Hasta La Gadget!

Mavic, maker of bike parts and accessories, has gone all Sony on us. The EZ-Ride Evolve pedals don’t look too different from a normal platform pedal, but that little circle in the center is a magnet. When combined with the matching shoes (and here’s the proprietary Sony-style part) which are only supplied by Mavic, your feet will snap into position as the powers of attraction take hold.

Or will they? A small magnet, however strong, will never replace proper toe-clips or cleats as mechanisms for keeping feet on pedals. On the other hand, the stiffened soles will make riding more comfortable and efficient than a pair of Converse, and the matching male and female X-shapes, along with the magnet, will at least keep your feet in the proper position on the pedals.

The problem is that you can only buy your shoes from Mavic. We imagine there may be a tiny demand for these in the mountain biking market, but otherwise, use toe-clips or just learn to put your balls on the pedals (the balls of your feet, that is). Mavic’s magnetic pedals cost around $60 per pair, the shoes $90.

Product page [Mavic via Bike Radar]

The Pogo Stylus is an iPhone accessory that we have mocked mercilessly since its beginnings, in the same way a jock will ceaselessly bully a bespectacled geek until one day, he gets his sweet, sweet (and doubtlessly technical) revenge. Well, Ten One, the nerds behind the stick, just got that revenge.

The Pogo comes in various guises but in all of them comprises a small tubular stick with a wad of conductive foam on the end. This lets you use it as a pen on the iPhone’s screen, and also on the glass touchpads of the unibody MacBooks. Mostly pointless, as the idea of the iPhone screen is to obviate the need for an easy-to-lose pen.

The revenge comes in the form of Mac software which, ironically, works just as well with a finger. Autograph is a tiny application which can add signatures to your documents. Ever been send a pdf form that you have to sign and return, only to end up printing it, signing and then scanning it back in? Autograph is here to help.

Autograph runs in the background and, when you hit a hot-key or click the menu bar icon, brings up a little transparent black square. You use the stylus (or finger) on the trackpad to sign. Hit enter and it is inserted into the document you were working on. And of course you can use it to insert quick sketches.

Autograph is a very neat exploitation of Mac hardware, and cost $7, or comes free with those previously useless Pogo Sticks.

Product page [Ten One]

See Also:

• Pogo Stick Turns Mac Touchpads into Graphics Tablets
• Pogo iPhone Stylus Bounces Back. Again
• Pogo Stylus: The Most Useless iPhone Accessory. Ever

This keyboard is hideous, a piece of design so startlingly humdrum that, like the perfect spy, it could slip into your office and remain unnoticed for weeks or months. But Adesso’s AKB-440 has one extremely useful feature, especially in an age where almost everyone uses a laptop.

It has an integrated touchpad, along with a pair of mouse buttons, situated below the useless section which contains the “insert”, “page down” and “end” keys. The arrow keys have been shifted across under the, uh, shift key, laptop-style, to make room.

Now a mouse, with all its fancy buttons, might be more efficient than a trackpad, but once you get used to having one there at your finger and thumb-tips as you write, reaching over to grab the rodent starts to get annoying. I have a lovely old sprung external keyboard which is propped against the wall because I am so used to my MacBook keyboard and oversized trackpad.

And even if you love your mouse, there are times when you are surfing one handed (drinking a cup of coffee, I mean) that an integrated trackpad much easier. Hell, just scrolling a long document would benefit.

The $60 keyboard has one other great selling point. If anyone in the office does notice it, they’ll never steal it. It’s just too plain ugly.

Product page [Adesso via Business Wire]

These awkwardly-named headphones from Audio Technica solve several problems for me. The ATH-ON300 ONTO (told ya) features a super-thin headband, which has been dubbed the “seamless headband”. This will let me keep my headphones on my ears while cycling — earbuds have a dangerous habit of popping out in the heaviest of traffic.

But better, they will let my stylishly wander the streets wearing both headphones and a gentlemanly Panama hat, as I drown out the din of the city and instead imagine myself in the depths of India, beating malaria with a cold gin-and-tonic. Delicious!

The ‘phones have 30mm drivers and output a dynamic range of 12-23,000Hz, enough to take care of all your compressed MP3 files. At once. The tunes are pumped at a coclear-rattling 100mW and have a 1.2 meter cord. All this for $50.

The downside? Audio Technica seems to have bought the colors from the 1980s. That, and the company says that its colored cans are “designed for women.” There goes my all-male explorer fantasy.

Product page [AudioCubes via Oh Gizmo]

The BookArc comes from TwelveSouth, the same people that brought you an aluminum accessory shelf that hangs off the back of your iMac or Cinema Display. The BookArc, though, is for a MacBook, regular or pro.

The $50 stand is an elegant arch of metal with a silicon insert to allow a snug and scratch-free fit. While held upright, the MacBook has a smaller desk footprint and is surrounded by lovely, cooling air. This is for people who regularly hook up their notebook to an external display and keyboard.

And the speed increase? You won’t notice anything with the higher-end MacBook Pros that sport proper graphics cards, but the low end Macs see some relief from not having to drive two displays: when running closed all the graphics power is available for the single screen.

I tested this claim (without the BookArc) by running Adobe Lightroom on my closed 13” aluminum MacBook piped into the external monitor I usually run alongside the notebook display. It was quicker. Lightroom can get a little sluggish at times, and it was certainly snappier.

What you do lose, of course, is a secondary display. You’ll also need a keyboard and a mouse, but if that’s your setup anyway, this is neat and elegant solution.

Product page [TwelveSouth]

See Also:

• Backpack Adds Tidy Shelf to Back of Mac