For the golfing set, Chubbs Peterson said it was ‘all in the hips’. While this is very true, for the technology crowd, it may be ‘all in the wrist’. Case in point, the Universal Gadget Wrist Charger from ThinkGeek.

Tipping the scales at 82 grams and pricing in at $35, the Universal Wrist Charger is a must-have item for those looking to take their ‘geek chic’ look to the next level. The charger is compatible with most HTC, LG, Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung and Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) phones… Heck, it’s even compatible with the iPhone.

The charger features a rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery (1500mAh, 5.5V), LED indicators, a simple on/off button and more. In the box you’ll find the wrist unit itself, plus 1 mini USB cable, 1 charger output cable, and 9 connectors (for everything from your iPhone to your Nintendo DS).

Go ahead, check it out. Pick one up and slap it on and your wrist. If you do so, you may look as cool as this guy:

Have a great weekend everyone.

Universal Wrist Charger ($34.99) [ThinkGeek]

[Via: TheDesignBlog]

I haven’t written a post about Babies and Mobiles for a while, mainly because my baby has now grown up in to a 2 year old toddler. But given how proficient she is with Mobile devices, I figured it might be time to write another one.

Before I get stuck in to the post proper, a quick shout out to the developers of the App she likes the most: First Words: Animals, by Learning Touch!

Right, so as I was saying, I had written a series of posts about how Mobile devices can prove useful in bringing up children, and mainly had restricted myself to talking about things like baby monitors, and so on. But since that time, my daughter is now fully conversant in the world of Mobile! It started off when she recognised the difference between a toy Mobile and a real one – at that point I started wondering whether in fact she might be able to use one. Given I run an iPhone, and there are LOTS of kids apps for it, I figured to download a few and give it a try!

Well maybe I opened Pandoras box – my daughter can now:

• pick up the phone and press the home key to bring it out of standby
• unlock it with a swipe
• swipe the homescreens to the homescreen where I have some kids applications
• pick the one she wants
• use the application and interact with it
• swap to other apps if she gets bored

And I suppose to some extent this is a glowing recommendation of the App store, since there are loads and loads of Apps aimed at children, of various different ages. The favourite App in our house currently (as mentioned above) is First Words: Animals, by Learning Touch – it’s a game of sorts, but with casual productivity – teaching spelling, pronunciation, and sounds, for a number of common animals. Implicitly, there is also co-ordination of hand to eye, concentration, and dexterity of control by using the touch interface of the iPhone too.

To be clear, I don’t let my daughter use any App for more than 10 minutes at a time, and it’s supervised play too – mostly because I think it’s important to set boundaries on what time periods acceptable to use the device, but also just in case she decides that the iPhone would be better placed in the bin, or swimming in the loo!!

At any rate, for those of you that have young kids, and an iPhone/iPod Touch (or in fact any touchscreen smartphone that supports an Application store), then I’d suggest seeing what they make of the applications – in a controlled fashion, there are a number of benefits to them playing with Apps – the only downside immediately I can see is that my daughter is more comfortable and capable with a mobile device than I am

First Words: Animals (£1.19) [iTunes link]

Lady Gaga – love her, or … well, be puzzled by her, you’ve got to appreciate that this is one hard-working lady, and with some sheer determination (plus a stack of very odd appareil) she’s managed to take the world by storm. Ga-ga-Ro-ma-ma, as she would say. But like many artistes these days, it seems she hasn’t been able to shrug the allure of product placement. Now it’s not the first time that a Mobile device has featured prominently in a music video, and it sure as hell won’t be the last, but this is a dual-shock of advertising i.e. the phone appears in two places.

I am going to invite you to watch the video here, and then check for 2:09 and 4:16 in the video – tell me which device you see, and which operator the phone is on (don’t worry, it’s VERY obvious from the video!). Let’s see who can nail it first!

The official site for Lady Gaga is here, where you can also see the video.

Etsy is fast becoming one of my favorite places to go for odd cases, and other strange handicrafts that you’d have trouble finding anywhere else. With the iPad now available for pre-order in the US, it’s time for folks to start thinking about a carrying case purchase. With that in mind, Etsy has come to the rescue again.

The ‘iMaxi’ iPad case is a real, functioning case for your new iPad. With each case lovingly hand-made with a durable vinyl outer layer and plush, quilted cotton inner layer, this case is sure to please or disgust your friends. Either or.

You can pre-order your iMaxi case right now via Etsy for $30.00 >

[Via: TiPB]

How cool is this? If you were in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, you will have noticed many folks walking around with pins all over the place. Pin collecting and trading is always a big deal at events like this… Not quite sure what the fascination is about it myself, but a lot of folks do it.

Getting to the point here, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) decided to get in on the pin game just a little bit, according to a tipster over at TUAW. The Apple Store at Pacific Centre was giving away a limited edition set of iPhone app-inspired pins to some lucky customers (see above). I want them. Now.

Apparently the Apple Store at Oakridge Centre also had some pins, namely a special red iPod Nano pin with the Canadian Maple Leaf emblazoned on the screen. Very cool.

If anyone out there in the Vancouver area has some (or all) of these pins. Talk to me. I want them. Seriously. OK, heck, maybe I DO get this pin trading thing…

Time for something a little offbeat. Have you ever wanted to stash your mobile device into something delicious? Say, oh, I don’t know, a ‘Hungry Man’ TV Dinner? Well, now you can thanks to the Retro TV Dinner Turkey Corn and Mash Potatoes Gadget Case (wow, long name).

This is truly ridiculous, yet at the same time it makes me want to part with some of the dollars in my pocket. Here’s the official description from the seller ‘Coolbeans717′ on Etsy:

A great way to keep scratches and marks off your electronics igadgets and cell phones. A full color image is printed on front and back and bonded to materials creating a vinyl like exterior, white scratch free felt inside. Hand washable with warm water and mild soap.

Each Case is Uniquely hand cut, assembled and created by me and then machine stitched.

A hand-crafted TV Dinner mobile phone case. Wow, doesn’t get much better than that, does it? From what I can tell the case should hold most current-gen mobile devices just fine. For all the details head on over to Etsy.

Boston.com has a fantastic weekly series called “The Big Picture” that features between 30 and 40 images depicting scenes from current events. This week’s edition was focused on Chile, and how it looks like 3 days after their massive earthquake. As expected, they’re devastating, but this image below of people charging their mobile phones makes a point how far we’ve come to depend on those little pieces of plastic and metal we carry with us everywhere.

At IntoMobile we have multiple writers, each with their preferred smartphone platform, each making fun of the other’s mobile device, and in some cases each other’s mother, but at the end of the day we know that calling and texting are the two most important features.

Android fanboi, iPhone fanboi, Windows Mobile fanboi, whatever, we’re mobile phone fanbois. Period.

So, taking a small break from the latest cut and thrust in the mobile world, we continue my (nearly) favourite game of ’spot the mobile device in the music video’ – this week it’s the turn of fresh new thing ‘Ke$ha‘, who has been causing chart destruction in both the US and UK. Having punished us with some tight lyrics in ‘Tik Tok’, she’s now back with another chart banger, called ‘Blah Blah Blah’ – featuring dudes of the moment 3Oh!3

But the question is: which Mobile device is featured blatantly in this video? It’s quite an easy one, so let’s see how many people get it. On this occasion I’m not even providing a link to the video, just to add that extra 5 milliseconds of tension whilst you look it up via Google (NSDQ: GOOG)!

Game on! (Answers in the comments please)

You can check out Ke$ha’s official site here.

[Image via: keshasparty.com (official site)]

Time for a video (and laugh) break. New from the folks at neo-fight.tv, comes what they believe an Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) commercial would look like if produced by the advertising team at Old Spice. I think they’ve got it dead on. Take a minute, hit the play button above and enjoy.

‘anything’s possible when you buy from Apple, and not from Sprint (NYSE: S) or T-Mobile (NYSE: DT). I’m on a horse’.

I get a kick out of the ‘Old Spice’ ads, but recognize the kind of humor isn’t for everyone… But if you did enjoy the ad above, check out my favorite ‘Old Spice’ spot after the break.

Read the full article »

Our buddies over at iFixit have been busy doing all sorts of cool stuff – for those of you that don’t know, iFixit is the premier teardown service for hardware internals – any devices that comes out, you can expect these guys to have it in pieces, usually within days!

On this occasion, they’ve got some snaps of the iPhone 3GS naked (well, without it’s covers on), and have formatted them to 320×480 size – wait, I hear you say, isn’t that iPhone native screen size? Yes, exactly, which means you can use them as wallpaper – giving some kind of pseudo-x-ray view in to your device

The pics above are a scaled down version of the two wallpapers, so to get the two source files you’ll need to visit the iFixit site here.

[Via: iFixit]