03 Sep 2004 | Mark said...

I like the way the Bigha site presents its products (guess their just not into bikes) with a logical flow to the story and presentation.

The only "huh?" moment I had was with the product naming and the way it's presented graphically.

Naming the products "Now" and "Always" with the pricing for both models the same led me to initially wonder, if the laser was always priced at $119 why is it now priced at $119?

Bit confusing there.

03 Sep 2004 | Gilbert Lee said...

I'm a little confused here. I thought Bigha is a "riding" site. Now why is the laser thingy so prominent now? Second tab? Maybe EK can enlighten us on this.

03 Sep 2004 | Dave Woodward said...

Mmm... DIV soup. Someone should clue them in that there are a few more tags to HTML other than "div", "p", and "a".

03 Sep 2004 | Ed Knittel said...

Dave - not to worry, I think they know that there are other tags. Take for instance their home page in which they make use of a one cell table for their footer. That they then wrapped around a div.

In fact - all of the tables they use for layout have divs wrapped around them. I'm especially glad to see that even though everything has a class assigned to it they haven't dropped using the good ol' spacer.gif.

This isn't soup - it's gumbo.

03 Sep 2004 | mike scott said...

thinkgeek also has a sick green laser.

thats been on my list of "expensive junk that i still want (under 150)" for a while now.

03 Sep 2004 | Factory Joe said...

Dudes, you realize that the Jasper Laser is really a light saber, right?

04 Sep 2004 | Arne Gleason said...

From the depths of my very being I want one of these, but as hard as I try, I cant reckon why.

04 Sep 2004 | ek said...

Hey Mark, interesting point about the naming — none of us had considered that that would cause confusion. We'll definitely keep our eyes on that to see if it's common.

To Gilbert, we've always considered ourselves to be a company focused on developing products to help people enjoy the outdoors in a non-competitive way. The first manifestation of that was a bike, but we have a few different things in the works!

To Mike, I don't want to sound like I'm disparaging a competitor's product or being Mr. Salesguy, but there are some important differences between Jasper and ThinkGeek's green laser.

First, both Jasper models can be run continously until their batteries run out (which should be about 6 - 9 hours). Our understanding of the ThinkGeek laser is that it's rated to run for a maximum of two-minutes and requires an equivalent cool-off period (i.e. if you run it for two minutes, you need to let it cool for two minutes).

Second, Jasper is consistently brighter. We test every unit to ensure a power output between 4 and 5mW. The majority of the green laser products on the market are only tested to a 1mW minimum and, because they lack power control circuitry, even a laser with a tested output of 5mW will dip substantially below that based on changes in temperature and battery life.

The Jasper's power control circuitry also means it works better in cold conditions, which is important given that it's a product most people will be using outdoors at night.

Finally, Jasper is offered with two control switch styles — a momentary push button (which is the more conventional style for lasers) and a constant on/off switch. Other products only offer the momentary switch because they can only be left on for a minute or two before overheating.

Hope I'm not being too rah-rah about our product, but it really does have some unique benefits.

To Arne, it's even cooler in person. ;-) Honestly, I never, ever found myself wanting a laser pointer, but when I saw these bad boys in use for the first time, I was hooked! It's especially nice out where we are, because it gets nice and dark at night. It may not be as impressive in areas where there's a lot of light pollution.

Hope this helps!

05 Sep 2004 | Jonny Roader said...

"We've always considered ourselves to be a company focused on developing products to help people enjoy the outdoors in a non-competitive way."

Unless you've got a crappy laser pointer. ;)

06 Sep 2004 | sknk said...

once i had a orange laser key chain thingy, but i lost it. i miss it sometimes.

07 Sep 2004 | pinkus said...

There's no "i" in sknk. Oh, wait, yes there is.

08 Sep 2004 | Paperhead said...

ffs man ... you quoted a cat.