No, not the type Tiger Woods probably got. I’m talking about the hands that appear in commercials that tease you with beloved gadgets. You don’t know the faces behind them, but the hands certainly get a good amount of money in exchange for their seductive powers. They can earn up to $10,000 a day.

The niche market is not so niche anymore. With the splurge of iPhones and Kindles, there are about 300 people who are hand models. It’s a full time job for 50 of them. The roll out of new videogames, computers, and phones has created the need for beautiful hands that can type, push, or do just about anything.

Newsweek got the scoop on super hand models. Make sure you watch the video, it’s quite entertaining.

Some models worry about paper cuts. Others wear gloves to protect their hands. Their hands are their most prized possession, even if it means they have to lubricate their hands with lotion 40 times a day. Beyond the day-to-day worries, their lucrative careers are relatively short-lived — some can’t find work in their late 30s because they have old hands.

Needless to say, after watching the Newsweek video, I felt like I needed to rush to the nearest spa to get a manicure. Seriously, this winter weather plays no favors to anyone.

Image: flickr/ Toni Blay

Hand Jobs are in High Demand is a post from: TechStartups.com

Through some clever apps, the iPhone and iPod Touch have been turned into remote controls for a variety of devices and software products including one of my favorite applications, boxee.

Today, Startup hardware company ThinkFlood released the RedEye universal remote control system for the iPhone and iPod Touch that controls everything exept your dog and the kids.

After downloading the free RedEye application from the iTunes App Store, (and forking over $188 for the RedEye base station) you place the unit in the same room as the equipment you want to control. The iPhone or iPod touch communicates with the base station over your wifi network to control TVs, DVRs, stereos, gaming equipment and other gadgety goodness.


Don’t know if, say, your cable set top box is supported? You can download codes from RedEye’s global code database, which is updated regularly. The RedEye also has a learning function, which enables you to program commands using an existing device remote.

The system offers “activity-based control,” which means you can program it to execute a series of commands with only one touch. Only the buttons appropriate to the activity appear on the screen.

Now for the really cool stuff: Multi-Touch!

RedEye supports Apple’s Multi-Touch gestures and accelerometer controls. For example swiping two fingers down the screen can reduce volume and flicking the iPhone forward can change the channel. (Videos of the unit in action are below.)

While all this sounds great, RedEye still suffers from the same inadequacies as all other iPhone or iPod Touch remotes. The app needs to be running and wifi needs to be active on your iThing. Once the device automatically turns off, you have to wake it up and reconnect to your wifi network before you can use it.

Of course, if you leave it on, it will suck your battery dry.

It looks like a great product but the limitations of the platform would still drive me toward purchasing a Logitech Harmonay Universal Remote or one of it’s brethren.

Still, RedEye looks like a very cool product. Will you buy one?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

RedEye Brings Multi-Touch to Your TV, Turns your iPhone and iPod Touch into a Universal Remote Control is a post from: TechStartups.com

The gadgets are flowing and they’ve got both publishers and subscribers in a tizzy over their options. Are they 3g? Can I put my content on it? Just wifi? What services do they deliver? Do I need to build an app? Am I locked in?

All great questions but not the one that is at the front of my mind. That question being where is the personal media hub for all of this content? Each type of media that we consume has a disparative quality of some sort that requires another gadget or format transcoder to allow usage – which means, users need a hub.

I just want to know where that hub will be. I’m not sure if it belongs in the cloud or can even exist there due to limitations placed on that content by rights holders. Which is a legitimate reason not to use the cloud since publishers need to eat.

A couple reasons to use the cloud would be transfer speeds, remote accessibility and backups. With increased gadget connectivity it would make sense to do this. An example of a gadget that needs to be fed from an outside source like the cloud is the PSPgo. It relies on connectivity to fetch games, video and browse the web.

The games on PSPgo arrive from a Sony controlled hub behind a firewall. If the cloud is too limiting due to rights management the other other solution would be to offer a private hub. Another gadget, but one that resides in the dwelling of an individual. Using the Sony model for control and privacy a device like this could be the next evolution of an inclusive hub. It seems to me to be the missing link.

Media management across multiples platforms and for varying devices would require some version of a standard protocol. The protocol probably already exists and could be as simple as HTTP with SSL. The device itself a web server that connects to cars, phones, tablets, computers, televisions, etc.

A device like this could also create new opportunities for rights holders to create new models for selling content. I’m thinking in the range of micropayments for ongoing usage or payments for amount of time used. An example would be a movie that instead of a 24 hour limit would allow the consumer to view it 2 times on any device before being crippled or offered for purchase for an additional few dollars.

My personal interest would be to have a media hub that I had control over and could add content to from any device like the PSPgo, Kindle, iPhone or computer. The ability for these devices to speak a common language for file storage and retrieval would increase consumption and sales as all of a users purchases become portable, even if lockedin to a device.

There are plenty of media hubs that exist today for personal use that can be net connected, but this device would find its niche in storing and delivering content without limitation.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Where is the personal media hub for ebooks, music and videos? is a post from: TechStartups.com