I love when people hack things… basically take one piece of technology and turn it into something else, especially when it’s useful.
The other day I stumbled upon an emailing typewriter.
This project was inspired by a mother’s frustration with e-mail and using a computer.
Apparently she simply cannot relate to scroll bars, the mouse, control keys and so on.
Her son decided to make for her a typewriter that sends email.
It is a regular portable typewriter, which has concealed electronics that automatically sends the typed letter as an email to the intended person when the letter is finished and pulled out of the machine’s carriage.
On the geektastic scale of 1 to 10, I give this a 9.
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- Lack Of Communication | December 31, 2006
- What is a portable app? | April 9, 2006
You have to wonder how they’ll effect the “receive email” function promised. I mean, full marks for getting it to send correctly, but emails only going one way seems kind of pointless.
Anyway, I’m kind of figuring some sort of jury-rigged, dedicated laser printer would be best - press a button and it’ll check for and print any received emails (and it’s a laser printer just because I’ve found that they need less maintenance than inkjets). Somehow coming up with a motivator to make the typewriter print out emails itself might be possible, but seems like such a pain to do, and you would have to stand there while everything prints out, feeding in pages one by one…