Yeah, the video's silly, but the "instrument" actually looks like a lot of fun.

I'd love to create an ensemble of these, each person using wildly different and conflicting presets.

Oh dear. Casios weren't enough, I guess.

I think I need some quite reverie now.

Damn.

This is quite errrrr.... dumb. And bad.

Ugh.

Even worse, I'm middle-aged...

ugh

My FIRST problem with it is it looks like the legs of a plastic lawn chair sticking up upside down, not the kind of thing that inspires me musically. And if "everybody sounds good", then the presets are doing 95% (or more) of the work. Still, the Gizmodo blogger fails at Rule #1 in Doing Negative Reviews (the Holy Grail of Simon Cowell), which is "be less crappy than the crap you're reviewing" (and I know the Gawker Media Network is All About the Pageviews, but he included updates in the original post and then wrote an "update" post later that day which just repeated everything he'd written without getting any less boring - and no, the word balloons added to the video frameshot provided no value added). Then I checked the byline, and I know there are a lot of odd names among the Gawker Geeks (many obvious aliases), but Jesus Diaz? That's what my Mexican neighbor yells when he stubs his toe! Then again, it could be just another name for the God of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, which would explain and excuse the poor writing. I mean, Scody, you got the obvious Theramin connection, but Jesus didn't?!? What I could've done with the lawn-chair comparison... sigh.

more cowbell!

≡ Click to see image ≡

Did you know that Léon Theremin, the guy who invented the thing, also invented the first spying bug that was embedded into a gift to America's Russian ambassador?

heeee! I love that ad! Please. The little "Everybody sounds great!" etc. text titles seem like they were written in Engrish. It's a beautiful thing. *high five!!!*

Wow, the future of music is finally here!

I'm sure someone with madder Max/MSP skillz than I have could whip up a patch or a stand-alone to enable this contraption to do all sorts of crazy shit - sample triggering, parameter adjustment, modulation... the sky's the limit.

Of course, the typical Sharper Image customer probably doesn't realize this and will most likely sell it on craigslist a year from now for pennies on the dollar.