Gadgets

From the department of “get it while it’s hot” comes iTether, an app which lets you share your iPhone’s data connection with your Mac or PC. While some carriers enable this feature natively, most iPhone users will have to jailbreak their devices to tether them or pay extra for the service.

The app comes in two parts. A Windows/Mac client and the iOS app. It works by creating a virtual, software-based Ethernet port to which your computer connects via USB. That’s the theory at least — in my testing (with an iPad, not with an iPhone) the Mac app wouldn’t stay up for long enough to actually use the web. It does actually connect — after launch the app opens the Tether site in your browser — but crashes as soon as I try to navigate elsewhere.

The problem appears to be an exception with the Mac app’s kernel extension, although the iPad end seems to work just fine. Other report that it functions as described.

You can have the brightest bike lights in town, but if a car driver decides to run an intersection, he’s not going to see you from side-on. If you have a city or touring bike, you can buy tires with reflective strips. If you have a more minimal ride, or a bike with skinny little tires, you could check out Fiks.

Amazingly, it’s possible to count your heart rate just by observing tiny changes in the color of your skin, caused by the movement of blood through the body. Even more amazingly, it’s possible to detect these changes using the terrible camera in the iPad 2.

The app that performs this double-rainbow of technological magic is Philips Vital Signs Camera. It uses the front-facing camera of the iPad to both track the rising and falling of your chest to determine breathing rate, and the small changes in skin color to track heart rate.

When Steve Jobs first dreamed up the iPhone with his team at Apple, he didn’t want it to run on AT&T’s network. He wanted to create his own network.

So says Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Stanton, who spent a good deal of time with the late Apple CEO during the phone’s development period. Jobs wanted to replace carriers completely, Stanton says, instead using the unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi operates on for his phone.

If you’ve been craving an iPhone 4S, but you travel a lot, or don’t want to be tied down by two-year data plan, you can grab your very own unlocked, contract-free model starting today.

One caveat, however: The unlocked model is only available on GSM networks, such as AT&T or global providers, not on CDMA networks like Verizon or Sprint. Apple is careful to note this on the purchase page of the Apple Store’s website.

Non-discerning European listeners have been rocking out to the Q2 for around a year already, and now lucky Statesiders can enjoy the limitations of a four-channel Internet radio. Yes Internet radio. Those things still exist.

The Q2 is a small, colorful cube which connects to the Internet via “wireless broadband.” You can configure it (via a computer) to remember four stations, and you can flip between them by physically moving the Q2 and laying it on a different side. Volume is adjusted by tilting it back or forward, and if you place it face-down it enters standby.

There are several great apps for the iPad which turn it into an amp and pedals for an electric guitar, but the iPB-10 Programmable Pedalboard goes one better, by adding a hardware stompbox to the mix.

Pedalboard, as I’ll call it to save burning extra pixels on your screens, is a multi-effects box without a brain. This is supplied by slotting in your iPad and firing up the $2 companion app.

The skeuomorphic design shows pictures of well-known pedals, which is a boon to existing players but will become increasingly redundant as hardware pedals eventually disappear.

One distinguishing feature of Android phones is their exclusive Gmail app. Not anymore. Today, Google began sharing the Gmail love with iPhone and iPad users through its new Gmail iOS app.

The app actually isn’t available at the moment: After the app went live, many users reported a bug (a “no valid ‘aps-environment’ error entitlement” error), and the app has since been removed from the App Store. However, those who have already installed the app have been given the OK by Google to keep using it.

The Electronic Pen tells you just how much ink it has laid down, by distance. While it might be fun to know that your signature is exactly 13.37cm long, there are more practical uses, too.

For instance, you could use Jang Hyung-Jin’s concept pen to measure lines as you draw them, effectively turning any straight edge into a ruler.

When the iPhone 4S spec sheet was officially revealed in early October, consumers were disappointed to learn that Apple’s newest iPhone doesn’t support 4G, or fourth-generation wireless data connectivity, as rumored. But now it looks like a 4G/LTE iPhone will arrive next year. According to sources that just spoke with DigiTimes, Apple will “join the LTE club” in 2012.

DigiTimes is notorious for floating unsubstantiated Apple rumors.