Gadgets

Your Apple TV just got a lot less boring with the help of nifty new tools that override its restrictions and add powerful capabilities.

Launched Friday morning, the XBMC app for Apple TV 2 — which requires jailbreaking — expands the set-top box’s multimedia playback to support almost every type of audio or video format, including 1080p HD content. By default, the Apple TV can only play a few formats compatible with iTunes, and only supports 720p video.

Looks like buttonless is in this season.

No, not on this spring’s selection of evening wear. We’re talking about renderings of HP’s rumored webOS-powered tablet published this week on Engadget. It’s a sleek, all-black rendition of what we may be seeing from HP soon, and like the soon to be debuted Motorola Xoom, the tablet has got a button-free face.

While the pictures, leaked by an anonymous Engadget source, aren’t the most detailed, there are a few new things we can glean from taking a look. The finish on the back of the all-black tablet is slick-looking, differentiated from the rubberized backing you might find on, say, the new Galaxy Tab 4G. There’s a mini USB port at the bottom of the tablet along with front-facing camera, both found in many of this year’s forthcoming tablets. Two speakers appear to be on the left side and one on the right, a configuration which adapts to stereo listening in both portrait and landscape orientations.

Deep in the bowels of the Las Vegas Convention Center last week, we found Victorinox, makers of fine folding Swiss Army knives.

They’ve made the leap into the 21st century with USB drives that form part of their knives’ complement of tools. What we didn’t expect was just how much data they’ve managed to cram into a tiny, elegant, folding package.

The Victorinox Slim is available in capacities up to 64GB.

Truco is a modular carry-on case, designed to be split and concatenated to fit even the oddest space in the overhead locker. It should guarantee that your precious gadget-filled suitcase never gets tossed into the hold.

I first flew on a U.S domestic flight a few years ago, and it sucked. Every idiot was milling around, and stuffing way too much carry-on into the overhead lockers. I got on with my small hold-all and ended up having to stow it under the seat in front, thanks to all the scofflaw morons before me. And don’t get me started on the game of whack-a-mole the flight attendant had to play just to get these bovine idiots to sit down for long enough to, you know, launch the plane.

LAS VEGAS — Sony Ericsson’s new Xperia Arc packs some startling photo and video-taking features into a rather slim – and arc-shaped – package.

The phone runs the latest version of Android 2.3, Gingerbread, and slides it into a thin body that measures just 8.7mm at its waist. And it is a “waist”: the case has a pronounced concave-curve at the rear which gives it a swooping elegance.

LAS VEGAS — Eye-Fi will add a new “Direct Mode” to its Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards, allowing cameras to send photos direct to smart-phones and tablets as they are taken.

Currently it is only possible to beam photos from an Eye-Fi filled camera to, say, an iPad with a rather clunky chain of tools. First, you need a pre-existing Wi-Fi network for both camera and iPad to connect to.

James Whelton won a pink 8-GB iPod Nano and on the plane on his way back home, he hacked it. While he hasn’t jailbroken the Nano, he did get the better of the little device and dug out some interesting details of what may be possible.

James got control of the Nano’s SpringBoard, the iPod equivalent of a desktop, where all app icons appear. Normally, the Nano’s OS checks to make sure that it isn’t trying to load a modified version. James bypassed this check and proved it by removing an app icon, leaving a blank space (see video below).

Apple has issued a press release saying that it expects to sell 1 million new Apple TVs by the end of the week. The second-gen set-top box has been on sale for three months, so sales are not as hot as Apple’s top sellers, the iPad and the iPhone, but it’s still selling a lot faster than the first version.

Apple likes to brag about its sales numbers — if they’re good enough. Otherwise, those numbers are never mentioned.

The timing of this announcement is rather odd. Apple is usually very clear with its messages, but here it is expecting us to report that it will probably sell a million units by the end of this week.

Pocket projectors are fast heading towards impulse-buy status, and Chinavision’s Mini Projector with Wi-Fi and Wireless Remote $200 price-tag is as impulse as it gets right now. And as you may have guessed, it has some fancy extras.

The projector itself uses a 3-watt LED lamp, unlike the increasingly common focus-free laser models, which puts out 10-lumens of light. That isn’t bad, but you won’t be watching anything bigger than a sheet of legal paper unless you turn out the lights. Resolution is a non-HD 640 x 480 pixels.

Ever get scared that somebody will nab your iPad from the coffee-shop table when you quickly run off to the bathroom? Then stop leaving the iPad unattended, you fool! Just take it with you.

If you just must leave it lying around, though, maybe you could try this iPad lock, from Maclocks. It’s a clear plastic case which adds bulk to the iPad, coupled with a Kensington-style cable lock that hooks into a slot on the side of the case. Once in place, the tablet cannot be removed from the case “without damaging the iPad”.

But a thin metal cable isn’t much of a deterrent, and no matter how tough that plastic case is, it won’t last long if the metal teeth of the lock are given a sufficient yank.