Jan 03

Pointy Post-It Notes Are Better Than The Original

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

Is it possible to build a better Post-It note? One look at Jun Inokuma and Yuri Naruse’s house-shaped block of sticky-notes says yes.

The house shape is no coincidence – Inokuma and Naruse are architects – but it is also something of a by=product of the shape of the stickers themselves. Imagine slicing a house-shaped loaf of bread. Now imagine the slices are paper, and that you are somehow way better at slicing a paper loaf than a bead one. Now, if you still can, imagine the little house-shaped notes. Have I lost you? Here’s a picture:

As you can see, the notes, named IE-TAGs, have everything that a Post-It has, along with a handy roof-shaped tab to mark a page in a book.

There’s another reason for the house-shape. The notes are made from wood taken from the construction waste of real houses, recycled into paper. The notes only exist as a concept right now, but the fact that the design has been trademarked offers hope that we will be able to neaten-up our notebooks in the near future.

IE-TAGs [Narakuma via Core77]

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Jan 03

Pen Clip Clips Pens to Moleskine Notebooks

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

You got a brand new Moleskine notebook or diary for Christmas. You also got a fancy new pen. And if you’re really lucky, Uncle Pete gave you just over $13 (or €10) to spend on anything you like. Generous old Uncle Pete.

Might we suggest you pick up the Pen Clip, designed for Authentics by Stefan Diez. It’s a metal tube that clips into the spine of a notebook and lets you slide in any pen, be it a write-anywhere space-pen, or a cheap-o Biro. It’s a handsome way to keep pen and paper together.

It will be useless, of course, if your pen already has a clip (clipped pens can be forced into the Moleskine’s spine, like an epidural into a human’s vertebrae, but the spine will crack after a while). The Pen Clip can also be clipped to posters, calendars and anything else.

The $13 is for the small sized clip. If you received a large pen for your gift, then you’re out of luck: the large clip costs €13, or $17. Uncle Pete doesn’t look so generous now, does he?

Authentics Pen Clip [Connox via Oh Gizmo!]

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Dec 29

Skin Turns iPhone into Polaroid Land Camera

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, iPhone, Retro, Today's Chili

The iPhone is already the spiritual successor to the Polaroid, able to deliver great results, instantly. So instead of wishing that whichever company currently owns the Polaroid brand-name would just make a great new camera already, why not just make your iPhone look like the iconic Land Camera?

Buy this skin, designed by Canada-based Ryan Astle, and you can do just that. The reusable plastic stickers come in a pack of two – one big one for the back, so the subject of your photo can see how retro-serious you are about your snaps, and a little sticker for the bottom panel on the front, adding a fake button on either side of the home button.

Of course, the Polaroid name itself isn’t mentioned, because this might distract Polaroid’s current owner from churning out cynical cash-in crap for long enough for a visit to court. There’s really no doubting what the design is “inspired” by, though, and it can be yours for just $15. The skin will fit any iPhone model, not just the current one.

Photoroid Skin [Infectious / Ryan Astle via Giz]

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Dec 29

The 10 Most Significant Gadgets of 2010

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Notebooks, Phones, R&D and Inventions, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

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When this year began, we were feverishly speculating about an Apple tablet, looking forward to 3-D TV sets, and optimistically waiting for the end of the cable companies’ cruel grip on our wallets.

We had to settle for one out of three. While manufacturers did release a handful of 3-D TVs, there’s just not enough content (either on cable or Blu-ray) to justify purchasing one yet. The heavy, expensive glasses you need to buy don’t make the proposition any more attractive, either.

And as for getting all our video from the sweet, ever-flowing bounty of the internet? Sure, we still do that — when we’re at work. But at home, internet TV is still struggling to stand on its own. The gadget we’d pinned our hopes on, the Boxee Box, is unfinished and buggy. Google TV is hampered by the unwillingness of the TV networks to play ball. Apple TV remains locked into its own little iTunes-centric world.

So that leaves the Apple tablet. If you’d told us in December 2009 that we’d be using the word “iPad” every day without giggling, well, we would have giggled at you. But there it is: There’s no getting around the fact that the iPad, silly name and all, has completely and successfully redefined what a “tablet computer” could be.

But the iPad was far from being the only big gadget news of the year. E-readers, cameras, and even exoskeletons made huge strides in 2010. Here, then, are the 10 gadgets that were most significant in 2010.

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Dec 28

Omega Headphone Stand: The $180 Plywood Curve

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, expensive, headphones, Today's Chili

If ever there was a solution to a first-world problem, this is it. Behold, the Omega Headphone Stand, a perfect answer to a question that was never asked.

The stands are exactly what they claim to be, nothing more: a place to keep your over-the-head headphones. If you have been suffering the awful chaos of a pair of expensive cans sitting messily on a table, or even worse, sprawled across a shelf, offending the eyes of every sensitive soul who visits your luxury, minimalist home, then you can stop your painful worrying. Now you can perch those high-end headphones onto a curved plywood stand.

The swooping veneer sculptures come in a variety of forest-killing hardwoods – cherry, maple, zebrano or walnut – and mimic the shape of a human head, which makes a lot of sense as the ‘phones are designed to cosset the noggins of audiophiles the (first) world over.

The price? A mere $180, meaning you’ll have to spend at least that on a pair of headphones or risk your superficial friends chuckling at you. Oh,and you’ll have to do something about the cords, too. In the photo, they’ve just been cleverly hidden from the camera’s view. In your home, they’ll make a mess that will drive you crazy. Crazy enough to spend another $180 on an ivory cable-tidy, no doubt.

Omega Headphone Stands [Elusive disc via Uncrate]

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Dec 28

QWERTY Slider Case for iPhone Is Fat But Functional

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, iPhone, Today's Chili

Boxwave’s keyboard case for the iPhone 4 looks to be just about perfect for the person who loves their iPhone, but still pines for the hard keys of their BlackBerry. They’ll also need big pockets – not because the case is particularly expensive, but because it adds quite a bit of thickness to the already chunky iPhone. Boxwave doesn’t list the size, but from the photos, it appears to double the iPhone’s depth.

The keyboard itself is a landcape slider combined with a snap-on case which leaves the front of the phone clear. It’s a Bluetooth model (battery life, 45 days) and has a row of numbers up top as well as the standard QWERTY. You also get a home button and a search button, especially handy as it means you don’t have to reach up to the touch-screen to swap apps. What you don’t get is a proper spacebar, but there are both shift and caps-lock keys.

Despite the bulk, this fat accessory manages to be fairly elegant, and has cut-outs for the camera and all the edge-switches. Finally, the case charges via USB.

Like I said, it’s perfect for the keyboard-lover who has defected to an iPhone. But how many of those are there these days? I have a feeling that the people who simply cannot use an on-screen keyboard will just stick with a BlackBerry, or move to a keyboard-equipped Android phone. After all, who really wants to double the thickness of an iPhone 4? $80.

Keyboard Buddy iPhone 4 Case [Boxwave via iLounge]

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Dec 27

Unity Turns Coffee Table into Universal Remote

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, Phones, Today's Chili

Place the handsome Unity box on your coffee-table, download the companion application from the App Store, and you can control your TV, DVD player and pretty much anything else in your living room, direct from your iPhone.

The black, cylindrical Unity seems a lot like the soft, rubber Peel which we saw a few weeks ago. Both allow you to remote-control any IR gear you have, but while the Peel hooks into your home’s Wi-Fi network, the Unity uses Bluetooth. And while the Peel is a system that learns your tastes and breaks down the entire concept of channels, the Unity is a flat-out nerd-fest.

Once you have told the Unity app which devices you own, you can flip channels using on-screen keys. But then the fun begins. Central to the Unity are “actions”, step-by-step instructions that execute with a single touch. So one press can fire up your home-theater gear, switch the TV to the right channel and start the movie playing. The one thing it won’t do is make the popcorn.

Unity also has one other big advantage over the Peel: You can buy it. While the Peel is still little more than vapor (and a free app), the Unity can be had for $100.

Unity product page [Gear4 via Macworld]

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Dec 27

Thimble: A Bluetooth Braille Smart-Finger

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, Displays, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

Thimble is a Bluetooth finger-glove that hooks up to your smartphone and works as a Braille display. By pulsing Braille shapes onto the fingertip via an “electro-tactile grid array”, all kinds of messages can be conveyed to the user.

But that’s not all. The concept design, by Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet, also has a camera inside to scan words in the real world and transcribe them into Braille, along with a microphone for voice control. Thus the user can ask where they are, the phone will provide the location via GPS and the Thimble will read out the answer. Here’s a slow-moving video showing how it would work.

The phone, in this case, is an iPhone, as iOS already has great accessibility features for the sight-impaired, and already works just fine with existing Braille displays. Hedberg and Bennet are “working on a patent”, and as the product is actually fairly straightforward, we’re hoping to see real, working versions in the future.

Thimble – There’s a Thing for That [Vimeo via DVICE]

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Dec 23

Solar Vox, a Portable Sun-Powered Charging Station

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Phones, solar, Today's Chili

The Solar Vox, from Detroit-based designers  Eric Strebel and Jim Nogarian, is a USB charger powered by the sun. The project has been launched on Kickstarter, the place where potential customers can pledge their cash for startups, in exchange for getting one of the first products off the line.

The Solar Vox consists of a solar panel and a pair of rechargeable AA batteries, housed in a box shaped like a tiny air-hockey table. This odd design, a rather 1980s-style vision of the future, has a purpose: the case can be tilted to fully soak up the sunbeams. The odd angles let you prop the box at 0, 30, 70 and 90-degrees.

Once charged, you hook up your cellphone or other portable device and pop it into the inner chamber. This keeps things tidy, and protects the phone from the sun.

Eric and Jim plan to have the first units ready in the first quarter of 2011. To sign up and get one when they’re done, you’ll need to pledge $100.

Solar Vox product page [Kickstarter via Core77]

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Dec 22

Stash-Bag is a Travel-Friendly Gadget-Tidy

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili, Travel

The Fluent Stash bag from Nau is all kinds of useful. It’s a purpose-made travel organizer rather than a take-everywhere bag, but this specialization means that, like an overbred dog, it’s very good for its single purpose.

It’s a felt-flapped three way carrier, folding out to reveal three “stash” pockets plus a zippered mesh compartment for cables. Between these pockets are stitched a pair of long, thin channels, perfect for stowing a pencil.

The pockets snap shut thanks to press-stud closures, and the clasp that holds the lid down doubles as a hook for hanging in a hotel-room, or from the back of an airplane seat, and the design means you can also hook a strip of the fabric itself around a shower-curtain rail.

The bag can also be used for toiletries but let’s face it: If you’re reading Gadget Lab, then it’s likely that you’ll be carrying far more cables and electronics than jars of face cream.

Finally, the felt is stiff enough to keep the bag freestanding should you fold it correctly. It looks very handy, and much better than my current, and not dissimilar solution. I use a rubbery plastic bag that has a hook on top and a ziplock closure. The problem? My underwear came in it, and I still didn’t remove the label.

Fluent Stash bag [Nau via Uncrate]

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