Hasta La Gadget!

The MyTrek pulse monitor tracks your exercise with an iPhone app

Whenever I see anyone running with a heart-rate monitor, I can’t help but think of bondage . Sweaty and bare chested, these people run with a strap around their glistening torsos and look like nothing more than extras in a fetish movie. I guess there is a bigger number of people who exercise with their shirt mercifully covering their shame, but the kinky-looking ones are the ones I remember.

There will be no suggestions of S&M with Scosche’s MyTrek pulse monitor. The strap fits around your forearm and speaks wirelessly to your iPhone or iPod Touch via Bluetooth. It comes equipped with an accelerometer to help distinguish between your hammering pulse and your lolloping gait, and the rechargeable battery keeps it going for 5.5 hours — longer than you’ll ever need. The measuring is done by LEDs and photo sensors which track blood pressure fluctuations to determine your heart rate.

A companion app offers a live readout, and will also track your progress over time, with graphs, a workout calendar and even calories expended. Now you can run for just long enough to burn off that extra donut, and not a meter further.

Finally, the armband has buttons to control your music.

The MyTrek is available now, for $130. I’d say that’s a small price to pay for running shirtless and not looking like a pervert.

MyTrek product page [Scosche. Thanks, Mark!]

MyTrek app [iTunes]

The good news: Starting next year, the 3-D glasses you get with your 3-D TV may be compatible with displays made by other major manufacturers as well.

The bad news: They’re still hopelessly ugly.

Sony, Samsung and Panasonic have rallied together to support the “Full HD 3-D Glasses Initiative” and will use Xpand brand 3-D glasses for their active shutter sets starting in 2012.

“The companies intend to work together on the development and licensing of radio frequency (RF) system 3-D active glasses technology,” according to the press release. The technology will be applicable towards all kinds of 3-D displays, including computer monitors, projectors, 3-D theaters and, of course, television sets.

To date, adoption of 3-D in the home has been pretty slow, and not without reason. The technology is victim to a number of issues, including causing nausea, eyestrain and fatigue for some viewers. It also has suffered from a dearth of quality content offerings and diminished consumer trust following a slew of 3-D box-office flops. Not to mention most people just don’t want to put on a pair of chunky, unattractive specs to watch Avatar in 3-D or enjoy a 3-D video game.

Perhaps this move to unify 3-D among suppliers will put consumers a little more at ease; if they purchase a Panasonic TV set and a Samsung monitor, they’re at least able to use the same pair of 3-D glasses for both. LG and Vizio are two other major manufacturers of 3-D TVs who at this point are not taking part in the initiative.

Xpand currently has universal 3-D glasses available for $129.

Development for the new, universal Xpand RF system 3-D glasses will start in September. If you’re an early adopter and you’ve already purchased a 3-D TV this year, don’t fret: The glasses will be backwards compatible with the companies’ 2011 active-shutter TVs. However, the press release doesn’t specify if prescription models will also be universal.

Too bad active shutter glasses aren’t as attractive as these guys.

Source: The Giz

Image credit: The Giz

The Elecom Silicone Stand makes your phone look like a tiny iMac

I hate my stupid phone so much that buying a stand for it would be like buying a beer for the idiot who keeps parking his BMW in my neighborhood bike lane — utterly unthinkable. But for those who have better phones (or who drive BMWs and think that the roads were built just for them), the Elecom Silicone Stand is a great way to get rid of $21.

An elegantly-curved polished aluminum base arcs up, iMac-style, to a flat panel up top. This panel is made from sticky silicone, and grips the rear of your flat-backed phone using nothing but the magical powers of friction. It can be placed in portrait or landscape orientations, depending on what your phone will be doing as it sits cosseted on your desk, and keeps your handset both scratch free and mercifully raised above the plebeian hordes of cables, loose change and other common detritus below.

You can pre-order the stand right now, in black or white. Me? I’ll leave my crappy Samsung Beyoncé in the bottom of my bag along with the keys and coins it deserves. I will then take the sharpest of those keys and take a walk with it down to the bike lane, looking for a shiny black German car.

Elecom Silicone Stand [Flutterscape]

See Also:

• DJ Mix Table Resembles Giant, Broken iMac
• Speaker Dock Turns iPad into Tiny iMac

It probably infringes all kinds of trademark law, but the iPad Game Boy cases is still pretty awesome

Lootiful’s retro-tastic iPad case will make your iPad 2 look just like a first-gen Nintendo Game Boy. The polycarbonate snap-on back plate turns your sleek, modern tablet into the taste-wasteland of beige, gray purple and yellow that was all the rage back in 1989.

While the case isn’t yet ready for sale, Lootiful already sells a smaller version for the iPhone 4 for a reasonable $18. You can pre-order the case “soon,” though. And with Nintendo’s continued refusal to put its games on non-Nintendo hardware, this might just be the closest you’ll get to playing Mario on your iPad. At least until Nintendo is forced to pull a Sega, I guess.

iPad 2 Game Boy case [Lootiful via TUAW]

See Also:

• Gadget Lab Notes: 8-Bit Camera App Snaps Game Boy Camera-Style …
• Heat-Pickled Gulf War GameBoy Still Works
• Super Hard Drive: 80GB Drive Hacked into Gameboy
• iPhone Gets GameBoy Emulator
• Ceramic Bricks Cast from Original Gameboy

If you have been looking for a case that would protect your iPad against anything short of a nuclear explosion, and at the same time make it look like a really tacky Dell laptop from the late 1990s, then today is your lucky day.

The case is from Pelican, and if you know anything about Pelican gear you’ll know that it is pretty much indestructible. The Pelican 1075 HardBack is designed to work with the iPad or iPad 2, but is big enough to fit a netbook if you still have one that works. In the latter case, you can install the standard “pick and pluck” foam lining, or a netbook-shaped pad.

For either iPad, a custom-shaped insert is available. This will also prop up the iPad when the case is open, letting you put a Bluetooth keyboard on the bottom section and making the thing really look like an old, ugly laptop. These is also space under the keyboard for various cables and accessories — this isn’t the case for you if you want something slim and stylish.

In fact, the Pelican is most likely to be used by people in harsh environments. Tony Stark might use it next time he takes a trip to the Middle East, for example.

The case is pretty reasonable. And calling a Pelican case affordable says more about the crazy overpricing in the iPad case world. You can pick on up for $70.

Pelican 1075 HardBack [Pelican. Thanks, Kiersten!]

See Also:

• Review: Pelican HeadsUP Lite 2670— Dull Even in the Daytime …
• Dell’s Rugged Notebook Drops From the Ugly Tree
• Rugged, Waterproof Hard Drive Keeps Your Secrets Safe