

The Lowly Button Gets an Upgrade - mhb
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/10/the-lowly-button-gets-a-brilliant-upgrade/

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beloch
This is an interesting idea. Some problems:

1\. I have a dozen sets of earphones and I don't think there are even two of
them with identical cables. How would these buttons deal with different gauges
of wire covered in different thicknesses of insulation? Cables too big
obviously won't fit at all and cables that are too thin will slide, causing
slack to be taken up by gravity until you turn your head and painfully jerk
the buds out of your ears.

2\. What problem is this solving again? I'm actually pretty okay with not
clipping my headphone cable to my shirt. In fact, I never do. I have workout
buds with an ultra-short cable that's just long enough to reach a clip-on mp3
player that goes on the neck of my shirt. I have canal-phones with their own
cable management features to eliminate microphonics. I have a nice pair of
woodies with a cable far too fat to fit inside any button-clamp ever made!

Allright, I admit it. I'm being obtuse. These are probably designed for Apple
buds. Those things are ubiquitous so you can design specifically for their
cables and still have a decent market. Their ergonomics are poor enough that
they might actually benefit from being attached to your shirt too. Still, it
seems rather impractical to upgrade your whole wardrobe to accommodate $5
crap-buds. At $3-4 a button, even just upgrading the buttons (nevermind the
time spent sewing!) isn't worth it. Just buy half-way decent headphones suited
to your needs!

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malux85
Uh ... do I have to have one of these buttons on each of my shirts?

Seems like it would be better to have the headphone attachment mechanism on
the headphones, like a clip on the headphone wire, so I can clip it to my
shirt. Oh wait, I already have that.

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rhplus
Just put the wire _inside_ your shirt!

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benologist
Blog spam.

<http://www.shapeways.com/model/699026/button-2-0.html>

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heyitsnick
I see comments like this a lot on HN and I find it very frustrating. The
curation and coverage is not "blog spam," it's an extremely useful service.
I'm fine with someone linking to gizmodo, they deserve credit for curating the
information, and this article provides more context and a touch of humor. It
also provides three links, two in the body and one in the footer, to go to the
shapeways page.

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CKKim
I think people have different definitions of blog spam and it's a matter of
taste. Personally I began to grind my teeth after the first cliche-ridden
paragraph ("cliche-ridden" again being subjective, but the "there should be a
Nobel Prize for..." format has been done enough now that it just seems lazy to
me) and by the time I got to "the Button 2.0 is approximately _a thousand
times_ more useful" (emphasis mine, to highlight particularly clunky
hyperbole) I was hovering over the tab with my finger over middle-click.

Here's the thing: this kind of overwritten article is so easy to put together
and IMO so inferior to the clean, straight-up no-nonsense page on the
Shapeways site that I don't feel "blog spam" is so inaccurate. I don't feel
strongly enough to call it out as such as "benologist" did, especially as I
know that to others on here (such as yourself?) it's not, but I hope this
explanation helps you see it from both sides. To "benologist" this sincerely
_is_ blog spam and the fact that they linked to the cleaner article gets them
an upvote from me.

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hnriot
I don't know why it's so hard for people to skim read. I looked at the photo,
immediately got what the text was going to say and am perfectly capable of
reading hyperbole without it making me grind my teeth or have any other kind
of overly dramatic response.

~~~
CKKim
Fair enough about the "overly dramatic response" and probably equally fair
downvote(s) on my comment. From the guidelines, then:

    
    
      > Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports 
      > on something they found on another site, submit the latter.

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nikcub
During long days away from my desk when I use my headphones a lot I often
found that they would fall out and get tangled. I started carrying safety pins
with me - I would pin it on the inside of my shirt and run the headphone cable
through it.

When you finish a call you take your earphones out and they slide down on the
inside of your shirt. When you need the headphones again they are right there.

I place the pin far up on the inside left-hand side, as close to the top
button as possible. Works just as well on the outside, I just prefer having
them inside my shirt.

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jentulman
I know people are pointing out the existing easy solutions, but I'm really
quite taken by the idea just for the 'Oh gosh, yeah! so simple' moment I had
when I saw it.

If I could buy a bag of these I'd happily sew one on to all my shirts in
preference to a clippy thing on the cable of which I've used several and kept
none.

Although buttons do have very rounded corners.....

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Aardwolf
This one is good!

Sometimes there are articles about improvements to something that is claimed
to "change the world", while it's just building an electronic gadget into
something, or making something controllable with an iphone.

But this here is really a clever idea!

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pbhjpbhj
Clever but impractical.

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mdonahoe
I'll wait until the kickstarter video comes out showing me how hard my life is
without this button.

Props for making the tiniest iPhone accessory yet!

~~~
mason55
_> I'll wait until the kickstarter video comes out_

Hopefully they have a working prototype and not just a rendering!

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astangl
Why not just tie an overhand knot on a bight of the cord, and then slip the
resulting loop over a button on any shirt you happen to be wearing?

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maxpert
Now this is smart!

