Hasta La Gadget!

The FridgePad is billed as the “ultimate fridge magnet”. I’d say it’s probably the ultimate anything. Think about it. Even with my obviously awesome “Waterproof, Kitchen-Proof iPad Case” (a ziploc bag), your iPad still gets in harms way in the kitchen. The FridgePad fixes this by mounting the iPad up where nature intended: on the front of the refrigerator.

Made of aluminum with a big old magnet on the back to keep it firmly stuck to the fridge, the FridgePad holds the iPad with four plastic corner clips. Once secured to the door of the smallest and coldest room in the house, you can use the iPad to play music, podcasts or audiobooks, show you recipes or, well, anything the iPad can do. The more I think about it, the more it is clear how perfect the iPad is as a kitchen computer. And if you’re really messy when you cook, you could even slip the whole rig, magnet and all, into the ziploc bag and just slap that onto the refrigerator.

The stand will cost £50 ($78) when it ships, and will be available through Amazon. There’s no word yet on a launch date, but you can sign up for email alerts on the product site. In the meantime, I have a feeling that a trip to the hardware store is in order.

FridgePad [Woodford Design via CrunchGear]

See Also:

• Endo: Finally, A Useful Fridge Magnet
• Vista Fridge Magnet Completely Misses the Point
• How-To: Gorillapod Doubles as Awesome iPad Stand
• How-To Make a Waterproof, Kitchen-Proof iPad Case and Stand …

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

The BottleBob Bottle Cap Punch is a gimmick, a gee-gaw, a single-purpose uni-tasking tchotchke. But despite this, what it does is pretty awesome. It cuts holes in the metal caps of soda-bottles so, when you insert a regular plastic straw, it looks like you somehow punched that thing right through it, you old tough-guy you.

The plastic and metal punch also falls firmly into the category of “tat”. For those unfamiliar with this word, it comes from British English (aka “quaint” English) and has the following meaning in the New Oxford American Dictionary: “tasteless or shoddy clothes, jewelry, or ornaments”.

Still, imagine what this little widget could do for your reputation. If you can pierce a metal cap with a flimsy plastic tube, you could probably also… Well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination. $27, available now.

BottleBob Bottle Cap Punch [Epaulet Shop]

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

It looks like Sprint is hell-bent on bringing at least some kind of iPhone to its network. An FCC filing shows a MiFi like device which not only creates a personal Wi-Fi hotspot but also acts as a cradle for the iPod Touch. It effectively turns the iPod into an iPhone, only without the actual phone part, nor the cameras, nor the GPS. But you sort of see the point.

The “Peel”, as it looks to be called, is an interesting idea, and isn’t outside the scope of Sprint’s iAmbition: remember the free iPad case which would also hold Sprint’s own 4G wireless router? This one would run on the slower but more pervasive 3G network, and use its own battery. It would also do away with the issue of tethering, as you could connect several devices to the hotspot.

If it escapes the FCC’s clutches, we’d expect to see this soon enough. And who knows? Maybe you could also wrap it around the iPhone thus avoiding both pesky dropped calls and AT&T’s flaky data network. Win win!

FCC Reveals ZTE Peel On Sprint, For Apples Perhaps [Phone Scoop via Cult of Mac’s John Brownlee]

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

Really, the Panasonic RP-HJE 130 is just another earbud. Price is a good indicator of headphone quality, and after that you choose whether you need noise-canceling or an in-line remote and you’re done. But the real genius behind the RP-HJE 130, the thing that will make people buy a pair, is something that has nothing to do with Panasonic. It’s the packaging.

It’s fantastic, right? The design was done by the Scholz And Friends agency in Berlin, Germany, and shows the two hook-shaped buds as a pair of eighth-notes linked together by a bar formed by the in-line remote. The design was so good that it won a Cannes Lions award this year. These buds, it is certain, would jump off the shelf at you, whatever their specs.

And those specs remain a mystery. A Google search for “RP-HJE 130″ comes up with nothing but articles about this design. Switch to Google Shopping and you get precisely zero results. But then, I guess it doesn’t really matter. After all, it’s better to pick headphones on their quality, not their packaging, which will be ripped open and tossed into the recycling-bin after a few minutes anyway.

Panasonic Earphones: The Earphones Note [Coloribus]

See Also:

• Model-Kit Business-Card Transforms into Plane, Car, Boat

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

A while back, the folks at Portland Design Works sent over a couple bike lights, a set containing the Spaceship and the Radbot. After opening them up and almost blinding myself, I set out to test them, with the intent of killing them. Read on to find out if they survived.

The kit consists the Radbot 500, a 0.5-watt red LED powered by a pair of AAA batteries, and the Spaceship, running on two AAs, which shines its white LED through a “German-engineered lens” and will “withstand rain showers and meteor showers,” (according to the blurb).

I started out the test in Barcelona, but it quickly became clear that the hot temperatures, lack of rain and smooth roads weren’t going to tax these lamps. Worse, Barcelona is so well lit at night that you really don’t need lights on your bike (although the law says otherwise). So I took the pair to a rather more difficult terrain: Berlin, Germany.

Berlin is almost bankrupt, which means long stretches of unlit road and teeth-rattling cobbled streets. It is also in the North of Europe, which gives it hot, dry days (up to 40-degrees, or 100º F) punctuated by cold nights and day-long thunderstorms. It is, in short, a very tough place for bikes and bike accessories.

The lamps do their most important job admirably. They’re ridiculously bright: the red Radbot alone can illuminate a whole room at night, and that’s when its still strapped on my rucksack, pointing in the wrong direction. The Spaceship’s tight beam, a mere curiosity in Barcelona, was essential when cycling through the pitch-black Mauerpark at night, picking out a glowing ellipse on the ground in front to illuminate a safe path between the potholes and broken beer-bottles.

The lights are removable. The Spaceship clamps onto the handlebars with a wraparound collar and a finger-operated screw to tighten it. It stays in place, even over the cobbles. The Radbot comes with a few different fixings. I clip it to the Brooks tool-bag hanging from my saddle, but you can screw an adapter to the light-mount on a rack, the seat-stay or the seat-post.

Despite hanging on tight, I managed to drop both lights plenty of times (usually while trying to drunkenly fix them onto the bike, post-beer-garden). They bounced, and neither of them has even a crack (yet. I’m still trying). Both lamps have also sat outside in Berlin rainstorms: They’re waterproof.

Problems? Very few. While the Radbot needs a long, 1.5-second press on the power switch to turn it on and off (to stop it lighting up in a bag), the Spaceship doesn’t, and actually switched itself on in my bike-bag on its air-trip here. Also, to change the batteries, you need to unscrew the lights to open them. A minor pain, as the screw-shut cases are what keeps the rain out. Otherwise, they come highly recommended (especially the Radbot’s cool pulsing flash-mode). The Spaceship even doubles as a handy weapon with which to blind rival bike-polo players (I have tested this).

Available now in a set for $45.

Spaceship/Radbot 500 [PDW. Thanks, Dan!]

Photo: Charlie Sorrel

See Also:

• Hands-On with the Knog Frog Bike Light
• Reelight: Magnet Powered LED Bike Light
• LightLane's Lasers Make an Instant Bike Lane
• Video: Sanyo Eneloop Bike Pedals For You

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