GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Oh man. If the LiveRider is anywhere near as good as it looks, then it’s going to sell roughly one zillion units. It’s a hardware/software combo that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a cycling computer, and it looks pretty hot.

First, the hardware. It comprises a frame-mounted sensor which cable-ties onto the chainstay and senses speed and cadence via magnets attached to the wheel and crank. This beams its info via 2.4 GHz RF to a dongle plugged in to the iPhone. The iPhone itself sits snug in a shock-absorbing handlebar-mount.

You then fire up the free companion app and get access to all the usual data: speed, cadence, calories burned and so on, but on the big screen and in easy-to-view color. If you have GPS in your iDevice, it will also use that to let you know where you are.

My favorite feature is called “Chase Rider”, and it is like nothing so much as the ghost-driver feature in Super Mario Kart. It will remember past rides and play them back so you can race against your own best times. Neat.

The whole setup weighs in at just 3-ounces, and costs a very reasonable $100. You will, of course, need to supply your own iPhone (everything fits except the first and last iPhones). Available now.

LiveRider [New Potato Tech]

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Experience a little bit of Las Vegas in your own home or office with Jackpot Slots for the iPhone: a USB dock with a knob-topped lever on the side which turns the phone into a one-armed-bandit.

The plastic block costs $40, and the accompanying application is free in the App Store. Just pull the lever and “enjoy” the slot-machine experience. There’s even a proper contest which buyers can enter: score enough points and you’ll be included in a competition to win a real trip to Vegas, or even money.

Sadly, the real experiences of Las Vegas aren’t replicated. While you could sit in your office chair with a cup full of quarters, tossing them in the trash as you play, nobody will bring you free drinks, and no arrogant idiots in too-short shorts, sandals, socks and baseball-caps will be blighting an otherwise well-designed gaming floor and worst of all, there will be no hidden speakers tootling out musak from the bushes, trees and fake rocks lining the streets.

Still, as docks go, Jackpot Slots isn’t a bad one. It works just like any other to charge and sync, and if you pull the lever all the way forwards, your iPhone or iPad Touch will pop out. Just like the eye of that cheating gambler in Scorsese’s Casino when they squeezed his head in a vice.

Jackpot Slots [New Potato via Cult of Mac]

Jackpot Slots [iTunes]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews