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.
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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].
Continue Reading
Whether you are a serious musician or just like playing as a hobby to relax, chances are you have a guitar and a tuner. As with most musicians your budget is probably tight or with the casual player you don’t keep up on the up-keep of your gear, so when your guitar is out of tune, you go for the tuner. But most likely the battery is dead because A) you didn’t want to spend the cash or B) hadn’t played in so long, the batteries just went dead. This is why the solar powered guitar tuner makes perfect sense.
Tascam has done a great job with this tuner and thought about including a USB port just in case that tuner was stuffed in your guitar case for too long and you need a quick fix to get back in tune.
Released just in time for the holidays and priced right [under $20] with a range of hues to select from: black, pink, orange, green, blue, white.
Continue Reading
Yes, we have a soft spot for USB steampunk of just about anything. Here is another design release from WWWorks aptly named “Imperial.”
Like the USB Scorpion steampunk, the Eagle wraps around the tail of the USB with the LED in the position of the beating heart. What beauty. What symbolism.Brass tubing protects the inner USB but is also very decorative for looks, the etched brass overlay holds the dark red garnet cabochon above the LED. The head and tail plugs which hold the USB inside the brass tube is made of scorched wood with “highly visible grain” to give it the old craftsman style look.
DisplayLink will be pushing a new graphics chipset they say will take a major step toward any device with any display connectivity. Well damn, that’ll make it easy.
The nut for DisplayLink is their ability to leverage the bi-directional throughput of USB 3.0 to offer an array of functions and features. This means multiple full HD videos, high res graphics, standard video imaging and networking data can be simultaneously running. To give you an idea, apply these products to your imagination:
USB or Ethernet bus powered monitors
Universal USB docking stations with graphics, networking, and audio
Affordable Ethernet and USB zero clients for shared resource computing
USB to HDMI adapters for PC to TV connectivity
USB to DVI, VGA or DisplayPort adapters for multi-display notebooks
Mobile device to display
Dual-Headed USB bus powered graphics adapters
The new technology by DisplayLink include items such as:
Continue Reading
Buffalo is rolling out an all new USB Blu-Ray player for your laptop. What is particularely interseting about this offer is the forward thinking support for the 3D format.
Buying for the upcoming formats doesn’t come cheap, the new Buffalo USB Blu-Ray player has a list price of $350. For that price, many will consider getting an all new laptop with Blu-Ray…although it might not have 3D support.
The Buffalo portable player is part number BP3D-PI6U2-BK and measures 137- × 147- × 20mm. The device is currently available in Japan, but will lander later this month in the US.
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading
The Corsair HS1 USB headset is about as serious as you can get for superior audio while gaming, watching movies or simply Skyping. The all new line from Corsair is a bit out of their comfort zone of storage and cooling gear, but at least they’ve done it right. Headset gear is an essential part of enjoying intense games like FPS Doom, Half Life or Halo. In addition it keeps the other half equally as happy [meaning Mom’s, girlfriends and wives don’t b!@ch about the cranked up noise].
The HS1 was built for supreme audio with massive 50mm drivers to deliver more accurate low-frequency effects in a carefully tuned acoustical design. The clear, low-noise reproduction of the unidirectional noise-canceling microphone lets teammates hear better, and with extra-large inline volume and microphone controls it’s easy to grab and control sounds given the situation of the game.
Some other notable points before making the jump to Corsair for full details:
Continue Reading
Over the past several weeks we’ve read reports about the PS3 Jail breaking solution via USB whereby the jailbreak tricks the console into thinking it’s in debug mode and thus gives you access to the device like never before.
The PS3 jailbreak would allow the use of illegal games as well as homebrew games to be played on the console. In addition, the hack also blocked mandatory updates from Sony which could overwrite the hack and secure the device once again.
Jail breaking like this is nothing new, in fact we’ve heard about it with the iPhone for [literally] years. However, with the PS3 it was a bit different. It was different because the PS3 has been a platform which has remained unbroken or un-hacked [if that’s a word] for nearly a decade. That is a feat no other gaming company has
Continue Reading
If you’ve been to this site before, you know we are a fan of USB Steampunk. We just received word there is a new kid on the block who’s doing some cool USB steampunk.
This design is coined “Steampunk Scorpion USB.”
WWWorks is the profile name over at Etsy and he’s done some nice work on his first release. What I like about the style of this design is the lack of gears you so commonly see with USB steampunk. Rather, WWWorks put some detail into the design on the brass.
So here is a bit of detail about WWWorks. Based in Budapest Hungary WWWorks is a computer IT guy by day and a craftsman by night. Trying to break away from the
Continue Reading
Over the past several weeks we’ve read reports about the PS3 Jail breaking solution via USB whereby the jailbreak tricks the console into thinking it’s in debug mode and thus gives you access to the device like never before.
The PS3 jailbreak would allow the use of illegal games as well as homebrew games to be played on the console. In addition, the hack also blocked mandatory updates from Sony which could overwrite the hack and secure the device once again.
Jail breaking like this is nothing new, in fact we’ve heard about it with the iPhone for [literally] years. However, with the PS3 it was a bit different. It was different because the PS3 has been a platform which has remained unbroken or un-hacked [if that’s a word] for nearly a decade. That is a feat no other gaming company has
Continue Reading
