Hasta La Gadget!

When you’re a professional gadget blogger, you see a lot of oddities. None of them, though, makes me weep for the future of the human race more than the keyboard case, a sleeve designed to protect possibly the hardiest piece of computer hardware you own.

These two cases, from WaterField Designs, happen to be for the ridiculously resilient, tough and lightweight aluminum bluetooth keyboard from Apple, but their absolute wrongness would apply to any keyboard. But first, lets look at just what perils await a poor keyboard in the horrific depths of your bag.

Let’s assume that you don’t throw in handfuls of grit and half-eaten packs of Cheetos into your bag along with your more valuable goods. Perhaps you may have tossed in some keys? Or a picnic knife has worked its way loose? While a cellphone or tablet computer may risk a scratch to its screen, a scrape on a keyboard won’t make any difference. Who cares if the home keys get a chunk taken out, or the back of the ‘board gets dirtied up? Just typing on the thing with your filthy hands probably does more damage.

And then, why are you carrying a keyboard in the first place? Perhaps you are on a business trip and plan to do some heavy work on your iPad? Then pack the keyboard in with your clothes. Otherwise, you don’t even need that keyboard. Your laptop has one built-in, remember, and you probably aren’t carrying a desktop machine on the road.

Even so, I guess there must be a market for such things, and this is what causes the tears of pity and sorrow to moisten my normally parched, cracked ducts. If you are in fact thinking of wasting some money, you can have the budget Keyboard Socket for $15, cut from the finest “scratch-free material”, or opt for the Keyboard Slip, a $30 case fashioned from ballistic nylon with a padded interior. What’s more, “a piping trimmed edge let’s [sic] you chose [sic] to add a splash of bold color, or to stay under the radar with subdued tones.” Cheeky!

Keyboard Slip [WaterField Designs via MacUser]

Keyboard Socket [WaterField Designs]

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If you’re using both hands to play a musical instrument, the last thing you want to worry about is turning the pages of sheet-music as you play. The traditional solution was to make somebody do it for you, or to quickly reach up and do it yourself.

Tech has helped. These days a laptop with a USB foot-pedal is the way to go, but there have been all manner of spring-loaded and hydraulic contraptions invented to turn actual paper pages. These were, as you might expect, less than reliable.

Airturn, maker of sheet-music-reading software and hardware, has come up with a solution for the iPad. Apple’s tablet would seem to be the perfect device for reading music: it’s big enough to replace a piece of paper, whilst still slim and light enough to put on a music stand. Combined with Airturn’s new Bluetooth foot-switch, it makes a reliable, wire-free and practical solution.

The BT-105, as it is called, has a pair of switches, one to page forward, and one to page back. The switch doesn’t just work with the company’s own software, either. The video demo shows it controlling a third-party app with a zoom feature. In this case, the switch can tell the app to flip half a page at a time or, more accurately, to show the second half of the page before it flips to the next one.

The switch is in development right now, but should be available in the last quarter of this year.

iPad Bluetooth page turner footswitch prototype [Airturn. Thanks, Hugh!]

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Livescribe’s Pulse smart pen that can automatically digitize written notes is a big hit among students and business professionals who want to move away from paper.

Now the company has introduced a slimmer version of the its pen called Echo that offers more storage and improved features  including support for PDF files.

The Echo pen has double the capacity of the Pulse and is available in 4 GB and 8 GB models that record 400 and 800 hours of data respectively. The 4 GB version will cost $170 and the 8 GB version is priced at $200. The 2 GB Pulse pen will cost $130, down from $200 when it was first introduced.

Livescribe has also added a 3.5 mm audio jack so consumers can use their own headphones, instead of having to buy specifically designed ones from LiveScribe.

Livescribe introduced its first smart pen Pulse in March 2008. Users write notes on Livescribe’s sheets of paper, just as they would on a notepad. The Pulse pen captures everything the user hears using a audio record feature. As for the notes, they can be accessed by simply tapping the pen at any point on the sheet of the paper or through a computer using the Livescribe desktop software. The only drawback is that the pen will work only with Livescribe’s proprietary paper. The company also launched an app store that now has more than 60 apps including study aids and dictionaries.

With Echo, Livescribe has updated the user interface so it is easier to access apps, added features such as password protection so the audio recorded on the smartpen can have more privacy,  and introduced the idea of custom notebooks so users can group and organize notes more easily.

Later this year, Livescribe plans to add new software called Connect, which will allow users to email notes, audio and PDFs from the smartpen and paper when the pen is is docked to a Mac or PC.

The company also plans to introduce a collaboration software called Paper Tablet, that will allow consumers to communicate directly from a Livescribe notebook to a computer using the Echo pen and a USB cable. That means if you draw an image on the Livescribe notebook then it can directly appear on the screen in real time–a feature that should be very useful for creating graphics and for artists.

Check out Livescribe’s video of the Echo pen and some of its key features:

See Also:

• Livescribe Pulse Pen Garners Notable Buzz at Demo
• Video Review: Smart Pen Records Your Writing, Voice
• For Hardware Entrepreneurs, Getting From Idea to Reality Isn’t Easy
• Entrepreneurs Find Gold in Gadget Startups

Photo: Livescribe

I wear glasses. I like them. I like how they look, and I like that they stop me poking things in my eye. But I can afford to buy them. For many, especially in developing countries, spectacles are an out-of-reach luxury.

Why? They’re just plastic, right? Some of that is the styling (or application of a designer label to a pair of commodity frames), but a lot os the actual shaping of the lenses. Enter a new breed of spec: adaptable, adjustable eyeglasses. Instead of solid, one-off lenses, these glasses have a hard lens at the front and a softer, flexible plastic sheet at the back. In between is a layer of viscous liquid with a high refractive index (light-bending ability). By pumping more of less of this liquid between the layers, you can custom fit your glasses to yourself, no expensive opticians or lens-grinding needed.

The main difference between manufacturers is the method of adjustment. Adlens’ specs (pictured) have a knob on the side which you turn to adjust the amount of fluid in the lens. Those from TruFocals have a slider on the bridge of the frames to do the same thing.

Why would you need adjustable lenses? For the elderly, one pair of adjustable glasses could replace glasses for reading and regular use. For the young, whose prescription can change rapidly, one pair of glasses could last a lot longer (assuming they don’t get smashed at school). And hopefully, should this technology become widespread, identical pairs of glasses (with basic, non-astigmatic corrections) could be made in bulk for the developing world and adjusted by the new owners themselves.

The biggest limitation right now is the shape. In order to work, the lenses need to be a perfect circle. Good news if you’re John Lennon or a high-school poet, bad news for everyone else.

Adlens product page [Adlens]

Trufocals product page [Trufocals. Thanks, Jessica!]

See Also:

• $20 Self Adjustable Pump-Action Glasses

The Fingerist is a $150 iPhone holder that makes you look even more like an idiot when you pretend to play guitar. The little box has a slot into which you slide the phone. You then fire up your favorite music-playing app (a virtual guitar or keyboard, for example) and commence to play (what I believe the kids refer to as “rocking out”). Because of its size, and two metal nubbins to connect a strap, the Fingerist makes the experience a little more like holding a guitar, and a little less like strumming a slab of glass and metal.

For that $150 (the price of an actual cheap electric guitar) you also get a 3-watt built-in speaker (3 AA batteries required) and a line-out socket to hook it up to an amp.

I suppose that it could be fun as a novelty, but the still-tiny size means that when playing, you’ll always look like you’re performing hammer-ons up at the top of the fretboard, which is the guitar equivalent of crossing your arms at the wrists whilst playing air-drums.

Despite this, I love the retro, blocky faux-wood design. It would make a great iPhone speaker dock, too, without all the guitar-playing shenanigans.

Fingerist [Evenno via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Make It: iPhone Guitar Connection Kit
• Hook Your Guitar to Your iPhone and Rock Out with iRig
• Turn Your iPhone Into an Electric Guitar With iShred
• PocketGuitar is Best iPhone Hack Ever
• Mobile Phone Guitar Makes Sweet Music
• Guitarbud Hooks Axe to iPhone

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