fling

Thumbs up! iPad Fling joystick now in Apple stores

Want to get more hands-on control with your iPad games? Ten One Design's nifty Fling joystick is now in Apple stores across the U.S.

Fling sticks to your iPad with two suction cups alongside a plastic spiral. The analog device doesn't require any batteries, software, or ports.

You just stick it on and use the small black thumb-stick in the center of the plastic circle. Proper positioning, though, can be tricky.

It's transparent, so you can see whatever's underneath on your iPad screen. Check out the vid below.

The Fling is designed to make gameplay easier if you're playing titles with an on-screen directional pad or virtual joystick, such as Meteor Blitz, Across Age, or Super Megaworm.

Read our quick review of using Fling with N.O.V.A., Dead Space, Lego Harry Potter, Reckless Racing, and NBA Jam here.

Fling is available in Apple stores or at Ten One Design for $19.95. You can get two for $29.95. … Read more

Amazon stymies Lendle e-book lending service

It may be game, set, and match for Lendle. No, not Ivan Lendl, the former tennis great. Lendle, the newly hatched e-book lending service.

Lendle first reported the news via Twitter: "Amazon has revoked Lendle's API access. This is why the site is down. It's sad and unfortunate that Amazon is shutting down lending sites...According to Amazon, Lendle does not 'serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.'"

Reached by CNET, Lendle co-founder Jeff Croft, who's based in Seattle, had this to say:

They [Amazon] shut the API access off, and without it, our site is mostly useless. So, we went ahead and pulled it down. Could we build a lending site without their API? Yes. But it wouldn't be the quality of product we expect from ourselves.

Kindle, Nook lending site, eBook Fling, goes live

In the past month or so, a couple of e-book-lending sites, Lendle and BookLending, opened for business. Those sites cater to Kindle users, but Book Swim's eBook Fling, which officially launched today, offers lending to both Kindle and Nook users.

How does e-book lending work? Well, while publishers only choose to make certain e-books lending-enabled, plenty of e-books are available to loan out on a very restricted basis. If you own a lendable e-book (they're labeled as such), you can loan it to one person, one time, for 14 days.

The sites all work in much the same … Read more

Another sharing service piggybacks on Kindle lending

Here's another me-too service that intends to help consumers share their electronic books by piggybacking on the lending features available on Kindle and Nook books.

BookSwim, which bills itself as a "Netflix for Books," announced that it plans to launch eBookFling.com tomorrow, a site where users swap e-books. BookSwim's press release makes it obvious that company managers either anticipate the service won't be warmly received by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and book publishers or are trying to gin up the release with a little controversy.

"The initial reaction may be a negative," … Read more

iPad joystick at CES 2011

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Nvidia announces a 3D sharing page called 3DVisionLive

HP may not announce a tablet at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show after all, but rather may wait until February if press invites are a decent indication of the company's plans

Asus announces a line of Android and Windows tablets as well as a new Android phone

Video streaming site Vudu is going to start streaming 3D movies

The Fling is a suction joystick for the iPad

Toss your trash with Flings

So you've got the gang over for a backyard barbecue (hey, I live in Houston, and we don't do winter here), and the trash and recycling is piling up all over the deck. Grab a couple of Flings recycling and trash containers, and you're good to go.

Flings are portable, compact bins--when closed, they're about half the size of a pizza box--that snap open to hold 13 gallons of trash or recycling. You can avoid the classy trash-bag-hanging-from-a-nail look, and you can easily pop open two separate containers to keep your recyclables from being covered in … Read more