Laptop-DRV » Accessories and Peripherals

Tiny, Stick-On Joysticks for Touch Screen Gaming

admin — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:22:07 +0000

Joystickers’ Classic stick-on buttons for touch-screen phones. Photo: Joystickers

Check ‘em out: nipples for the iPhone. Or, some-more accurately, “removable gaming buttons for hold screens”.

We have seen a lot of clever products which supplement physical, moveable joysticks to touch-screen devices as well as have many games easier to play, but a Joystickers, as they are called, are about the simplest around. The nubbins stick straight onto a shade as well as transfer your movements around capacitive rubber.

They work similar to this: The outdoor cylinder and bottom sticks to the potion with the micro suction cup element. This houses a conductive rubber nubbin, that bobs around upon an internal spring. Pull down with your ride and a bottom edge contacts a screen, as well as so on.

Joystickers also creates a rather nice brush-shaped stylus and the unchanging pen-tip stylus, though these “Classic” buttons have been the coolest thing upon suggest, and they’re so tiny you could keep them in the little mystery pocket upon your jeans. They’re also little enough to remove really quickly, though that’s unequivocally only your fault for being so careless.

Want some? You’ll need to pitch in over during Kickstarter, where a $40 oath will buy you a span of Classics.

Joystickers Classic [Kickstarter. Thanks, Anthony!]

MacDec Tea-Tray Holds Keyboard as well as Trackpad

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:09:51 +0000

Thodio, builder of the Furby-like moveable iBox speaker, will right away sell you a €100 tea-tray customized to hold an Apple set of keys and trackpad. The MacDec trays, in timber ($138) or acrylic ($165), have been carved or machined with hollows which hold a set of keys and pad in a laptop-style T-shape, for make use of upon a lap or a table. They also use neodymium magnets to keep the peripherals in place, although last time I looked, aluminum wasn’t the element that stuck to magnets.

It’s a sincerely utilitarian product, if costly, but a purpose of this post is to wonder why these things exist. The a single viewable make use of box is a media-center Mac, but how many of those have been there really?

There has been the new flurry of these holders, in the T-shape seen here as well as also in a some-more common side-by-side configuration (Twelve South’s MagicWand), so somebody sees this as the renowned market. I prefer a laptop layout, as I don’t have to move my palm to carry out a cursor. I also find it incredibly comfortable to sort with the tiny Apple aluminum set of keys upon my lap while in the easy chair or upon a floor, promulgation content to my iPad. But so far, for computer make use of at least, these assorted products don’t quite work, however good done they may be.

Any ideas? I have no answer, other than that this is the non-problem which doesn’t need to be sole. Maybe there are the ton of media-center Macs out there after all? Suggestions, if you have them, in the comments.

MacDec product page [Thodio]

Dodocase’s Bookback Covers iPad in Leathery Skin

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:50:15 +0000

Dodocase’s Bookback skin for a iPad

On of my biggest complaints in yesterday’s iPad 2 wish-list was which a behind of a current iPad is just as well slippery. It never feels secure in the palm, as well as if you tuck it under your arm or prop it on a arm of a cot, you’re looking during imminent disaster.

And as if by sorcery, today I got the representation from the Dodo people, behind the famous Moleskine-like Dodocase for the iPad. The brand new product is the elementary back skin for the iPad, as well as also a iPhone, which is made from a exact same leather-like element that covers the Dodocase itself.

The skins have been called Bookbacks, as well as come as self adhesive, reusable skins, debossed with the name as well as logo in black or red. They only suggest scratch protection for a aluminum back panel — you’ll need the correct case if you devise to sling your iPad in the bag — though for mending the feel as well as grippiness of the iPad, the Bookbacks look preferred.

They’re not too pricy, possibly. The iPad chronicle is $20, and the little iPhone model is only $9.

Bookback product page [Dodocase. Thanks, Abby!]

Clip-On Mantis Lamp is Almost Embarrassingly Versatile

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:05:27 +0000

>View all

Remember that child during your high-school who could do flattering much anything he set his mind to? It didn’t matter if it was sports or behaving or math, he mastered them all but even trying. You as well as I hated him, but the girls loved him. If that kid were the flare, he’d be a Mantis.

The Mantis is from the crowd-sourcing pattern shop Quirky, as well as is almost ridiculously versatile. In actuality, the rage of uses is so far-reaching which I had no choice but to include every shot from the press container in a art studio above. Go ahead as well as click through. I’ll wait for.

Done? I told you it did the lot. The Mantis comes in two parts, the battery powered LED flare and a clip, into which the torpedo shaped light slides. The shave clips anywhere: to a base of your iMac or other monitor, to the tip of your laptop shade, to a cupboard doorway or to the bed headboard. And because a lamp can twist in the clip, you could even angle it down to irradiate your Kindle.

But there’s some-more. Once private from the clip, a Mantis isn’t left naked. It has its own flip-out mount with rubberized tips which let it mount up on your desk similar to the long-necked sign, balancing on its outstretched flippers. From this position it can expel the light from the 11 LEDs down onto any badly-lit charge you may be behaving, for up to 30 hours upon the span of AAs.

A quick sign of how Quirky functions. The pattern of a brand new product is presented to a village, as well as is honed by cabinet. This sounds terrible, though almost regularly turns out good. Pre-orders are afterwards gathered until a starting point is met and a production lines rumble into life. The Mantis will cost you $30 ($27 right right away and needs 1,500 orders to flip the switch at the factory. What are you waiting for?

Mantis product page [Quirky. Thanks, Tiffany!]

$750 Bike ‘Computer’ Little More Than an iPhone Case

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:23:33 +0000

The difficulty with regulating your iPhone as a bike mechanism is which it is exposed to rain, salty road spray and even a occasional unexpected dump onto the pavement. What you need is the waterproof as well as shock-resistant mount so your phone survives prolonged sufficient to call an ambulance when you fall off yourself.

That mountain is the iBike Dash. It’s the box as well as computer in one, and similar to many bike accessories, it has the price that bears roughly no relation to what you get. There have been two models. The solid Dash encases your iPhone (3, 3GS or 4) as well as allows it to hook up to a accumulation of (optional) inputs: heart rate display, cadence sensor, as well as also speed submit from a magnet upon the wheel. The Dash + Power adds a power scale and essentially includes a sensors in a box. The models price $300 as well as $750, respectively.

The oddest part of a product page is that it keeps touting the touch-screen, the GPS and the absolute computer inside. It takes a little digging to find out which these are all granted by your phone.

The cases additionally come with a messenger app, called iBike (free in the app store). It gives GPS tracking, as well as entrance to all a metering functions of the iBike units. It’s not a prettiest cycling computer app out there, though it looks similar to it does the pursuit, as well as offers lots of customization.

But really, it comes down to the silly prices of those waterproof bike mounts. Sure, they suggest the tie in between phone and sensors, but is an interface dongle unequivocally worth $300, let alone $750?

iBike Dash [iBike Sports]

Artists Keep Hands Clean with Tablet-Friendly Brush Stylus

admin — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:25:21 +0000

Beret-wearing, work bashful layabout “artists” glory! Now you can swap expansive as well as messy paint and canvas for an expensive as well as neat iPad and brush-shaped stylus. Well, a iPad part is expensive. The Nomad brush stylus is only $24, or around the same price as a rubber, nubbin-tipped pen stylus.

As an intent, the brush is pleasing. A walnut as well as co missile gives way to the brush done with the reduction of artificial as well as natural fibers, as well as the bristles appear to have been condensed given we saw the prototype final month. The Nomad additionally has specs — or at least as most specs as a brush can have. It weighs 0.2 ounces, or 5.7 grams, and measures 7.5 inches long by the entertain of an inch far-reaching, or 19 x 0.6 centimeters.

Like any capacitive touch-screen stylus, it requires no energy, as it is merely the replacement for your finger. And the bristles won’t change a on-screen paint at all — that’s taken caring of by software. But given how much easier my aluminum Alupen stylus creates drawing as well as essay, just a feel of the Nomad alone should be value a money. The brush will work with any tablet or phone with the capacitive screen.

Nomad brush product page [Nomad Brush. Thanks, anonymous Nomad chairman

New Apple Peel Case Makes iPod Look Like iPhone 4

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:02:11 +0000

Remember the Peel? It’s the box for the iPod Touch that adds the vibrator, mic, orator and cell-radio, branch a iPod into a phone. No? Don’t worry. You may have blanked it from your memory, your eyes and brain scarred by its practical distortion. The Peel looked like it was carved an aged truck tire by a Linux UI designer with the tremors.

Enter Peel v2 the product that could have come out of Apple’s own design lab. In fact it arrange of did: The brand new Peel is the finish rip-off of a iPhone 4, right down to volume buttons on a side.

It’s a little thicker than a iPhone 4, and a teaser upon Peel-maker Yosion’s site doesn’t nonetheless state that iPod Touch the box will fit. Still, if you are starting to go for this clunky resolution instead of just buying a phone already, then at slightest you won’t look like you’re holding the gangling auto-part up to your ear when you make use of it.

Price as well as availability, along with roughly all else, stays undisclosed.

Latest cinema apple II 520 [Yosion]

Photos of Peel 2 [Yoison forum around Mobile Mag. Thanks, Fabrizio!]

Tiny Plug-In WALdock Turns iPods Into Boomboxes

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:37:16 +0000

It seems similar to each time I see cold brand new gadget these days, I click a couple and finish up at Kickstarter. Is it unequivocally probable which people are coming up with improved ideas, and removing them to the market faster, than big corporations with big R^D budgets? It seems so.

Today on a Gadget Lab Kickstarter Showcase is the WALdok. As a combination of plug-in horse, orator and iDevice dock, it was unfit which I not write about it. So here goes:

The WALdok is the orator which plugs straight into the wall. Up on tip is the 40-pin wharf connector, so the iPod or iPhone can assign as it plays you the honeyed music. This also powers the speaker, that consists of a large 40mm driver as well as the drum chamber at the back of it.

While it functions with any dock-connected iDevice, it looks coolest with a latest Nano, turning nit into a world’s smallest (and cutest) boom-box. The WALdok, by Hern Kim, is designed to be tiny though still offer the better sound than the tinny alternatives on a marketplace.

The Kickstarter idea is $30,000, as well as Kim is up to $4,000 already. If you want a WALdok, you’l need to throw in the smallest of $59.

WALdok [Kickstarter]

WALdok product page [WALdok]

500mm iPhone Lens for Grungy Close-Ups

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:24:40 +0000

Given which a cellphone box can easily run to $35, the iPhone Telephoto Lens is something of the discount, combining as it does both the long, prolonged lens, the case to cling to it upon, a mini-tripod to keep things steady, as well as the micro-fiber cloth to polish all up.

It functions like this: You trip the iPhone into the box (where it can be left, should you be a case kind of person) as well as then clip a lens on, over a iPhone’s existent lens-hole. Photojojo, that sell a pack, says that it gives a equivalent view of the 500mm lens on a 35mm camera.

Focus is primer — approbation, there’s essentially the focus ring. And while the extravagant isn’t good (you can check a representation shots upon a product page), it’s a lot better than you’d get from a digital zoom. In fact, deliberation that almost each iPhone print these days is unfailing for the thorough grungifying in possibly Instagram or Hipstamatic, a soft, not-so-sharp images should be undiluted.

Also: Amazing for peeping-toms.

The iPhone Telephoto Lens kit is, as I said, $35, and comes in two models, one for iPhone 3 and one for iPhone 4.

The iPhone Telephoto Lens product page [Photojojo]

MagicWand Helps Aluminum Keyboard as well as Magic Trackpad Stick Together

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:41:23 +0000

Twelve South’s MagicWand is the 16-inch strip of aluminum with a single purpose in life: to have your Apple keyboard and trackpad get along improved. The Bluetooth aluminum set of keys as well as the Magic Trackpad slide into the c-section strip and are hold together as one solid section. You can use it on the desktop or on your path.

I have had one to test for a past week or so and it is a typically solid accessory from Twelve South. The dual peripherals snap into place by their battery bulges — a round pieces that prop them up from a back. Once snapped into the MagicWand, you slide an h-section plastic club in between them. This, along with the rubber t-section insert, keep a pad and house in line with each other. Once connected, they appear as a single.

For me, regulating a section on the table isn’t so great. One stray touch upon a now very nearby trackpad can send your cursor off to another part of your text as well as have you restraining in a wrong place. This is some-more of the problem with my flailing typing style, yet. The tangible MagicWand is meant for a table, as well as has rubber feet at the back, only like the Apple originals.

On the lap, though, it’s better, forming a plain lap-top table. You can sit behind as well as control the media center Mac Mini, for e.g., or just lean back in your table chair as I am now, taking the break from all which unconstrained sitting up straight.

The MagicWand will price $30. It works great, though I cite to have my Magic Trackpads (I have dual out upon either side of my set of keys, and pushed the small back. If you do fancy one, afterwards go forward. You won’t have a complaint with build quality.

MagicWand product page [Twelve South. Thanks, Andrew!]