Yikes!
"Stocking fillers" are usually cheap!
Stuck for ideas for someone who has everything or just in need of inspiration to top up a stack of gifts you already have? It's certainly tricky sorting out gifts that are going to please over those that will be destined for eBay come the New Year. So here we have a bit of mixed bag – or should that be Santa's sack? – ranging …
Ha ha ha ,
Bob Dormon picked 10 completely random tech items, which probably have a decent kickback, threw them onto a webpage and gave the page a title.
A Spyder4 screen calibration tool for photographers........had me rolling about the office floor
A Dlink routeur .................... had the rest of the office rolling about the floor
An Aston Martin mouse ......... we had people coming in from the street to see why everyone had tears in their eyes whilst flailing about wildly on the office floor and they too joined in....
It's wednesday and Bob must have some serious problems coming up with anything original, so we got this............
ha ha ha.
I'm still wiping away the tears as I write
Who at El Reg HQ seriously believes that as a last minute Christmas present, any of us is going to waste £180 on a monitor calibration tool just because it'll work on a FruitPhone? Or £260 for headphones, for that matter?
I mean, yes, I understand that these articles are at least 50% about the affiliate program clickthroughs, but still...had you offered stuff that people might even remotely be interested in picking up as impulse-buy last-minute gifts, it could've worked. I've no idea who this list is targeted at, only that they clearly have far more money than sense.
They're stocking-fillers in the sense that, with maybe one or two exceptions, they're all pointless junk.
I was flabbergasted by the price of the colour calibrator and the pedal that adds distortion to your phone. (Maybe I've missed the point of the last one. Is is a pedal that allows your phone to distort the noises your guitar makes?). Then I saw that they were targeted at iOS. I suppose to an Apple customer, nothing is too expensive.
I was already pretty dubious about taking the article seriously when it's supposedly about stocking fillers, yet there's nothing in this list at what I would call stocking filler price. I stopped reading altogether when you feature an iPhone case which supposedly reduces mobile "radiation" yet increases signal strength. If you're going to put out such an obvious marketing puff piece based on stuff you've been handed/loaned, next time please put the complete and utter bull***t on the first page so I won't have to waste any of my life on it again.
Putting aside the claims of "radiation" from mobile phones causing harm, you cannot at the same time reduce "radiation" and increase signal strength - THEY ARE THE SAME THING. If you block/attenuate the signal coming out of/into the phone, your signal strength and quality will drop.
"Weird science? Snake oil modelling? Take your pick, it’s going to be hard for a user to determine if the improved signal strength is noticeable or if Pong’s redirection of TRP (total radiated power) is going to save your life or not"
No, it won't be hard for any user with any ounce of common sense at all. Any user with any common sense at all will realise that if you block something you cannot amplify or improve it at the same time. No, they'll stay the hell away from the company foisting quackery on you at an inflated price; they'll get A.N. Other brand silicone case/skin for their phone and pay £5-£15 for it. Which, incidentally, will also stop your phone sliding around and protect it from falls without the exorbitant price tag that this thing commands.
There is no depth of fail low enough to describe the depths that TheReg has plumbed with this "article".
So, under my standard Xorg setup, the rate of movement of my mouse will randomly vary if I forget myself and don't use the scroll wheel button thingy....
Cheers El Reg, glad I missed out on that mouse. Doesn't look particularly ergonomic either...