Retro

If the term "Apple fanboy" were in the dictionary, a line drawing of Jeremy Mehrle could well appear beside it. Chip Chick says the St. Louis resident has 74 Macs on display, including 30 that adorn the bar pictured here. "His collection contains 18 different CRT-based iMacs, a Next Cube, four different Apple II computers, and a 20th a Anniversary Mac," she says, citing MacLife Magazine as her source. It's even more impressive when you see the photos of the rest of the abode, which can be found on Flickr.

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since John DeLorean was arrested on drug-trafficking charges, a major scandal for the GM executive often credited for creating the famed Pontiac GTO. It seems like just yesterday to us but, then again, we still have a Members Only jacket somewhere in our closet.

Anyway, a quarter-century later, we find that we're hardly alone in our appreciation of the DeLorean DMC-12 of Back to the Future fame, which we still think was one of the best-designed sports cars of our generation with its gull-wing doors and stainless-steel finish. Retro … Read more

Loath as we are to admit it, we've developed something of a weird fascination with USB keys. Partly because we're amazed at how many companies spend so much time and effort on this commodity technology.

Our reponse? To write about yet another one, of course. But this one's different, really. The Gibson Signature Series "Les Paul Standard Flash Drive" offers only 1GB of storage but is a miniature replica of the famed guitar whose name is almost synonymous with early rock and roll, according to Uber-Review. Another USB key offered the Les Paul name but … Read more

Mood-ring offshoots have become a staple of the retro-tech trend, but this is one of the sillier--and most expensive--examples of the genre we've seen. The "Therapie" is a canvas wall lamp that was "inspired by color and light therapy theories which give it a soothing aura to reverse bad tempers," according to BornRich. To us, it just looks like a plasma TV displaying different colors.

We woudn't mind the idea so much--many of us at Crave have a fondness for the '60s--but the price is downright offensive: $1,100. At that level, you'd … Read more

There are tons of retro-designed music players on the market, but they've almost become parodies of themselves with the same old jukebox and '20s-style radio cases. So we're thankful that Pure Digital has decided to break out of the box, figuratively and literally. It's created a digital radio that looks like a Marshall amp--including, as Crave UK points out, a volume knob that goes to 11 a la This Is Spinal Tap. Brilliant.

When the New England Patriots visit the Indianapolis Colts this Sunday in the NFL's AFC Championship game, Boston.com hopes the result will be a foregone conclusion: the Patriots will win 38-31.

That will be the final score, according to a Madden NFL 2007 simulation of the game performed by Boston.com on an Xbox 360. This is thanks in part to Colts kicker--and former Patriots hero--Adam Vinatieri missing two field goals. A video of the game's virtual highlights is posted on the site.

Boston.com's game is not the official EA Sports Madden NFL 07 simulation … Read more

A lot of companies want to sew their technology into the fabric of luggage or clothing, trying to make it as unobstrusive as possible. Not Lifepod. Its "Beat Generation" line of bags, backpacks and cases does just the opposite, as you can see Tech Digest and its Web site: Lifepod's line trumpets--blasts, actually--its technology in the form of its sound system, both visually and aurally, with big speakers and other equipment mounted unapologetically on the sides of retro-style products done in psychedelic, disco and bowling themes (our personal favorite). If they can figure out how to play … Read more

The good news: I have found photos of what is undoubtedly the most awesome iPod case ever, thanks to Make Magazine's blog.

The bad news: Like most stuff featured on Make, you can't buy it anywhere.

Flickr user sirljohns has put up a sort of tutorial of how to make a fully functional iPod case out of an old Game Boy console, but you'll still need a good amount of technical know-how in order to build one yourself. Nevertheless, this is about as cool as it gets.

Can you remember the last time you saw a new fax machine that didn't look like every other model on the shelf? For that matter, what about a new fax machine at all? Same here. That's why it was easy to notice the Canon FAX-JX200. (OK, so they still need to apply some of those creative juices to their nomenclature.) We agree with SlashGear that faxing still has a place in the world, and we hope that Canon's redesign indicates that it thinks so too. And we're even happier to see that it's only $80.… Read more