Hasta La Gadget!

What’s this you say, your clothes would be better off if they weren’t strewn all over the floor, but you just don’t know how to maintain them airborne sans magical abilities? Fear not, we’ve finally found a hanger worthy of a true gadget geek in the retro styled 8-bit pointer you see above. There’s not an overwhelming amount of complexity to it — hell, even the one screw that holds the finger to the wall is permanently attached — but nothing communicates your tech credentials quite like a pixelated mouse cursor from yesteryear. Available now for $19.99 a piece plus shipping.

8-bit hanger is a gravity-defying, geek-gratifying implement of mass distraction originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CTIA always has its fair share of dodgy goods, from mildly quirky to downright laughable, we see all kinds. The Cell-Mate admittedly touches on all of these but is surprisingly useful, comfortable, and at $14.99, dirt cheap. The box includes the wire headset and a couple Velcro adhesive pads that you apply to your set; slap one on to your phone, attach to the wire frame and you’re ready to talk handsfree. Our own Paul Miller agreed to put it through its paces including: assembly, a test call, and then a fast lap around the press room here at CTIA. Please join us after the break as we torture test the Cell-Mate.

Continue reading Cell-Mate headset heads-on

Cell-Mate headset heads-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pretty pricey, no? Still, it’s at least ten bucks cheaper than a monthly subscription to the dead-trees version. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20001150-93.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Digital Media/a/p

Soon after yesterday’s post on the PRS Guitarbud, an apparently noisy, badly made cable for connecting your guitar to your iPhone, I got a mail from Gadget Lab reader Paul Stidworthy. Paul makes RiotFX, a $5 “multi-effects processor app” for the iPhone, and is concerned that people using his application get the best sound possible. To this end, he has posted a guide to making your own cable. It may not be cheaper than the PRS cable, but it should be a lot better, and you may find you have almost everything you need lying around the house.

First, you need a cable that splits a jack to three RCA phono plugs. It needs to have the ground on the right ring of the jack, so the easiest thing to do is buy a good-quality iPod AV cable. Then you put on an RCA-to-mono jack adapter (for the guitar) and an RCA-to-female-minijack adapter for the headphones. If you like, you can stop there, and you’ll have something that will work great for around $10 to $15. Or you can fancy things up a little more with an impedance matcher. Paul explains:

Using an impedance matcher with your cable has a number of benefits. It presents the guitar with a higher impedance load than the iPhone does, which improves the sound and makes the tone and volume pots behave better (for example, you might notice that if you don’t use an impedance matcher, adjusting the tone pot has little effect).

It also isolates the guitar circuit from the iPhone input – the iPhone is sensitive to changes in the DC resistance of the circuit, and using an impedance matcher eliminates these problems.

In this case, you’ll be out around £25 ($37) for parts, but you’ll have the best setup you could get. Assembly is dead simple, involving daisy-chaining the pieces together (Paul has a full guide up on the RiotFX site). Paul recommends doing things this way as it “will give you a much better experience than the Guitarbud” He gives a few pointers to good brands to use, and you can pick up the RiotFX software to test your cable out for $5.

Building a Guitar Cable for your iPhone and iPod Touch [Riotmode. Thanks, Paul!]

RiotFX [Riotmode]

RiotFX [iTunes]

Public Bikes is just about to launch a range of stylish granny-bikes. The cool-looking machines combine the sleek, pared-down look of a fixed-gear bike with the comfort and practicality of the Dutch City Bike.

There are two kinds of frame: a step-through (sometimes wrongly called a girls’ frame) and a classic double-triangle, both made from steel. The bikes all use internal hubs, with a choice of one, three or eight gears, and all come with front and rear caliper brakes, fenders and chain-guards. After that you can get fancy with leather seats, carrying racks and baskets. The prices will run from $650 to $1,200 when the bikes go on sale this April.

Public Bikes may be on to something here. These are the same kind of bikes you see all over the place in many Northern European cities. They’re cheap, strong and comfortable, all of which encourages you to ride more. The store is already open in San Francisco’s South Park (at number 123), so you can drop in for a test ride. South Park is a few minutes away from the Wired offices, so hopefully somebody will drop in and take a look (I’m looking at you, Dylan Tweney).

Public Bikes [Public Bikes via Bike Hugger]