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Oct 11

The Stemie: Bike-Pad Protects Your Family’s Future

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

The Stemie isn’t going to stop you crying if you slip off your saddle and take a metal whack to the baby-maker, but it might just make the bruises a little less severe. The oddly-spelled accessory is simply a silicone-rubber ball with a strap that slips over and secures to your bike-stem.

You have to be riding your bike in a rather odd fashion, or have some very bad luck, to actually hit your more sensitive parts on the sharp aluminum elbow of the handlebar stem, but its pretty easy to bash a thigh if you’re using your bike for anything more dangerous than commuting. Mountain-bikers, BMX-ers and bike polo players are all aware of the risks. This last – polo-players – are especially vulnerable as they’ll often use old road bikes with an angled quill-stem instead of the squared-off clamp-on stems seen elsewhere.

The Stemie weighs 60-grams (2.1-ounces), comes in an array of eye-burning colors and costs $19 – a small price to pay for the continuation of your bloodline.

Stemie product page [Stemie via Bike Snob]

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Oct 08

Casio Prizm Calculator Plots Equations Onto Photographs

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

If you’ve ever looked at the curve of a hill, the cables of a suspension bridge or the arc of a coastline and wondered, “I wonder what function would fit that line?” — congratulations, you’re a nerd. And Casio has a surprising new calculator that will answer your question.

Casio’s new Prizm calculator is to the graphing calculators of my school-days as the iPad is to the slates we scratched on with sticks of chalk. It has a color, 216×384 pixel display, 16MB of memory, a USB-port, and will do all of your math homework for you.

I hated graphing equations in school. I did a math A (advanced)-level, which is the equivalent of, I don’t know, a Nobel prize or something in the U.S. One of our tasks was to look at equations and do a quick eyeball sketch. No plotting, just guesstimates. I was hopeless, failing on anything more complex than x=y+1. Worse, I had a primitive graphing calc in my bag that I wasn’t allowed to use.

Any graphing calculator will let you input an equation and show you the result. Casio’s Prizm does this in reverse. The color screen will display a picture, and will draw a line over the top of any shape you like. It will then give you an equation for this line.

If that wasn’t amazing enough, that USB port lets you hook the calc up to a compatible Casio projector to show off the results on the big screen.

Now the beautiful math plots and photographs of math artist Nikki Graziano are within reach of any high school calculus student — at least in principle.

With tech like this, I’m surprised anyone actually goes to school anymore. After all, you don’t actually need to do any work there, it’s all done for you. If you have any doubt as to the disappearing math abilities of the developed world, think about this: why are there so many tip-calculators in the App Store? Can you really not work out 15-percent in your head?

$130, available now.

Casio Unveils Next-Generation Graphing Calculator – PrizmTM [Casio]

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Oct 08

Watch Diary, a Paper Book with Embedded Analog Clock

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

The Watch Diary is a hardback paper notebook with an analog clock sitting in the middle. Like the Hungry Caterpillar book, which has holes punched in its pages, the Watch Diary has a circle punched through from front to back, allowing the clock to peek out. This, combined with a clever page design, makes for a rather intuitive scheduling tool.

Instead of writing your appointments in boring old lists, one after the other, you can squeeze them all on around the small clock-face at every page’s center. Around the face-hole are printed numbers with lines radiating outwards like inky sunbeams. You can block out sections or just jot down where you should be at a certain hour.

When closed, the clock keeps ticking and looks a lot nicer than many smartphones. Amazingly, this is not a concept design but an actual, shipping product. It comes in black, orange, ivory and white, and a book will cost you $17. You could also grab the $12 spiral-bound version, or buy a clock-n-paper refill for your Filofax or Franklin Diary folder. Available now.

Watch Diary [Connect Design via Oh Gizmo!]

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Oct 07

Gorillatorch Blade Bright Enough to Kill Vampires

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

Joby’s latest Gorillatorch is called the “Blade”, and it will make the perfect companion for vampire-fighting. No, it doesn’t blaze with real, skin-blistering sunlight but it certainly lloks like it: the Blade normally shines 65 lumens from its CREE LED lamp, but in boost-mode it will blast out 130 lumens, enough to dazzle even the most recalcitrant of immortal undead.

Thinner and tougher than its predecessors (the still-available Original and Flare), the Blade is milled from anodized aluminum and is waterproof, making it immune to the inevitable dunks into garlic-infused holy water.

Like the other Gorillatorches, the jointed legs and neodynium magnets in the feet let you clamp it anywhere, freeing-up both hands for hammering wooden stakes through evil hearts.

The price for this essential vampire-hunter’s accessory is $60. Go buy one before it’s too late.

Gorillatorch Blade [Joby]

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Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Oct 06

Our Remote Controls Are Amazing, Yet Nobody’s Happy

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, apple tv, apps, logitech, ps3, remote, sony, tivo, Today's Chili, wii, xbox

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Sony Controller for Google TV

We hate our remotes. Every electronic media device comes with its own remote. We lose them and can’t control our stuff without them. They break. We confuse them with each other. It’s too hard to do simple things. It’s way too hard to do hard things.

We ask too much of them. The batteries die, and they all take different batteries. They’re uncomfortable. They’re unresponsive. What we do with our hands doesn’t match what’s happening on the screen. And the software that’s on the devices that are controlled by the remote is frequently terrible.

And occasionally, as with Sony’s controller for its upcoming Google TV, the remotes just boggle the mind with their ugliness and complexity.

We’re not alone in disliking remotes. The preceding litany of problems comes from what readers told Consumer Reports in an article titled “Readers Dislike TV Remotes.”

Now we have an emerging class of internet-connected media devices with powerful software designed to make navigating TVs and movies easier. Google TV, Apple TV, TiVo and Roku join game consoles like Sony’s Playstation 3, XBox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii in providing multimedia content on the biggest screens in our house.

But however sophisticated the software, all of these devices still need hardware devices for us to control them. It’s quite likely that some of these devices won’t be dedicated remotes at all, but phones, tablets or other handheld media devices running apps. We might use these apps to control not just our TVs, but our entire house.

That’s one vision of the future of remote control.

Here, we want to examine the other side of the equation: dedicated hardware controllers. From traditional remotes to mini-keyboards, video controllers and devices that combine all three, here are 15 devices that offer you a glimpse of everything that’s good and bad about the current generation of remote controls.

Above:

Sony’s Google TV Controller

WIRED: Offers all the control you could want. Full QWERTY keyboard for text entry, which is essential for search — sure to be a key part of the Google experience. Raised buttons with different feel make it easier to use in the dark. It’s even got tab, control, number and function keys — not dependent on software to get it done.

TIRED: Sheer size of the thing will be a deal-breaker for some. In different shades of gray, it doesn’t look like a device from 2010. Too many buttons could be confusing or intimidating to non-expert users.

Image: ABC News

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Oct 05

The Glif iPhone 4 Tripod Mount Does Much Much More

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, iPhone, Today's Chili

The Glif is a small piece of plastic with a tripod mount embedded within. It is also the most useful accessory you could buy for your iPhone 4. Made from injection-molded plastic, the simple shape of the Glif hides a surprising range of functions.

Designed by Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt, the primary function of the widget is to mount your iPhone 4 onto a tripod. To do this, it slips into a groove that wraps L-shaped around a corner and the long edge of the iPhone. It also works as a kickstand, much like the MoviePeg for previous iPhones. It’s easiest to see the configurations in the gallery below, but there is one more rather cheeky thing that the Glif will do that’s not shown: it works like a bumper. Leave the Glif on the phone, wrapped around the bottom left edge and it will stop you touching the antenna-strip and dropping calls.

The Glif is currently in development using Kickstarter, a service that lets people pitch-in money to get products into production. Provost and Gerhardt set a goal of $10,000, and almost $30,000 has so far been pledged, so the production-lines should start rolling soon. The price should be around $20.

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Glif product page [Glif]

Glif – iPhone 4 Tripod Mount & Stand [Kickstarter]

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Oct 05

Livescribe Echo Smartpen Lets You Do Almost Everything

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

Livescribe’s smartpen has two primary features: It records ambient audio along with every pen stroke of your handwritten notes. But not all its uses are immediately obvious.

I bought the new, higher-capacity, more ergonomic Livescribe Echo in August and have spent the last few weeks putting the pen through its paces. I’ve also gathered up testimonials about the device — mostly from other journalists, who understandably love it — and questions and tips from ordinary users.

Just like our How to Do (Almost) Everything With A Kindle 3, this is a list of (almost) everything you could do with a Livescribe Echo smartpen — plus a few Q&As at the end.

Indexing Audio

Among journalists, the Atlantic’s James Fallows has been the most enthusiastic and eloquent supporter of the Livescribe. In “The Pen Gets Mightier,” Fallows describes his love for the smartpen, particularly its ability to match handwriting with audio. “The result is a kind of indexing system for an audio stream,” Fallows writes. “For me this means instant access to the three interesting sentences — I just write ‘interesting!’ in the notebook or put a star—in the typical hour-long journalistic interview.”

In my experience, as in Fallows’, this is absolutely game-changing. I’ve tried a number of devices to record interviews, from traditional recorders to my iPhone’s Voice Memo app, even Google Voice for telephone calls. None of them are as reliable or useful after the fact as the Echo.

It captures ambient speech remarkably well, even at distance. It even works fairly well recording a speakerphone-to-speakerphone conference call, a feat that gives a good deal of trouble to most people’s ears, let alone their recording gadgets.

You can play back recordings using the pen’s built-in speaker, or by uploading the pencast to your computer. There the Livescribe Desktop application (on Mac or Windows) can print your written notes to a PDF file or export your audio for archiving or editing.

It’s particularly useful to export written notes to online note–management applications that can handle PDFs like Evernote for remote storage.

Recording Speeches and Classroom Lectures

In The New York Times, Wired columnist Clive Thompson profiled Brian Lacata, an Oakland math teacher whose students all use Livescribe pens in his class.

In the classroom, the smartpen is a curious mix of the traditional and the high-tech. As Thompson notes, “the pen is based on an age-old classroom technique that requires no learning curve: pen-and-paper writing.” But while audio recording has been used for some time (not without controversy) to tape lectures and meetings, it changes with the use of the smartpen.

When Lacata’s students take notes, “the pen alters their writing style: Instead of verbatim snippets of Lacata’s instructions, they can write ‘key words’ — essentially little handwritten tags that let them quickly locate a crucial moment in the audio stream.” Essentially, it offloads the raw-data–recording component of note-taking to the audio stream, while placing the tagging, indexing, thinking and questioning components firmly within script. Instead of notes, you’ve recorded a mind-map.

Oct 04

Finally, Official iPad and iPhone Cases from Moleskine

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, ipad, iPhone, Today's Chili

At last, Moleskine has come up with its own set of iDevice covers. Since the launch of the iPad, we have seen traditionally-bound covers from Pen & Quill and Dodocase, beautiful, handmade cases which both protect your iDevices and disguise them as old-style notebooks.

Oddly, the official Moleskine covers for the iPad and iPhone (3G and 3GS) are the least Moleskine-like of the lot. Whereas the others do nothing more than put a cover and retaining strap around your gadget, the Moleskine adds a paper notepad and a soft, suede-like lining to the cardboard and faux-leather cover. It also holds the iPad in place with an ugly bezel-covering rectangle, instead of the Dodocase’s elegant, if sometimes slippery, edge-gripping rubber pads.

The paper/iPad combo will surely prove attractive to some, but the added thickness makes things somewhat impractical. The iPhone version is especially encumbered: Look at the picture. So useless does this case render the phone that even Moleskine admits that “the Smartphone Cover is mainly conceived to be used with Bluetooth, headphones or loud speaker.”

The cases are on pre-order at Amazon, but neither launch-date or price have been announced. Our advice? Buy either the Pen & Quill or Dodocase, and sling a regular paper Moleskine in the bag along with it. Or just make your own.

Moleskine Covers for iPhone and iPad [Moleskine]

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Oct 01

Bluetooth Sheet Music Turner Could Help Readers With Disabilities

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, e-books, e-readers, ipad, Music, Today's Chili

AirTurn’s Bluetooth foot-switch for iPad turns pages with the tap of a foot. It’s designed for keeping both hands free to play an instrument while reading digital sheet music. However, it may turn out to be an important technology for e-book readers with disabilities.

Gadget Lab wrote about AirTurn’s BT-105 prototype in July, but I discovered its accessibility potential in this thread at e-reading site TeleRead. A reader wrote the following email to TeleRead editor Paul Biba:

My friend’s grandson is bright, loves to read, but doesn’t speak and lacks the fine motor skill to turn pages on his iPad book reader. Is there any software or device that could turn the pages for him?
Could you also ask if they know of an input device, do they know how a non-technical person would hook the input device to the iPad or computer?

I did my own research and was discouraged not to be able to find any purpose-built software or hardware to do the job. Late last night, reader “possentespirto” mentioned the AirTurn, which is still scheduled to be available sometime in Q4 of this year. Bluetooth pairing doesn’t require a great deal of technical wizardry, and the AirTurn foot pedal is already compatible with third-party software. This could be a terrific solution.

Users lacking either full control of their arms and hands or the limbs themselves could use the foot pedal to turn pages and zoom in on text; users with other disabilities could convert the foot clicker into a hand-clicker. In fact, the device reminds me of nothing so much as the clicker Stephen Hawking used to select text before he eventually lost control of his hands as well.

AirTurn’s foot-clicker may be too heavy or require too much force to be usable for some disabled users. Here’s where there’s a natural opportunity for an accessibility-minded company to build on this technology, make something explicitly for these readers and do it right.

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Sep 30

Booq Boa iPad Sleeve, Like an Upgrade to Apple’s Own

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, ipad, Today's Chili

After testing (and buying) far too many iPad cases, including the famous bamboo Moleskine-alike Dodocase, I finally settled on Apple’s own slimline sleeve. So good is it that I have removed it precisely once since buying it almost a month ago, and that was to show my mother the iPad inside.

Booq’s new Boa folio-style case looks a lot like Apple’s, and adds a few extras. Like the Apple case, the iPad slides into the Boa and is held with its edges enclosed, and with holes for the ports. Both cases also share a sticky-out bumper around the perimeter, although the Boa’s sits at the back, not the center. Booq’s case also folds into a stand for either typing or horizontal display using the same clever tuck-in flap as Apple.

Then things diverge. The Boa is slightly padded, which makes it thicker but more protected than Apple’s case. It also has a couple pockets: a document sleeve on the inside and an iPhone-sized pocket on the front. These, too, could add bulk. Finally, the case has a closing strap to stop it flapping open like dirty uncle Pete’s shorts and accidentally revealing the delicate object within.

For me, the Apple iPad case is pretty much perfect. I don’t care about its dirt-attracting abilities, and prefer its slimline, skin-like profile to more protective padding. But in taking the best points of the Apple case and slightly adding to them, along with using high-quality Napa leather and something called “Twylon”, the folks at Booq have come up with a nice upgrade. It isn’t cheap, though: the Boa can be had in a range of manly, neutral colors for $90, or in a ballistic nylon version for $50. Available now.

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Screen shot 2010-09-30 at 1.12.46 PM