Retyper the opinionated brother of ployer goes deep on the very hot TV- be gone gadget via writer Henry Cruz, who knew that this thing would sell like hot cakes
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ENOUGH ALREADY with televisions in banks, airports, restaurants and even bathrooms -- now you can really
TURN IT OFF: A new keychain gadget (like those car clickers) now lets people turn off most TVs and is flying off the shelves says New York Newsday.
"I thought there would just be a trickle, but we are swamped," the inventor, Mitch Altman of San Francisco, said Monday in an interview. "I didn't know there were so many people who were into turning TV off."
CLICK IT OFF: Hundreds of orders for Altman's $14.99 TV-B-Gone gadget poured in Monday after the tiny remote control was announced in Wired magazine and other online media outlets. At times, the unexpected attention overloaded and crashed the Web site of his company, Cornfield Electronics.
The keychain fob works like a universal remote control but one that only turns TVs on or off. With a zap of a button, the gizmo goes through a string of about 200 infrared codes that controls the power of about 1,000 television models. Altman said the majority of TVs should react within 17 seconds, though it takes a little more than a minute for the gizmo to emit all the trigger codes.
Altman, 47, first got the idea for TV-B-Gone a decade ago when he was out with friends at a restaurant and they found themselves all glued to the perched TV instead of talking to each other. No one was around to turn the TV off.
He quit as an adult and hasn't owned a television since 1980.
He has tested the TV-B-Gone remote discreetly in many places, including in other countries, and -- with the exception of Hong Kong -- says he usually gets little to no reaction from others after the background TV noise and glare disappears.
"I can be mischievous, but I'm not going to do anything malicious, and I don't want to make anyone's life more difficult," Altman said. "I just don't like TV, and I'd like people to think more about this powerful medium in their lives."
By Henry Cruz
