The new iPhone keyboard from Iomnio is a great example on the convergence of technology. The keyboard, named WOWKey, has a dock station for your iPhone where-by giving you full keyboard connectivity and functionality to your iPhone.
With the WOWKey you can respond to emails quickly and easily. You can draft letters, run excel spreadsheets and much more like a traditional laptop computer. The WOWKey gives you the functionality you need to more effectively use your iPhone. In my opinion, this is the direction which computers need to go. From some studies, the majority of computer use is for email response and web browsing.
Iomnio has two additional features which any iPhone lover will appreciate; first, they have 15 hotkeys designed for the iPhone for quick navigation and utility access. Second, WOWKeys offers is the use of the multi-touch function on a PC display and the Air Mouse Pro, an app that can be used as a laptop touchpad or number pad.
The WOWKey from Iomnio is priced at an equivalent $105 US dollars. The WOWKey is currently only available in Korea, but is clearly designed for the largest market, the United States, as you can see the English version settings in the screenshot from the original article at AVING.net.
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With Apple’s recent news about the MacBook Air being ultra thing, ultra long lasting and ultra cool, what many overlooked was the reinstall software shipping on a USB drive.
With companies trying to save energy, reduce cost and reduce product sizes, it’s no surprise [at least to me] that Apple dumped the optical drive in favor of solid state memory…for both the computer and the restore media.
“Even the flash drive looks awesome from Apple,” says my colleague who does a ton of iPhone and iPad applications…with a new one coming out.
Beside the fact of flash being faster than optical, we also save space on the internal SSD drive by not having the reinstallation software loaded, but rather off-line and secure. Just be sure to wrap a key-chain around it, the Apple restore USB drive looks pretty small.
It’s a bit amazing we haven’t seen more iterations of the iPhone bumpers with power packs built in. I guess the primary reason would be the bulkiness added, but once company doesn’t care and that’s Energizer.
Energizer introduced their AP1201 battery pack earlier this month for the iPhone 4. It’s a iPhone 4 specific bumper which includes a built in batter pack. The battery inside the silicon bumper is made of their patented lithium polymer battery technology. The power pack adds another 200 extra hours of standby time, 27 extra hours of music time, 7 extra hours of video time, or 5 extra hours of talk time on 3G networks.
It’s hard to tell from the picture how much bigger it makes your device, but the video after the jump gives you a real world comparison.Â
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You might have heard the next gen iPad will include a miniUSB port, but for those looking for an easier interface today, or want a standard USB interface for even the upcoming iPad, you should get the USB connector kit from USB Fever.
The kit has a SD and USB connector which talks with the iPad through the female Apple connector you use for synchronizing or connecting to your computer.The kit gives you an easier way to upload images, video and PDF documents. It also gives you an easier way to connect your iPhone or other digital camera or video recorder to your iPad. Hell, you could almost toss out the PC…oh way, you’ve still got to sync and update.
The USB port could also be used to connect your keyboard to the iPad for typing emails, etc. Sure you all love the keypad on the iPad, but it’s still not as easy to use as a traditional keyboard.
USBFever webpage [$35].
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Yet another “i” product for all those Apple gadgets, but this time we feel it’s a product worth mentioning. The iPADock is a dock station to power or sync all your Apple gear in one handy location. The iDevices has designated USB power ports, designated USB-to-PC sync ports and additional flash memory ports for SD cards, SDHC and Compact Flash downloading.
So if you haven’t asked yourself how to clean up your sync area at work or home for the Apple gear…don’t worry, that day will come. For example, at our house we have 4 iPhones, two iPods, a FlipVideo and several cameras. All of them will receive power via USB.
First off, we have 4 iPhones because we’ve migrated from 3G or 3GS to the 4. The iPods are legacy products we had before the phones, yet we still use them for workouts…and the cameras, well those are good anytime.
What I like about the iPADock station are all the power and sync options.
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All of Apple products are designed as a “less is more” philosophy where a user just “knows” how to use the product when they hold it or see it. The Apple Trackpad is no exception. Great looking product that works exceptionally well and is bare bone minimum on design features.
One of the beautiful elements of the Trackpad is the wireless freedom you get from using the product. For the wireless product you need juice. The Trackpad does this via batteries. However, some get tired of replacing the batteries [like it’s that hard] and did a simple USB hack to power the Trackpad. This hack is not used for communication, that is still done through Blue-tooth, but this is only for eliminating the need to swap batteries or constantly recharge them.
To accomplish the hack, remove the pad’s batteries, strip a USB cable down to the red and black power wires and attach them to a battery-sized wooden dowel. Finally, push the dowel inside the pad’s battery compartment and presto! It works.
Granted this is a USB hack even my 7 year old could do [less the wire stripping] and I’d recommend making something a bit more elegant.
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So here is my tutorial on making a great looking iPhone wallpaper design.
The concept is fairly easy, here is the high level over view: We will set the proper size, create the pattern image, upload the image to a web space, download the image and set it as the wallpaper. Sounds easy, right? Well it is.
First, the correct size for the iPhone screen is 320×480 pixels. So get into your favorite photo editing program and get a blank file with the size of 320×480 pixels for you iPhone wallpaper.
Second, you’ll need to create an image. Of course you can take a picture and set it that way, but I’m thinking more like a subtle pattern that isn’t obtrusive and is more complimentary to yourself while using the iPhone rather then having an ego trip by setting my kids best picture as my wallpaper.
For me, Photochop is my weapon of choice and I created this nice little pattern image which we’ll use for the wallpaper.
Note: With the new iPhone 4.0+ firmware you have the ability to set the lock/unlock wallpaper and set a different picture as your background image for Home when using your iPhone. I think the above pattern image is a very nice background image for the Home position.
Third, after you’ve created your pattern image, you will save it as a
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I’m sure most have seen this video which is the intro to Steve Job’s press conference today about the iPhone4 antenna problem. Great video, and I love the part about Gizmodo – what a bunch of drama queens.
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We have heard of crazy USB happenings before and they always seem a bit suspicious, case in point is the latest bit of news about an iPhone 4 bursting into flames.
I doubt it really burst into flames but the temptation to make a social media claim of an iPhone 4 blowing up is all too tempting. The truth is more likely a slow melt from poor circuitry with an “after the fact” photo to create the drama.
Given the aforementioned iPhone 4’s bezel allegedly got extremely hot to the touch during the recharging process, you can stand to wonder if this might be an excellent warning sign for a phone about to blow.
What do you think? Post your comments on our Facebook page.
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It’s fairly well known from user complaints over the weekend the iPad charges a bit differently then the logic used in our brain. Here is the low down on the iPad USB power issue if you don’t feel like reading 20 paragraphs for these simple points:
The iPad will power over USB ports with “high power” while in use.
The iPad will [obviously] charge when used with the supplied 10 watt power adapter.
The iPad will not charge over lower powered USB ports while “in use” however, they will charge when asleep.
If the user gets the iPad message “Not Charging” you must take this literally. This means the use of the iPad will equal the draw of power and only when it goes to sleep will it recharge…so it’s like a break even.
Gizmodo posted about a new product which is a docking station for your iPhone which turns it into a corded land line phone. WOW…how times have changed.
Clearly two steps back, a dock station for an iPhone and it’s not even cordless. But looking on the positive side, maybe the old timer middle management crowd can finally embrace technology of the iPhone without giving up their corded desk phone.
It’s seems to be more of a concept phone. Lets only hope. What do you think?
Source:Â Gizmodo.
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MacBook laptops don’t come with VGA out or DVI out connectors for extending one’s video screens to more then the MacBook itself. Today Wisair announced a solution for just that with their Wireless USB DisplayDock Set.
Wisair’s DisplayDock solution allows Mac users to connect to a monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, via a single wireless link with a single adapter that connects to a USB port on the MacBook. Since we haven’t seen a big offering to help out MacBook users we expect this to be a big hit with the MacFanBoys.
Wisair will be OEMing the solutions via three vendors [Atlona, Source R&D, Cables Unlimited and Olidata in the UK.
Some major points to consider:
Point to point plug and play USB wireless
Universal solution for MacBooks
Distance up to 30 feet
Doesn’t load over WiFi so your internet USB gadget surfing remains fast
Wireless video supports up to 1440 x 1050 screen resolution
Mac Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6) OS support.
No price yet was announced from the Press Release or OEM sites. Product will be available the first of March.
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