Hasta La Gadget!

The Octopus is an external battery-pack for the iPhone, with a neat trick. Instead of just hanging off the dock connector and sliding out just enough to disconnect, it has suction cups that stick the pack onto the back of the phone.

These suckers are just like those on an octopus’ tentacles, just not as tasty – hence the name. The battery pack connects to the dock-port via a flexible cable, and takes around three hours to fully transfer its load of electricity into the iPhone.

One juiced, the iPhone will be at roughly half-power, able to play video for 10-hours or offer four hours of talk time. The Octopus itself charges via a USB-cable.

Why use this instead of a combo case and battery? Because it only needs to be used in emergencies. Those battery cases add bulk to what is a pretty slim and pocketable device, whereas an emergency battery can be kept out of the way in a bag until needed.

The Octopus is pretty cheap, too, coming in at a shade under $30.

Octopus – Attachable Battery for iPod and iPhone [Chinavision]

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It might not fool the dedicated (or even slightly attentive) thief, but for keeping your new 11-inch MacBook Air safe as you dash from the coffee-shop table to grab another little sachet of sugar, it might just do the job.

“It” is a plastic skin for Apple’s new ultra-portable laptop, which turns the computer into a passable facsimile of a paper notebook. The Composition Notebook Skin, designed by Flickr user Beyond the Tech, even features a cover for the MacBook’s wrist-rests that mimics lined paper – although if somebody has gotten as far as opening the lid of you Mac, it’s unlikely that this last effort will fool them.

If you think such a disguise is either effective or just plain cool, you can grab Beyond the Tech’s image files and use them to make your own. You don’t actually have to print the PNG files onto plastic or anything messy like that. You just take the files and send them off to a custom skin-maker like Zagg, which will take care of everything for you.

My Composition Notebook Skin [Beyond the Tech / Flickr]

Beyond the Tech’s skinmods [Beyond the Tech via the Giz]

See Also:

• $13 Add-On Turns iPhone into Leica
• Rainbow Apple Sticker: The Ultimate iPad Accessory

Just as seemingly every year the number of blades on a disposable razor inevitably increases, so every few months a new iPad dock adapter adds yet another input. In August we saw the 2-in-1 camera-connector, with USB and an SD-card slot. The just last week we were treated to the plasticky wonders of the 3-in-1 adapter, which added micrSD to the mix.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, behold the amazing, nay, astonishing 5-in-1 dock adapter. Slot this overachieving little widget into your iPad’s port and you get all of the above functions plus a mini-USB port (for charging the iPad or connecting to a computer) and an A/V-out port. This last lets you hook up an iPad (or a video-supporting iPod) to a TV.

That’s a whole lot of features packed into one small box and – if experience of these things is anything to go by – it will likely break soon after buying. On the other hand, this combines a whole shopping-cart full of Apple products into one, and even ships with the A/V and USB cables needed to use it.

What next? The same manufacturer also has an unholy version that will read Sony MemorySticks, but I’m hoping for something more practical (or plain weird). Comments, please: What oddity would you like to see here? MIDI would be nice for musicians. A crappy but functional webcam would be awesome for everyone. But I’m going to vote for a USB hand-warmer. Given the iPad’s huge battery, this should last at least a day, and keep me blogging from my cold, non-heated apartment.

5-in-1 adapter product page [Anguodz via MIC Gadget]

See Also:

• Chinese Knock-Off: Two-in-One iPad Connection Kit
• Dongle Adds USB, SD and MicroSD to iPad
• IPad Camera Connection Kit Supports External Hard Drives
• iPad USB Camera Connector Works With Keyboards, Audio In-Out …

Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit is a wonderful thing, although overpriced at $30. Not only can you use it to inject photos from your camera direct into the tablet’s brain, you can also hook up all manner of USB peripherals, from keyboards to microphones to thumb-drives.

MIC Gadget’s 3-in-1 adapter does all this, and more. It combines Apple’s two small, easy-to-lose widgets into one slightly larger, slightly harder-to-lose package, putting an SD card reader and USB port into one plastic box. The extra is a micrSD slot, which is actually all but useless: the only way it would work is if your cellphone saves its photos into a standard folder named “DCIM”, which is what will trick the iPad into reading them.

There’s one thing that MIC Gadget’s version had in common with the official Apple version: it costs $30. I’d stick with Apple’s overpriced kit: it works, you only have to carry the part you need and it is built to last. It is also available now, unlike this 3-in-1 solution, which ship after Christmas.

3-In-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit [MIC Gadget]

See Also:

• iPad USB Camera Connector Works With Keyboards, Audio In-Out …
• USB Typewriter Turns iPad Into Paper
• IPad Camera Connection Kit Supports External Hard Drives
• IPad to Get Two-Megapixel Camera This Year

These amazing R2-D2-themed cans are clearly the headphones you’re looking for. Fashioned in the currently popular (and always comfortable) padded-earpiece-and-headband style, the two ear-cups are tiny replicas of R2-D2’s dome. It’s like your head was a double-sided X-Wing fighter and somebody stuffed a pair of R2s into your ear-holes.

I’d list the specs here, but as we now know, gadget specs are bullshit, and these headphones are almost identical to any others you’d get for the asking price of $50 (or 37 euros). One thing that is worth noting, however, is that the cable contains an inline remote with a mic, for controlling and talking on your phone.

There are other headphones in this Star-Wars themed line, but none is as perfectly conceived as this: They’re all just flat-sided with different prints and color schemes (although the Boba Fett pair is, predictably, pretty bad-ass).

So we are now led to the inevitable. What could possibly top this perfectly formed design? What about a pair of Princess Leia ‘phones? Surely it can’t be hard to take a mold from a pair of Danish pastries, or even to twirl real fake hair over the ear pieces?

R2-D2 headphones [Coloud]

See Also:

• The R2-D2 Droid Phone You're Looking For
• Sad: R2-D2 Becomes a Children's Aquarium
• Life Sized C3P0 and R2D2 Replicas
• Rebel Assault with a Deadly Pepper: R2-D2 Pepper Mill