GadgetReview » Donations

Child’s Play Starts Fundraising Drive

Shawn Kline — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:53:32 +0000

With the chaos of my last weekend, somehow this one slid unnoticed into my inbox. Now here at GadgetReview, we’re always ready to help out a worthwhile cause, and in my opinion, the folks at Child’s Play have one of the most worthwhile causes I’ve seen. In case you don’t know what they do by now (have you been living under a rock?), since 2003 Child’s Play has been working on getting toys and games to hospitals worldwide in order to help out sick children. My own child was in a Children’s Hospital before, and I know how little they had for him to do there (I mean they had a PlayStation one with two games – both were scratched and couldn’t be played). It’s this charity that makes the stays kids have to go through end up being bearable.

I’m not one to be a schill for anything that I don’t believe in, so what I’m telling you right now comes from the heart – these guys do an amazing amount of good work. Not only does giving things to hospitals help out children, but it also helps to stem the tide of people thinking that all gamers are nothing but violent and arrogant assholes. In 2010, they raised almost $2,300,000 (just over five grand short), and it would be great to see those kind of numbers again. I hope we can get some kind of fundraising event here to help them out, but in the meantime here’s a list of things you can do on your own:

Host your own fundraising event (childsplaycharity.org/events)
Buy or donate an item on the Child’s Play Giving Works eBay page
Donate directly through PayPal
Become a corporate sponsor (and talk to your bosses about this) – email Kristin Lindsay
Mail a check to Child’s Play, 123 NW 36th Street Suite 210, Seattle, WA 98107
Text the keyword GAMERS to 50555 to make a $5 donation

The annual Child’s Play charity auction will take place on Thursday, Dec. 8th, 2011 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. Tickets can be purchased at www.childsplaycharity.org. Passes will cost $145 per person and $5,000 for table sponsors.

Philips Tapsters Likely Won’t Hit Stores

stevea — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:26:42 +0000

Several months back, we introduced you to the Philips Tapster headphones. But there’s some bad news here for everyone who was looking forward to them–there’s now pretty much no way they’ll hit store shelves.

The folks out at Crave on Cnet’s Asian subsidiary believe they know why, too–they don’t work.

It’s a strange theme these days, gadgets that don’t work, but the beat goes on (or rather doesn’t) from these headphones. They were supposed to be a major innovation in playback and volume controls, which are supposedly controlled by tapping and swiping the ear modules. Under normal circumstances, this would dislodge them from the ear, but with these, they didn’t dislodge. Something of an accomplishment there, but the problem was, the purported tap-and-swipe system of volume and playback control never materialized.

So a little bit of vaporware for you, folks…and that’s always at least a little sad.

Read

$140,000 Diamond Encrusted Hot Wheels Car

Christen Costa — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:56:11 +0000

To kick off Hot Wheels’ 40th anniversary, Mattel unveiled a diamond encrusted 1:64 scale Hot Wheels car. The car is one-of-a-kind and the most expensive in Hot Wheels history. The car is valued at a mere $140,000, is cast in 18k white gold, and includes more than 2,700 diamonds that weigh nearly 23 Carats total. Nick Lachey was there to kick off the event. Relax folks; he was there to donate the vehicle for auction in late 2008 to his charity ‘Big Brothers Big Sisters’.

More info here.

OLPC Donation Update: We’ve Raised $275

Christen Costa — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:29:33 +0000

Good news!

Techlasers was kind enough to donate enough money for at least one OLPC computer! My Mom also donated some money, so we’re now at $275.

We’ve got just 4 days left to raise $124 more dollars. Only you can help.

Please send all donations, via Paypal, to info@gadgetreview.com

For more info about the cause checkout this post.

Thanks again to Techlasers for such a generous donation!

‘One Laptop Per Child’ Donation Request

Christen Costa — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:26:24 +0000

I love what OLPC is doing. To further their cause, I am requesting donations (from Gadgetreview readers) to be put towards an OLPC computer. Until 11/26, OLPC is “offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada.” So if you donate (assuming we meet our goal) we’ll be able to provide a laptop to a child in a 3rd world country and give a laptop to an “inner city kid” here in LA. I am putting in $50 to start the donations, which means we’ll need another $349 from the Gadgetreview fan base. If we don’t accomplish our goal before 11/26 then we’ll just put it towards one laptop, which is $200. If we don’t reach $200 then we’ll donate the remainder of the money to another good cause (see below example). If we achieve above $200, but don’t reach $399 then I’ll donate the difference to another good cause, such as Step Up. The current offer, which ends 11/26, also includes one year of T-Mobile Hot Spot Access, which I’ll give away to one lucky donor!

Please send your PayPal donations to info@gadgetreview.com. Helping one kid could save 1000s!

To insure that I’m not pocketing the money, I’ll post proof of the donation in December.

Happy Holidays!