Great Gadgets

Great Gadgets (12/4-8/06). In this week-long series from All Things Considered, we hear experts and others talk about their favorite gadgets.

Little Things that Make a Bike Ride Better
(12/4/06 -3:37) · "Bicycle designer Georgena Terry describes her favorite gadgets. They don't attach to her bicycle; they are little computer programs that tell her what the weather is before she gets on her bike. Georgena Terry is the president of Terry Precision Cycling."

Lead-Filled Anchor Is a Low-Tech Gadget (12/5/06 - 3:51) · "In part two of our series on favorite gadgets, we hear from Alex Lee, president of Oxo International. You might have one or two of their black-handled ergonomic kitchen tools in your house. Lee describes his favorite gadget: an anchor for his fishing boat that's made of two bags full of lead shot."

Gadget Design Gurus Pick for Grating and Wine
(12/6/06 - 3:00) · "Two men who design what they call "gadgets for gadgets" talk about their favorite small tools. Aaron Lown and John Roscoe Swartz are the creative directors of Built NY, where they make neoprene totes for computers, cell phones, cameras, baby bottles and the like. Their favorite gadgets are a sharkskin ginger grater and a volumetric flask designed to be used in a laboratory -- but instead used as a wine decanter."

Cleaning Up with Roomba
(12/7/06 - 3:49) · "Jason Toon and Luke Duff work for the Web site woot.com. Their favorite gadget is something they bought from themselves: a Roomba. It's a small robot that sweeps up dust."

The Listeners Weigh In
(12/8/06 - 3:55) · "This week we've been hearing about favorite gadgets - from people who design and sell them. Many listeners wrote in to tell us about favorite gadgets, too. Three listeners join us: John Sturdevant, Eve Leedy and Vince Lupo."

Musings

• Compare a gadget of yours with one of those mentioned in any one of these NPR pieces.
  
  
• Comment on what the American writer Henry David Thoreau had to say about gadgets (what he calls "our inventions"), in his 1854 classic, Walden: "Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at."
  
  
• What's the difference between a gadget and a tool? When does a tool become a gadget? Or, using a somewhat different approach, how are gadgets related to toys? Try to use one specific gadget to make your case.