Hasta La Gadget!

Dave Honl, our favorite maker of light-shaping tools, has added a circular soft-box to his lineup of small-flash accessories. The nylon and polyethylene cone folds flat and joins Dave’s snoots, grids and reflectors. The big difference between the new traveller8 softbox is that, as its name suggests, it softens light and spreads it out. All Dave Honl’s other kit is designed to control and focus light exactly where you want it.

The traveller8 attaches to the small flash head the same way as all the other Honl modifiers: You wrap around the included rubberized, Velcro Speed Strap and the soft-box then Velcros onto this. Folded, the soft cone is around 11 x 9-inches, and weighs in at under four ounces.

The traveller8 may seem expensive at $70, but if it is made to the same standards of the rest of the range (which we have tested), then it should last you just shy of forever.

Honl Photo traveller8 Softbox [Honlphoto via Strobist]

See Also:

• Make Your Own 'Honl' Lighting Kit
• A Month With Honl Flash Light Modifiers
  
• HonlPhoto Speed System Carrying Bag

There’s likely a reason that Hammacher Schlemmer’s product page for the Convertible Coffee Table doesn’t show any pictures of people using it. It would probably crick your spine into a Quasimodo-hunch within mere moments of springing it open.

The table sits innocently in your living room, its slightly too-tall shape providing a shiny brown surface, just like any other coffee-table. But when you need to scoff a TV dinner or get some work done on your notebook computer, the lid pops open and rises up like the lid-activated storage drawers in a toolbox. The birch-veneer and walnut-covered top pantographs 15-inches towards you and sits at a height of 31-inches, a makeshift desk that sits… Right in front of your face.

If you’re wondering, that’s too high. I sat on my sofa and measured. 31-inches is around my chest height, and I’m over six-two. In fact, this desk is higher than my actual desk. Moreover, it is higher than my desk was before I cut the legs down so I could use it comfortably (and yes, I have a proper adjustable chair).

If you’re looking for a coffee table, then, which will flip up and allow very tall people with high chairs to use it as a work-surface, then go ahead and spend the $200. If you’re planning on using this as a quick way to more comfortably do some work whilst lazing on the sofa, or to safely eat a snack, forget it. Unless you are Mr. Fantastic, or have the body proportions of a T-rex, you’ll be sweeping those Doritos directly off the table-top and letting them drop into your mouth.

The Convertible Coffee Table [Hammacher Schlemmer via Oh Gizmo!]

The Netflix iPad application will now let you watch your streamed movies on the big screen. The 1.0.2 update brings support for the iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter, allowing you to pipe the video out to any VGA-compatible TV, monitor or projector.

The trick with Apple’s $30 dongle is that developers need to explicitly give it a purpose. Unlike hooking a monitor up to a notebook computer, you don’t automatically get either an extra screen or a mirrored version of the existing one. Instead, the developer decides what, if anything, gets shown. Apple’s Keynote app, for example, shows the presentation slideshow only, letting the iPad’s own screen show the control interface. Many apps will only show a blank external screen until a movie is played or a slideshow started.

So now you can hook your iPad up to a TV, sit back and watch big screen Netflix movies, albeit in low-res, analog VGA. It’s handy for hotels, we guess, or ad-hoc movie sessions at a friend’s home, but we can’t help thinking that Apple’s rather more flexible, do-anything Camera Connection Kit is a far better first accessory to buy.

Netflix update [iTunes via TUAW]

iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter [Apple]

See Also:

• IPad Camera Connection Kit Supports External Hard Drives
• iPad USB Camera Connector Works With Keyboards, Audio In-Out …
• Five Essential iPad Accessories
• Netflix Streaming on iPad
• 3G iPad's 'Unlimited' Data Plan Survives Torture Test

If you’ve suddenly found yourself torn between a tablet and netbook, Acer wants you to know you’re not alone. It also wants you to know there are options, one of which would benefit said company’s bottom line should you choose to accept. The new Aspire Timeline 1825PT is an 11.6-inch netvertible at heart, boasting a swivel-screen multitouch panel (1,366 x 768 resolution), up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor, integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, HDMI / VGA outputs, a 250GB or 320GB hard drive, integrated media card slot, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, a VGA webcam, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, gigabit Ethernet and a 6-cell battery that can reportedly last up to eight solid hours under ideal conditions (read: no chance). There’s even a multitouch trackpad and gobs of bloatware to really cap things off, with color options including diamond black, sapphire blue and ruby red — all of which sound seductively awesome. A 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium gets you going, but it’ll take at least £599.99 ($886) to get one headed your way.

Continue reading Acer launches 11.6-inch Aspire Timeline 1825PT netvertible

Acer launches 11.6-inch Aspire Timeline 1825PT netvertible originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 May 2010 01:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We recently were lucky enough to meet the makers of the Meguru, an electric car made with traditional Japanese crafts and techniques.

Resembling a kind of rickshaw eco car, the Meguru is comfy and looks pretty stylish, in a funky antique sort of way. The main body is iron coated with urushi (lacquer), the flooring made from real bamboo and, most noticeably, the “door” is a fan-shaped washi (Japanese paper).

Developed jointly by Yodogawa Group and Kinki Knives Industries Corporation in Osaka, the makers hope that Meguru will become a hit in traditional towns like Kyoto and Nara. They plan eventually to offer the light vehicle at a cost of around a million yen (c.$10,000).

Its batteries can be powered by ordinary household electrics and a two-hour charge lets you drive non-stop for forty kilometers (about 25 miles). Fairly leisurely in pace, Meguru can still pick up some speed, apparently up to 40 km/h (25mph). The car is actually already registered as a road vehicle and can be driven in public. so keep your eyes peeled!.

On the right is a picture of me enjoying the cushioned seating with the very friendly Kiyonobu Agata-san, one of the people behind the project.

A few years ago a Japanese university developed the BamGoo, a small EV made of bamboo. Could this be the start of a new Back to Japan eco car trend?