Jun 23

Carmen: Internet Radio On Your Car Radio via Radio

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Music, Retro, Today's Chili

Wouldn’t it be great if you could listen to internet radio in your car? With Livio’s new Carmen, you can, provided you’re happy with a rather weird, convoluted, time-consuming and almost Rube Goldberg-esque experience.

The best way to give you an idea of the whole complicated mess is to describe the process. First, plug the Carmen into your computer, fire up the companion software and then choose the from the internet radio stations available (“more than 42,000 stations”). The Carmen will then record these for you, DVR-style, in real-time. To make that clear, you won’t be downloading an hour-long show in seconds like you would with a podcast: you’ll be waiting an hour for it.

Once the 2GB stick is loaded up, you take it to the car and plug it into the cigarette-lighter socket. Then you turn on the car’s radio. The Carmen works by sending the MP3s via FM (although you can opt for an aux cable). It even comes with a small remote control so you can search on the floor for that instead of squeezing the Carmen’s tiny buttons.

To recap: You spend hours recording radio shows only to re-broadcast them to your car stereo. And for this you spend $60. Alternatively you could just use the radio in your car, or hook up the cellphone or MP3 player you already have to your car stereo. That would cost you nothing.

For all my complaints, I admit I have a soft spot for the Carmen: the idea of recording songs and shows off the radio to listen to in the car takes me back to my childhood. Thank goodness somebody is applying today’s tech to 1970s problems.

Available for pre-order now.

Carmen Car Audio Player [Livio. Thanks, Joe!]




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Jun 22

IPad Keyboard Dock Works with iOS4

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

IOS4 will let you use a Bluetooth keyboard to type on your iPhone or iPod Touch and control various other functions. I’m writing this post on a latest-gen iPod Touch with an Apple Wireless Keyboard and it works great: The brightness buttons, volume and iTunes keys all do what you’d expect. This is a headline feature of the new iOS, shown off by Apple right there on the about pages.

What you may be surprised to learn is that the iPhone will also work when forced into the iPad Keyboard Dock, as tested by internationally-beloved technology pundit Andy Ihnatko. Once squeezed onto the dock connector, you get all the same functionality as you would with a Bluetooth keyboard, with the added danger of busting your iPhone due to the tight fit (the slimmer iPod Touch should work a lot better).

You might remember that you can also hook up a keyboard to the iPad via the USB camera connection kit. I can’t test this as mine is still on back-order, but Ihnatko tried it out an the answer is a big “no”. The iPhone flashes up its non-compatible accessory warning. Ah well.

I can’t say typing long-form text on the tiny screen is any fun, but it would certainly be better than typing long-form text on the iPhone’s screen. Even so, Apple’s minuscule Bluetooth keyboard is still large when compared to the iPhone. Perhaps this will kick-start the market in foldable, rollable keyboard accessories?

The iPad Keyboard Dock works with the iPhone 3GS! [CWOB]

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Jun 18

App Turns iPhone 4 into Ad-Serving Mirror

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

A new app will turn your iPhone 4 into a mirror, ready to help you apply lipstick or get your hair just right (I’m looking at you, Gadget Lab review supremo Danny Dumas). The combination of a front-facing camera and the hi-res “retina” display turns out to be perfectly for a spot of mobile vanity.

The Lady often borrows my iPod Touch to use the scuffed but still reflective back plate as a mirror. I’m not sure if it’s to touch up her makeup or to just check herself out, but it works. Until now, iPhone owners had to buy apps which promise to turn the handset into a mirror, but do no more than switch off the display, letting you stare at yourself through a screen, darkly.

DLP Mobile’s version, though, is the real thing, piping the video feed live from camera to screen, and even offering color-corrections for ambient light. The app, called Mirror App, will be in the App Store on iPhone 4 launch day, June 24th, with one extra, probably unwelcome feature that your real mirror will never suffer from: it will be serving up iAds.

Who Needs a Mirror When You Have a Cellphone? [NYT]

Photo: DLP Mobile




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Jun 18

Particle Case Turns iPad into Clipboard and Pen

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

Right up until the iPad became real, one of our favorite pastimes was to chuckle at the Pogo Stylus, a pen designed for capacitive touch-screens. After all, who needs a pen for the iPhone when it is designed to work great with a finger?

But the iPad is also a rather nice electronic canvas. Drawing and painting with your finger will give you a picture even your mom wouldn’t hang on the refrigerator, so the little foam-tipped Pogo has finally become quite a valuable tool. In fact, it has now gotten its own accessory: the Particle Case, also from Ten One design.

The case is really little more than an extended clip for the Pogo. A rubberized strip runs around the edge of the iPad, similar to the new iPhone Bumpers only they wrap around a little more . There are cut-outs for the ports and buttons, and a little clip in which to hold your Pogo stylus. And that’s it.

You do at least get a Pogo thrown in, and the little rubber feet on the back stop the iPad from wobbling when placed flat on a table, but its hard to see the market for this. After all, it offers almost no protection (the back is open, for example) but will stop the iPad from sliding into a more substantial case.

The Particle Case will cost you $35.

Particle Case [Ten One. Thanks, Jenny!]

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Jun 17

Koss Celebrates With PortaPro 25th Anniversary Edition Headphones

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

Did you know that the insanely popular Koss PortaPro headphones have been around for 25 years? To celebrate, Koss has come up with the appropriately-named PortaPro 25th Anniversary Edition, a product that remarkably appears to improve on the classic original.

The PortaPros are folding, lightweight headphones that sound great. Wired associate editor Joe Brown says they sound like electrostatic headphones. I say that they sound like something four times the price (just $50).

There are problems, though. The PortaPros break easily and, despite a lifetime warranty, you’ll find yourself buying replacements. The weak points are the spot where the earpieces join to the band, and the cables and connections. In the Anniversary Edition, the cables are now corded, which should help.

Another addition should make an even bigger difference. The Anniversary Edition brings beefier magnets: neodymium iron boron to be precise. This, combined with the “oxygen-free copper voice coils” will make the headphones louder. The very open design of the PortaPros makes it easy to drown out their sound in noisy places, so this is welcome.

But the best part is that they lose the dorky light-blue earpieces, replacing them with cool black. I’m totally sold. I have used PortaPros for years, and love them, so I’m searching for a local dealer right now. Happy birthday, PortaPro! $80.

PortaPro 25th Anniversary Edition [Koss via Uncrate]




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Jun 17

Kindle Case from Moleskine Mixes Paper and E-Ink

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

Moleskine has finally gotten around to making a case for Amazon’s Kindle. If you have both a large Moleskine notebook and a second-gen Kindle and put them one upon the other, the marriage will be immediately obvious. Both are almost the exact same size. If the Moleskine were a little wider, you could hollow out its pages yourself to make a snug nook for the Kindle.

The Kindle Cover is made from the same materials as a regular Moleskine notebook, with the shiny black cover and elastic strap. More of those straps are on the inside, holding the e-reader in place by its corners, and the interior is suede-lined for scratch-free device-coddling.

Moleskine hasn’t gone e-crazy yet, though. A slot inside the front cover holds a reporter-style notebook so you can write and draw in the analog style. For anyone who has tried to take notes on the Kindle, this will come as good news.

The price is a reassuringly expensive $40, including two reporters pads. That’s actually not too bad considering a tiny pocketbook is $12.

Kindle Cover [Moleskine]

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Jun 16

UrbanEars Medis Cling to Ears Like Spiderman

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

UrbanEars’ new Medis earphones come somewhere between earbuds and headphones. Using the rather scary-sounding EarClick, they manage to hold themselves inside the ear, but not in the usual canal-stuffing, gag-reflex-triggering way.

Instead, the oversized ‘buds have a pair of lugs. The fixed, bottom lug hooks into the cartilaginous antitragus above the earlobe (yes, I have a diagram of an ear on the screen to help me) and a second, removable lug snuggles under the inferior crux. You can choose from four sizes for this second lobe to precisely fit the unit into your ear.

Apparently this spreading of pressure points means you can hardly feel the Medis. You will be able to see them, however: the Medis come in an eye-scorching range of “color-ways”, and all of them are sensibly named as real colors (well, almost all. One green is called “sallad”). The cans come with a mic and in-line remote on the fabric-covered cord, and the specs on the sheet point to good sound, although only a test will tell for sure.

The drivers are a rather large 15mm, frequency response runs from 20-20,000kHZ and the sensitivity is a good-enough 94dB. I’d be interested to test these $50 earbuds: the fitting system looks like it could actually work. Available everywhere in July.

Medis [UrbanEars. Thanks, Valerie!]

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Jun 14

IPhone Leash Prevents Dropped Calls

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

Of course, a retractable wire restraint won’t actually help the iPhone play any nicer with AT&T’s beleaguered network, but it will stop the screen of your iPhone (or any other phone, despite the name) from ending up like a crystalline spiderweb after hitting the floor.

The extremely dorky process goes like this: You stick an adhesive pad onto the back of the phone, which adds a plastic loop. This loop then connects to the painful-sounding “split ring connector” and that in turn hooks onto a 30-inch steel cable.

The cable retracts into the belt-clip, just like a metal tape measure swishing back into its case, and the clip is held on by a locking carabiner. If there is a nerdier accessory in all the world I want to see it.

The leash will not only keep you phone from fatal impacts; it will also stop you from dropping it in water (something that Wired Science editor Betsy Mason might find useful to stop her dumping yet another iPhone in the toilet) and helps to prevent theft. Or not: a cable running into your pocket means one thing to a thief, and that’s that you have something valuable in there.

It gets a whole lot less ridiculous if you use this to secure your phone whilst inside a bag, but for those who insist on wearing their dorkiness on their belts, an optional extra can make you look even sillier. The Designer Label puts “a crystal clear polyurethane dome” over the design or photo of your choice, mimicking those old-fashioned key-fobs.

The iPhone Leash will cost $25 in money. In cost to your street-cred, its price cannot be overestimated.

iPhone Leash [My Phone Leash. Thanks, Daniel!]




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Jun 14

Ugly Bluetooth Headset Transforms into Even Uglier Wristwatch

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

The 2-in-1 Bluetooth Handsfree Wristwatch Headset takes a humdrum, utilitarian Bluetooth earpiece and turns it into an even less appealing wristwatch. So cheaply made is it that even the product shot, usually a gadget’s greatest hour beauty-wise, is all ragged and plasticky at the edges.

But it has one great feature which makes me love it: no more will I have to pity the fools who keep a Bluetooth dongle in their ear at all times, those self important morons who use this piece of gadgetry to signal their social standing (note to those people: you’re not giving off the signals you think you are). Now, those people can instead pull the blocky plastic earphone from their waxy orifice and squelch it into a wristband. Once installed in the wristwatch position, it can still be used, Dick Tracey-style (although without the video, of course), to control and talk to their phone.

The li-ion battery will last for 200 hours in standby and give eight hours of A2DP-listening, voice-dialing, caller ID-displaying, blue-backlit screen-glowing fun. The price for this ugly chunk of electronics? $68.

2-in-1 Bluetooth Handsfree Wristwatch Headset [Light in the Box via Oh Gizmo!]




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Jun 03

Case Manufacturer Mails 4G iPhone Cases to Wired.com

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


Apple’s iPhone-centric developer event is still days away, but a case manufacturer sent Wired.com two protective rubber cases designed for the next-generation iPhone.

The company, Gumdrop Cases, said it based the case design on a combination of specifications provided by inside sources in the plastics industry, as well as features seen in the prototypes leaked to Gizmodo and a Vietnamese blog. The company, which has offices in California, the U.K. and Hong Kong, said it did not receive the specifications from Apple.

“It’s supposed to be announced on Monday is what we’re being told, so we wanted to make sure we had cases available,” a Gumdrop spokeswoman told Wired.com.

The third-party accessories industry has historically been a leaky boat for Apple, according to Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac writer and former news editor of Wired.com. In the past, we’ve seen a number of case manufacturers begin selling protective cases for Apple products ahead of release. However, those leaks usually occur in China, and this is the first time Wired.com has actually received a case for a next-gen Apple product before it was released.

The characteristics of the two cases line up with the prototypes of the next-gen iPhone revealed in video and photos. Its overall form factor is slightly more square than the current iPhone. The case also fits awkwardly around the current iPhone: The holes for the audio/silent switch, volume button, power button and microphone jack don’t line up. The camera hole is slightly too large, giving enough room for a camera flash — a feature that Gizmodo and the Vietnamese blog saw on their prototypes of the next-gen iPhone.

A Gumdrop representative admitted the company deliberately mailed the cases, labeled “iPhone 4G Case” on a press flier, in order to gain attention prior to Apple’s official announcement of the product — you could call it a publicity stunt.

We have to get a next-gen iPhone to see if these will really fit, but the story about overseas insiders in the plastics industry is intriguing.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday, where Steve Jobs is expected to announce Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone during a keynote speech.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com




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