Hasta La Gadget!

There are a gazillion apps to turn your iPhone into a remote control, and let you operate your computer, your Sonos home music system or even your DirecTV DVR. The problem is, they work over Wi-Fi, whereas your TV, stereo and DVD-players all swallow up infra-red light in order to follow your distant commands.

That changes with the little $50 L5 iPhone Remote, a dongle that plugs into the dock connector and allows you iPhone to become a proper universal remote, spitting invisible light at all manner of home electronics. It comes with a free companion application that lets you program and assign the frequencies, and you can drag and drop the button icons around the screen until you’re happy with them.

The first version, which should be shipping soon, has a significant drawback in that you need to teach it the correct signals by pointing your remote, but downloadable, pre-programmed codes will be coming in the future. On this point, the FAQ entry is pretty funny:

In testing, users designed their UI and learned the signals in about 3.5 minutes. In the same amount of time, database users were still trying to read the model numbers off the backs of their A/V devices.

The other problem is cosmetic. The remote app is ugly. That may not worry you, as this will cheaply replace all your remotes with one single device, and it will apparently also work with the iPad. And the iPhone is much less likely to be lost down the back of the sofa.

L5 iPhone Remote [L5 via Uncrate]

When it comes to making hardware, there are two things Microsoft has always been good at: mice and keyboards. With the SideWinder X4 keyboard, the company can add one more thing to the mix: Kick-ass press releases.

The blurb for the SideWinder starts with the words “Ghost Buster”, and goes on to explain Microsoft’s clever new process to combat ghosting (you see what they did there?) in high-performance gaming keyboards. Not only that, but the explanation is so clear that I can’t really do better. It runs a little long, though, so I’ll just paste an extract:

Most keyboards use a stack of plastic sheets that are printed with silver ink to create a grid of wires underneath the keys. When a key is pressed, a row wire connects to a column wire. This works well when one or 2 keys are pressed, but pressing more can lead to problems. For example, if two keys in the same row are pressed and then a third key is pressed in a different row, but the same column as one of the first two, all of those rows and columns become shorted together. There are actually five different key combinations that produce the same shorted rows and columns! Since there is no way for the system to know which set was pressed, only the first two keys are reported, with the others becoming “ghosts” – unreported key presses.

Pretty good, huh? The new SideWinder uses carbon on these nodes to block the short circuits, and then uses resistive multi-touch to accurately work out which keys you were pressing. This is of course moot for typists, however fast they tap out the text. But for gamers it is the difference between (in-game) life and death. The SideWinder also has macro recording and rather fetching adjustable lights inside.

How much for this high-end machine? Just $60, available soon.

SideWinder X4 [Microsoft. Thanks, Brittany!]

In the world of iAccessories, first is good. We get so many pitches for cases, stands and the like when a new Apple product is released that the only way to pick which one to cover is to print them all on paper and have Punxatawny Hal, the Wired.com pet tortoise, pick one out for us. Or we cover the first ones we see. Whatever.

Today we have Scosche’s kickBACK stand for the iPad, a polycarbonate kickstand which will hold the iPad almost upright for watching movies or tilted just enough to make typing easier. We foresee many of these kinds of stand, although the Apple solution of a case/stand combo looks to be the best so far.

The price of the kickBACK is yet to be revealed — no surprise as the product itself still appears to be little more than a computer rendering. As a guide, the kickBACK for the iPhone is $35, so expect this to cost more than that.

Scosche kickBACK page [Scosche. Thanks, Mark!]

This is the Performance Book Caddy, a $20 sheet of steel that could be the death of you, literally. The caddy clamps onto the handlebars of your bike and supports any manner of reading material so you can catch up on the morning’s news as you hurtle through downtown commuter traffic.

“Ok, Mr. Snark,” I hear you say, “this is meant for stationary bikes.” That might be the obvious answer, but it is wrong. Here’s the pitch, direct from the Performance Bicycle site:

Trying to find time to catch up on your reading and training? Do both at one time with the Performance Book Caddy!

Perfect for all types of reading material
It mounts in seconds to virtually any road, mountain or stationary bike [emphasis added]

Now sure, some folks actually hook their bikes up to practice rigs at home instead of just going outside (the equivalent of playing with yourself whilst wearing protection), but the blurb and the product shot combine to suggest otherwise.

It does have me thinking, though, that this would make a nice mount for a netbook (with shake-proof SSD drive, of course). Or a map. Or perhaps even lunch. After all, if you can read, eat and generally conduct a normal day whilst careening around in a couple tons of steel and glass (a car), surely doing the same on a bike should be at least perfectly legal, and at worst a good head-start on a Darwin award.

Performance Book Caddy [Performance Bicycle via DVICE]

Still searching for the perfect camera bag? Of course you are. Now Photojojo has lent its hand to the insoluble problem, and the result – the SLR Sloop – actually looks pretty good.

There are a zillion good camera bags out there for photographers or amateurs actually going out on a photo-shoot. But for those of us who want to tote a camera along with our everyday cary-around junk, and to throw it all in the same bag, the options are more limited. And if you want a bag that doesn’t say “here’s my camera” then things get even worse.

The SLR Sloop addresses the last problem first, looking more like a bag for carrying diapers, or for lugging some cold beers to the beach. Open it up and you find a capacious cavern into which can be nestled cameras, lenses, a flash, along with keys, cash, cellphones and the other everyday essentials. Four zippered pockets, two in and two out, keep the sharp-edged stuff away from the delicate photo gear.

The padded insert, which comes with five dividers, is removable, so you really could load this up with beers. The water-resistant fabric is cut from the same stuff as a sailboat sail. The Sloop actually looks rather carry-able, if a little deep from front to back. The soft-sides, though, should mean that it shrinks to fit when not too full.

So the bag is, in most ways, a real departure from gadget-bag design. In fact, the only thing that the SLR sloop carries over from “real” camera bags is the price: At $150 each, only serious bag-nerds will be interested.

The SLR Sloop, a Camera Bag to Love [Photojojo]

See Also:

• DIY Camera Hand-Straps From Photojojo
• Kata 3N1 Camera Bags Now Carry Netbooks
• Gadget Lab Reader Makes Stealth Camera and Netbook Bag
• Three Of The Best Camera Bags You Can Buy