Hasta La Gadget!

Twelve South’s MagicWand is a 16-inch strip of aluminum with a single purpose in life: to make your Apple keyboard and trackpad get along better. The Bluetooth aluminum keyboard and the Magic Trackpad slide into the c-section strip and are held together as one solid unit. You can use it on the desktop or on your lap.

I have had one to test for the past week or so and it is a typically solid accessory from Twelve South. The two peripherals snap into place by their battery bulges — the round bits that prop them up from the rear. Once snapped into the MagicWand, you slide an h-section plastic bar between them. This, along with a rubber t-section insert, keep the pad and board in line with each other. Once connected, they seem as one.

For me, using the unit on the desk isn’t so great. One stray touch on the now very nearby trackpad can send your cursor off to another part of your text and have you tying in the wrong place. This is more of a problem with my flailing typing style, though. The actual MagicWand is meant for a desk, and has rubber feet at the rear, just like the Apple originals.

On the lap, though, it’s better, forming a solid lap-top desk. You can sit back and control a media center Mac Mini, for example, or just lean back in your desk chair as I am now, taking a break from all that endless sitting up straight.

The MagicWand will cost $30. It works great, but I prefer to have my Magic Trackpads (I have two) out on either side of my keyboard, and pushed a little back. If you do fancy one, then go ahead. You won’t have a problem with build quality.

MagicWand product page [Twelve South. Thanks, Andrew!]

See Also:

• Apple's Magic Trackpad Brings Multi-Touch to the Desktop
• Apple's First 'Magic' Trackpad from 1997
• Backpack Adds Tidy Shelf to Back of Mac
• BookBook for MacBook Notebook

Why should the audiophile nerds get all the good-sounding gear? Floor-standing speakers, amps that weight a ton and speaker cables as thick as the tentacles of a giant squid might sound good, but they’re not exactly portable.

Battery powered speakers are never going to compete with proper hi-fi gear, but at least we don’t have to settle for sucky portable speakers anymore. The new foxL v2 joins the Jawbone Jambox in the tiny-speaker-big-sound category, and better, it was invented by a rocket scientist.

There are two internal tricks. One is the “Twoofer”, a combined tweeter and woofer which saves space but apparently gives a big sound from a small (25mm) driver. The other, rather cleverer, trick is the “BassBattery”. This uses the mass of the rechargeable li-ion battery as an “acoustic suspension bass driver.”

The foxL comes in two forms: a straight-up wired version and an A2DP Bluetooth version which also adds a mic for hands-free calling, and a call answer button. They are priced at $200 and $250.

A word on this kind of speaker. Even with clever engineering and high-quality internals, the bass from a little speaker is never going to shake the room. I have been trying out the Jawbone Jambox for the last few days and it sounds truly amazing for its tiny size, but there is no real bass thump. You get a good thud, but it’s not the same. The SuperTooth Disco which I tested a while back has a subwoofer built-in. This gives better bass, but the speaker is as big as three Jamboxes.

That said, things are a helluva lot better than they used to be.

FoxL product page [SoundMatters via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Jambox
• Jawbone Creates a Wireless Speaker With Serious Boom
• Ears-On With the SuperTooth Disco Bluetooth Boombox
• SuperTooth, a Block-Rocking Portable Bluetooth Speaker

At long, long last the iControlPad – a hardware gamepad for the iPhone – can be bought. Well, almost. You can order today for a delivery next week, whereupon you can slot in your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other phone that will fit in the slot and play button-bashing titles like Street Fighter 4 as God intended.

We have followed the on-again-off-again history of the iControlPad here at Gadget Lab, right up until the last setback which saw the iControlpad team pulling the almost-ready design due to cold feet. The fear was that Apple wouldn’t approve of an accessory that hooked directly up to its phone, and would kill the project. The result was a switch to Bluetooth, which has the happy side-effect of making the gamepad compatible with any phone, console or computer that works with it.

The unit has its own 1500mAH battery, which can also charge your phone via USB should you decide that making a phone call is more important than a quick blast on Sonic the Hedgehog. It is also customizable. The main unit is flanked by two “side clamps”. These are plastic bars that clip on and provide a snug case for the following phones, pasted right in from the iControlPad product page:

iPhone 3, iPhone 3G, iPhone, iPhone 3GS, iPhone4, iPod touch (some require padding), Motorola Backflip (needs padding), LG Optimus S, LG Ally, Blackberry Touch (Torch?), Samsung Intercept (may require adjustment), HTC Dream, T-Mobile G1, Era G1

While you’ll need to jailbreak your iPhone to get the most from the controller, it “does work on un-[jailbroken] iPhones in keyboard mode.” So you’ll have to wait for

The price? Well, you’d better be pretty serious about your gaming, as it’s $75 with sides, plus $15 for extra sides, or $60 naked. available “now”.

iControlPad product page [iControlPad]

See Also:

• Real Gaming Control Pad Planned for IPhone
• Belkin Readying iPhone Joypad?
• GPad: Another iPhone Gamepad Case
• Stick-On Buttons Turn Smartphones into Game-Pads

It’s Friday, and you know what that means: Time for impossibly specialist bike tools [No it isn’t – Ed]. This week it’s the turn of the LockWhip, a combo-tool from Fixed Gear London. But first, here’s a video of it in action:

As you can see, the chap doing the demonstration is a qualified fixed-gear rider: With no brakes, he terrorizes pedestrians by running a red light at top speed and careers into London’s Picadilly Circus. He also has the obligatory skinny pants with Kryptonite Evo-Mini D-lock in the back pocket. Rest assured: this guy is a professional.

In order to celebrate surviving yet another careless voyage through England’s capital, our hero then decides to change his rear sprocket (translation for non fixed-gear riders: he changes gear). For this he uses, of course, the LockWhip. This contains a chain-whip to whip off the sprocket, a lock-ring tool and an open 15mm wrench to remove and replace the wheel.

Once done, he tucks the oily tool into his inside pocket, wipes his hands on his pants and jumps back into the heavy London traffic with scarcely a glance. If you want to see fellow road users (cars and busses) being surprised by a reckless rider jumping in front of them from nowhere and generally trying to cause an accident, then keep watching until the end.

The 250mm x 40mm, hardened and blackened steel LockWhip isn’t exactly portable, but its more portable than a regular chain-whip and lock-ring combo tool, if only because you don’t need to carry a separate 15mm wrench. £26 ($42 / €31).

LockWhip Tool [FGLDN via Urban Velo]

See Also:

• 5 Inexplicable Fixie Fashions
• Hipsters Grieve: The $150 Walmart Fixie
• Bianchi to Launch Retro-Styled Fixie in 2010
• Public Bikes: Fixed-Gear Style with Granny-Bike Ride
• Bent Basket: The Fixed-Gear of Cargo-Carrying

Confession: I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t even have a smartphone. What I have is some piece-of-crap Samsung “feature” Phone. It’s called the Behave, or the Beyoncé, or something like that (I’d check the name, but then I’d have to touch it). I hate it. But I hated it even more when I got it, and here’s why:

This phone, and pretty much any other phone I have bought since phones started to get cameras in them, have plastic or rubber flaps stuffing up the charging holes, and often other ports, too. These need to be popped out, or dug out with a fingernail, every time you need to charge the phone. Then you need to somehow hold the thing open with one finger while you wrestle the (proprietary) charging plug into place.

The answer is, of course, to rip the cover off like the crusted scab it is, and toss it in the trash. One I did this I experienced the delight of of removing one tiny annoyance from the library of UI errors that make up the Samsung Beyoncé’s design.

“Wait,” you say. “Now your phone will get stuffed with fluff, like the belly-button of a flannel shirt fanatic.” To you I say “No!” I just peered into Beyoncé’s charging slot and it is fluff-free. It’s a little dusty, but so what? The charger slides in just fine. And to be clear, I keep this thing in lint-filled pockets and bags alongside keys and coins. The screen is scratched to hell and the back-plate is chipped back to the bare metal but the power-hole is completely clear.

But that’s just, like, my (vehemently held) opinion, man. There are many who would like to spend $10 on a tiny rubber bung to stuff-up their iPhone’s dock-connector port, and perhaps even the headphone jack (and why not. If you’re going to annoy yourself, why not do it properly?). For you, there is the iCorkz Combo Pack, an accessory that can bring frustration and anxiety of accidental loss to your everyday phone dealings. You’re welcome.

iCorkz Combo Pack product page [iCorkz via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Tat