Word: doodad
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...raves, but listening to the score out of context is a little like hearing gossip about people you don't know: some things simply don't register. Portions of the album, however, are breathtaking. The instruments--from synthesizers and the thereminesque Ondes Martenot to harps and an acrylic doodad of Albarn's co-invention that replicates the sound of car horns on busy Chinese roads--are lavish, but the exoticism is somehow kept in check. Typical of Albarn's various cultural adventures, he doesn't attempt to pass as a local; the details and pentatonic scale may come from Chinese...
...wand's not magic. It's just a plastic doodad smaller than a lipstick, embedded with a tiny electronic chip that is scanned by a reader in the vending machine. The reader taps Mason's credit account over the Internet and works much like a credit card--something most vending machines won't accept, along with crumpled dollar bills. Mason's wand from FreedomPay, based in Wayne, Pa., lets him eat not just from the machines at work but also at any of Boise's 31 McDonald's restaurants. Says Mason: "Now I don't starve...
WRITE AID Until now the worlds of paper and silicon have been irreconcilably separate. No longer, thanks to a clever doodad from Seiko called the SmartPad ($199). The SmartPad looks like a shmancy executive portfolio, with a seemingly ordinary pad of paper on one side and a port for your Palm PDA on the other. Whatever you write on the pad instantly appears on the screen of your Palm. You can even save your scribblings as an image and e-mail it. For bad handwriting, however, there's still no cure...