Hasta La Gadget!

Moleskine has started stamping its name on plastic bags

You now how sometimes a strong brand, known for making one thing, and making it well, branches out and slaps its trademark on all kinds of other goods? We call it a “cash-in”. On a completely unrelated note, Moleskine has expanded its product rangie.

The “iconic” notebook company has added a whole range of bags and pens to its lineup, and the results aren’t pretty. Let’s take the messenger bag, a black plastic number who’s sole similarities to Moleskine’s books are the high price and the elastic strap that keeps it closed. A strap that works perfectly on a small, rigid book, but less so on a big floppy plastic bag.

The base is rigid, though, so it can stand up on its own, and the bag has several divisions and flaps for holding laptops (up to 15 inches) and Moleskine’s own accessories, such as the Multipurpose Case. This “case” is in fact several soft pouches which velcro to the inside of the bags to help organize things.

The bag is fine, and would be a great deal if you bought it in the junky suitcase store downtown for $20. As it it, the messenger bag comes in at €118, or $170. Even if the U.S price ends up lower, as is likely, that’s still a lot for a plastic bag.

But if you are going to buy one, drop me a line after you have done so. I have a very nice Adidas notebook you may be interested in. Just $120.

Moleskine messenger bag [Moleskine]

See Also:

• Moleskine
• Kindle Case from Moleskine Mixes Paper and E-Ink

Samson’s Meteor has a 1/8th inch socket and a one-inch diaphragm

The Samson Meteor mic, released today, offers lucky buyers fold-back legs and the largest diaphragm available. If this sounds to you like a great way for a frustrated musician to spend a weekend alone than you are dead right. And if you’re chuckling right now, you have a filthy mind.

If the gun from Portal had been made in the 1950s, it would look like the Meteor. It’s a chrome and mesh lozenge which stands stout on its stocky “fold-back” legs and stares at you with a single menacing blue eye. Inside the Dalek-like body is a cardioid-pattern mic which sends a 16-bit, 44.1/48kHz output to the USB port of your choice (it will work with the iPad via the camera connection kit).

If our lone musician starts to long for a little pillow-talk, he can flip the Meteor over and jack into the 1/8 inch hole at the back. This gives no-latency headphone monitoring, and the volume can be adjusted via a front-mounted knob.

There’s also a mic-mute switch (should the neighbors start to complain), a stand adapter for when you finally build up the confidence to go out in public and — finally — grippy rubber feet to stop the mic from sliding away from you.

The Samson Meteor is now available nationwide at Best Buy, for just $100, or cheaper than a date with a real girl.

Samson Meteor [Samson. Thanks, Brad!]

See Also:

• Shure Busts Out USB Microphones for Musicians, Podcasters
• Super-Microphone Picks Out Single Voice in a Crowded Stadium …
• 3 Lies Guitar Center Told Me Today About Microphones (Updated …
• New Microphone Uses Smoke — and Lasers!

Monocomplex Design’s Tack range is beach furniture with a clever twist. Instead of desperately trying not to sink into the sand, the Tack chair and bench are big spikes which slide into the soft surface like golf tees and sit there, solid.

The lightweight plastic chairs also have handles for easy removal. They probably aren’t made to be bought by your or me. Instead, they could be rented out to beachgoers for a few [insert local currency here] per day.

I can see these going down very well in my abandoned country of origin, England. There, on the two days of Summer enjoyed each year, the locals will load up their cars, sit in a traffic jam in sweltering 70ºF heat for several hours and then set up camp on the crowded beaches.

Like Robert Falcon Scott on his Antarctic voyage, the English come prepared: They will have fold out chairs, and perhaps a table. They will bring wind-breaks which they will hammer into the sand around them to turn their small patch of beach into a walled-off outdoor home. They will have thermos flasks full of hot tea, and cold-chests full of sandwiches and beer. There will be kids’ toys, inflatables, dinghies, lilos and cheap, plastic footballs.

The two things that you will never see are beach umbrellas and sunscreen. There’s nothing the English like more (apart from smashing up public toilets) than to spend their two days of summer lying unprotected under the sun, crisping their pale, sallow skin to a frazzled lobster-red, whilst sweating out enough salty perspiration to fill a paddling pool.

Yes, extra beach furniture would go down a storm in England. Or perhaps it is still a little too exotic. Maybe if Monocomplex came up with an easy to carry TV set and sofa that could be quickly unpacked on the beach, then they’d have the English market sewn up.

Tack product page [Monocomplex via Yanko]

Often, we see CGI rendering of concepts that look just like real products. Urbanears’ Bagis headphones are the opposite: a real product that looks like a computer mockup.

The optical illusion is no doubt helped by the Bagis’ single-color construction. Made from rubber, every part is the same shade of whatever garish color you choose. Some may say they look cheap, but I like the look, and if you live in Eastern Europe you could set off your sense of Ostalgie by buying a pair in drab gray or olive green.

Fancy colors are nice and all, but the Bagis (that’s a horrible name, by the way, a cross between “bag” and “haggis”) also have a neat trick: the earbuds snap together like Lego bricks. One ‘bud is male, the other female, and they join together to keep your cord from tangling when not in use. This also provides a quick visual (and tactile) reference as to which is left and right, something tricky to determine with many earbuds.

Finally, like all Urbanears cans, the Bagis have an in-line remote and a mic for making calls. The Bagis are available now, for $30.

Bagis product page [Urbanears. Thanks, Valerie!]

See Also:

• UrbanEars Medis Cling to Ears Like Spiderman
• Big Urbanears Headphones Good for Sharing, Traveling
• Marshall Headphones (Probably) Go to 11

Cheap craplets like the Nextbook may be the only tablets than can sell in an iPad-dominated market

You remember how — back when people still bought MP3 players — almost everybody had an iPod? I say “almost”, as there were some holdouts who opted for non-Apple players. But they weren’t buying Sony or Samsung in any numbers. They were buying the cheap-o players that cost pocket money.

And so I think it will go with tablets other than the iPad. The PlayBooks and Xooms aren’t going to sell more than a handful of units, but a super-cheap, stripped down tablet might. If somebody has $500 to spend on a tablet, they’re buying an iPad. But there will be people who want a tablet but will never have that kind of money to spend. They will go for the cheap, no-name tablets.

Which brings us, at last, to the Next3. It runs the “latest” version of Android (not really: it’s running version 2.1, which is a few revisions out of date), has an 8.4 inch touchscreen, an accelerometer, a speaker and a “built-in battery” (I told you it was stripped down). There’s no 3G, but you do get Wi-Fi.

The Next3 is being positioned as an e-reader, and had partnered up with Borders to put free books on the machine. Unfortunately, Borders has filed for bankruptcy, so now the Next3 can be had with the Kobo reader app and store. Kobo is a pretty good e-reader that works on pretty much any device.

The price for the Next3? $300. Even that may not be cheap enough, but at least somebody is trying to make crappy tablets for less than an iPad, rather than crappy tablets for more than the iPad.

Next3 product page [Nextbook. Thanks, Susan!]

See Also:

• Kobo Beats iBooks with International iPad Bookstore, App
• Kobo E-Reader First on iPad
• Motorola Xoom $600 With Verizon Contract, $800 Without
• Hands-On With the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet
• PlayBook Shows Challenges of Bringing Flash to Tablets