Articles tagged with: accessories

Computers are great at portraying three dimensions, but the world’s favourite input device – the mouse – is steadfastly 2D. Enter desk left (or an axis of your choice) the SpaceNavigator for Notebooks – an Atari 2600 paddle detached from its handset and plonked atop a jack-in-the-box spring affixed to a steel paperweight. Sort of. Manufacturer 3DConnexion describes it rather more succinctly as a “3D mouse for your 3D world”.

If even the longest-lasting laptop doesn’t meet your needs when you’re working away from the mains, there is a simple solution – buy one or more spare batteries. Simple, maybe, but not necessarily convenient – most laptops batteries are an awkward shape to carry around, you’ll have to use the laptop to recharge them and should you change laptops, you’ll need to change batteries too. That’s where the APC Universal Notebook Battery 70 comes in – it’s an external battery pack that’s not only easy to carry, it works with most laptops, too.

You could always wait till you get home but if your just have to have prints while out and about, Canon's new Selphy CP770 may be just the ticket. Launched alongside the cheaper but deskboud CP760, it is, to put it bluntly, a photo-lab-quality printer in a bucket.

Is there nothing those Scandinavians can't turn their designer hands to?  Bored of crafting minimalist sofas and desk lamps, they've created the Contactbox - a wall-mounted designer charge station for your mobiles and smartphones.

So no more cables dangling by the bedside or coiling into a viper's nest behind the desk, now you can strap your thirsty handsets into Contactbox's elasticated straps and plug in with minimum mess. It's available in lacquered red, white and black or solid oak for £54.40. That'll be the designer price-tag, then.

[Scandinavian Design Center]

Never judge a MacBook by its cover, they say - clearly not a mantra that the folks at serial accessory maker Brighton Net live by. They've just crafted this 'faux leather' (Mmm) Bookshell covering to protect Apple's baby laptop from harm. It also serves the handy purpose of transforming the white plastic lid into shades of either bright red or alluringly expensive black. Brighton Net describes the feel as 'suede-like'. If that sounds appealing then look out for them appearing at its online distributor Bridgewell.

[Brighton Net]

On board sound will never match the impact you can get from a dedicated soundcard - not something you tend to find on a laptop. Till now one of the few options has been to slip Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook into a spare ExpressCard slot but with ExpressCards themselves becoming a rarity, the same team's come up with a USB 2.0 version.

If suitcase-size solar panels seem a tad too cumbersome then consider Devotec's new solar charger, dubbed it's smallest yet. Even smaller than an iPod nano (1st generation that is) its built-in battery packs enough power to charge a mobile, Blackberry or MP3 player twice over.

The world's first memory card with built in Wi-Fi, has now morphed into the world's first memory card with geotagging. From today the simple Eye-Fi card we've come to know and love will be split into three models - Home, Share and Explore.

The Share appears to be the standard model we've already seen, with ability to transfer shots from camera to a PC wirelessly, or to sites such as Skype via your home network. The Explore adds a roaming agreement - currently in the US only - to upload photos to photo sharing sites via a network of hotspots across the country. Lastly the least expensive, Home, is for simple transferring to PCs only.

As an added bonus the Explore gets the new geotagging service to add location information to each photo's EXIF data. It's not quite perfect as it doesn't use GPS but rather the Skyhook system as featured on the iPhone, which triangulates from known nearby hotspot locations.

They'll be on sale in the US for $79, $99 and $129. No word yet on when we'll see them here.

[Eye-Fi]

If you’re finding the lack of tactile feedback on the Apple iPhone's keyboard a problem, help is at hand (ho ho). My Touch Keys is a transparent screen protector with holes that lie over the part of the screen where the on-screen keyboard appears. The overlay doesn’t interfere with the iPhone’s touch-screen operation, but when the keyboard pops-upeach key then has its own small depressed area that – supposedly – makes it easier to find with a fingertip. There's a video after the cut...

We've had the first Near Field Communication (NFC) phone, now hail the first NFC accessory to go with it. The Parrot PARTY Black Edition is a black edition of Parrot's boombox styled PARTY Bluetooth speaker but with one extra ingredient; NFC. No need to pair this wire-free speaker with your phone, just tap the two together and the Bluetooth link is established. Magic.

PARTY owners will recognise the rest of the spec list - a class-D amp with 6W output, eight hours rechargable battery life plus Parrot's top-secret Stereo Widening tech, oh, and Virtual SuperBass to add an element of grunt.

It'll be out in the summer for £79 - nicely timed for the arrival of Nokia's NFC loaded 6212 classic.