Hasta La Gadget!

The much-rumored inPulse – a wristwatch accessory for the Blackberry – has materialized. Now, instead of rudely checking your Blackberry every few minutes during meetings, you can instead glance at your watch, an age-old gesture of boredom guaranteed to offend everyone, young and old.

The quite lovely-looking inPulse connects to a Blackberry via Bluetooth and can either alert you to the full barrage of your very important email or can be set to filter it. These alerts are then displayed on the 1.3-inch OLED screen, and you are notified of their presence by the vibrator inside, and the whole watch, when fully charged (via microUSB), should last for around four days.

Pretty much anything that can be pushed to the Blackberry can be pushed those few inches further to your wrist. This includes RSS feeds, weather reports, SMS messages and the Twitter, guaranteeing that you can remain blissfully distracted during your next trial-by-PowerPoint. You’ll still have to pull out your crackberry to reply, but at least now you’ll know which messages to respond to.

The inPulse will be available in a limited first run “very soon” for a reasonable $150.

Product page [Allerta. Thanks, Eric!]

If you bike a lot, and especially if you bike a lot away from home or city, you need to carry a tool-kit. Luckily, you can repair any fairly modern bike with a toolkit small enough to fit into a tool-roll, saddle bag or even a repurposed pencil-case.

I have put together the perfect kit (for me, at least) over the last few months as I spend more time out on the road, but the one thing I could not find was a 15mm box-wrench small enough to fit in the bag. Finally I caved and ordered a Surly Jethro Tule from the UK. It cost too much, but it has the great advantage of incorporating a beer-bottle opener Here’s the kit:

You see the Jethro Tule (a great name, by the way), a Topeak multi-tool, a tiny Wrench Force mini-pump (which works very well, considering the size), a patch-kit in a section of inner-tube and a spare section of chain (five half-links). It all lives inside a Brooks D-Shaped Tool Bag, which comes in two parts meaning you can quickly remove the inner, zippered section from the seat.

With this kit I can fix pretty much anything short of the headset or bottom-bracket, including chain repair. The Jethro Tule is one of many 15mm wrenches aimed at fixed-gear riders. They are all distinguished by a high price and a beer-opener. But does it work? The short answer is yes, but there is a problem.

The wrench is short. If you have tightened your wheel nuts with a longer spanner you’ll have some trouble getting enough leverage to remove them. It can be done though: The tapered box means the handle points out, away from the wheel, and the large flipper-like plate is big enough to kick with a heel, just like you do with a car wheel. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done, and the box itself is deep enough that it holds on tight to the nut.

The Jethro Tule won’t replace a standard-sized box wrench at home, but on the road, it works great. And did I mention it opens beer? Around $30.

Product page [Surly]

Almost unnoticed amongst Apple’s product updates yesterday was a new infra red remote control, a sleek new aluminum number which replaces the plastic one that has been around for the last few years.

As with many Apple accessories, the remote started off as a bundled extra with all consumer Macs, and then one by one the Macs started to ship without it. If you bought one of the first few generations of iPod, which came with a dock, FireWire and USB cables and a case, this will be familiar to you.

Still, the little remote is certainly very useful, although overpriced at $20. It lets you control Front Row, the Apple TV, iTunes, many third-party apps (the excellent and free VLC media player, for one) and even an iPod in a dock. I use mine (in my house they seem to multiply like USB cables) to control iTunes podcast playback while I’m cooking or getting oily hands while fixing my bike.

The new remote is smaller, of course – and amazingly for an Apple device – actually has more buttons. The play button has been moved from the centre to join the “menu” button below the main circle. It is backwards compatible with any Apple device with an IR port (introduced in 2005), and you can’t get it for free. If only Apple would fix the software so iTunes doesn’t “overhear” the commands when it’s in the background and you actually are trying to pause, say, a movie.

Product page [Apple]

Apple on Tuesday released a family of new Macs, including upgraded iMacs, a unibody white MacBook and Mac Minis. The newest addition to the Apple product line is a wireless, multitouch mouse.

The Magic Mouse (below), which ships with new iMacs released today, features a completely touch-sensitive top side. Multitouch gestures can trigger left- and right-click functions, as well as 360-degree scrolling.

The mouse also detects swiping gestures: Swiping left takes you back a page in Safari; swiping left and right in iPhoto browses the previous and next photos, respectively.

Apple added two screen sizes for the iMac, a 21.5-inch model and a 27-inch model. They feature new LED backlit displays with a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. The 21.5-inch model starts at $1,200 and features a high-resolution 1920-by-1080-pixel display. The 27-inch iMac starts at $1,700 and features a 2560-by-1440-pixel display, which offers 60 percent more pixels than the previous 24-inch model, according to Apple.

Priced at $1,000, the solo MacBook (top) remains white, but it gains a unibody enclosure like the current aluminum MacBook Pros, except this one is plastic. That’s mostly a cosmetic difference, giving the MacBook cleaner lines. It sports a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 13.3-inch LED backlit glossy widescreen display and a multitouch trackpad.

The Mac Mini received minor updates. There are two configurations: A $600 model features a 2.26-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of 1066-Mhz RAM and a 160-GB hard drive. An $800 model sports a 2.56-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM and a 320-GB drive. Both feature NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphic chipsets. If you want to use Mac Minis as servers, the 2.53-GHz configuration has a $1,000 option that includes Mac OS X Server and two hard drives.

Lost in the flurry of releases, Apple’s remote control received a makeover, sporting the aluminum-and-black aesthetic to match the new iMacs and MacBook Pros. The remote can control not just Macs, but iPods and iPhones as well. It costs $19.

See Also:

• Latest Rumors Point to New Macs on the Horizon

Photo: Apple

My experience with guns is limited to finger-banging: sticking out my forefinger and moving my thumb while making the sound of a gunshot with my mouth. If I’m feeling particularly frisky, I will blow imaginary gun-smoke from my finger after I shoot.

But I know enough about guns (from the movies) to know that this Wii-compatible Heckler & Koch MP5 inspired sub-machine gun is awesome. It has the newer, more accurate motion-plus sensors, a speaker and a rumble-pack, and works as both Wiimote and nunchuk.

The difference you see between the box-front illustration and the photo is the orange barrel-tip, a US safety measure designed to stop trigger-happy cops from shooting 14-year-olds dead. The photo was snapped at a Hong Kong trade-show by Pocket Lint, and has yet to find its way overseas. Fingers crossed (when you’re not using them to finger-bang, of course) for a swift release.

Wii gets custom-made Heckler and Koch MP5 controller [Pocket Lint]