Hasta La Gadget!

Ho ho ho! The iPill. It looks like a pill. Do you see?

Bad, pun-tastic name aside, the iPill is a cheap solution for sound recording on the iPod. Compatible with the iPods Nano 4G, Classic 120GB, and Touch 2G, the little capsule breaks open to reveal its jack plug, which you than shove into the headphone socket to enable mono recording.

The little $13 mic has been tested by iLounge and the verdict is that it is actually better than Apple’s own microphone. This isn’t a surprise. In the realms of accessories, Apple pretty much sucks. The company has never made a decent mouse, and its headphones seem engineered to break after a few months of use.

So, should the iPill show up in the US in useful numbers rather than the trickle currently dripping in, it might be worth picking one up. Just don’t try to take it through customs yourself.

Ozaki iPill On-The-Go Mic [iLounge]

Photos: iLounge

If you took a roulette wheel and the old electronic follow-the-music game, Simon, you’d end up with something like the Route O-Clock. It is a (prototype) broadband router which detects bandwidth use and displays this information using colors on a clock-like display which divides the day into half-hour segments. The idea is that it helps you plan you most bandwidth-heavy activities for parts of the day during which less traffic is flowing.

It’s a little like the SmartSwitch, a light switch that gets harder to turn on as power consumption in your home increases. It’s a nice idea, we guess, but wouldn’t it be better to have the tech built into a router which could then load-balance for you, for instance firing up BitTorrent only when the tubes are fairly clear?

Also, why so big? A small circle LEDs should do the trick. This reminds us more of King Arthur’s Round Table. Or a dart board. Or a… well, you get the idea. Ambient metering of environmental variables? Good. Honking, glowing disks on the mantelpiece? Not so good.

Product page [Future Routers via The Giz]

Lexmark has announced a new line of web-connected touchscreen printers targeted at small and medium businesses. The inkjet printers will have a 4.3-inch touchscreen, can copy, fax, scan and directly connect to RSS feeds or download weather information from the internet.

The new printers come on the heels of a similar product launched by HP last month. HP’s Photosmart Premium web-connected printer allows customers to print movie tickets from Fandango, content from USA Today, Google maps and upload photos directly to a Snapfish account.

Lexmark’s new printers will have a graphical interface with icons for basic functions, says the company. It will also allow buyers to customize their workflows on the printer and create shortcuts for activities such as group faxing and scan to email templates.

The printers will have wireless capability and a business card scan mode that will allow contact information to be automatically uploaded to Microsoft Outlook, Windows CE or Palm OSTM.

Lexmark’s web-connected printers will be priced from $200 to $400 and will be available starting September.

Photo: Lexmark touchscreen printer/Lexmark

Energizer has launched an extremely useful range of products. XPal consists of various battery/charger packs which acknowledge that the batteries in your devices suck, and then do something about it.

The packs have lithium polymer batteries and come in various sizes and capacities. You plug in your cellphone, say, and while it charges from the mains, the battery pack in the XPal is also topped up. Later, when things run down, you can get another chage away from a wall-wart.

So far, so normal. Except that Energizer also promises that, if you buy a pack and it doesn’t have the tip you need, they’ll send you one, free. And to keep the packs in use in the future, Energizer will also send you two tips a year for any new kit you might buy, free, forever. Prices run from around $20 up to $200, depending on size and power.

Also part of the range is a this USB clip charger, which allows you to throw out clunky proprietary camera battery chargers and just slip the naked cell into the claw to charge. As it’s USB powered, you’re limited to five volts output, but that could be fine in emergencies.

Product page [XPal via Oh Gizmo and Gearlog]

In a bid to inject some spark into stodgy home printers, HP has introduced a new all-in-one touchscreen printer that can directly connect to the web and print coupons, maps, movie tickets, news and weather information without the need for a PC.

HP has also taken the idea of apps, popularized by smartphones such as iPhone and T-Mobile G1, and extended it to its product. That means the company’s latest printer will come preloaded with HP applications that can be accessed via the touchscreen panel. HP will also allow users to create and download apps from their site later this year.

“By giving people access to the content they want at the touch of a finger, the ability to customize their printing experience and create their own apps, we are driving a significant shift in how people will be printing in the future,” says Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, imaging and printing group, HP.

That means picture yourself just turning on this printer going to Fandango and printing movie tickets or accessing Coupons.com for the latest grocery deals, or printing directions right off the device.

The new printer comes with a rather clunky name–the HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web, and a hefty price tag.  It will be available starting fall for $400.

The printer will have a 4.3-inch LCD touchscreen and can print, fax, copy and scan. It can also print directly from Wi-Fi-enabled PCs, Bluetooth-enabled devices,  iPhone and the iPod touch.

The device’s user interface seems fairly easy to use and it will have the ability to browse the web, though it is not likely to be a complete browser. Among the early HP app partners will be USA Today, Google including mpas and calendar, Fandango, Coupons.com and Web Sudoku. The printer will also connect directly to a user’s Snapfish account to view, print and upload photos.

Bringing maps, news and coupons functionality to a printer makes it more likely that the average user will get more value from their printer. But unless HP can bring that $400 price tag down significantly, this could end up as a niche product.

Photo: HP Photosmart Premium/HP