Jun 25

Cute Hug-a-Plug Fits Into Nooks and Crannies

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Today's Chili

The Hug-A-Plug Dual Outlet Wall Adapter not only doubles the amount of sockets into which you can plug your appliances, it flips the outlets through 90-degrees so you can use them easily, even when hidden awkwardly away behind furniture. It’s also called Hug-A-Plug, which along with its surprised-looking Mario-cloud face, is just plain cute.

The adapter is just $5, right about what it should be – I’ll admit to having a thing for plugs and adapters of all kinds, but anything over $5 takes them out of the useful category and into the “boutique power” category, a category which I just made up.

Bonus feature: the rounded ridges up top make a great thumb-grip for when you need some purchase to yank out a cable. Sexy? No? Useful? Hell yes!

Hug-A-Plug Dual Outlet Wall Adapter [Cyberguys via Coolest Gadgets]

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Jun 25

Kinetic Energy Generator Powers Gadgets with Magic

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

The nPower PEG is exactly the kind of thing that would have airport security asking you some rather awkward questions, and perhaps also earn you some childish snickers. The rather utilitarian phallus is in fact a kinetic energy generator which charges gadgets as it moves.

The PEG (personal energy generator) makes electricity as you move, harvesting your expended energy like the Matrix harvests your battery-like human meat-bag. It is made from titanium, and outputs standard USB power, which can be piped through a variety of different cables into iOS devices, BlackBerries and other cellphones. And that is all we know. The FAQ, the spec page and even the compatibility pages are almost willfully free of real information.

For instance, do you wonder how it works? I did, so I followed the treasure-trail of links to the penultimate teaser:

The science behind our technology is based on the Faraday principle and Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Our technology is scientifically unique enough to receive a patent, yet very simple to use. Read.

Excited, I clicked the read link and found:

An average human walking up a set of stairs will expend around 200 Watts of power. When you recharge your cell phone (including iPhones) the most amount of power it will accept is 2.5 Watts. The nPower® PEG can harvest your walking power and deliver it to your phone to recharge the battery without you knowing that it is working.

Where’s the science? There is no mention of Einstein to be found. Now, I did some science in school, so I can guess that the PEG probably just has a magnet inside, bouncing up and down in a copper coil and generating a current which is then smoothed out to safely enter a UBS-powered device. But if you’re going to drop $150, the price of the PEG, on a mysterious metal tube, it would be nice to know what it has inside. Especially if you are taking it through airport security.

How the nPower PEG “works” [nPower PEG. Thanks, Steve!]

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Jun 25

Guitar Sidekick Puts Smartphones Right Where You Want Them

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

Last night I went to see Bob Dylan in concert. The audience for the rock legend has probably changed more than Bob himself. I saw a lot of Cuban cigars, dads with binoculars and mumsie types waddling what I expect was meant to be a sexy dance. I also saw a lot of cellphone and camera screens a-glowing in the wind.

Thankfully Bob couldn’t see that the majority of his audience was happier watching him via a tiny LCD, but if he had cared, or wanted to join in, he could have used the Guitar Sidekick, a guitar headstock-mounted holder for smartphones.

The Sidekick clamps onto the strings behind the nut (the bit the strings pass over before running down the fretboard) and your device slides in and can be twisted to sit where you want it. The specs say “smartphone”, the pictures show that it is clearly meant for an iPhone, but you could probably even squeeze an old-school tuner in there.

Now, the Sidekick isn’t just for checking Twitter while you’re on stage trying to keep up with Bob’s creatively arrhythmic solos. It could also be used with any number of smartphone apps, whether for tuning, recording or even displaying musical notation or guitar tabs. You could even use it to remember lyrics, although if you are a 69 year-old with a voice that makes Tom Waits sound like a castrato, you probably don’t need to actually form real words anymore.

The Guitar Sidekick costs $30, and will work with any guitar that has strings. It needs just one more, tiny, feature: an Eric Clapton (or God) attachment for holding burning cigarettes.

Guitar Sidekick [Castiv via Macworld]




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Jun 24

Plug XBox, Blu-Ray into iMac via Belkin Adapter

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Displays, imac, Today's Chili, video

You probably already know that you can hook up a MacBook to your giant 27-inch iMac and use it as an external display. But what if you have another device that you’d like to plug into the big screen? A Blu-ray player or a games console, perhaps?

Belkin’s new white plastic brick will take any HDMI signal and squirt it into the iMac’s Mini DisplayPort. The AV360 will let you play XBox games on the iMac, and even watch DRM-crippled movies – the adapter is HDCP-compliant, and also pipes through stereo audio.

There are a couple of gotchas. One is that any 1080p source will be downgraded to 720p, a shame on the biggest iMac’s 2560 x 1440 pixel display. The other problem is one of price: The AV360 is $150. That’s $150 for an adapter, although $150 is certainly cheaper than buying a second display, and the box takes up a lot less space. Available now.

AV360 Mini DisplayPort Converter for 27-inch iMac [Belkin via Oh Gizmo]

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Jun 23

Carmen: Internet Radio On Your Car Radio via Radio

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

Wouldn’t it be great if you could listen to internet radio in your car? With Livio’s new Carmen, you can, provided you’re happy with a rather weird, convoluted, time-consuming and almost Rube Goldberg-esque experience.

The best way to give you an idea of the whole complicated mess is to describe the process. First, plug the Carmen into your computer, fire up the companion software and then choose the from the internet radio stations available (“more than 42,000 stations”). The Carmen will then record these for you, DVR-style, in real-time. To make that clear, you won’t be downloading an hour-long show in seconds like you would with a podcast: you’ll be waiting an hour for it.

Once the 2GB stick is loaded up, you take it to the car and plug it into the cigarette-lighter socket. Then you turn on the car’s radio. The Carmen works by sending the MP3s via FM (although you can opt for an aux cable). It even comes with a small remote control so you can search on the floor for that instead of squeezing the Carmen’s tiny buttons.

To recap: You spend hours recording radio shows only to re-broadcast them to your car stereo. And for this you spend $60. Alternatively you could just use the radio in your car, or hook up the cellphone or MP3 player you already have to your car stereo. That would cost you nothing.

For all my complaints, I admit I have a soft spot for the Carmen: the idea of recording songs and shows off the radio to listen to in the car takes me back to my childhood. Thank goodness somebody is applying today’s tech to 1970s problems.

Available for pre-order now.

Carmen Car Audio Player [Livio. Thanks, Joe!]




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Jun 22

IPad Keyboard Dock Works with iOS4

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

IOS4 will let you use a Bluetooth keyboard to type on your iPhone or iPod Touch and control various other functions. I’m writing this post on a latest-gen iPod Touch with an Apple Wireless Keyboard and it works great: The brightness buttons, volume and iTunes keys all do what you’d expect. This is a headline feature of the new iOS, shown off by Apple right there on the about pages.

What you may be surprised to learn is that the iPhone will also work when forced into the iPad Keyboard Dock, as tested by internationally-beloved technology pundit Andy Ihnatko. Once squeezed onto the dock connector, you get all the same functionality as you would with a Bluetooth keyboard, with the added danger of busting your iPhone due to the tight fit (the slimmer iPod Touch should work a lot better).

You might remember that you can also hook up a keyboard to the iPad via the USB camera connection kit. I can’t test this as mine is still on back-order, but Ihnatko tried it out an the answer is a big “no”. The iPhone flashes up its non-compatible accessory warning. Ah well.

I can’t say typing long-form text on the tiny screen is any fun, but it would certainly be better than typing long-form text on the iPhone’s screen. Even so, Apple’s minuscule Bluetooth keyboard is still large when compared to the iPhone. Perhaps this will kick-start the market in foldable, rollable keyboard accessories?

The iPad Keyboard Dock works with the iPhone 3GS! [CWOB]

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Jun 18

App Turns iPhone 4 into Ad-Serving Mirror

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

A new app will turn your iPhone 4 into a mirror, ready to help you apply lipstick or get your hair just right (I’m looking at you, Gadget Lab review supremo Danny Dumas). The combination of a front-facing camera and the hi-res “retina” display turns out to be perfectly for a spot of mobile vanity.

The Lady often borrows my iPod Touch to use the scuffed but still reflective back plate as a mirror. I’m not sure if it’s to touch up her makeup or to just check herself out, but it works. Until now, iPhone owners had to buy apps which promise to turn the handset into a mirror, but do no more than switch off the display, letting you stare at yourself through a screen, darkly.

DLP Mobile’s version, though, is the real thing, piping the video feed live from camera to screen, and even offering color-corrections for ambient light. The app, called Mirror App, will be in the App Store on iPhone 4 launch day, June 24th, with one extra, probably unwelcome feature that your real mirror will never suffer from: it will be serving up iAds.

Who Needs a Mirror When You Have a Cellphone? [NYT]

Photo: DLP Mobile




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Jun 18

Particle Case Turns iPad into Clipboard and Pen

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

Right up until the iPad became real, one of our favorite pastimes was to chuckle at the Pogo Stylus, a pen designed for capacitive touch-screens. After all, who needs a pen for the iPhone when it is designed to work great with a finger?

But the iPad is also a rather nice electronic canvas. Drawing and painting with your finger will give you a picture even your mom wouldn’t hang on the refrigerator, so the little foam-tipped Pogo has finally become quite a valuable tool. In fact, it has now gotten its own accessory: the Particle Case, also from Ten One design.

The case is really little more than an extended clip for the Pogo. A rubberized strip runs around the edge of the iPad, similar to the new iPhone Bumpers only they wrap around a little more . There are cut-outs for the ports and buttons, and a little clip in which to hold your Pogo stylus. And that’s it.

You do at least get a Pogo thrown in, and the little rubber feet on the back stop the iPad from wobbling when placed flat on a table, but its hard to see the market for this. After all, it offers almost no protection (the back is open, for example) but will stop the iPad from sliding into a more substantial case.

The Particle Case will cost you $35.

Particle Case [Ten One. Thanks, Jenny!]

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Jun 17

Koss Celebrates With PortaPro 25th Anniversary Edition Headphones

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

Did you know that the insanely popular Koss PortaPro headphones have been around for 25 years? To celebrate, Koss has come up with the appropriately-named PortaPro 25th Anniversary Edition, a product that remarkably appears to improve on the classic original.

The PortaPros are folding, lightweight headphones that sound great. Wired associate editor Joe Brown says they sound like electrostatic headphones. I say that they sound like something four times the price (just $50).

There are problems, though. The PortaPros break easily and, despite a lifetime warranty, you’ll find yourself buying replacements. The weak points are the spot where the earpieces join to the band, and the cables and connections. In the Anniversary Edition, the cables are now corded, which should help.

Another addition should make an even bigger difference. The Anniversary Edition brings beefier magnets: neodymium iron boron to be precise. This, combined with the “oxygen-free copper voice coils” will make the headphones louder. The very open design of the PortaPros makes it easy to drown out their sound in noisy places, so this is welcome.

But the best part is that they lose the dorky light-blue earpieces, replacing them with cool black. I’m totally sold. I have used PortaPros for years, and love them, so I’m searching for a local dealer right now. Happy birthday, PortaPro! $80.

PortaPro 25th Anniversary Edition [Koss via Uncrate]




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Jun 17

Kindle Case from Moleskine Mixes Paper and E-Ink

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

Moleskine has finally gotten around to making a case for Amazon’s Kindle. If you have both a large Moleskine notebook and a second-gen Kindle and put them one upon the other, the marriage will be immediately obvious. Both are almost the exact same size. If the Moleskine were a little wider, you could hollow out its pages yourself to make a snug nook for the Kindle.

The Kindle Cover is made from the same materials as a regular Moleskine notebook, with the shiny black cover and elastic strap. More of those straps are on the inside, holding the e-reader in place by its corners, and the interior is suede-lined for scratch-free device-coddling.

Moleskine hasn’t gone e-crazy yet, though. A slot inside the front cover holds a reporter-style notebook so you can write and draw in the analog style. For anyone who has tried to take notes on the Kindle, this will come as good news.

The price is a reassuringly expensive $40, including two reporters pads. That’s actually not too bad considering a tiny pocketbook is $12.

Kindle Cover [Moleskine]

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