Hasta La Gadget!

A fake leather-bound book-shaped case for a laptop computer is pretty dumb, but then the MacBook Air isn’t really like any other laptop computer. Instead of winding up with a huge behemoth of a case desperately trying to squeeze a computer inside, like a portly gentleman trying to hide his belly with a tent-like shirt, you can slide the tiny MacBook Air anywhere you like. And one place we like is inside the new Pad & Quill Cartella case.

The Cartella is an italian leather-bound, baltic birch-framed book-a-like for the 11 and 13-inch Airs. We used to call this category “faux-Moleskine”, but now its probably big enough to have its own name. I’ll leave that to somebody else though, as the best I can manage this Monday morning is Notebook Notebook, or iBook (which I think somebody took already).

Like the iPad and iPhone cases before it, the Cartella holds its contents in place with the pressure from squishy corner pads. And if it’s anything like the iPad version, it’ll grip your Air like Spiderman grips, well, anything.

The case also comes with a document pocket inside the front cover, for carrying those pesky pieces of paper people persistently press on us, and thanks to cut-out in the wooden frame, you can get to all ports while the case is attached. And like the iPad case, you can flip the front cover around the back and make a wedge-shaped lap-table to work on.

The cases weight 13.3 and 14-ounces, and cost $90 or $100, with $10 off right now as a launch offer.

Cartella product page [Pad & Quill. Thanks, Brian!]
Photos: Pad & Quill

See Also:

• iPad Case Smackdown: Dodocase Vs. Pad & Quill
• The Case: Another Beautiful Moleskine-Like iPad Case
• Little Black Book: An Open and Shut Case for iPhone 4

Let’s say that each of these Plattfuss Rubber Bands, made from old bike inner-tubes, is 2mm wide. You get around 70 in a pack, which requires 140mm (5.5-inches) of OG bike tube to make them. The sizes in the pack are assorted, from different tube sizes, but to keep things simple let’s assume they come from 700c tubes.

These tubes fit a wheel with a diameter of 622 mm (forgive the international standard measurements – inches are impossible to work with at small sizes). Thus the circumference of a 700c wheel (and therefore the tube) is πD, or pi x diameter, or 1,954mm, or around 77-inches. Thus you could get 13 packs of Plattfuss Rubber Bands from a single inner-tube.

The price for a pack of the Plattfuss bands? $7. The price of 13 packs? $91. The price of a used inner-tube? Free.

Plattfuss Rubber Bands [Plastica via Uncrate]

See Also:

• IT Clips Turn Inner-Tubes into Bungees, Belts
• Rubber Wallets Made From Old Inner-Tubes
• How To: Make an iPod Nano Case from a Bike Inner-tube
• Rubber Bags Made from Bike Inner Tubes
• (Almost) 1001 Uses for Old Inner Tubes

Apple sought to reinvent the phone with the iPhone, and now a company is trying to reinvent the landline with an iPhone accessory.

Seriously. That’s the gist of the iFusion accessory, which consists of an iPhone power-charging dock and a Bluetooth receiver that pairs the device with a traditional telephone handset as well as a speakerphone. There’s also a USB port on back to connect the device straight to a PC or Mac for syncing the iPhone with iTunes.

The company said customers would enjoy the handset’s ergonomic design. However, unless you have miraculously good iPhone reception, I’m not sure why you’d get this.

I tried placing a call to my friend Heather with the iFusion. I heard her loud and clear when she picked up through the iFusion handset, but she hung up after she couldn’t hear a word I was saying (I think).

Showcased at Macworld Expo, the iFusion Smartstation iPhone dock costs $170. The accessory ships April 2011.

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

Some things are cool for a very short time, before becoming totally dorky. The aluminum, fold-up “adult” scooter, for example. This flash-fashion in the early oughts saw creative types in London’s Soho scooting from meeting to meeting along crowded sidewalks, bellies wobbling as they turned heads, and then heading down to the Met Bar for an after-work cocktail. And then, mere weeks later, you were a loser just for touching one.

The iPad’s cachet has already proved longer lived, but Assero seems hell-bent in changing that. The company’s Defender and Protector bags are backpacks that are worn backwards, sitting over your chest and belly. The iPad sits in a front pocket which can be opened up and hinged down, suspended at your chosen angle by two straps. Thus positioned, you can attack the screen with both hands, just like using a laptop.

These bags are clearly the iPad equivalent of the fanny-pack, itself something only worn by people who have given up on life and switched to elastic-waisted jeans and shoes that can fold up to be packed easily. Is the iPad so big and awkward that you need to have a desk for it suspended above your gut? Apparently so, according to the people Assero managed to extract quotes from:

My Apple iPad is heavier than I expected; and, to carry it with patient files and everything else was just not convenient.

So heavy… What about this one:

I thought the Apple iPad was going to revolutionize my industry, but while it’s convenient – it requires a desk which isn’t often available to me

A desk? Really?

The Apple iPad wasn’t an option to me because it is awkward to use while standing.

Well, that one’s true.

The Protector is the smaller of the two, and is pretty much a sleeve for the iPad. It costs $90. The Defender is more like a cross between a laptop bag and a backpack, with pockets for phones, pens and cables, and costs $130. Both can, of course, be worn as regular backpacks, but then you’re giving a pickpocket the same easy access to you iPad that you enjoyed when it was up front.

Assero Defender and Protector [Assero]

See Also:

• Slim, Minimal iPad Bag is a Purse for Men
• Dodobag, a Murse to Hold Your Dodocase
• How-To Make a Waterproof, Kitchen-Proof iPad Case and Stand …
• Stash-Bag is a Travel-Friendly Gadget-Tidy
• Murses

Just in case you thought I get a little too mean when writing about certain products, here’s an email from the people at Waterfield Designs regarding a writeup of their keyboard carrying case. You may remember that it caused “tears of pity and sorrow to moisten my normally parched, cracked ducts.”

Since the keyboard case signaled the end of civilization, I thought you’d enjoy this new case too. (End of the planet as we know it?)

And what is this mystery new case, the accessory that will extinguish all life, not just human, from this abused sphere we call home? It’s the SuperDrive Sleeve, a pouch that makes the keyboard case (and its good friend, the trackpad cover) seem positively useful.

Item: You haven’t used the optical drive in any of your computers for the last year. Many of you will have owned a desktop or notebook and not even know whether the SuperDrive even works.

Item: You have bought a MacBook Air, which comes with a USB key to restore the operating system and leaves out the DVD-drive in favor of useful features like battery life and portability.

Item: You can download movies these days, you know.

Despite this, the Waterfield SuperDrive Sleeve presumes not only that you will somehow decide that you need to own a CD/DVD reader/writer, but that you will actually carry it with you. Not only that, but that you will do so often enough to need a purpose-made case. A $25 case with a ballistic nylon shell, a soft, coddling neoprene lining and a mesh pocket for the cable (or a floppy disc, I suppose, considering that you are clearly living in the past).

I’m willing to admit I may have gone in a little hard on the keyboard case, but a SuperDrive case? C’mon. What next? A Fax Bag?

SuperDrive Sleeve [Waterfield Designs. Thanks, Heidi!]

See Also:

• Protective Keyboard Cases Signal End of Civilization
• Protective Keyboard Case Joined By Trackpad Cover
• Leather Case Turns iPad into Netbook
• Aluminum Shell Hides iPad Keyboard