Consumer Review: MyVu!

Every once in a while, electronics clearinghouse woot.com runs an event called a woot-off, which is a good way to make me buy stuff, because it makes purchasing needless electronics into a game, with timers and sirens and competition and congratulatory messages. Recently, I got swept up in the madness and got the MyVu Personal Media Viewer, a purchase based on overcaffeination and the promise that I would look like Geordi LaForge. It plugs into an Ipod 5th Gen and gives a floating, Viewfinder-sized video image from your Ipod in glasses. I got it for fitty bucks, and am pleased to see that the parent website offers it for two hunnert, because that makes me look like slightly less of a sucker.

First thing: obviously, they look awesome on. As I put them on during my train ride this morning, I was slightly self-conscious plugging in the attached earphones and started singing from The Who's Tommy: put in your ear-plugs, put on your eye-shades, you know where to put the cork.

The video screens on the inside of the glasses are about the size of a fingernail each, and in a dark room, it looks like you are watching a small screen in a theatre, but in the light, you can see through your glasses on either side, so you can see if you are being surrounded by technology-hungry thugs. If you need corrective lenses, there is a site where you can order them to clip onto the inside of the headset, but why don't you get robots to burn your eyes with lasers instead, high-end leisure electronics consumer?

The video quality is the same as the Ipod. This toy would make most sense to use to watch vids on a long car or airplane ride. I like the privacy of it. The two screens made me feel a little cross-eyed upon first wearing, but I got used to them. I would really like to see these hacked to use with a laptop!

(People keep commenting on my gloves, but I swear they're just to wear on my bike!)

Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me. I am a nerd. I know it, Jackie Kashian knows it, and woot knows it. The first video I watched on it? Weird Al Yankovic's "White and Nerdy."

In my madness for personal items, I also bought this "Personal Hand Massager" during the woot-off, because of all the cramping I get in my hands when I use the computer. I think that this particular item will bring a whole new meaning to the term, "woot-off."

POSTSCRIPT: ZOMG, Woot found my post and linked to it from their blog- so if I link back to a blog linking to my blog, will the universe implode? Let's see!

POSTSCRIPT PART DEUX: Well, the Woot.com link was interesting, as I watched 800 people traipse through my blog over the next couple days, leaving neither comments nor footprints, just like they were never here at all. Maybe there's a lesson there about the internet. Et tu, page hits?

The real thing I wanted to mention was the danger of wearing the MyVu Personal Media Viewer in public. I wore them on the train one day and realized that an ex-boyfriend was in kicking distance and I had to pretend not to be myself, or if I was myself, absolutely I was not wearing wack-ass glasses.

The very next day, I was wearing them (watching Blade Runner, nerd!) on the train and became aware that a kid was begging for change, which caught me off-guard and I said no, I'm sorry, and he asked, wow, are those little video screens? And I had to admit that they were- so, although he thought they were cool, I felt bad admitting that 1. not only do I not hand out cash to kids on the train, 2. I am wearing ridiculously un-needed consumer products. Yes! I am an asshole.

And you absolutely should not use the personal massager in public.