Hasta La Gadget!

Cole Haan Leather Cover for Kindle 3. Photo from Amazon.com

Q: I love my new Kindle 3, but I’m always worried that I’m going to knock a cup of coffee on it, or that my son will use it as a Frisbee. Are there any good cases you would recommend? — Anxious in Akron

A: Akron, I’m in much the same situation with my own Kindle. The device itself seems sturdy enough, but I always have this irrational fear that the beautiful but curiously-static screensavers of famous authors are staring at me, or through me, with their cold, dead E Ink eyes, beckoning me to read their books. Unfortunately, all of the Kindle cases I’ve seen and tried have some serious drawbacks.

Let’s start with the cases available from the Amazon Store. Most of the cases they sell are still for the second-generation Kindle, which won’t fit your device; you just have to ignore those entirely. In the left-hand sidebar you can pick your Kindle model, and you’ll only see relevant results.

Amazon Lighted Leather Cover, from Amazon.com

Amazon itself makes two cases for the Kindle that are basically identical: they’re both leather and come in a range of colors, with a microsuede interior and straps and hinges to keep your reader from sliding around or worse, out. The basic model is $35; add an on-board light, and the whole package costs $60.

Now, when the Kindle cost $400, springing $35-$60 for a decent-quality case and $50 for a two-year warranty had a kind of logic to it. But I don’t remember the woman from the new Kindle poolside ad leaning over and saying: “It’s a Kindle. $139. I paid about as much for the case and the warranty on it.” That would be a really stupid commercial.

Even my friends who love their Kindle cases and want to wrap their beloved e-readers in the best have problems with Amazon’s cases. Everyone agrees that the light on the $60 case can be useful, especially outdoors at dusk and occasionally in bed at nighttime. Everyone also agrees that it adds a lot of weight to the overall package, turning the light-as-a-feather e-reader into a clumsy hardcover.

That leaves you with two options: go for broke with a high-end case, or actually be broke and find something cheap and easy. The Cole Haan Hand-Stained Pebble-Grained Leather Kindle Case costs $99, and has a great rep carried over from its much-loved Kindle 2 cases. But Amazon reviewers complain that Cole Haan skimped on strength and quality to get its case out in time for the Kindle 3 launch.

Apparently the Kindle 2 case had an extra patch of leather strengthening the spine, that added extra protection and made the Kindle in the Cole Haan case feel like a high-quality book. The company’s Kindle 3 case is just one-ply, making the spine less stiff and more likely to wear with use. At other price points, that might be forgivable, but $100 is enough to nudge loyal users into the angry zone.

The longer the Kindle 3 is out, the more manufacturers begin releasing cases for it. Belkin has a line of sleeves available on the Amazon store now that I don’t think were there when I started researching this last week. In particular, many companies are starting to sell sleeves, not cases, that cost around $20.

However, if you’re plan to go this route, the best tip of all comes from Instpaper’s Marco Arment. In his first look at the Kindle 3, he notes how the Kindle 3’s rubberized back (as opposed to the earlier version’s slick aluminum) and slightly-smaller size makes it the first iteration to be comfortably used without a case. As for a sleeve, his solution is ingenious:

Photo credit/permission courtesy Marco Arment at Marco.org

A standard 6×10 bubble envelope — the size you’d use for shipping a DVD in a case — actually makes a decent low-budget Kindle 3 slipcase. And if your goal is to just throw it in a bag and have basic scratch protection until you remove it for use, it’s a pretty good solution.

Not bad at all. Next thing you know, those envelopes will be available in nano-patterned Naugahyde for $19.95.

In time, the marketplace will catch up, prices will (I have to believe) start to come down, and we’ll get more variety and usability out of our Kindle 3 cases. In the meantime, give one of these a whirl, preferably without putting down hard money first. If they don’t work for you, you can always go back to barebacking it.

P.S.: If you’ve hacked together your own Kindle/e-Reader/tablet case solution. I’d love to read about it in the comments. Share the love!

See Also:

• Modular iPad Case Lets You Tweet From Your Kegerator
• Moleskine-Shaped, Bamboo iPad Case
• Concept Case Adds Camera to iPad
• Kindle Case from Moleskine Mixes Paper and E-Ink
• The Guardian: A Floating, Waterproof Case for Kindle
• M-Edge Guardian Case for Amazon Kindle
• Pinstriped Cashmere Kindle Case Is So Very English
• Amazon Kindle Third Generation With 3G + Wi-Fi
• A Textbook Case for the Kindle
• Photos: Putting Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 Head-to-Head
• New Amazon Ad Shows Kindle As Sexy Competitor
• Why Does the New Kindle Have A Microphone?

Altec Lansing’s Octiv Mini just a wee bit too bantam for your needs? Fret not, as the same company has just issued a jumbo-sized version by the name of Octiv Duo ($99.95; ships in October). As the title implies, this iPod / iPhone speaker dock is capable of holding (and charging) a pair of iDevices, and a third unit can be juiced as well through the integrated USB port. If your pal’s Sansa Fuze+ somehow ends up over at your place, the model-agnostic auxiliary port should suffice. Oddly enough, it’s a free accompanying app that really sells this thing — the Music Mix application shuffles songs from both players and allows users to set the percentage of music played from each iPhone or iPod while docked, ensuring that you and your SO never stop bickering about who has the better playlist. In related news, the outfit has also introduced a trio of Muzx headphones, with the Core, Extra and Ultra editions shipping between now and next month for $29.99, $49.95 and $99.95 in order of mention. More details on each, along with a video of Music Mix in action, await you just beyond the break.

Continue reading Altec Lansing intros Octiv Duo iPod speaker dock and Muzx earbuds

Altec Lansing intros Octiv Duo iPod speaker dock and Muzx earbuds originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember when Nintendo said it’d release its release date for the 3DS autostereoscopic portable game system on the 29th of this month? We may already have the magic number — depending on how you interpret a few Japanese words. You see, a supposed video game accessory designer by the handle “nocchisan” recently tweeted that eleven Nintendo 3DS accessories will be released on November 11th, and asked his or her followers to kindly buy them up… while purportedly remarking that the 3DS itself will arrive at the same time. While the tweets in question can certainly be read that way, and it makes a certain amount of sense for accessories to appear at launch, our admittedly limited grasp of Japanese suggests an alternative translation: that it’s the accessories themselves (and not the 3DS) that will all arrive at the same time. There’s also the little matter of nocchisan himself, whose Twitter account has already disappeared — we have nothing actually connecting him to the accessory company except a link in his tweet.

Rumor pegs Nintendo 3DS for November 11th in Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re but a few days away from Apple’s music-related “special event,” and naturally the bloody rumors are being tossed into the water, frothing up into quite a feeding frenzy. Last week came talk of new iPod touch and nano models, and now we have even more cases and accessories that seem to back up the belief that there’s a fourth-generation touch and a sixth-generation nano coming. The nano is rumored to have a 3 x 3cm touchscreen (presumably this one) and room on the bottom for a proper dock connector, ensuring compatibility with the millions of iPod cradles and whatnot out there. The new cases we’re seeing certainly back up that idea, with a dock-sized cut-out along with room for what’s said to be a headphone jack, volume controls, a hold button, and a clip ’round the back. At the moment we know rather less about the new touch, but we can hazard a guess as to what it’ll look like.

[Thanks, Hobbsy101]

Next-generation iPod touch and nano accessories and rumors continue to surface originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The kids may be ditching wristwatches for time-telling smartphones, but manufacturers and designers still have some tricks just-barely-up-their-long-sleeves. The trick seems to be making watches more like smartphones by packing in extra functions or forgoing utility altogether for pure aesthetics or prestige.

Now, I can’t really read the spiral watch in the video above, but I appreciate the beauty and concept of the thing. The designer, Denis Guidone, says “I don’t like to design watches, what I really like is to design time.” This really puts us on another plane. If Marcel Duchamp were alive today, I’m sure he’d be making timepieces. (Dali, definitely.)

The “architecture you can wear” web magazine/design store Yanko Design has been highlighting clever takes on the wristwatch like this all summer, including design firm o.d.m.’s digital watch that puts the screen on the sides and the buttons in the middle, and a really gorgeous and surprisingly affordable piece by Daniel Will-Harris that lights up the numbers showing hours and minutes in color:

Image from Yanko Design

Let’s suppose, though, that you want your watch to DO stuff. Computerworld reports on watch manufacturers who are stoked about using the new Bluetooth spec, which makes it easier to hold connections on low-power devices, to pair your wristwatch with a computer the same way you would a mouse, keyboard or phone:

That means a watch or other device with a standard coin-cell or “button” battery that is worn on a wrist, kept in a pocket or worn on a necklace could communicate with a person’s smartphone or laptop. Using the wireless connection, the watch could display data received from the larger device, Bluetooth Special Interest Group Executive Director Michael Foley said Wednesday…

“The specification opens up new categories of Bluetooth devices,” he said. “You could replicate your phone on your watch for caller ID information or [to activate] a music player.”

These watches are probably still over a year away, though, as nobody’s made an announcement just yet. The ones with virus-templated nanobatteries that last forever are a long ways off.

Image from Rolex

Finally, there’s the classic non-timekeeping function of a wristwatch — showing neither utility nor idiosyncratic taste but socially recognized status and power. Luckily for high-end watchmakers, the psychosocial cachet of their products doesn’t seem to be trailing off.

In “Why Do We Care About Luxury Brands?” Jonah Lehrer writes about what our continued desire for genuine Rolex watches, Hermes Bags and real (not sure ’nuff) iPhones has in common with our childhood objects of affection:

Although we outgrow stuffed animals, we never get beyond the irrational logic of authenticity and essentialism. There are certain things whose value depends largely on their legitimacy. While I might listen to bootleg music on my iPhone, I want the phone to be genuine. I want that Apple logo to be real. Why? Because the brand has effectively woven itself into my emotional brain. Because when I see that logo, I don’t see a functional object. Instead, I’ve learned to respond to everything that isn’t functional, all those subtle connotations conveyed in the glossy ads. There are many blankets in the world. But there is only one blankie. The best brands are blankies.

Sometimes it’s nice to look at your watch, not even to check the time, but just to remind yourself that it’s there.

See Also:

• Gallery: Sexy, Strange New Timepieces Debut at Basel Watch Fair
• Tokyo Flash E-Ink Watch
• It’s Beer O’Clock! Watch Has Built-In Bottle Opener
• Void’s Slab-Like Retro Watch Is Impossible to Read
• LED Nerd Watch Tells Time in Hex, Binary, Octal
• Tiny Clip-On Timepieces Turn Anything Into a Watch
• New Watch Takes Electronic Ink Beyond Books
• World’s ‘Most Feature-Packed Watch’ is Also its Ugliest