Hasta La Gadget!

Well, here’s a gadget we can confidently say we’ve never seen: Canon has announced a wireless mouse that doubles as a calculator. The X Mark I mouse, only available in the U.K., has Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, 1200 dpi resolution, and three clickable buttons, including a scroll wheel, with the keypad placed beneath it.

The crazy thing is, this isn’t that wild a mashup, depending on how much data entry you do on your PC. Certainly, as much as desktop operating systems have advanced, the concept of clicking around an onscreen calculator hasn’t changed much, which is to say it hasn’t gotten less tedious. Some people might actually find pressing the numbers directly to be a more natural user experience, although some of us can still barely touch type.

The X Mark I will sell for £ 39.99 / €48.99 ($64.54) in November. In addition to PCs, it will work with Macs, although we’re sure that Steve Jobs, as averse as he is to mouse buttons, would not approve.

Photo Credit: Canon

It’s always been said that the iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the phone. A new adapter, which adds phone functions to the iPad, proves that this isn’t quite the case.

The “Apple Peel 520″ cradle, first spied a week ago with a Sprint logo on the back, adds a cell radio and an extended battery to the Touch. And while it works, it doesn’t exactly turn your iPod into an iPhone. The adapter is made by Chinese manufacturer Yosion, and has been tested by the folks at the MIC Gadget blog.

The Yosion box is a rubber case with a cell-radio, a vibrator, mic and speaker, a dock connector to interface with the Touch and an 800mAh battery to power it (three hours talk, 120 hours standby). It’s pretty thick, and has no volume buttons so you can’t change the volume of a call, and while a 3G SIM will work for calls, you won’t get 3G internet, which kind of makes it pointless.

How do you use it? First, you need to jailbrak the iPod, and then you have to install the Yosion SMS and phone apps. It all works just like the iPhone from there, although sometimes, according to MIC Gadget, the caller ID info doesn’t show up, and missed call alerts will be blank (only marginally less useful than the iPhone’s real alerts).

It’s not all bad, though: The case only costs just $388 RMB in China, or around $57. That’s certainly cheaper than an iPhone.

Apple Peel 520 Review [MIC Gadget via Engadget]

See Also:

• Rumor: Sprint Testing Wi-Fi Case for iPod Touch
• IPod Touch
• GPS Add-On Case For iPod Touch
• Hands-On With the Dual iPod Touch GPS-Kit

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Laboratory 424’s Mini Riser laptop stand is so simple you could make one yourself in minutes. At $8 for two, it is also so cheap that you don’t have to.

Laptops run hot, and you are almost obliged to get a little space between base and desk if you want to stop those fans kicking in as soon as you go near YouTube. Laboratory 424’s boffins realized that most stands aren’t as portable as the notebooks they are supposed to accompany, so they made one so minimal that it can slip unnoticed into a laptop bag yet be strong enough to support up to 16-kilos (35-pounds) of hot metal and glass.

The Mini Riser is little more than a sturdy, bendable wire with a rubberized vinyl coating. The amorphous “m” shape is reminiscent of a million badly-designed corporate logos, and comes in almost as many colors (ten). Once out on the desk, it just slides under the back of you notebook, propping it up and giving both a better viewing angle and keeping the air flowing.

But what I love the most about the Mini Riser is the gallery on the website. Why use boring old modern laptops in your photo-shoot when you can use old toilet-seat iBooks and even more ancient hardware instead? There’s even an OS X joke in the captions.

Mini Riser [Laboratory 424. Thanks, Jeff!]

If Stanley Kubrick had decided to make the plumbing in 2001’s Discovery One spaceship visible, it would have looked like this. These gorgeous speakers are hand-built by Etsy seller Ikymagoo, and are little more than cleverly-joined sections of PVC-pipe with a pair of speakers shoved in the ends.

The Ikyaudio Sea Cucumbers Audio Speakers use three-inch magnesium/aluminum alloy drivers in the ends, and the tail of the caterpillar-like curls has a hole in the end which acts as a bass-port. The amp is connected via binding posts (and you’ll need an amp – these speakers are unpowered) and Ikymagoo says they have a “nice sound and a very good sound stage, lots of low end bass for a small speaker.”

The Lady pegged them as Japanese in styling right away, and suggested I clear out the living-room and put in some tatami-mats, a couple cushions and these speakers. I would have to pay for this, of course, and the Ikyaudios are a rather steep $200 a pair, so I’d probably make my own.

Lucky for me, Ikymagoo has posted an extensive how-to on his speaker constructions At DIY Audio Projects, complete with a video of the prototypes in action. It actually looks pretty easy, but if you would rather get a pair of these instead, they also come in red and yellow.

Ikyaudio White Sea Cucumbers Audio Speakers [Etsy via Make]

See Also:

• JVC DIY Speakers Miss the Point
• Hi-Fido, A Dog-Shaped Ceramic Speaker
• A-Box, A Speaker For Real Men
• Whole Lotta Love: B&W Zeppelin Computer Speakers

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

That little gadget up there isn’t a cellphone, although it certainly shares some design points with the old G1 Googlephone. It is actually a MiFi-like cellular hotspot, a little battery-powered box which shares a 3G data connection over Wi-Fi.

Like the MiFi, the Huawei E583C will support up to five devices over Wi-Fi, plus one more over USB, and it has a microSD-card slot for storing and streaming data. The E583C is functionally very similar to Huawei’s UK-only MiFi E585, with an OLED display to show you the router’s status: which network you’re on, the router’s signal strength and battery level. Lest you think that this is a mere gimmick, I’d point out that one of the biggest annoyances with the original MiFi is the lack of visual feedback, especially on battery status.

The price, when it launches in Hong Kong this month, will be HK$1,380, or $178. And before you go, here’s a fun snippet from the press release: “gadget lovers can now experience the excitement of on-the-go wireless internet.” Excitement!

Huawei Debut Next-Generation Personal Mobile Wi-Fi Device [Huawei via iTech News]

See Also:

• New MiFi with OLED Display
• Mifi-hunter
• Verizon Mifi: Personal Wi-Fi Coming this Month
• MiFi to Get App Store
• MiFi Plus iPod Touch (Almost) Equals iPhone

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.