Speaker Dock Turns iPad into Tiny iMac

By Charlie Sorrel 

October 15, 2010  |  

8:12 am  |  

Categories: Accessories and Peripherals

There’s pretty much only one thing I don’t like about my iPad. While the speaker is strong and clear when it comes to iTunes and most other movie and music apps, when you watch films and TV shows in the Apple-supplied “Videos” app, the sound sucks. It’s just way too quiet. Combine that with the fact that most movie soundtracks are mastered to bring up the sound FX over the vocal track and you can see the frustration.

The PadDock 10 might fix this. It’s an iPad speaker dock with a pair of 3-Watt speakers, a dock-connector and a pair of sockets at the back for charging or syncing (via AC or USB respectively). It also lets you spin the iPad 360-degrees, and when it’s in landscape orientation it look like nothing so much as a tiny wee iMac, complete with the single aluminum foot.

As the folks at LaptopMag point out in their great video review, the PadDock 10 has no remote, but then, when will you be more than an arm’s length away, anyway?

The PadDock costs $100 and is available now.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/speaker-dock-turns-ipad-into-tiny-imac/#ixzz12bt95eWb

IStand is a POS Pole for the iPad

By Charlie Sorrel   September 14, 2010  |  8:42 am  |  Categories: Accessories and Peripherals

It’s a stand for the iPad, and so of course it is called the iStand, but it’s also an elegant piece of furniture. The Danish-designed stand is aimed at POS use (no, not that POS) and holds the iPad at a handy browsing height allowing customers to flip through catalogs, menus or any kind of information. I can imagine these in use both as educational aids in museums and also by clipboard-nazis as they deny you entry to their lame but “exclusive” nightclub.

The iStand has space for a dock-cable and bolts shut around the iPad. It also covers the home button to prevent tinkering, so you’d better be sure you have launched the correct app before you lock it up. It tilts and swivels, too, depending on how you want to use it.

The company behind the iStand, InSilico, also makes companion apps, although these are not listed in the app store. They are pretty self explanatory: They’re called iCatalogue and iMagazine. I’m thinking it would be pretty cool to put a couple of these in Wired’s reception hall showing the iPad version of the mag (or better, tuned to the Gadget Lab page). The only problem there would be in the New York office, where Bureau Chief John C Abell does a lot of his “work” in the comfy reception-area armchairs, and his snoring might scare people off.

Depending on the price of this simple metal pole and mount, the iStand plus iPad combo could be a very cheap way for businesses to get a custom interactive POS system. Knowing what I do about the costs of velvet ropes and stands, though, the iStand is likely to cost more than the iPad itself.

iStand is here [InSilico. Thanks, Kim!]

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/istand-is-a-pos-pole-for-the-ipad/#ixzz10MBjEoHc