Retro

Urgent messages sent using Morse Code via radio waves or by electrical telegraphy are, by necessity, quite short - after all, you don't want to spend all day dotting and dashing your way through War and Peace. These days, of course, if you want to send the latest piece of gossip or news to those near and dear there are quite a few quicker options - from email to instant messaging and Facebook to Twitter. For users of the latter networking platform who are looking for a novel way to merge the old with the new, Martin Kaltenbrummer's open source Tworsekey Morse Code interface can deliver messages direct to the Twitter API via Ethernet LAN.  Read More

Whether it's an old-fashioned typewriter input for tablet computers, digital cameras made to look like 35mm film classics, or custom e-bikes with a touch of vintage styling - retro-now is most definitely in. If you want a guitar amplifier to fit right in with all your nostalgia-oozing new tech, Fender's Pawn Shop Special models are here to help. The diminutive Greta is styled liked an old tabletop radio, and the more powerful Excelsior is described as one of the distinctive tube combo amps in the company's history.  Read More

Remember Lomography's LomoKino we featured back in November? It's an uber-faux-retro film camera that can shoot about a minute of 3-5 frames-per-second footage using any old 35 mm stills film. Well, Lomography have now released the LomoKino SmartPhone Holder which, though you mightn't have guessed by the name, is a means of digitizing your LomoKino movies using only your smartphone (*cough* by which they mean iPhone *cough*). Cunningly, it's done without need of an app.  Read More

Husqvarna has decided to go back to the 70s with its Concept Baja. The retro-styled bike had its first debut at the 2012 Progressive International Motorcycle Show in New York last Friday as part of the exhibition's 12-city tour across the U.S. Taking its name from the famous desert race that's been run each year for more than four decades, the Concept Baja radiates a 70s vintage vibe with a design that echoes the company's off-road models from that era, but with a modern touch most immediately evident by an LED-array headlight built into the front number plate and an LED instrument display built into the crossbar.  Read More

If you think that you've spotted a strangely old-looking motorized bicycle cruising around the streets of Los Angeles, don't worry, you're not hallucinating. What you're likely seeing is one of two hand-built Juicer e-bike models - both of which harken back to the very early days of motorcycle development, when engines and motors were fixed to bicycle frames. The Juicer 36 is fashioned like a stretch cruiser and the 48 is an homage to the board-track era. Retro styling aside, the stand-out feature for us has got to be the gorgeous battery/motor configuration, that's been arranged like cylinders of a V-twin engine.  Read More

Along with GI Joes, Slinkies and Sea Monkeys, View-Masters are probably one of the most-remembered childhood products of the past few generations. Even if you yourself never got the chance to flip through disks of still images using one of the manually-operated stereoscopic viewers, chances are you at least knew someone who did. Well, now that you're all grown-up, you have the chance not only to relive your childhood by buying a View-Master-like Image3D viewer, but also to create a reel of your own photos to view in it. As a ten year-old, you would have thought that was pretty amazing.  Read More

Back in the days before digital cameras and printers, many do-it-yourselfers liked to develop and print their own photos. While those days of darkrooms, chemicals and papers haven't completely given over to CMOS sensors and printers just yet, nuts and bolts photographers still have to work a bit harder to get their hands dirty, so to speak. Now, camera gadget site Photojojo offers one way to stay "retro," by offering a very affordable build-it-yourself twin lens camera kit that shoots honest to gosh 35mm film. Best of all, even though it looks like a toy, its plastic lens actually captures fairly decent (read "lo-fi dreamy") photos. The small amount of vignetting and lens flare is thrown in for free!  Read More

Once upon a time, before zoom lenses were invented, movie and TV cameras had three lenses that the user could choose between, using a Lazy Susan-type arrangement to swivel them into place - you wanted to go wide, you'd swing in the wide-angle lens, if you needed a close-up, you'd swing in the telephoto. Well, in the spirit of everything old being new again, the iPhone Lens Dial now offers the same functionality for Apple's iconic smartphone.  Read More

There are numerous retro iPhone cases on the market, and most of them have no useful features except for helping you to stand out from the crowd. Holga, however, has introduced an iPhone case that not only adds some vintage flair to your smartphone, but also allows for photographic experimentation with nine built-in special effects filters.  Read More