Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Maybe you’ve been eating too much fried chicken, or you’re just a neurotic health nut. Whatever the case may be, if blood pressure is important to you, there’s some iPhone dongleware for that.

Withings’ blood-pressure monitor is a traditional strap with a dock connector at the end to plug into an iPhone or iPad. Launch the Withings app, tap the Start button and you’ll feel the accessory tighten around your bicep and slowly loosen up until the app gives you a reading of your blood pressure.

During my demo here at the Consumer Electronics Show, I scored a blood pressure of 160/90 — pretty high, but expected because this convention’s pretty stressful. After it took my pressure it gave me the option to look at my blood-pressure history in a 2D chart — nifty for monitoring progress.

“In the near feature, 30 percent of Americans will have to follow their blood pressure, so we think we have a big audience,” said Eric Carreel, chairman of Withings, a French company specializing in health accessories.

Withings is among a wave of new gadgets taking advantage of features inside mobile devices to monitor health anywhere and anytime. A similar device we saw last year was an insulin meter that connected to an iPhone for diabetes patients to plan out their meals and insulin injections using live data.

The Withings accessory ships this month for $130; the iOS app will be a free download in the App Store.

See Also:

• Wired.com Readers' Best iPhone Dongleware Inventions
• Special-Purpose iPhone Accessories: Where Are They?
• iPhone 3.0 Wish List: Accessory-Powered Apps We Want

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The Fling is a stick-on game-controller for the iPad. It comes from Ten One design, the company behind the popular Pogo Stylus that lets you write on your capacitive touch-screen with a pen.

The Fling is made from bendy resin, aluminum and a pair of suction cups. You fire up a game with an on-screen joystick – a first-person shooter or Street Fighter IV, for example – and place the Fling over the top of the touch-controls. Stick it down with the suckers and you’re good to go. The Fling lets you make your moves on a rocking D-pad and transfers them to the screen beneath via the magic of conductivity. And because it’s transparent, you can see the game through its jellyfish-like body.

Here it is in action. Get ready on the mute button, though – there’s loud music.

Neat, huh? And just $25 – not dirt cheap, sure, but certainly no more than buying a decent controller for a regular console. I had moved on to finger-friendly games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, but the Fling may make me reconsider my abandonment of SFIV.

Fling product page [Ten One via Kotaku]

See Also:

• iCade: Spoof Arcade Cabinet for iPad
• Stick-On Buttons Turn Smartphones into Game-Pads
• Pogo iPhone Stylus Bounces Back. Again

LAS VEGAS — Joby, the joint-legged tripod company, has launched a new iPad case / stand today. And as you’d expect from Joby, it’s not your usual iPad stand.

The Ori is named for origami, and it’s easy to see why. The composite aluminum/polypropylene case is made up of sheets which fold into a bewilderment of different configurations. It starts out looking like a folio case, and consists of three sections, like a book-cover with a third section attached at back. Within these sheets are further, pop-out parts that allow all the fancy folding.

First, you can just fold these main sections to various reading-friendly angles. Second, you can pop a smaller kick-stand out from one sheet to make a very secure typing stand. Third, this kick-stand can be used in combo with the main stand for a raised, kitchen-friendly configuration which keeps it above spills.

Lastly, you can go all-out for the in-bed TV-stand, which uses everything but the kickstand and introduces a swivel that lets you spin the iPad into horizontal and vertical positions. And don’t forget: the Ori also works as a microfiber-lined case.

The Oro costs $80. That’s not cheap, but it will replace pretty much every other stand and case you might need. And if the composite material is anything like as light and stiff as that of the Aviiq laptop stand we reviewed, you probably won;t even notice its there.

Ori product page [Joby]

See Also:

• Hands-On with Aviiq's Beautiful, Expensive Folding Notebook Stand …
• Joby Gorillabike: Dangerous, Bendy, Awesome
• Joby's Gorillatorch Flare Puts On the Red Light
• Joby's New Tripod Gear: Magnets and Balls
• Joby Gorillapod, Now for iPod Touch

You got a brand new Moleskine notebook or diary for Christmas. You also got a fancy new pen. And if you’re really lucky, Uncle Pete gave you just over $13 (or €10) to spend on anything you like. Generous old Uncle Pete.

Might we suggest you pick up the Pen Clip, designed for Authentics by Stefan Diez. It’s a metal tube that clips into the spine of a notebook and lets you slide in any pen, be it a write-anywhere space-pen, or a cheap-o Biro. It’s a handsome way to keep pen and paper together.

It will be useless, of course, if your pen already has a clip (clipped pens can be forced into the Moleskine’s spine, like an epidural into a human’s vertebrae, but the spine will crack after a while). The Pen Clip can also be clipped to posters, calendars and anything else.

The $13 is for the small sized clip. If you received a large pen for your gift, then you’re out of luck: the large clip costs €13, or $17. Uncle Pete doesn’t look so generous now, does he?

Authentics Pen Clip [Connox via Oh Gizmo!]

See Also:

• Moleskine-Shaped, Bamboo iPad Case
• How To Turn an iPhone into a Moleskine Book
• Wallet-Emptying Moleskine Multi-Pack. Verdict? Gorgeous
• Fisher Space Pen – Wired.com
• Contractor Space Pen Looks the Part
• Neither Pen Nor Pencil: Write Endlessly In Metal