Christmas Gadget Explosion is Thankfully Figurative

Despite the hard economic times, it appears it was a bumper Christmas for sellers of handheld gadgets. The number of Americans owning tablet computers and e-readers appears to have almost doubled in the space of a few weeks.

According to the latest figures from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the proportion of US adults owning a tablet computer rose from 10% in mid-December to 19% in early January. The figures for e-readers were exactly the same.

The pre-Christmas survey was of just under three thousand people, while the January figures come from two surveys totaling 2,000 people. As with all such surveys, extrapolating to the national population is far from flawless. The statistical margin of error in this case means there’s a 95% chance that the actual nationwide rise for each type of gadget was somewhere between as narrow as a leap from 12% to 16.6% and as wide as moving from 8% to 21.4%.

Whatever the true figures, there has clearly been a significant rise in ownership that, given the timescale, is likely a combination of direct gifts, people spending cash or store voucher given as a gift, and people who had long-planned to buy one of the gadgets but held back to make sure they didn’t get it as a Christmas gift.

The survey didn’t ask about brands, though the authors speculate it’s the result of both Amazon and Barnes & Noble introducing low-priced tablets and slashing the costs of their e-readers. It may well be this was just the usual boost in sales caused by lower prices, but may also have meant the gadgets fell into more Xmas gift budgets.

Another noticeable trend (albeit much more vulnerable to the margin of error) came with people who owned both types of gadget. In December, when tablets and e-books were each at 10%, the proportion of people who owned both types was 18%, suggesting the vast majority were owned by major tech lovers.

For the January figures, with each category at 19%, the proportion owning both was 29%. That certainly ties in with a lot of people getting one of the gadgets for the first time.

The survey also looked at demographics. With tablets, a slight imbalance in favor of males has now evened out, which certainly fits in with a more stereotypical early adopter theory. With e-readers, there’s now a clear gender gap opening up, with 16% ownership amongst men and 21% amongst women.

Perhaps more surprisingly, ownership of both tablets and e-readers is proportionally more common amongst African American and Hispanic people, though not by a significant margin. That mirrors the pattern with smartphones, where one explanation is that they are more likely to be used as a substitute for a fixed-line phone service or a computer, particularly among those living in short-term rentals.



This Cthulhu Tattoo Will Eat Your Soul! [Pic]

[GAS] reader Sarah recently sent me this pretty cool Cthulhu tattoo she has on her arm, but don’t look at it for too long, else you might end up with a piece of your soul missing.

Thanks Sarah!



The Avengers Smell Good

Licensing for The Avengers is in full swing and an unlikely product has come out to promote/bleed the franchise. Cologne! Because geeks need to smell good too!

The four pictured above are the scents and their angle (Be Angry – must smell awesome!) but Loki and Nick Fury will also get their chance.

Robot6 Shares:

The Avengers Cologne Set boasts “four unique fragrances”: PATRIOT, Mark VII, SMASH! and Worthy; you can probably piece together which name goes with which hero. Loki, meanwhile, gets Mischief Cologne (“Made to Rule”), and Fury has Initiative Cologne (“Activate the Initiative”).

Now films don’t have scents to go along with them, but in your imagination I am sure there are smells that you might expect to go along with them.

Here’s my list, and you can decide which of these scents you would prefer to accent your manliness!

Captain America

He is perfect and iconic. He represents everything a country should be. Desire is one of those qualities and while this man is making the ladies swoon, I quite expect it would smell like a musky spice. Stand back ladies!

Iron Man

Tony Stark may be the charmer in a tuxedo, quick with a line and a wink that makes women forget their middle names. But this is IRON MAN. All steel, class, and a splash of colour for style. How he smells however might be something else. That clean sharp smell of steel, but with a hint of hydraulics and industrial lubricant. Oh baby!

Hulk

Bruce Banner is too much of a bookworm to worry about smelling good, so his scent is likely the smell of his generic brand drug store deoderant. However when he turns into the menacing Hulk, I would assume that deoderant is not enough to keep up and he likely starts smelling like an elephant after a good round of racquetball. Whew!

Thor

Gods are perfect. They fall out of bed looking like they were at the gym since birth. Why should they smell bad? Thor’s scent is likely a musky macho smell with a hint of nature’s wilderness to hint at his rough side.

Which masculine hero would YOU want to smell like?

Reading Kills According to this Short Animation [Video]

Imagine a world where the simple act of reading turned deadly.

My graduation film from the Vancouver Film School Classical Animation program.

[Beto Gomez]

CineStar Octocopter Drone is Watching YOU! [Video]

Henning Sandstrom stopped by FreeFly HQ on his way to Maui to teach me how to film beautiful forest scenes like he does so well!

The weather was really challenging, but we got the chance to do a few flights with the newly completed 3 axis gimbal. This video shows the gimbal with a Sony FS100 and 18-55 lens.

[Via Gizmodo | Tabb Firchau]