Force Feedback Gaming Vest Uses Compressed Air to Mimic Pain

If I had one of these, maybe I'd be more of a gamer!

Also known as the 3rd Space Vest, the Force Feedback gaming vest from TMgames is filled with compressed air pouches in order for you to feel the pain when you're hooked up to your console and having your butt kicked by scary aliens. Compatible with around a dozen games, including Call of Duty, Doom 3, Quake 4 and Medal Of Honor, so if you want to feel what it's like to be knifed, shot, blown up or merely punched in the kidneys, you might think about shelling out $169 for this.

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Fontogenic Candidate Selection

Following up on our recent post about comparing the Democratic candidates with their corresponding computer platforms, today we introduce political analysis based on typography. Really, could this blog be any more geeky?

Gruber sets the stage (in a way sure to please Jackson): "If you’re going to cast your vote based on the candidates’ choice of fonts, it’s Obama all the way."

A Font We Can Believe In

I think it’s interesting that the design of Gotham was influenced by early Modernism, another movement that was about change and social idealism. And I like that the design aesthetic that may help move Obama into the White House was inspired by the humble NY Port Authority Bus Terminal sign. -Helvetica film director Gary Hustwit

[Yes, someone made a film about the font Helvetica. Seriously.]

McCain After Shave Balm

Hillary's snooze of a serif might have come off a heart-healthy cereal box, or a mildly embarrassing over-the-counter ointment; if you're feeling generous you might associate it with a Board of Ed circular, or an obscure academic journal. But Senator McCain's typeface is positively mystifying: after three decades signifying a very down-market notion of luxe, this particular sans serif has settled into being the font of choice for the hygiene aisle. -H&FJ

You've really got to see the mock-ups with this one.

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John Gruber: A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd

If you love John Gruber and Daring Fireball as much as I do, well, you should be arrested for stalking. And then you should read this man-behind-the-legend interview by Shawn Blanc.

SHAWN: Do you have any advice for writers who are struggling to find their voice?

JOHN: I honestly don’t know what works for others. The act of writing, like any art, defies description. Some of the best advice I’ve seen regarding how to write essays is from Paul Graham. He says writing is thinking, and, insightfully, that writing forces you think better. He wrote, “Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well.”

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Drobo is da Bomb

Apparently, it's gadget lust week at fishwreck. Here's the latest entry.

You pop the front off of the box to reveal four empty drive bays. Each one can hold a SATA-standard hard drive mechanism (which are as cheap and plentiful as greed and avarice). Just buy some and slide them right in. Installing drives in the Drobo is no more complicated than inserting a frozen waffle into a toaster. No screws, no mounting brackets…just push it into the slot until the bay’s retaining clip clicks into it.

You can mix and match capacities, leave some of the drive bays empty…it doesn’t matter. Dump the storage in and close the door. Drobo figures everything out all out on its own. Plug it into your computer and it appears as a standard, single USB storage device ready for formatting.

The feature list goes on and on -- it's redundant, you can hot-swap drives, and upgrade capacity on the fly, and hang it on your network -- and yet it remains simple to use. Read on to get the full grok.

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Chumby hands-on: What fun

Or maybe I just need to get one of these. I know Down By Design wants one!

It's a little touch-screen Web appliance that can display a changing lineup of personalized widgets for you: Clocks, photo galleries, Twitter feeds, and so on. The Chumby gets its data over WiFi, and you control what widgets it displays on the Chumby.com site

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How to make a Physical Gmail Notifier

I was given a lovely glowing cube by the generous people at Linden Labs as a freebie at a job fair yesterday, and I decided that it was far too attractive to simply sit there on a shelf, pulsating forlornly until its batteries went flat. How about making it useful, while maintaining its visual appeal?

I gotta get me one of these cubes! Anyone know where to get one? (And, no, I do not want one of those not-nearly-as-cool units from IKEA.) [via Gizmodo]

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Apple TV Take 2, Now with AirTunes, Soon with Airfoil

On Tuesday, Apple released version 2 of the Apple TV software, a free update dubbed "Take 2." You've likely heard about the major changes like buying from the iTunes store directly from the device, the more refined user interface, support for movie rentals and web-based photo slide shows.

What you might not have heard is that the new software also allows the Apple TV to act as an AirTunes device. This means you can stream audio from iTunes on your computer through your Apple TV to your sound system, just like you can with an AirPort Express. You can even control iTunes on your computer using the Apple TV remote control. Nice.

But what if you want to play audio from some other source on your computer? Or synchronize your audio stream to multiple AirTunes devices or even to other local Macs? Enter Airfoil, a $25 application from Rogue Amoeba that allows you to do just that. Except that it's not quite compatible with Apple TV just yet, but they're working furiously on an update that will deliver that capability. Double nice.

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