Hasta La Gadget!

The Pocket Grill. Better than sausages on sticks. Photo credit Pocket Grill

While much of the world inhabited by Gadget Lab readers has mercifully returned to temperatures conducive to work and play, here in Barcelona, Spain, the weather is a hellish combination of hot and humid, the kind of weather that requires you take a pair of spare T-shirts should you need to go outside.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that its still grilling season here, and what better way to enjoy an impromptu BBQ in the cool surrounding mountains than with the Pocket Grill. The grill comes in three folding parts: a pair of legs and the grill itself.

The stainless steel grill folds out to provide a cooking surface of almost two feet by one foot. The legs unfurl to make two long and rather flimsy-looking c-sections. These cross over each other to make an x-shape with four feet, and the grill clips on top. It looks wobbly, but is solid enough to cook up to ten pounds of red meat and hippy vegetables at a time.

As you might guess by the hammy video on the site, the Pocket Grill is a kickstarter project, and you’ll need to pledge $40 to secure inn of your own. There’s also a $15 cookbook, but if you need recipes to use a grill, then maybe you should just stay at home and order in a pizza.

Pocket Grill product page [Kickstarter]

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• Tailgating Gone Wild: Trailer Packs Home Cinema, Grill, Satellite TV …
• Grilliput Pocket BBQ

As I write this, there’s a JawBone JamBox speaker sliding slowly backwards across my desk. I hope it’s being moved by sound, otherwise the end of the world may well be nigh.

This new-found ambulatory ability is thanks to nothing more than a software update. And no, this update doesn’t make a pair of legs spring Transformer-like from the chunky little Bluetooth speaker. It adds a new sound-processing feature called “LiveAudio.”

LiveAudio adds support for binaural audio, the technique used to create 3-D stereo sound. Usually, a pair of microphones are placed on a dummy head to record what a human would hear. Then, listening later on headphones, we experience the sound as if we were “there.”

The JamBox update brings this playback trick to a speaker.

The software claims to eliminate the crosstalk from the left and right channels, thus delivering the right sound to the right ear and so on — much like 3-D video, only with audio. So how does it work?

Amazingly well. I’m not sure it actually manages to only send the correct sounds to each ear, but the processing results in a much bigger audio “image”. The JamBox is a little thing, and it is somewhat disconcerting to have it sat on the desk in front of you, but with sound coming from seemingly a few feet to the left and right.

You can do before/after tests yourself, if you like. Once the update is installed (after the familiar plugging and unplugging ritual to make your computer see the speaker), head over to one of the recommended binaural audio sources (I used Spotify) and listen. To toggle LiveAudio on and off, hold the plus and minus buttons down together. The difference is startling (you’ll also know which mode you’re in a the volume up/down buttons play a different tone when pressed).

The update is free, and if you own a JamBox, you should get it right away. Just remember not to put it too close to the edge of a table before you fire it up, lest it take a dive. And the music I was listening to which drove the JamBox across my desk? 07 Ghosts I by Nine Inch Nails. Crank it.

JamBox LiveAudio [JawBone. Thanks, Mindy!]

See Also:

• Speakers
• Bass-Bustin', Battery-Powered Speaker Invented by Rocket Scientist …
• Ferox

Really?

The Desk-It Weekly Calendar looks rather pointless, whether you prefer paper diaries over electronic or not. Scrawling your dates and appointments onto sheafs of dead trees is fine: The Lady prefers it that way because it is light, easy to read and more portable even than her never-used iPad.

But the Desk-It is always tied to your computer. Once you stick the sheet to the chin of your monitor, it’s going nowhere, so you may as well use the calendaring app on the computer itself. Sure, you could rip the giant Post-It-style sticker off to take it with you, but that’s about as practical as trying to carry a sheet of fly paper.

And if you’re not using an iMac, it seems even more pointless: Without that slab of aluminum behind it, you’ll have nothing to press against with your pen. And if you are using an iMac, you surely just cried out “What?! You expect me to use iCal? That piece of crap?”

My answer is to upgrade to OS X Lion. Despite the annoying leather-look, the 10.7 iCal is around one thousand times better than the old version. Try it out.

Back to the Desk-It. If you want one, a pad of sixty will cost you $10, or roughly $60 for a year’s worth. Available now.

Desk-It Weekly Calendar [Pocketo via Werd]

Photo credit: Desk-It

See Also:

• Pointy Post-It Notes Are Better Than The Original
• Pock-It: A Post-It Note, Pimped
• Paper Planners Survive in Smartphone Era

Budwrap wraps buds

Budwrap isn’t an insulating collar to protect your delicate office-worker’s hands from your chilled can of watery beer, although it could presumably be used as such. No, Budwrap is a silicon bracelet around which you can securely wrap your cellphone’s earbuds.

Designed by Mark Williams, a high school teacher from Texas, the Budwrap was inspired by two things he saw students doing every day: wearing rubber bracelets and wearing earbuds. The band sits on your wrist and has two ears which wrap over and provide open-sided tunnels into which the earbuds themselves are slotted. Then you wrap the cord gently around the band (the edges are raised to keep it from slipping off) and the jack socket has its own hole to keep it safe.

Because the Budwrap is sized for Apple’s white earbuds, the holes are in all the right places. What’s more, it turns out that your wrist (or the notionally perfect Budwrap wrist) is the same size as the iPhone 4. Or at least it also wraps around the iPhone, longwise, so you don’t have to wear this on your arm.

Mark is soliciting funding from Kickstarter, where a pledge of $15 will get you a black Budwrap “sent directly to your doorstep.” More colors will appear once the project is successful.

Budwrap product page [Budwrap. Thanks, Mark!]

See Also:

• Ingenious Cord-Winder Fashioned From Business Card
• Readers' Hacks: New, Improved Headphone Cable-Winder
• Zip-Together Headphone Cords Eliminate Tangles

The K750 soaks up ambient light and can run for months without new AAs or a plug-in charge. Photo courtesy of Logitech

Wireless keyboards are great for keeping your desk clutter-free. But no one wants to make a trip to the store for a fresh pack of Energizers when their keyboard dies.

Enter: Logitech’s Wireless Solar Keyboard K750, now available in a Mac-compatible model.

Essentially, it’s your high school calculator revisited. Solar cells lining the top of the unit use ambient light — desk lamps, fluorescent ceiling bulbs, and even sunlight for the old-school types — to charge the keyboard. Once set up, it runs without interruption so long as there’s at least some illumination. On a full charge, the K750 can run for three months in complete darkness.

The keyboard has the standard OS X layout with shortcut keys, and each key cap is slightly concave for pleasant typing patter. Choose either all black, or Apple white, with the option of three candy colors to accent the solar panels.

Along with eliminating all of that earth-killing battery waste, the K750 is made without PVC and arrives in a fully recyclable box. Mother Gaia would be proud of you.