Hasta La Gadget!

[Above, The Fort Gay Free Will Baptist Church, Fort Gay, WV.]

Cassville was small town in West Virginia that lies on the banks of the Tug Fork and Big Sandy rivers. In 1932, for reasons that are apparently now entirely forgotten, the town changed its name to Fort Gay. I had never heard of the place–and neither, apparently, had Microsoft. After all, as of the 2000 census, the town only boasted 800 residents.

The company suspended a gamer after he listed the town as his location on the service, declaring it offensive.

“At first I thought, ‘Wow, somebody’s thinking I live in the gayest town in West Virginia or something,'” the gamer, Josh Moore, told the Associated Press. “I was mad. … It makes me feel like they hate gay people.”

Moore, a 26-year-old unemployed factory worker contacted Microsoft customer service to complain about the suspension. He told the incredulous Microsoft employee to Google the city’s ZIP code–25514. The employee refused (after all, they probably only use Bing over there, right?).

The mayor of the town attempted to intervene in the conflict, only to be told that, the word ‘gay’ “was inappropriate in any context,” according to the AP.

Microsoft has since apologized for the mix up, promising to “make it right.”

The guys behind the new modulR line of iPad cases have a clever idea: Let one case take on multiple identities through a variety of add-ons.

The basic case is a hard plastic shell that protects the iPad in use. Its rubberized edges grip the tablet securely, while little “nubs” on the back give your hand something more to grip onto than the iPad’s normally slick exterior. They also help raise the device off the table so it’s a little easier to pick up.

When traveling, you can clip on a hard plastic face plate that protects the iPad’s screen.

At your desk? Slide the case into an L-shaped metal bracket, which has slots that the case’s rear nubs lock into. (Note: We’ve actually got the bracket upside-down in the photos here, a mistake so common that modulR says they’ll be adding stickers to the bracket so customers know which end is up.)

Those same slots appear on modulR’s “slim case,” which lets you mount your iPad on the wall — or, with the addition of a handful of powerful neodymium magnets, a refrigerator. In fact, this is the first refrigerator mount we’ve seen for the iPad in the Gadget Lab. It works with most old-school fridges, but if you’ve got a fancier wood-paneled or stainless steel refrigerator, you’re out of luck. (Stainless steel isn’t magnetic.)

We used it to display our favorite websites and recent tweets on the face of Beer Robot, our office kegerator.

You might be nervous about the effect of those powerful magnets on the iPad’s internals. While modulR couldn’t offer us a blanket assurance, they did say that they expected no problems — and we saw none during our tests. Perhaps if the iPad had a spinning disk inside instead of solid state storage, the proximity of magnets might be a bigger problem.

One down side is weight. The case is substantial, which provides protection, but it also adds 5.8 ounces to the iPad’s weight (10.2 ounces with the cover on). That may not sound like much, but it’s a noticeable addition to a gadget that weighs just 1.5 pounds to begin with.

The other is price: modulR sells a bundle that includes the case, cover, stand, and the slim mount for $100. The case and cover alone are $60.

Still, it’s a substantial, solid case and the only one we know of that allows fridge mounting. If that’s what you’re looking for, the modulR case is a good choice.

modulR iPad Case (product website)

Photos: Jon Snyder / Wired.com

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

See Also:

• Moleskine-Shaped, Bamboo iPad Case
• Quirky's iPad Case With Two-Way Kick-Stand
• The Case: Another Beautiful Moleskine-Like iPad Case
• Combination-Lock iPad Case is Almost Pointless
• How-To Make a Waterproof, Kitchen-Proof iPad Case and Stand …

If you’re not careful, it’s pretty easy to let your entire living room become slowly dominated by gaming gear. Your Rock Band drum set establishes a base of operations, and slowly but surely the pile of games encroaches on your couch’s territory. Then the guitars make a play for the easy chair, and the wireless controllers take over the coffee table. With Level Up’s new gaming towers, it doesn’t matter which game system you have (or if you have multiple,) you can get a tower that will store the system itself, your favorite games, your controllers, and even a few other peripherals like those Rock Band instruments you just don’t know where to keep.

Level Up has four towers for the three major consoles: the Aperture and Trideca that match the Nintendo Wii, the Allow for the PlayStation 3, and the Zig-Zag for the XBox 360. Each tower has a controller deck that the top with molded slots for your game controllers, shelves for your games and other discs, and soft plastic hooks on the side for cables, Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitars. This way you can keep all of your gaming gear in check without necessarily hiding it all away. The shelves are available at brick-and-mortar stores like Toys ‘R Us and Bed Bath and Beyond now for $69.99 retail. 

The iPhone 4‘s best new feature in iOS 4.1—besides not hanging up on people with your face—is its ability to capture HDR photos. But you’ve gotta use it correctly. More »

As predictable as the sun rising somewhere over east Japan, the iFixit crew have put their tools and wits to the task of deconstructing the latest generation of iPod touch. Their teardown is still ongoing (exciting, isn’t it?), but here are their observations so far. The new touch is noted as being the easiest to crack open yet, and yes, its retina-busting 640 x 960 LCD is fused to the external glass, just like the iPhone 4. There’s an 11-gram EMI shield between the front end and the battery, accounting for a lofty 10 percent of the portable media player’s weight. Beyond it, you’ll find a chunky 3.44Whr Li-Pol cell, which is soldered to the board as is usual Apple practice, but a novelty here is that the headphone jack isn’t. Great, tie down the thing we might want to replace and untether the one we don’t care about. We’ll keep you updated with any other salient info as it arises, but for now, go check out the source link for more pictures of the undressed iPod touch.

The front-facing camera has been found, as expected, to be the exact same module as built into the iPhone 4. The WiFi antenna is located just under the front glass panel, a position said to have allowed for the new all-aluminum back on the iPod touch. Another shock: the A4 chip that drives the iPad and iPhone 4 is also found on the 2010 touch, and its markings confirm a 256MB RAM allowance.

Continue reading iPod touch (2010) torn down, found to contain an awful lot of battery

iPod touch (2010) torn down, found to contain an awful lot of battery originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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