Hasta La Gadget!

Note to PC speaker makers: don’t force me to use yet another USB port when I have a perfectly good headphone socket on my notebook. I know that some audio-outs (and their preceding circuitry) are junk, but if I’m paying $500 for a pair of your computer speakers, it’s likely I have a fairly decent computer to hook them up to.

Ok, rant over, and apart from sucking up a USB port to feed the music directly into their own digital/analog converter, the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin MM-1 looks to be a rather sweet speaker. The Zeppelins are actually a pair of shrunken hi-fi speakers instead of the more common sub-and-satellite setup, which means you get “the full spectrum of frequencies”. B&W (now you recognize the brand, right?) has also tweaked the circuitry to turn these into near-field monitor speakers, which means they sound better close-up like studio monitors, instead of from a distance like most hi-fi speakers.

B&W has also incorporated its “Nautilus tweeter”, which is not an underwater Twitter poster but a cone-shaped tube behind the tweeter taken from its iconic shell-shaped speaker of the same name. This, according to B&W, “dampens resonance and produces purer high frequency sounds.”

We’re not sure that the average listener could tell the difference, seeing as we pump compressed MP3s out of our computers, but if nothing else they’ll look good on your desktop. And they even have a 3.5mm input jack, for whiners like me. Due February 2010.

Zeppelin product page [B&W]

Say what you like about fixed-gear freestyle (actually, I will: buy a frickin’ BMX), it has certainly made for some cool-looking bike products. Here is a spectacularly misguided but still awesome foot-strap design, a custom build from the Japanese bike bag makers Crank.

We suppose it was inevitable that, in a world of cycling gloves with the words “love” and “hate” printed on the fingers, we’d eventually see some punky, studded black vinyl bikewear. What next? Serrated brake levers? Price and availability unannounced.

FIXIKA × CRANK [Flickr]
Crank Store [Crank]

A recently published patent from Apple depicts pen-based handwriting recognition software that would work with tablet-like devices.

The described invention (screenshot at right) demonstrates a method to make digital handwriting recognition better than technologies used in the past. An “ink manager” would attempt to recognize full phrases before sending them to the handwriting recognition engine, as opposed to sending separate strokes.

“The present invention, in large part, relates to the observation that client applications and handwriting recognition software in pen-based computer systems can make far more accurate ink-related decisions based on entire ink phrases, rather than individual ink strokes,” the patent states.

Though the patent relates the technology to traditional tablet devices, we doubt we would see it applied to Apple’s touchscreen tablet, which is rumored for an early 2010 release. Tipsters in several reports have described the rumored tablet as a 10.7-inch iPhone.

Assuming Apple’s tablet is indeed a larger iPhone, it’s unlikely it will feature a stylus-based interface since the iPhone was designed for finger interaction. It’s odd, actually, for Apple to be thinking about pen-based computing. Steve Jobs in January 2007 denounced the stylus when introducing the iPhone at Macworld Expo:

Oh, a stylus, right? We’re going to use a stylus. No. Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em and put ‘em away, and you lose ‘em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with — born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers. We’re going to touch this with our fingers.

A stylus-controlled Apple product, tablet or not, would severely undercut Jobs’ statement now, wouldn’t it?

Via UnwiredView

See Also:

• Apple Patents Clamshell Design — A Sign of iPhone Nanos to Come …
• Leaked: Apple Filing Illustrates Multitouch Tablet Technology …
• Apple Patent Details GPS-equipped Nike+ Shoes

Photo of an R2H stylus (not an Apple stylus): joshb/Flickr

These wonderful whimsies come from Mintpass, a design company “founded to create the future”. And in that future, we will delve into our computer screens and fish out an actual, working version of the picture on-screen. Think of it as scanning in reverse.

These “OS Calculators” could also be called “physicalcs”, but we don’t recommend it. Modeled on the software calculators the come with Windows and OS X, they appear as fully functioning (prototype) pocket calculators. Here’s what the designer has to say: “It will produce a big empathy and therefore inducing smiles and laughter.” I love them, and I did indeed feel laughter and smiles induced when I first saw them.

The folks at Mintpass are looking for a manufacturer (and hopefully and IP lawyer). They may already have been waiting a while: the brushed aluminum calculator was dropped from OS X a few years ago, and that Windows calc looks distinctly XP to me.

Product page [Mintpass via BBG via Raw Feed]

See Also:

• IPhone-Connected Weighing Scale for Your iDiet
• Wooden Photo Frame Mimics Photoshop Window

The only time I leave my blogger’s lair with my laptop is to attend the annual CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. The sole dangers there come from the bad breath of hungover show exhibitors and viruses flown in from the corners of the globe to be transmitted by a million filthy handshakes.

None of these fazes my trusty MacBook, but if I ever took it into the real outdoor world it would be kept inside a Haglöfs laptop dry-bag, a waterproof, padded notebook nirvana, all wrapped up in an orange color that normally graces 1970s sci-fi movie spacesuits.

The Swedish bags, part of the pun-tastic “WATATAIT” range, are made from ripstop polyamide and have a double seal: one ziplock and one rolling closure. The computer cocoon comes in both 15 and 17-inch sizes, and even if you aren’t laptopping in extreme conditions, it’ll at least protect your machine when the high-fructose corn syrup beverage explodes inside your carry-on. £20 ($33).

Product page [Haglöfs]