IEEE Spectrum November, 2008 - 18

gifts
a soulFul
dinosaur and
a someWhat
oBedient dog

hasbro KoTa
US $300
hasbro biscuiT
$180
http://www.hasbro.com

sensor technologies come
of age in a pair of pricey
holiday toys for tots
beast, my kids would say goodbye
only after lots of dinosaur hugs.
Sam has not yet decided if Kota should
be his holiday gift this season, and Coby
is trying to talk me into an iPhone instead.
They grow up so fast! Parents, too, have
a decision to make. Hasbro, Kota's
manufacturer, refused to discuss the
dinosaur's projected life span, of some
concern when getting ready to fork over
US $300 for a prehistoric pet-especially
in light of reports of durability problems
with a Hasbro 2006 pet, the FurReal
Friends Butterscotch Pony. Perhaps by
Christmas one of Kota's many bloggeradmirers will have hacked into her and
documented her 11 embedded sensors.

hands on
Free the AAAA Six!

inside every 9V battery there are
six AAAA batteries
You may not have seen many
AAAA batteries yet, but you will.
mp3 players, glucose meters,
penlights, remote controllers,
Bluetooth headsets, and even
toothbrushes are increasingly
using the smaller size, according
to Jon eager, an aptly named
marketing director at energizer
Holdings, in st. Louis.
weighing only 6.5 grams,
AAAAs are as much as
43 percent lighter than AAAs.
that makes a big difference
when wearing a headset.
AAAAs are the same voltage
and almost the same length as
AAAs but 20 percent thinner.

28

NA * iEEE SPEctrum * NovEmBEr 2008

Nearly as cool for the kids-and
electronically much more interesting
to Mom-was Biscuit ($180), a sort of
golden retriever puppy who answers
to six voice commands. While he only
reacted correctly to "speak," "lie down,"
and "shake" about half the time, he
responded to anything he didn't
recognize with an endearing blink of
his eyes, a quizzical tilt of the head,
and a bark. What real dog obeys every
command anyway? I was impressed
that Biscuit did as well as he did
without being trained to understand
individual voices. Still, both boys
would rather have Kota "cause
dinosaurs are just cool." -Sherry Sontag

Naturally, AAAAs don't last
nearly as long. eager says
that in a 25‑-megawatt test
at a continuous drain with
a noise‑-canceling headset,
"the run time for a AAAA
is approximately 24 hours,
versus a AAA at approximately
55 hours." At about the same
cost, that makes AAAAs
relatively expensive to use.
so here's a little trick we
picked up from the web sites
Xkcd and makezine (metacafe
has a nice video report as well).
cut open a 9‑-volt battery and
you'll find six AAAAs wired

in series. Xkcd reports that
you need to keep track of the
polarity because the individual
batteries aren't labeled, and
you might want to use some
silver or aluminum foil to ensure
good contact, especially if you
use them in place of AAAs.
Naturally, energizer advises
against the practice, noting the
difference in length and the risk
of personal injury.
A twin pack of AAAAs
costs us $4 or more. A single
9V battery costs about the same,
so freeing the AAAAs within
yields four free batteries. Because
of the difference in run times,
when AAAAs are used in place of
AAAs, your "profit" is roughly two
free batteries.
-steven cherry
aaaa baTTeries
US $6.95 (six-pack)
Metacafe video: http://
tinyurl.com/2rbubo

Continued on page 30
www.spectrum.ieee.org

top: hAsbro; bottoM: rAnDi silberMAn

H

ow about taking home a
baby triceratops that growls,
munches leaves, moves its horns,
and plays such classic songs as "I'm
Gonna Catch a Baby Dinosaur"?
True, it doesn't walk, and
at first my kids-Sam, 3, and
Coby, 6-were disappointed. Still,
the 1-meter-long triceratops was
long enough and strong enough for
even the older boy to ride Kota's
spring-loaded seat in place, making
her (the kids quickly determined
that Kota was a girl) hipper than
any hobbyhorse. After some pretty
soulful looks, far more than anyone
would expect from a mechanical
http://www.hasbro.com http://http:// http://www.tinyurl.com/2rbubo http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2008
