Crave

Now this is something for the dedicated audiophile: What if you could turn any flat surface into a speaker?

The "Nimzy Vibro Max" promises to do just that, by reproducing sound through vibrations spread across any flat platform made of a hard substance such as metal, plastic, wood or glass. The idea has been tried before, but GadgetCentre says the cube-shaped Vibro Max has an integrated amplifier that's more powerful than previous models. Perhaps it's yet another technology that can be incorporated into our campaign for wireless home entertainment.

Technology can be a funny thing sometimes. Just when we've finished carping about something--in this case the dearth of wireless home audio systems--someone comes along with a product that goes in the opposite extreme. Case in point: The "Plug & Enjoy" mini-speakers from Yanko Design.

These tiny speakers do precisely what their name implies, plugging directly into the wall for your listening pleasure. According to OhGizmo, they work this way: "Roughly the size of a power adapter, the speakers plug into any outlet and are designed to receive an FM signal from your stereo, iPod, … Read more

As we've noted frequently in the past, ill-advised tampering can make some technological experiments go terribly awry. But sometimes, the need for certain functions supersedes all in the evolution of the handset.

That, at least, is how we view the mobile phone telescope from Brando. In fact, Shiny Shiny (a closet birder--who knew?) even admits to lusting after this gadget "possibly more than I've ever wanted anything in my life." Wow.

With such strong convictions, we find it difficult to fault this latest genetic permutation--even if it does make a perfectly decent phone look like the … Read more

This falls under our definition of a feel-good item, but probably not in the way you might think. It has nothing to do with tugging heartstrings; it just makes us feel good because it's evidence that we're not the only clueless people in the world.

You'd think that tripods would be among the easier photographic accessories to use, yet some of us are still confounded by them. Finally, there's something that even we can handle: the "Camera Stabilising Bag" (that's "stabilising" with an "s," not a "z," … Read more

LaCie, maker of storage devices, computer LCDs, and other computer peripherals, is one of the few companies to truly embrace original and clever aesthetic design. Why shove your gear into boring gray boxes (and then into a closet to hide the boring grayness) when you can encase it in colorful, whimsical designs that you want to show off?

LaCie's latest USB/FireWire hub is a perfect illustration of this marriage of tech and high design. The octopodal Huby (pronounced hub-ee) was designed by Ora-Ito, a French company. Each of the eight arms has a connector at the tip: four … Read more

Being of a decidedly superficial ilk, we're always on the lookout for stuff that catches our visual fancy despite how it might perform. That's why we were both pleased and disappointed in Saitek's new iPod speakers.

The "gently smoothed pebble" appearance, as Slashgear describes it, is indeed fetching. But then we saw a photo of the Nano stand affixed to the speakers, which looks like something of an afterthought applied with a nervous screwdriver. It's not nearly as bad as some of the deformities we've documented in this space, but it's not … Read more

It's true: the iPhone is here--but not the one everyone's been talking about. Linksys announced today its family of Voice over IP and Wi-Fi phones, called iPhone.

The purveyor of home networking equipment has been shipping several flavors of VoIP and Wi-Fi phones since 2004 and announced two new products today, but branding them under the iPhone moniker is a new move. The two new members of the family are the iPhone Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype (CIT400) and the iPhone Wireless-G Phone for Skype (WIP320). The former is targeted for the home: it includes a cordless … Read more

It's not often that Crave gets freaked out, but we were a little thrown by this coincidence.

The other day we ran a small item about a small device, a robot USB key. Certainly nothing unusual about that, except for a random reference to Ultraman--a character we probably hadn't recalled more than two or three times since childhood. Then Saturday, only a few days after the robot USB item, what do we spy? An Ultraman USB key.

Fareastgizmos reports that the 256MB storage device is part of a 40th anniversary commorative set of collectibles dedicated to the … Read more

Few times have so many accessories come out so quickly for something so small. That's just one distinction that belongs to the iPod Shuffle, as evidenced by this Marware travel dock that plugs directly into a USB port, according to iLounge. But if you're really trying to save space--after all, isn't that what the Shuffle is all about?--you might want to consider the IncipioBud, which forgoes the need for a dock altogether.