Hasta La Gadget!

If it was good enough for Marty McFly, it’s good enough for you

For $40 you can turn your sleek, modern iPhone into a retro-styled nightstand alarm clock. The Alarm Dock from Areaware is nothing but a hollow block of beechwood with a slot for your sliver of glass and steel, and yet — in conjunction with the right clock app — it manages to perfectly evoke those crappy old GE faux-wood flip clocks of yesteryear.

Designed by Jonas Damon, the box measures 6.75 x 3.5 x 2.5 inches and has space to plug the dock cable into the phone and route it out the back. And a good thing too, as the iPhone will eat its own battery before morning should you decide to leave the display running all night just to check the time once or twice.

Now all we need is an iPhone app which will wake you up with the inane chatterings of a shaved and caffeinated ape, punctuated by too-frequent and too-loud commercial spots. Older readers may remember something like this: it was called “radio”.

Alarm Dock product page [Areaware]

See Also:

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What could be more redolent of the morning than alarm clocks and toast? Nothing. Well, perhaps the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing, but this iPhone alarm clock is in the shape of a toaster, not a percolator or skillet. It’s called the Day Maker, and it pops your iPhone 4 up like a slice of toast when it thinks you’re ready to start the day.

There are slots for charging two iPhones, should you be lucky enough to share a bed with somebody as tasteful as yourself. When the time comes to wake up, the phone jumps up and the alarm sounds. And like all good alarm clocks you can defer the start of the day with snooze, in this case activated by pushing the phone back down.

The concept design is by Michael Kritzer, and is currently being shopped around by product showcase Habitco in the hopes of finding a manufacturer. I’d buy one, if only I had an iPhone 4, and if only I didn’t keep my existing alarm clock — a cracked old iPod Touch — in a real toaster on my nightstand (don’t ask. It’s something to do with midnight bagel cravings).

I’d like to see this as a more generic piece, though, and not just for one model of cellphone. As Apple seems to be updating its physical iPhone designs every two years, the maximum life for this toaster is a little over one year.

Day Maker [Michael Kritzer via Cult of Mac]

See Also:

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• Twittering Toaster Offers Some Tasty Bites
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On its own, the Unit 1 bag is a sleek, slimline and very nice-looking laptop sleeve (or paper-notebook sleeve, if you must). But add in Unit 2 and Unit 3 and it transforms into something a lot more useful, and yet still just as eye-friendly.

The company is called Unit Portables, and the bags are modular, with connections that are robust enough not to be snatched off by a passing pickpocket. The extra pouches can be bought and deployed as you need them, both inside and out, for complete customization.

It looks wonderful. It is also driving me crazy that I didn’t find out about these bags a earlier, when I was spending a week in Stockholm, Sweden. Why? Because it appears that the only way to get one is to walk you actual, physical meatbag body down to the Åhlens store in Odenplan, Stockholm. I was staying, like, one metro stop away from there, dammit.

Unit Portables product page (Unit Portables via Hypebeast and CrunchGear)

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• Swedish Speed-Camera Pays Drivers to Slow Down
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The accessory developer kit handed out to developers at Google's I/O conference. Photo: Mike Isaac/Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The first Android smartphone came in 2008. Then in 2010, the platform appeared on tablets. Now, Android wants to move into your home.

At its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google showed a sneak preview of its Android@Home project, which will extend the Android platform into household objects. That means some day in the future, you could control home appliances — your dishwasher, the heating system, the lights in your house — using your Android device as a remote control.

“Think of your phone as the nucleus that this all started with,” said Google engineering director Joe Britt in an interview. “We’re opening the platform up to everyone to do whatever they can imagine.”

Little detail was given, but Google explains it has essentially created a framework to control wireless communication between objects in your house. During a keynote presentation, Britt demonstrated this wireless communication using a Motorola Xoom tablet to control stage lights created by Google’s first officially announced partner, Lighting Science.

For Google, the Android@Home project is a first step into “the internet of things,” a term used to describe the growing trend of manufacturers producing intelligent, connected objects. Major tech companies like ARM Holdings and Hewlett-Packard have long since been involved in this space, from providing cheap microcontrollers and toolkits to hobbyists and engineers, to creating wireless sensor systems that measure seismic activity. In essence, projects like these ultimately aim to turn “dumb” or unconnected objects into “smart” (connected) ones.

“We want to think of every appliance in your home as a potential I/O device,” Britt said during the keynote presentation.

This type of wireless communication between devices already exists — commonly networked “smart buildings” often involve temperature monitors and lighting fixtures.

But Google says Android@Home cuts some of the expenses often associated with existing wireless monitoring systems. And according to Google engineering director of hardware Matt Hershenson, the project will open up possibilities of creating smart appliances to developers that otherwise wouldn’t have the chance.

In addition to the Android@Home preview, Google also debuted Android Open Accessory support. This allows external hardware, like a mouse or an XBox controller, to interact with your Android-powered device. If you want to attach an accessory that requires an app in order to function, you’ll be directed to the Android Market to download the app. USB support is currently available, and Bluetooth support is expected to come in the future.

Android Open Accessory is built in to Android 3.1 “Honeycomb” — which was released to Xoom tablet owners this morning — as well as Android 2.3.4 “Gingerbread.”

To spur the development of further peripherals able to interact with Android devices, Google handed out hundreds of Accessory Developer Kits (ADKs), which included hardware based on the highly popular Arduino platform.

Google's Arduino hardware can be found inside of the Accessory Developer Kit, handed out to attendees of its I/O conference. Photo courtesy of Google

The Arduino hardware platform is an ideal choice for Google’s extension of Android into physical computing. It’s very popular in the open-source hardware modification community due to its relative inexpensiveness, ease of use for beginners, and most importantly, its freely available software tools.

Tuesday’s announcements hint at Google’s larger vision for the platform: to spread Android’s reach across myriad devices and multiple industries.

“As an open platform,” said Google director of product management Hugo Barra, “Android was always meant to go well beyond the mobile phone.”

Or perhaps Android chief Andy Rubin said it best In a press conference on Tuesday: “Everything should be Android-ified.”

There’s not much to say about Pad and Quill’s Octavo for iPad 2 that I didn’t say about the first version. The case looks like a big Moleskine notebook, and the iPad is held very tightly inside by a precision cut wooden frame. But there are two reasons it’s worth a look. One, there have been some changes and two, the iPad 2 has itself changed the entire case game.

The original iPad really needed a case. Its shape and weight meant it slipped as easily from the hand as it did from the arm of the couch. Adding a case both protected it and made it easier to hold. Apple’s solution was to wrap the thing in a rubber bondage suit. It was ugly, but it worked, and it was as thin as a case could get.

But now, with its easy-to-hold new flat form, and the Smart Cover to protect and serve as a stand, many will use the iPad bareback. And while the Pad and Quill case is sturdy and very well made, putting my thin sliver of a tablet into its protective shell feels wrong. In the hand the iPad goes from being a skinny wonder to a clone of my old, fat iPad, only faster and with a worse speaker.

Still, the Octavo plays very nice with the iPad 2’s new features. There’s a hole in the back for a camera which works great. You can Instagram away with the cover in place, although you can’t fold it back around as it will then cover the hole.

There are also magnets in the cover, so that you are never bothered by the unlock screen, just like the Smart Cover. There is also a new pocket inside the front cover, for stray bits of paper. Finally, the old press-stud closure has been replaced by an elastic strip, like a Moleskine.

As for fit and finish, it’s as good as ever. The iPad is held snug, and if you should have any problems, the case ships with spare corner bumpers to pad things out. The iPad is released by pulling on a ribbon that pokes out like a bookmark.

If you want to use this style of case, the Octavo is recommended. It is solid and will outlast your iPad. Or you may choose to go commando, like me, and hang the inevitable scratches to the back of the iPad.

The Octavo os $60, and $10 extra for the version with a pocket. It comes with red, blue or green interiors.

Octavo product page [Pad & Quill]

See Also:

• Pad & Quill Octavo Case for iPad 2: Thinner, Lighter, Pocket-ier …
• iPad Case Smackdown: Dodocase Vs. Pad & Quill
• Pad & Quill's Book-Like Cartella Case for MacBook Air
• The Case: Another Beautiful Moleskine-Like iPad Case