Hasta La Gadget!

Lining up all the MacBook Pro’s connectors along one side doesn’t just save Apple money at the factory. It also makes the Henge Dock possible. The Henge Dock is a short plastic sleeve/stand into which you slide your MacBook or MacBook Pro.

As it comes to rest, the computer’s ports are gently filled by the male protuberances inside the dock, and these transfer the USB, audio, video and ethernet signals, along with power, to permanently attached cables. This lets you keep a neat and tidy desk setup, with speakers, peripherals and external monitor and just drop the Mac into the mix.

I love this idea. I use an aluminum MacBook and I am forever plugging and unplugging cables whenever I decide to actually work at my desk. The Henge Dock is available for all MacBooks, from the plastic model up to the monster 17-incher. Each kit comes with a set of custom cables and you choose which ones you run through the dock to marry up with your MacBook’s ports. You will have to bring your own magsafe power adapter and display adapter to the party, though.

Right now, the only docks that are ready to buy are for the 13-inch Aluminum Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro ($60 and $65). Other models are available for pre-order.

Henge Docks [Henge Docks via Core77]

After I mocked the Beltclip two weeks ago, Drinkclip, the maker of this belt-mounted cup-holder, issued a challenge. If I would contact them via Twitter, they’d send a sample which would “change the landscape of every writer at Wired magazine.” How could I resist?

This morning the mailman casually tossed a package into the apartment lobby and buzzed me to come downstairs and fetch it. Inside I found the entire Drinkclip, a combination of the Beltclip and a sprung clamp which can be attached to pretty much anything (suggested use – bicycle). The full test will take place over the coming week, but I thought I’d let you all know that, despite still being skeptical that a hot cup of coffee should be hung anywhere near the baby-maker, I’m convinced that this clip is tough enough to last, however useful or useless it may prove to be.

The clip comes folded, with the clamp tucked inside the cup holder. Flip it out, clamp the bracket onto your desk and you have a gimbaled receptacle that holds a beverage safely below the table’s surface, thwarting notebook-killing spills. As I never drink the coffee from a cup bigger than an espresso demitasse, I looked around for something else to fit in there. As you can see above, the Drinkclip isn’t just for drinks.

That’s right. The Drinkclip makes a pretty good Flashclip, and because it has a minimal plastic skeleton to hold its contents, it works great with remote controlled flashes that need line-of-site back to the mothership to receive their instructions. And as it is big enough to hold even a bucket of Starbucks’ finest, it will swallow even the enormous Nikon SB900 (not in this shot, as I was using it to take the photo).

The next test will be bike-related. Nerd-wear like this is somewhat mitigated when used on a two-wheels, and although I won’t be schlepping coffee, the included neoprene koozie means that the beer will stay cold whether hooked to the handlebars or direct to the waist. The challenge is afoot.

Too Cold to Hold [Drinkclip challenges Gadget Lab]

See Also:

• Too Hot to Handle: Hip-Mounted Coffee-Holder
• Danger: Handlebar Mounted Cup-Holders
• Coffee Tugo: Suitcase Mounted Cup-Holder
• Magnetic Cup-Holder Turns The Street Into a Diner
• Coffee-Cup Collar Expands Like B-Movie Special Effect

Pop quiz: What’s the most important tool in any toolbox? If you answered “duct-tape” or “gaffer-tape” you would be correct (if you said “gaffer’s” or “gaffers”, you’re still right, but need some practice when it comes to reading).

But even gaffer-tape can’t help if you don’t have it with you, which is why the Infinity DuKJug looks so good (it even has an odd distribution of capital letters in the name, the word-equivalent of MacGyver’s mullet). The polypropylene water-bottle has a slim waist covered in a silicone grip. Peel this grip back and you’ll find space to wind two-meters (6.5-feet) of the magic tape, enough for most emergency uses.

The bottle also has a sippy-lid, a cord retainer for the regular screw-top and weighs just five ounces. The bottle costs around $10, and you can choose from a delight of Bondi Blue iMac-era candy-colors. MacGyver would be so proud.

DuKJug [Amazon via Digital Story]

The DP-SLR is a secondary monitor for your camera. It is designed for movie-makers who use the latest video-shooting DSLRs but need a screen that’s bigger than the one on the back of the camera.

The biggest draw is the screen itself, which has a phenomenal 270 pixels-per-square-inch resolution. This makes it pretty much as sharp and detailed as the best DSLR screens currently available. The DP-SLR plugs into your camera’s HDMI-out port (video can also be fed in through component and RCA sockets) and mounts on the hot-shoe adapter. Given that it weighs 10-ounces, you might want to do this on a tripod.

The screen also has a wide, 179-degree viewing angle and measures 5.6-inches on the diagonal. The drawbacks? first, you’ll need to run a power cable to it — there is no battery pack yet (although one is planned). The base model costs $900, and if you want additional 3G/HD/SDI inputs you’ll need to spring for the $1200 version. Finally, if you order one you’ll be waiting 75 days. Not 75 days from now, but 75 days from when your pre-order is turned into an actual order, which could really be any time, ever.

DP-SLR [SmallHD via Oh Gizmo!]

After the lack of Flash support and the “missing” camera, one of the biggest complaints about the iPad is that you can’t print from it, with or without a wire. Google is about to solve this problem with cloud-printing, which will send your documents from a mobile device to any web-connected printer.

I tend to view printing as something like the floppy disk, a legacy technology that nobody really needs anymore. And before you light up the comments telling me you need to print receipts for your car repair shop customers, I say that’s not the job of an iPad or a cellphone. What you need (and already have) is a computer. For the odd boarding pass or document I might need on paper, I just email the file to the print shop down the road and pay them 10 cents.

But if you still insist on dead tree copies, Google hears you. To enable printing from its driver-free Chrome OS and any other mobile device, Google is putting those drivers in the cloud. Apps send print jobs to Google Cloud Print, whereupon they are processed and sent to net-connected printers. And this isn’t just the printer in your upstairs office, either. It could be on the other side of the world.

Google has today released the code and documentation to developers, so its just a matter of waiting for this to show up in the apps you use. In the meantime, iPad users might like this alternative solution:

A New Approach to Printing [The Chromium Blog]