Hasta La Gadget!

Apparently, the Architect Stylus will drive the laydeez wild

The capacitive stylus has turned out to be surprisingly useful for a lot of things, but up until now it was never a flirting tool. That’s about to change with the Architect Stylus, a pen which appears to send horny, espresso-sipping hotties into spasms of barely-concealed desire. Watching the promo video, you’d be forgiven for thinking this has a built-in vibrator

The Architect Stylus is handsome, though. It has a lanyard-able cap which unscrews to reveal a soft silicone tip. These tips glide a lot better over glassy screens than the foam ones found on other styluses.

The claims in the Architect FAQ are a little suspect, though. Apparently, using a stylus greatly lowers “the risk of scratching it with fingernails.” If you’re a grizzly bear, maybe.

Despite Steve Job’s famous quote that “If you need a stylus, they blew it,” they can actually be very handy. Last night I started a new Spanish class, and went completely paper free. Using the excellent Noteshelf app, I took notes and even snapped (noisy, poor-quality) photos of the textbook to make notes on instead of writing answers on its pages. I used the Alupen stylus, and never missed paper and ink once.

The Architect Stylus costs $23, and is available now.

Architect Stylus product page [Arctic Store via Twitter]

See Also:

• Crayola iMarker, a Kid-Friendly iPad Stylus
• HTC Tablet's Stylus to Cost a Whopping 80 Bucks
• Tip-Slip: Tablet Stylus Slides Onto Sharpie, Bic
• Fingers-On With The Chunky Alupen iPad Stylus
• Jot Pro Stylus is Like a Crosshairs for Crayons
• Korean iPhone Stylus: It's Made of Meat

Could the WISPR make smoking cool again?

The problem with being a smoker (apart from that whole early death thing) is that it is getting harder and harder to do. Gone are the days of firing up a fine Havana in a crowded restaurant, or sucking on a cigarette with your morning coffee. Smokers are forced to smoke outside, adding pneumonia and hypothermia to the list of risky diseases.

You probably won’t convince anyone to let you use it on a plane, but you may be able to get away with smoke-free smoking using the surprisingly stylish WISPR vaporizer from Iolite. The WISPR, designed by San Francisco designer Chris Luomanen of Thing Tank, is about as cool as it’s possible to be for a lung-tarring gadget.

It works like this: You open up the box and load it with the leaves of your choice (tobacco is recommended in most jurisdictions). Close it and hit the switch to light the thing. Wait for it to heat up and then get smoking.

The vaporizer doesn’t actually burn the weed inside. Instead, it heats it to 374 degrees, “creating a vapor that can be inhaled.” The act of not-burning apparently decreases inhaled toxins.

The body of the WISPR is a giant heat-sink, which means it disperses heat before it can burn your hands. The unit contains a built-in butane heater, and when you’re done you just fold the mouthpiece down as if it were a router antenna.

There are a few things to watch. The WISPR will get warm in use, but not uncomfortably so. A smoking session will last for around 15 minutes, and if using tobacco, you should use pipe tobacco, not rolling tobacco. This makes me think that it was really designed for some other more potent substance.

The WISPR isn’t cheap. It’ll cost you €200, or $270. In Spain, that’s a good few months worth of cigarettes. In the UK, where tax has made tobacco prices higher, that’s the rough equivalent of one pack of Marlboros*

WISPR product page [Iolite. Thanks, Pamela!]

See Also:

• The Smoking Gun: Best Kitchen Gadget Name Ever
• Smoking Gun Gigarette Holder: Wrong in So Many Ways
• Gadget Labber Calls on Tech to Help Him Quit Cigs
• Smokes On a Plane: NJOY Electronic Cigarettes
• The Inevitable USB Powered Cigarette

Ray sticks to a window and slurps up the sun

How do you make sure your solar panel is always pointing at the sun? Well, sticking it in the window would be a good start, and that’s just what Quirky’s new Ray does — literally.

Ray is a combined solar charger and suction cup, meaning you can stick it to the windshield of your car or the window of a sunny room and convert photons into precious electrons. The simple device also contains a battery, so you can store energy by day and drain it by night. According to the specs, the battery holds enough juice to fully charge a cellphone.

Fresh out of windows? Ray has you covered with a flip-out kickstand, which doubles as a cable tidy for the USB cord when not in use.

I like it, and I’d probably sign up for the $40 needed to pre-order if I wasn’t so impatient. Quirky waits until enough pre-orders have been received before the production lines run, and this can take a looong time. Still, order now and I guess you’ll have one in time for next summer’s sun.

Ray product page [Quirky via Gizmag]

See Also:

• Solar Screens May Make Phone Chargers Obsolete
• Solar-Powered iPhone Battery Case: Apple Approves
• Ralph Lauren Solar-Powered Backpack Is Predictably Expensive …
• 'World's Only' Solar-Powered Light-Bulb

Slim and sleek, or fat and full — you decide

As predictably as worms squirming to the surface of a field after a rainstorm, a new Apple device fills every gadget blogger’s inbox with PR pitches for cases. The irony today, of course, is that all the existing iPhone 4 cases and accessories will still fit the iPhone 4S.

But surfing right up on top of the deluge of email crap come these two new iPhone cases from WaterField Designs. Both are leather, both carry the iPhone and double as wallets, and both take different approaches to holding things.

If you’re the kind of person whose wallet is stuffed so full of junk that carrying it in your back pocket means risking a cricked spine when you sit down, you’ll want the iPhone Wallet. It’s a zippered burrito of storage for cards and cash, and the iPhone is held in a pocket with a clear window so you can see and use it while it is still inside. The iPhone Wallet comes in black or brown, costs $39 and will ship Oct. 31.

If you travel lighter (and have some respect for your back), then the iPhone Hint is for you. The simple pouch also has a window to see the iPhone within, but only has one slim pocket for cards and cash. The iPhone Hint is $25, and will also ship by the end of the month.

iPhone Wallet product page [SF Bags. Thanks, Heidi!]

iPhone Hint product page [SF Bags]

Easy to use, and easy to lose: the Apple iPhone Micro USB Adapter

Last year, the European Commission decreed that all future cellphones would have but one kind of charger. No longer would we see different cables for Nokia, Sony, and Samsung. Instead, there would be one charger to rule them all: Micro USB.

Which of course led everybody to wonder if Apple would play ball. There was of course no way that it would drop its proprietary 30-pin dock connector, so how would it comply with EU rules?

With a dongle, of course. Over in Europe, you can now buy an adapter which will let you charge your iPhone (or other iOS device) with a Micro USB cable. It’s a tiny chunk of plastic which slots into the dock connector and provides a standard socket into which any USB cable can be shoved in order to charge or sync the phone.

The adapters cost €9, or £8 in the UK, and will presumably come bundled with the iPhone 4S when it ships. Does this also mean that Apple will begin to ship plain USB cables with its various chargers? I doubt it — the adapter likely takes care of obeying the rules.

Still, for many people this will mean one less charger to carry, and this tiny dongle can be kept in a wallet. I actually do things the other way around, carrying my iPad charger along with a handful of other USB cables to charge other gadgets from it when needed.

Apple iPhone Micro USB Adapter [Apple]

See Also:

• Europeans Realize Dream of a Single Charger for All Cellphones …