Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Quirky’s Perch is an all-in-one speaker and charger for your phone. It comes in two parts: the dock, which stays put on your nightstand, side-table or desk, and the Bluetooth speaker, which charges on the dock but can be taken with you in a bag, a big pocket or just to the bathroom so you don’t miss any of your audiobook.

When not docked, the speaker has its own kickstand, so you can prop it up wherever you like, vertically or horizontally. It also has a built in mic for conference-calling. When it is docked, the speaker snaps into place, held by magnets.

The dock part hooks up to AC power and connects to your phone via a USB cable instead of a device-limiting dock-connector. It also has a clock readout so you can use it as a bedside alarm.

The Perch is just like any other Quirky product – designed by an online community and only sent to production once the minimum order has been reached. In this case the minimum pre-order is 1,600, and the price is $200, with a $20 discount for early adopters.

Perch product page [Quirky]

See Also:

• Jawbone
• Ears-On With the SuperTooth Disco Bluetooth Boombox
• SuperTooth, a Block-Rocking Portable Bluetooth Speaker
• Quirky

Pac-Man sucks on a touch-screen. Unless you have a proper joystick to yank your yellow-pizza avatar from the clutches of Clyde and co, then you’ll get bored (and frustrated) in minutes. Help is at hand (or at finger?) from ThinkGeek, in the form of the JOYSTICK-IT, a handsome stick which sticks straight onto a tablet screen.

Press it into place over the onscreen controls and the milled aluminum stick will transfer your jerks and tugs into virtual finger-presses by way of a conductive foam pad beneath. The biggest problem with on-screen gaming button is that your thumb can wander off the controls and leave you stranded just as you were about to perform a slick 180º and leave those dumb ghosts in a heap.

The stick will be available at the end of January, for $25. Stick it on you iPad, lay the tablet down on a too-low table and surround with glasses of warm beer. Congratulations: you now have a perfect replica of a tabletop arcade cabinet. Cigarette burns are optional.

Joystick IT product page [ThinkGeek]

See Also:

• Stick-On JoyPad Upgrades iPad Gaming
• Racing Game for iPad Uses iPhones as Controllers

LAS VEGAS — Maybe you’ve been eating too much fried chicken, or you’re just a neurotic health nut. Whatever the case may be, if blood pressure is important to you, there’s some iPhone dongleware for that.

Withings’ blood-pressure monitor is a traditional strap with a dock connector at the end to plug into an iPhone or iPad. Launch the Withings app, tap the Start button and you’ll feel the accessory tighten around your bicep and slowly loosen up until the app gives you a reading of your blood pressure.

During my demo here at the Consumer Electronics Show, I scored a blood pressure of 160/90 — pretty high, but expected because this convention’s pretty stressful. After it took my pressure it gave me the option to look at my blood-pressure history in a 2D chart — nifty for monitoring progress.

“In the near feature, 30 percent of Americans will have to follow their blood pressure, so we think we have a big audience,” said Eric Carreel, chairman of Withings, a French company specializing in health accessories.

Withings is among a wave of new gadgets taking advantage of features inside mobile devices to monitor health anywhere and anytime. A similar device we saw last year was an insulin meter that connected to an iPhone for diabetes patients to plan out their meals and insulin injections using live data.

The Withings accessory ships this month for $130; the iOS app will be a free download in the App Store.

See Also:

• Wired.com Readers' Best iPhone Dongleware Inventions
• Special-Purpose iPhone Accessories: Where Are They?
• iPhone 3.0 Wish List: Accessory-Powered Apps We Want

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The Fling is a stick-on game-controller for the iPad. It comes from Ten One design, the company behind the popular Pogo Stylus that lets you write on your capacitive touch-screen with a pen.

The Fling is made from bendy resin, aluminum and a pair of suction cups. You fire up a game with an on-screen joystick – a first-person shooter or Street Fighter IV, for example – and place the Fling over the top of the touch-controls. Stick it down with the suckers and you’re good to go. The Fling lets you make your moves on a rocking D-pad and transfers them to the screen beneath via the magic of conductivity. And because it’s transparent, you can see the game through its jellyfish-like body.

Here it is in action. Get ready on the mute button, though – there’s loud music.

Neat, huh? And just $25 – not dirt cheap, sure, but certainly no more than buying a decent controller for a regular console. I had moved on to finger-friendly games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, but the Fling may make me reconsider my abandonment of SFIV.

Fling product page [Ten One via Kotaku]

See Also:

• iCade: Spoof Arcade Cabinet for iPad
• Stick-On Buttons Turn Smartphones into Game-Pads
• Pogo iPhone Stylus Bounces Back. Again

LAS VEGAS — Joby, the joint-legged tripod company, has launched a new iPad case / stand today. And as you’d expect from Joby, it’s not your usual iPad stand.

The Ori is named for origami, and it’s easy to see why. The composite aluminum/polypropylene case is made up of sheets which fold into a bewilderment of different configurations. It starts out looking like a folio case, and consists of three sections, like a book-cover with a third section attached at back. Within these sheets are further, pop-out parts that allow all the fancy folding.

First, you can just fold these main sections to various reading-friendly angles. Second, you can pop a smaller kick-stand out from one sheet to make a very secure typing stand. Third, this kick-stand can be used in combo with the main stand for a raised, kitchen-friendly configuration which keeps it above spills.

Lastly, you can go all-out for the in-bed TV-stand, which uses everything but the kickstand and introduces a swivel that lets you spin the iPad into horizontal and vertical positions. And don’t forget: the Ori also works as a microfiber-lined case.

The Oro costs $80. That’s not cheap, but it will replace pretty much every other stand and case you might need. And if the composite material is anything like as light and stiff as that of the Aviiq laptop stand we reviewed, you probably won;t even notice its there.

Ori product page [Joby]

See Also:

• Hands-On with Aviiq's Beautiful, Expensive Folding Notebook Stand …
• Joby Gorillabike: Dangerous, Bendy, Awesome
• Joby's Gorillatorch Flare Puts On the Red Light
• Joby's New Tripod Gear: Magnets and Balls
• Joby Gorillapod, Now for iPod Touch