Hasta La Gadget!

Is this a trend yet? If not, it’s sure to be soon. After all, William Gibson is nothing if not harbinger of the future, right? The Neuromancer author has official given the thumbs up to Amazon’s popular eBook reader, writing on his Twitter account, “Actually, *touched* very first Kindle. Appealing unit, IMO.”

Gibson didn’t just like the unit, however, he signed the thing at a fan’s request–in fact, he signed four of them during an appearance yesterday on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond.

What do you think, could the man who coined the term “cyberspace” be leading another trend? I’m sure Gibson isn’t the first author to have done this, of course. It certainly offers an interesting work around to the inability to get author signatures in the front covers of eBooks.

It’s a bit like getting a team to sign a baseball. Get enough offers to sign the back of your device and the thing is probably better off behind glass. Judging from Gibson’s signature, the author didn’t really expect too many more signatures to join his on the back of this particular device.

I’m not sure what a “Brianwave” is, but I think I like it. It may have just been a simple typo when PLX Devices sent out a press release advertising the “World’s First Brianwave Interface for iPad/iPhone/iPod,” or perhaps it’s something far more profound–is the company trying to tell me something?

Whatever the case may be, later in the press release, the PLX promises that the XWave is “the world’s first brainwave interface accessory for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.” The device slips over the user’s head like a standard (albeit bizarre-looking) headset.

The XWave into any of the aforementioned Apple product, letting the users the company’s apps using electric impulses transmitted from their skills. The impulses are the converted into digital signals, which communicate with the devices.

Mind control ain’t cheap, of course–the device runs $99, though it does come bundled with a free XWave App. Says PLX,

The App allows you to become familiar with controlling objects with your mind and gives you an opportunity to train your brain to control its attention and meditation levels. With the application you will have to go through different stages to control the function of your brain. Objectives include: having to levitate a ball for a certain amount of time, change a color based on the relaxation of your brain and training your brain to maximize its attention span.

More apps will be available through iTunes. PLX will also be opening up its SDK for third-part app development. The device is available for pre-order, as of today. It will begin shipping next month.

The line between guitars and tech toys is blurring. You’ve got your Guitar Heroes and your Rock Bands on one end, and then your self-tuning Gibson “Robot” guitar on the other.

In between there are all manner of hybrid products–take the Fingerist, a wooden case that turns your iPhone into a guitar or products like the SoundTech, which offer something akin to Guitar Hero, only with real instruments.

And then there’s this thing. It clips to your guitar’s headstock. It holds your iPhone. Why? Frankly, I think they should pitch it as a way for a John Mayer to tweet crazy things to his fans during blistering light-rock guitar solos.

The manufacturer Castiv, however, is selling it as a way to look at things like guitar notation on your handset while you play. That makes a little more sense–I guess…

The Guitar Sidekick will run you $30. According to its site, the clip works with the iPhone, Zune, the PSP, Blackberrys, and Android handsets–really, it looks like it should work just fine with any moderately-sized handheld device with a big display.

Fridays before long weekends are the worst. It’s not even 10 AM on the East Coast, and I already feel like I’ve put in a full day’s work. Thankfully, this video is exactly what I need to make it, well, to noon, at least.

It’s the result of an “informal Rube Goldberg summer camp for kids ages 3-8,” which, frankly, sounds a lot more exciting than the Jewish and Boy Scout camps that I went to, growing up.

This video has all the makings of a viral hit for the sleepy long summer weekend: an involved Rube Goldberg-esque machine and a lot of really, really excited children (not to mention, perhaps most importantly of all, a plug on Boing Boing). The goal was to put a rubber ball in a pail, and the device succeeds with flying colors.

There’s not a lot of information about this “informal summer camp,” which, honestly, seems to be a bunch of kids hanging out at house building neat stuff, but hopefully they’ll extend the age range by a couple of decades next summer.

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