Hasta La Gadget!

When not knocking back gin martinis or sipping “Platform Heinekens” while waiting for the train home, Wired.com NY Bureau Chief John C Abell is quite the handyman. Not only is he the Foursquare mayor of his local Home Depot, he has also put together the best iPad typing stand yet seen.

Professional to the last, Mr. Abell even took time to load up the Wired.com front page before knocking out this video clip. The stand itself is made of a pair of “designer” steel doorstops, with rubber strips on top. And that’s it. As you can see, the doorstops, which are off-the-shelf items, are rock-solid when holding the iPad at the perfect angle for typing, but can also be scooped up and tossed in your bag where they’ll take up almost no space.

John was planning on somehow joining together the two wedges to save on readjusting their positions every time he set them down. In the end I convinced him that portability was more important, and he conceded that I had made an “excellent point.”

Rubber doorstops would work just as well, of course, but the steel ones come in at just $6 for the pair, will last forever and will match the black-and-silver color scheme of the iPad. The only problem is that they don’t appear to be in the online Home Depot store, so you’ll have to pay a visit to a real store. But then, you own an iPad, so what fear could the outside world hold for you anyway?

See Also:

• Joule: An Elegant, Minimalist iPad Stand
• The $5 iPad Dock
• Quirky's iPad Case With Two-Way Kick-Stand
• BookArc for iPad, an Elegant Aluminum Stand

The Vogel TwistDock is a sleek and sexy PS3 docking station that not only keeps cables and controllers neatly organized but also charges them (even when the system is powered down). Available exclusively for the PS3 and PS3 Slim, the TwistDock also adds two extra USB ports, which you can expand to six with the optional 4 USB Hub accessory.

TwistDock pricing has yet to be revealed (that’s to happen this summer), but what’s known is its availability: the holiday season.

Of course, a retractable wire restraint won’t actually help the iPhone play any nicer with AT&T’s beleaguered network, but it will stop the screen of your iPhone (or any other phone, despite the name) from ending up like a crystalline spiderweb after hitting the floor.

The extremely dorky process goes like this: You stick an adhesive pad onto the back of the phone, which adds a plastic loop. This loop then connects to the painful-sounding “split ring connector” and that in turn hooks onto a 30-inch steel cable.

The cable retracts into the belt-clip, just like a metal tape measure swishing back into its case, and the clip is held on by a locking carabiner. If there is a nerdier accessory in all the world I want to see it.

The leash will not only keep you phone from fatal impacts; it will also stop you from dropping it in water (something that Wired Science editor Betsy Mason might find useful to stop her dumping yet another iPhone in the toilet) and helps to prevent theft. Or not: a cable running into your pocket means one thing to a thief, and that’s that you have something valuable in there.

It gets a whole lot less ridiculous if you use this to secure your phone whilst inside a bag, but for those who insist on wearing their dorkiness on their belts, an optional extra can make you look even sillier. The Designer Label puts “a crystal clear polyurethane dome” over the design or photo of your choice, mimicking those old-fashioned key-fobs.

The iPhone Leash will cost $25 in money. In cost to your street-cred, its price cannot be overestimated.

iPhone Leash [My Phone Leash. Thanks, Daniel!]

Best Buy‘s just dropped the official details on its iPhone 4 pre-sale, and there are no surprises here. You’ll be able to head over to any Best Buy starting tomorrow (that’s June 15th) and pre-order up Apple’s latest offering for delivery on June 24th. That’s the same date Apple gave us so like we said — no surprises here — but you can hit up the full press release below if you’re into that sort of thing.

Continue reading Best Buy announces official iPhone 4 pre-sale for June 15th

Best Buy announces official iPhone 4 pre-sale for June 15th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Um… okay? In what’s easily one of the most curious product introductions of the year (in terms of method, not design), AT&T has seemingly just made official the first not-awful Android device to be sold in subsidized fashion for its network. ‘Course, those who don’t mind ponying up for an out-of-contract phone have been able to to pick up an AT&T-compatible Nexus One for a few months now, but contract lovers have been stuck with the Motorola Backflip and the promise of Dell’s admittedly underwhelming Aero. Dante Martin, a product manager at the carrier, has followed up on a prior video with a confirmation that the HTC Aria is indeed “launching on AT&T,” though he gives precisely no specifications in his address posted after the break. All we know is that the phone will most certainly ship with Sense and an optical trackball, but mum’s the word on a price or release. For now, anyway. Here’s hoping this is just the beginning — AT&T needs a decent dose of Android in the worst possible way.

[Thanks, Travis]

Update: Ah, and here’s the official presser. It’s a mid-range phone with Android 2.1, a five megapixel camera, 3.2-inch HVGA capacitive touchpanel, inbuilt WiFi and support for 7.2Mbps HSPA. There’s also a soft-touch back and a total weight of around four ounces, and AT&T says this one will be available on June 20th nationwide for $129.99 on a two-year contract (after $100 mail-in rebate, of course). As for specs? There’s a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor, proximity sensor, integrated GPS, a digital compass, light sensor, 512MB ROM / 384MB RAM, a microSD card slot (2GB included) and a 1,200mAh battery good for up to six hours of yapping.

Continue reading HTC Aria goes official for AT&T, gets toyed with on video (update: $130, coming June 20)

HTC Aria goes official for AT&T, gets toyed with on video (update: $130, coming June 20) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  YouTube (ShareATT), AT&T Specs [PDF]  | Email this | Comments