speaker 1: then get hugged by her own shirt and uh. According
Speaker 1: to the website, the intensity of the hugging actuator depends
Speaker 1: upon several factors, including how much pressure you use on
Speaker 1: your end, your heart rate, and your body temperature, and
Speaker 1: those things will determine the intensity of the hug. I
Speaker 1: feel dirty just thinking about that. But if you guys
Speaker 1: want to hug your significant others, I'm just waiting until
Speaker 1: they come out with hug pants. Hug pants. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. When you want to put
Speaker 1: so yeah, how can I follow that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's why I wanted to get it out first. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because um, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: of geek stores on the web now that there weren't
Speaker 1: just a few years ago. Of course, your mouth, um
Speaker 1: my one one of my favorites. IM. I'm a semi
Speaker 1: frequent shopper of think geek dot com, an excellent website.
Speaker 1: But there are others like a clear gear dot com um,
Speaker 1: both of which have some Valentine's Day goodies um. And
Speaker 1: they're all techy to different degrees. Um. You know, if
Speaker 1: you were looking for a tech style romantic evening, you
Speaker 1: both offer the flameless candle, you know, the led lights
Speaker 1: that you can essentially blow on and they light up.
Speaker 1: They don't use any sort of you know, flammable element
Speaker 1: at all. It's so you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: pretty nice way to say I love you, you geek.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a romantic evening and the lights
Speaker 1: very subtle. You can get getting different colors. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You can set the scene and there's no danger of
Speaker 1: you excellently burning down the apartment, which is always nice.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, yeah I've seen those. These are those
Speaker 1: are nice. Um. There's nice for other reasons too, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, for that romantic evening. Uh. Clearly I'm
Speaker 1: going a more goofy and geeky way than you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why didn't you you? Uh? Just before we started, Jonathan says,
Speaker 1: I've got all the goofy ones and I'm going, okay, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you go hit us with another goofy one?
Speaker 1: Maybe whould do the goofy ones first? Well no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we can. We can go back and forth. Here, here's
Speaker 1: another one. This is This is another shirt pair. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is also from Think Geeky and uh this is
Speaker 1: the eight bit Dynamic Life shirt. Yes, yes, So if
Speaker 1: you've played games like Legend of Zelda, you are familiar
Speaker 1: that your life bar is represented by a series of hearts,
Speaker 1: and as you get hurt, portions of the hearts disappear,
Speaker 1: so you could have maybe three and a half hearts,
Speaker 1: you know, four hearts whatever as showing your your total health.
Speaker 1: These shirts have six hearts on them. They're lit by
Speaker 1: l e eds and in their rest state. As in,
Speaker 1: if you are very far away from the person wearing
Speaker 1: the other shirt or another shirt, because really this will uh,
Speaker 1: this will change no matter who happens to be wearing
Speaker 1: the other shirt. If there's a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: who show up to an event wearing these things's gonna
Speaker 1: everyone's affected. Yeah, but if you are by yourself, you're
Speaker 1: not near anyone else who's wearing one of these, Your
Speaker 1: hearts will be at two and a half, and as
Speaker 1: you get closer to someone else wearing the same kind
Speaker 1: of shirt, the hearts start to fill up until you're
Speaker 1: around you know, hugging distance, and then they should be
Speaker 1: showing up in full. They do this with radio frequencies
Speaker 1: that transmit over a pretty short distance. But again, it's
Speaker 1: not like these are tuned to a specific you know
Speaker 1: mate shirt. It's anyone who's wearing that same shirt. So
Speaker 1: if you go to a Jonathan Colton concert, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance that you'll be lit up all the way
Speaker 1: because it'll be like eight other people wearing that same
Speaker 1: shirt somewhere in the audience. But still, I think it's cute.
Speaker 1: I uh actually looked into getting those for me and
Speaker 1: my wife at one point, and then realize that as
Speaker 1: big a dork as I am, my wife's not. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I'm married a pretty geeky woman
Speaker 1: and she's incredibly tech savvy, but she's content to keep
Speaker 1: that internalized as opposed to wearing it and letting the
Speaker 1: entire world know automatically wearing it on her sleeves, so
Speaker 1: to speak exactly. Well. Um, Actually, in going with the
Speaker 1: light up hearts uh theme, you can also get the
Speaker 1: two stores that I mentioned before. Um, you can also
Speaker 1: get u a l E D kit that has Um
Speaker 1: it's a heart shaped kit that you can make l
Speaker 1: E d s and with l E d s and
Speaker 1: once you put it together, the heart flashes, which is
Speaker 1: something you can you can actually make for yourself. Um.
Speaker 1: The Maker shed actually the folks overt O'Reilly who published
Speaker 1: Make magazine also have an l E ED Heart kit.
Speaker 1: This one is is smaller and the LEDs are actually
Speaker 1: closer together. Um. And but you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to do something, uh, you know, you could actually make
Speaker 1: something very much like that shirt yourself, and you know,
Speaker 1: or make some kind of jewelry and and enhance it
Speaker 1: with the the L E ED project, which would be
Speaker 1: pretty cool. The think geek version and I assume it's
Speaker 1: also has twenty eight red l A D s you
Speaker 1: can use and and yeah, and the circuit board itself
Speaker 1: is heart shaped. And yeah, you just need a little
Speaker 1: soldering experience really to put the thing together, to to uh,
Speaker 1: to get all the L A D s in place
Speaker 1: and area. Yeah, so if you don't have, um, if
Speaker 1: you don't have soldering experience, it might well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what, L E D kits not a bad
Speaker 1: way of learning how to solder, as you know, and
Speaker 1: as long as you're careful and you're just paying attention, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty good way to get the basics
Speaker 1: of how to build an electronic circuit. So you'll you'll learn,
Speaker 1: you'll love, you'll laugh. All right. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get one though, because last time I burned the apartment down.
Speaker 1: Here's a here's a geek shirt for you, all right.
Speaker 1: Roses are pound f f zero zero zero zero. Violets
Speaker 1: are pound zero zero zero zero f f All my
Speaker 1: base are belonged to you. That's the that would be
Speaker 1: the codes for roses or red. Violets are blue, all
Speaker 1: my bass or belonged to you. A supposed geeky as
Speaker 1: it gets folks, UM, I don't necessarily recommend that you
Speaker 1: get this for your your female sweetheart. But but ladies,
Speaker 1: if you're listening and you happen to be dating a
Speaker 1: really geeky guy who likes to drop the geek references
Speaker 1: all the time as a guaranteed winner, right there. Hey, um,
Speaker 1: speaking of Candice who we mentioned, Yes, Candice, I hope
Speaker 1: she doesn't listen to this episode. Didn't you say that?
Speaker 1: She said there she had found some conversation hearts. Yes,
Speaker 1: the conversation hearts um have changed each over the years. These,
Speaker 1: of course, of the ones that say things like hug
Speaker 1: me and I like you, or I love you, or
Speaker 1: be mine, you are cute that kind of stuff, don't
Speaker 1: ingest me. I taste like chalk. That's what I think
Speaker 1: they should say. Yeah, exactly, like I am. I am
Speaker 1: stuck in a factory and they won't let me out.
Speaker 1: Help me? Right. Well, some of the more recent ones
Speaker 1: actually have tech kind of phrases on them, including things
Speaker 1: like text me and tweet me. So even our candy
Speaker 1: is moving into the twenty first century. Uh yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's actually because of that. I'm you know, I actually
Speaker 1: thought of that when we were talking about Candice earlier.
Speaker 1: But um, Sweet Tooth Designs has some emoticon jewelry that
Speaker 1: you can say, um, there's a a heart with the
Speaker 1: less than three sign, which is the Asky version of
Speaker 1: the heart. Um. Also you can buy some with the
Speaker 1: you know, smiley emoticons and things like that. But I
Speaker 1: really like the heart shape pin in with the Asky emoticon.
Speaker 1: Heart's kind of a nice, sort of mildly techy touch
Speaker 1: to it. But as an actual piece of jewelry, it's
Speaker 1: not you know, right, I like the I like the
Speaker 1: various kinds of jewelry and shirts and things you can
Speaker 1: see with the less than three Yes. Yeah, nice, Um,
Speaker 1: you got another one for me? Not for me, Chris
Speaker 1: and I, I should add, we are not each other's
Speaker 1: significant other. That's true. Yeah, it's just clear that up
Speaker 1: because earlier today one of our coworkers suggested we were
Speaker 1: a great historical couple that would be chuck by the
Speaker 1: way and stuff. You should know, that, wasn't it. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: Actually I ran across something that you know, the speaking
Speaker 1: of weird Cisco. Yes, the the hardware manufacturer. You know
Speaker 1: they bought three Calm not too long ago, very very
Speaker 1: large company that makes things like you know, internet infrastructure routers.
Speaker 1: They have a video on their you Tube channel that
Speaker 1: suggests that if you really want to wow your sweetheart,
Speaker 1: you should buy them an a s R nine thousand
Speaker 1: router because and I'm quoting here, nothing says I love
Speaker 1: you like six times the mobile back haul capacity. Really
Speaker 1: nothing says I would like a divorce. Then a massive
Speaker 1: piece of tech hardware that is an awesome shows an
Speaker 1: awesome s is a humor. Oh yeah, yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: funny because I was going, is this really Cisco? And
Speaker 1: the videos on the rest of the channel are all
Speaker 1: about the the equipment. It's it's like, uh, white papers
Speaker 1: and other things that you'd want to know if you
Speaker 1: were going to invest in this, uh, this type of corporate,
Speaker 1: heavy duty high tech routing hardware. And then they posted
Speaker 1: this little sixty second video about how to uh to
Speaker 1: win your sweetheart by buying them a router. And I
Speaker 1: just thought it was one of the funniest things when
Speaker 1: I went certain speed day tech stuff, well, um, I
Speaker 1: got quite a few others. Okay, let's let's how about
Speaker 1: the USB Plasma Heart from USB dot Brando dot com.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, you're talking. You're you're talking like
Speaker 1: the plasma balls where you put your hands on the
Speaker 1: outside of the sphere and the plasma streams light up
Speaker 1: your hands. It was like ne version of you know,
Speaker 1: we're turning this spaceship around there exactly exactly. So they've
Speaker 1: got some that are heart shaped and they connect to
Speaker 1: your USB ports very computer, and so you can get
Speaker 1: someone a nice little tool that will consume lots of
Speaker 1: power and absolutely do nothing useful of any nature, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what Valentine's Day is all about. But you
Speaker 1: can put your finger on it, it will ye yeah,
Speaker 1: but really there's no use for it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: pretty okay. I saw it and I was thinking I
Speaker 1: kind of want one, and then I thought, yeah, do
Speaker 1: I need another? I've already got enough USB gadgets. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's why you doesn't work. It could be it might
Speaker 1: be my e key has been sapped to use uselessness
Speaker 1: because of all my USB accoutrement. Uh else, how about
Speaker 1: the USB Speaking of USB, USB Panda heated gloves Okay,
Speaker 1: that one I totally didn't see. This is also with
Speaker 1: the USB dot Brando dot com. So they have several
Speaker 1: different kinds of heated gloves that fit on your hands.
Speaker 1: You plug the gloves into your USB for it and
Speaker 1: it provides heat. So in case you're one of those
Speaker 1: freaks of nature people people who get cold hands. In
Speaker 1: the office for no apparent reason. It will allow you
Speaker 1: to to get some more within your hands. Now, in
Speaker 1: this case, the gloves look like little panda faces. Um,
Speaker 1: and it leaves your fingers free. Obviously, if you had
Speaker 1: your fingers covered up by gloves, would be really hard
Speaker 1: to type. So you know you've got these little panda
Speaker 1: faces on the backs of your hands as you're typing away. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's a gift that you should
Speaker 1: buy your wife. I'm just saying it's out there. Someone
Speaker 1: must be buying them. I'm sure they are. Uh. Or
Speaker 1: how about the beating hearts stress relief pillow? When you
Speaker 1: see this one either heart shaped pillow, and it simulates
Speaker 1: the sound of a beating heart. It actually throbs in
Speaker 1: different um speeds. It's never the same twice, or at
Speaker 1: least never the same twice in a row. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that by cuddling up to this, you are
Speaker 1: comforted by the feel and sound of another human heart
Speaker 1: beating close to yours, drifting off to sleep gently, and
Speaker 1: it shuts off automatically. So I guess we can assume
Speaker 1: that the heart eventually undergoes cardiac arrest and uh, it
Speaker 1: runs on batteries. Nothing says love like the gift of
Speaker 1: artificial cardiac arrest, speaking of of cardiac um heart attack
Speaker 1: in a heart attack. In the geek year shopping sites,
Speaker 1: you're if you really want to, uh to give your
Speaker 1: your loved one a piece of candy that says I
Speaker 1: love you, and they happened to be of the uh
Speaker 1: the geeky persuasion you you could find them, you know,
Speaker 1: a gummy heart that's actually like a human heart as
Speaker 1: compared to you know, the typical heart shaped Valentine thing
Speaker 1: that would that would be a very subtle and fairly
Speaker 1: inexpensive thing. Of course, It's also I don't know that
Speaker 1: anybody is going to just gnash into a a heart
Speaker 1: shaped heart that's you know, probably gummy. I just it
Speaker 1: seems like it might be a little too hurt, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we might actually cause heartburn. It's possible. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: gummy feet, you know. Never mind, Well, I have I
Speaker 1: have something here that I have actually seen one of
Speaker 1: these in person. I'm about to potentially cause embarrassment to
Speaker 1: someone because I am going to name her. But if
Speaker 1: none of you tell her that I said this, it'll
Speaker 1: all be okay. A certainly. A certain miss Natalie del
Speaker 1: Conti of c net was wearing one of these at
Speaker 1: c S. I happened to spot it and I brought
Speaker 1: attention to it because I thought it was so amusing.
Speaker 1: She was wearing a net cluss that had her Twitter
Speaker 1: handle on it said at Natalie Dell County. And she
Speaker 1: then told me that it was a gift. So she
Speaker 1: was just being nice, I assume, and not actually showing
Speaker 1: everyone that that is in fact or Twitter accountant. But
Speaker 1: if you want one of these, you can actually go
Speaker 1: to Survival of the Hippist dot com and there you
Speaker 1: can fill out a little form and create a customized
Speaker 1: Twitter handle um necklace. Uh. They also allow you to
Speaker 1: do it as a key chain, a bracelet, anklet, pen,
Speaker 1: or tie clip. And it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: Twitter idea. It could be a hashtag, or you could
Speaker 1: have no symbol at all and just have it be
Speaker 1: a name. But I think if you happen to have
Speaker 1: a significant other who loves to be on the Twitter,
Speaker 1: check it out the Twitter, the Twitter check it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's Survival of the Hippis dot com. All right?
Speaker 1: Then should we talk about stuff that you you know,
Speaker 1: that's on the less uh that that's tech techy type,
Speaker 1: but maybe you know, if you really want to do
Speaker 1: something actually nice. I got a couple of other little
Speaker 1: kind of cute goofy ones. These are not These are
Speaker 1: not tacky. I think necessarily they're more cute. So, for example,
Speaker 1: motion box dot com, if you you can send a
Speaker 1: fifteen second video to motion box dot com and have
Speaker 1: it converted into a flipbook. So imagine creating a video
Speaker 1: of yourself holding up a little sign saying you know,
Speaker 1: I love you, and then as long as it's fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds or less, you can send a motion box dot
Speaker 1: com and purchase a flipbook where they will print out
Speaker 1: a flipbook of the photos images of you in sequence,
Speaker 1: so that when you flip it you get the effect
Speaker 1: of the video, which I think is a really cute,
Speaker 1: little personal way of showing someone something really nifty that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't expect otherwise. Um. There's also there's the whole
Speaker 1: chocolate thing. Let's talk about chuck o mes. Chocko means
Speaker 1: like the Nintendo. We mean exactly like the Nintendo. Wean
Speaker 1: you can get a chocolate version of your chocolate. Actually
Speaker 1: it's not I think it's more of a generic, but
Speaker 1: it's it's from Paul Pape Designs, who will make a
Speaker 1: chocolate me figures and the message on the box says,
Speaker 1: we w I I belong together. You and me am
Speaker 1: I I. But you can also get me avatar as
Speaker 1: an Xbox Avatars, a little big planet, World of Warcraft
Speaker 1: or custom game character cake toppers for your wedding. He
Speaker 1: will design them, he'll customize them for you. So if
Speaker 1: you're getting married on Valentine's Day and you're a geek
Speaker 1: and you want those special geek cake toppers, Paul Paper
Speaker 1: Designs has them for you. Now, granted they're not cheap.
Speaker 1: They run between two hundred and four fifty dollars because
Speaker 1: in a lot of these cases these are the customized figures.
Speaker 1: So he will customize your cake toppers to look like
Speaker 1: your me or your avatar or your World of Warcraft character,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. So those were the other goofy ones.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we can talk about some gifts that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe less less um whimsical, let's say, and more practical. Well,
Speaker 1: because you know that's how I started act, Well, hit
Speaker 1: me one more time. You know, I was thinking that
Speaker 1: that a nice techy gift if you were trying to
Speaker 1: show someone affection, might be a digital picture frame. Excellent choice,
Speaker 1: you know, because that that's something that you can put
Speaker 1: on your desk with you know, however many photos it
Speaker 1: will hold and you know, swap the mouth from time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and they've they've come down in price and
Speaker 1: they've gotten a lot more energy efficient as well. I'd
Speaker 1: like to specifically mentioned the Kodak Pulse. Yeah, this isn't
Speaker 1: This isn't necessarily me endorsing a particular digital frame. There
Speaker 1: are others, as we can't. Yeah, there are others that
Speaker 1: do the similar things, but the Kodak Pulse in general
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I like this this frame,
Speaker 1: and again there are others that do the same thing.
Speaker 1: You can create an email address specifically for the frame,
Speaker 1: hook it to your WiFi, and then email photos directly
Speaker 1: to that frame. So let's say that you have a
Speaker 1: camera that has that ability where you can take a
Speaker 1: photo and send it via email wirelessly. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: cameras that do this. In fact, Kodak makes another one.
Speaker 1: They were doing this at c S, which is why
Speaker 1: it's so fresh in my mind. They had the Slice
Speaker 1: camera that would allow you to take photos and send
Speaker 1: it directly via email or or uploaded to a photo
Speaker 1: sharing site if you wanted, well you could you could
Speaker 1: send it to the frame's email address, so you could
Speaker 1: give one to your sweetheart and then occasionally update the
Speaker 1: frame with photos, hopefully nice ones, so that you remain sweethearts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very That shouldn't be necessary to say, but I
Speaker 1: thought I would say it anyway. All right, then, um,
Speaker 1: did you have? I mean, you were just I think
Speaker 1: that I have two other other gadgets I think of
Speaker 1: as nice, really nice Valentine's Day gifts. Now these are
Speaker 1: more expensive ones, but like the Amazon Kindle, I think
Speaker 1: is a great one if you have a If you
Speaker 1: have a sweetheart who loves to read and does not
Speaker 1: already own a Kindle. Um, I would say the Nook.
Speaker 1: But in general everything I've been looking at, the Kindle
Speaker 1: seems to have a better performance than the milk does. Well,
Speaker 1: you'd have to say it might kindle an old flame.
Speaker 1: There you go, You've got the whole pun thing going
Speaker 1: for you, as Pilett has pointed out exactly. And then
Speaker 1: the flip video camera. I was going that you might
Speaker 1: allow your sweetheart to flip out c two can play
Speaker 1: that game Pillette. But yeah, the Flip video camera again,
Speaker 1: it's it's very portable. It it takes you know, pretty
Speaker 1: good video and it's not hard to use. It's not
Speaker 1: hard to to poort that video over to a computer.
Speaker 1: So even if your sweetheart isn't that tech savvy, it's
Speaker 1: a nice thing to uh, it's a nice present to give. Now. Granted, again,
Speaker 1: these are the gifts that are more expensive. So it's
Speaker 1: if you've got the cash to burn and you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be just like, hey, I got your key chain
Speaker 1: with your Twitter handle on it. Well flip Yeah, flips
Speaker 1: aren't very expensive. Neither of the Kodak cameras with the
Speaker 1: z I eight what is similar Yeah, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: isn't flipped by Cisco. Maybe they're getting into the romantic
Speaker 1: tech business and maybe and of course, if you want to, uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to indulge in the stereotypical girls like
Speaker 1: anything that's pink. Pretty much every single manufacturer out there
Speaker 1: has a pink version of whatever it is they're selling. Personally,
Speaker 1: I don't care for that very much. I think it
Speaker 1: actually is sort of pandering in a way. I'm not granted,
Speaker 1: if your significant other loves the color pink, there's no
Speaker 1: reason not to go out and buy a pink version
Speaker 1: of whatever. But um yeah, I think personally, I think
Speaker 1: saying pink is for girls is a little suspect. I
Speaker 1: don't like that marketing push. So, uh, I never buy
Speaker 1: anything that's pink for my wife, which is also, by
Speaker 1: the way, how we ended up with food poisoning at
Speaker 1: that time with the salmon. Oh okay, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't go into that story. She's gonna kill me probably
Speaker 1: with salmon. Yeah, I don't really have a Well, I
Speaker 1: think the ultimate gift of love still is the HTC
Speaker 1: G one phone. Um even't even after the release of
Speaker 1: the Nexus one. My wife gave me the HTC g
Speaker 1: one phone, and that's how I knew that we were
Speaker 1: meant to be. It wasn't the previous twelve years of marriage.
Speaker 1: It was the htcg one. Well. Frankly, all kinds of
Speaker 1: gadgets like that, you know, are are great for it's
Speaker 1: something that actually the person actually wants. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be a Valentine's Day theme, Yeah yeah, if there,
Speaker 1: If if they're really into video games, get a video game.
Speaker 1: They like that they've been talking about. You know, don't
Speaker 1: you don't have to theme it? Perhaps Kingdom Hearts nice.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. Yeah, I was thinking that that
Speaker 1: that game I showed you of the guys who are
Speaker 1: chasing each other and you have to do um different
Speaker 1: muscle poses in order to fit through the hole in
Speaker 1: the wall. Oh yeah, oh man, Okay, yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: just throwing it out there, Okay, okay, So anyway, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a roundup of some of the
Speaker 1: gifts that we've looked at. And uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: if so, if you've got someone geeky in your life,
Speaker 1: take a look at sites like like think ache and um,
Speaker 1: they have all kinds of other stuff too, I meane
Speaker 1: T shirts and gizmos and and uh and remember do
Speaker 1: not tell Natalie del Kanti I said that because she
Speaker 1: already uh she's going to find out. Yeah, well eventually,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to prolong that for as long as possible.
Speaker 1: All right, So that leads us to some listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from nath Angel. Nathaniel says, Chris
Speaker 1: and Jonathan, I've finally taken the time to write you
Speaker 1: and tell you how great your podcast is. I've been
Speaker 1: listening for months now and learn at least a tidbit
Speaker 1: every time. Most of the time I gained an entire
Speaker 1: gig of new knowledge. Any who, I was spurred to
Speaker 1: actually write because of an interesting event that occurred one
Speaker 1: cold Wisconsin night. As I was on my way home
Speaker 1: from work. I was listening to my iPod and wanted
Speaker 1: to change the volume, but was not willing to take
Speaker 1: off my toasty warm gloves. I then remember Jonathan saying
Speaker 1: he had been guilty of licking his iPod, and I
Speaker 1: know my spin wheel on my Classic has the same
Speaker 1: touch sensitivity. So much to the addition of my dorkiness
Speaker 1: to the tenth power squared and divided by one point
Speaker 1: to two three seven, I licked my iPod. There, I
Speaker 1: said it. I'm out of the closet. Keep up the
Speaker 1: good work, Nathaniel, fellow iPod liquor, Nathaniel. I hesitate to
Speaker 1: say this, but I was kidding. I have never licked
Speaker 1: my iPod. How did it taste? So if any of
Speaker 1: you have any confessions you want to send us, remember
Speaker 1: our psyches are delicate, but you can do so at
Speaker 1: our email address. Which is hex stuff. At how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, you can check out our live show
Speaker 1: every Tuesday at one pm Eastern, and you can look
Speaker 1: at our blog posts, which often include our hilarious misadventures
Speaker 1: through tech. Check them out, check out the site, have
Speaker 1: a happy Valentine's Day, We love you for moral this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and be sure to check out the new
Speaker 1: tech stuff blog now on the house stuff Works homepage.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you