Gadgets

Woody Allen once said, “80 percent of success is showing up,” and Steve Jobs doesn’t even need to do that anymore. The CEO was dubbed mobile personality of the year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week without even attending the conference.

The award celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Global Mobile Awards and “reflects the contributions of individuals, established names, new thinkers, and rising starts, across the global industry and leaders of other industries that have contributed to the growth and convergence of mobile during the last year,” according to a Macworld article.

No Apple representative was present to collect the award, but Stephen Fry, the host of the Global Mobile Awards, said he would pass it on.

Corky is a self-charging mouse, turning your clicks and flicks into electricity. It is also made of cork.

Cork has many properties: It can warm the floor of a 1970s bathroom, or turn a wine of any vintage into a musty, tainted bottle of drain-filler. In this case it offers a welcoming, waterproof shell for a wireless scrolling mouse. The buttons and the scroll-wheel all contain piezoelectric elements which, in this concept design, generate juice with every click.

Now that Apple has chosen the famously awkward name “iPad” for its tablet, the most obvious candidate “iTablet” is up for grabs. Sure enough, a UK company is leaping at the opportunity.

X2 is happy to announce it’s “hot on the heels of Apple’s latest product launch” with the iTablet, which will run Windows 7 and Linux. The iTablet will ship April in two screen sizes — 10.2 inches and 10.7 inches — with a 1,024-by-768 resolution TFT touchscreen (multitouch optional).

Other specs sound like the guts of a netbook: a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, up to 250GB hard drive capacity, built-in stereo speakers, three USB ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI output, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and 3G connectivity.

There are a gazillion apps to turn your iPhone into a remote control, and let you operate your computer, your Sonos home music system or even your DirecTV DVR. The problem is, they work over Wi-Fi, whereas your TV, stereo and DVD-players all swallow up infra-red light in order to follow your distant commands.

Apple iPad’s most striking feature, its gorgeous 9.7-inch touchscreen display, uses liquid crystal display technology — but with a few unusual twists — to present a vivid image and a wide viewing angle.

“The iPad’s display uses the same capacitive touchscreen technology as the iPhone and iPod Touch,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, principal analyst for iSuppli. “At the same time, it offers a better picture quality than conventional LCDs.”

After months of speculation, Apple launched its tablet, the iPad on Wednesday.  The lightweight device (1.5 pounds) features a luminous touchscreen and a user interface similar to the iPhone.

Dan Woolley was all over the news last week as the tech geek who survived the Haiti earthquake with the help of a first-aid iPhone app, his digital SLR and, of course, a lot of luck.

The religious man credits his survival to God and all those praying for him. But in an interview with Wired.com, he reveals that he was even more technologically resourceful than initial reports suggested.

After the quake struck, burying the Hotel Montana in rubble, Woolley, a web programmer, came up with some clever techy ideas.

Map 2 is a folding paper map of Greater London, with a twist (or rather, with a fold): You can zoom in.

Electronic maps, like those from Google, are better than paper in many ways. You can search, zoom, get directions and carry a whole planet’s worth of cartography in your pocket. However, you still need a battery and an internet connection.

Map 2 incorporates one new feature from its electronic successor: zooming.

Printers equipped for 3-D are poised to go mainstream, now that Hewlett-Packard plans to start selling them. The company’s inkjet and laser printers are staples in offices and homes.

The devices, which can crank out three-dimensional plastic models through a process similar to printing text on sheets of paper, have until recently been available only to high-end industrial designers. HP’s devices will be targeted at a broader market of mechanical-design professionals, and will probably cost less than $15,000.

The Gravity Ruler is a low-tech, lightweight solution to overweight luggage, a bungee-cord and weighing scale in one.

Recently, a one-two punch from the airlines has meant that the weight of your carry-on luggage is rather important. First, you need to pay for any checked bags. Second, if your hand-luggage weighs too much, you have to check it. It’s a great way for the budget carriers to scam a few extra bucks out of their already suffering customers.

So you need to keep the carry-on under the limit, but of course you don’t want to carry a scale which just adds more weight to your luggage.