A little while ago, we did a piece on gorgeous looking fridges. The featured white goods really were aesthetically pleasing, but I think I’ve found just the thing to really ramp up the dork factor.

iPhone app magnets.

That’s right, you can replicate the interface of your mobile onto the open space of your refrigerator.

Sure, it might get a little confusing when you return home after several Long Island iced teas intent on sharing your wittiest comments/drunk nonsense on Facebook, only to discover that repeatedly jabbing the Safari magnet doesn’t actually work

But let’s be honest, that’s not such a bad thing.

Fancy grabbing them for your kitchen? They’re from IWOOT for £9.99

(They’ll go perfectly with your iPhone bedding)

Sat Navs are there purely to help you find your way to your destination, whilst alerting you of the occasional speed camera, right?

Not according to Trafficmaster.

Their International Rescue iPhone application teams a navigation system with a real life personal assistant who can help you out when you’re abroad and come across any problems. Which is particularly useful when you come up against language barriers.

You can use the app to get in contact with your PA if it’s an emergency, like a car accident, or if you simply need advice on where the nearest chemist is, need a hotel booked or flight times sent.

The Trafficmaster satnav system itself is clear and simple, with just a simple directional arrow and instructions on which route to take. No fancy famous voices or choice of sports car navigators here. The system picks up regular traffic updates to help you avoid a nasty jam on the M25.

The real advantage of this new app is the peace of mind it gives you if you were to run into trouble abroad. In particular, I think a lot of parents would be happy to download this for their teenage son or daughter looking to go abroad for their first trip alone. Business people who take regular trips abroad will definitely find a use for the app too.

Wins points for

• Business travellers will find this invaluable if they get in a pickle abroad. Monthly one-off subscriptions can also be bought for holidaymakers.
• Cheaper than buying a full stand alone Sat Nav
• Easy-to-use application

Lose points for

Price for a monthly membership is £19.99, and lifetime membership is £64.99. Not exactly cheap.

The maps aren’t very detailed, but then a busy map would be wasted on a small iPhone screen.

Conclusion

Whilst it might not be for everyone due to the price, it’s a great product for the friend or family member who always likes to be prepared. You can also download a version without the International Rescue for £34.99, or a PAYG version for £9.99.

Also available for Nokia, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry handsets.

Trafficmaster International Rescue SmartNav, £19.99.

More iPhone stuff on Dork Adore

A few months ago we did a round-up of the latest iPad covers and cases in anticipation of its UK release. At the time choice was extremely limited, but we’re now inundated with options, matching the variety available to the iPhone.

Happily, there are also a few eco-friendly options available. One particular manufacturer, Proporta, currently offers business-like leather cases for various mobile and tablet gadgets (right) which are made from 100% recycled leather. The iPad version (£34.95) also doubles up as a stand.

So if you’re getting an iPad, it might be a good idea to limit your carbon footprint with this range (and don’t forget you can recycle your mobile phone too!)

Following on from last week’s post (Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend), I’ve had time to ruminate over my transition, and having given the Legend back a week or so ago, I’ve had time to miss the things that I actually grew to kind of love.

For instance, as much as I love the clean layout of the iPhone, it was useful to be able to sprinkle apps and widgets about, dedicating one page to the apps I used most regularly, one to favourite contacts and one to a calendar overview. It’s a different way of working to the iPhone, but one I found I enjoyed.

I loved Spotify. I really liked the maps, and the addition of a compass which my old skool iPhone lacked (you can’t imagine how gratifying it is not to have to spin in circles on the pavement, trying to work out which direction was which).

But as much as I wanted to, I did not love Android.

My conclusion is that Android is still for early adopters. The marketplace is incredibly disorganised, and lacks the sleek standardisation that Apple’s draconian rules result in. The apps themselves were wildly varying in quality, which is something most app stores suffer from. However, this was highlighted in the Android store by certain apps that promised to do one thing, and once downloaded would just direct you to an advert – just when you thought spamming had nowhere else to go.

The Legend, however, I would be all over if it magically started running the iPhone OS: good to hold, super-bright screen, and fast – ohsofast — compared to my sluggish iPhone 3G. So that’s what I’m pushing for in the inevitable June iPhone announcement — simply a partnership and HTC to bring me the new phone of my dreams. Fingers crossed, eh?

If you’re a lover of air conditioning and cool air, get yourself down to Hell right now. It has temporarily frozen over whilst I temporarily dump my iPhone for an HTC Legend.

When announced, I wrote that the Legend might just have the potential to make the swap from iPhone to Android, but it was always going to be a tough transition. Here’s a little diary on how it’s gone.

Day One
This has officially been the worst day of my life.

What, you want an explanation? Oh alright. I have tried to de-Apple myself, and Googlify my life by swapping my sim to an Android phone. The result? A kabillion duplicated contacts on my iPhone, calendar appointments appearing two or three times and inexplicably adding alarms at every opportunity, an iPhone wiped of music and a whole load of tears. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Google, and I’m doing my best not to blame Apple. I’m sure there are ways of smoothly transferring all of the above between operating systems, but I’ll be damned if it’s ever happened to me.

Day two
I’ve yet to find the time to take advantage of all the things that make Android phones a compelling option, and I’m still in mourning for my well organised, if slightly Apple-dominated, life. Having said that, I spoke to my mother today, and her review of the phone was as follows: “Buy this phone immediately, Susannah. This is the first time I’ve been able to hear you properly in several years”. I’m thinking of getting her a column in Mobile Reviews.

Day three
The battery seems to be worse than my iPhone, which is saying something, and it takes me a while to realise this is because of that damned multitasking I was so excited about. Exiting to home from the middle of a programme keeps it running, and I’ve now got a dozen things sucking up the battery all at once. A quick Task Killer app installation, and I think I’ve got it sorted.

Day four
Today it came close to clicking. I always thought Spotify was my killer app for an Android, or at least the ability to run it in the background made it leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone version. I’ve now upgraded Spotify and so could listen to my cached playlists. If I keep the Android handset it’s going to change the way I listen to music – currently I have 2,000 songs on repeat, most of which are old news. With Spotify I can see myself preferring whole albums, simply because the playlists are easier to manage that way. No bad thing, actually, as it might increase my musical concentration from ‘first line….bored of this…skip…hate this one… skip…’.

Find out if Susi survived the week in the next gripping instalment.

Another month, another technology show. This time, it was the turn of the mobile industry to get up all in your grill, showing off their latest innovations and creations. I luvz it. Mobile World Congress is one of my favourite shows (Barcelona, phones, tapas – what’s not to like?) and — thank god — this year it felt like we could spend whole days without uttering the words ‘well, it’s not iPhone, now is it?’.

Here’s the phones you might want to bear in mind when you’re given the magical ‘it’s time for your upgrade’ call:

HTC Desire – March/April
Desire doesn’t cover it – this phone is the kind of phone that will have you laughing too loudly at its jokes and desperately trying to copy its body language in the hope that at the end of the day, it’ll choose you to go home with. There’s a 1Ghz processor (fast!), an AMOLED display (bright!) and Flash video capabilities (videos on the web! Unlike the iPhone!). HTC has also reskinned Android with its own Sense UI, and given it a nifty People widget, feeding all the social networking gubbins into one handy feed. But there do seem to be a lot of buttons on the bottom….

HTC Legend – April
Enter the HTC Legend. Quite frankly, it’s not quite as good as the HTC Desire – there’s no Flash video and it’s not running off the 1Ghz snapdragon processor. What it lacks in power, though, it makes up for in sheer lickamability. That’s a Macbook-esque aluminium unibody you see there (oops, Apple, what are you going to announce as your iPhone hardware update now?), and they’ve dumped any kind of nipple (hee!) for an optical trackpad. Hawt.

Windows Phone 7 – December
You’d be forgiven for throwing a whole lot of meh at Microsoft, for its consistent attempts to cram a desktop OS onto its mobile phones. But hold your horses there, cowperson. The latest Windows Phone 7 OS looks suspiciously usable (if you’ve had the chance to play with a Zune, you’ll find the interface similar) with big widgets, no tiny crosses in the corner of screens crying out for a stylus, and most importantly, there’s added Xbox.

The phones will be compatible with Xbox Live, so you’ll be able to interact with other players using your avatar, view updated records of play and access messages through the service.  Remember though, this was an OS preview, so the hardware could still be meh-y

Puma phone – April
Honestly, this strikes me as one of those phones that everyone falls a little bit in love with, but no one actually buys (trust me, I once bought a Nokia 7280, I’m very familiar with phones you really shouldn’t buy). The main feature of this phone is the solar panel sitting on the back. And the fact that it’s made by a company better known for producing Big Cats and sportswear.

For every one hour in the sun, you can apparently claw back two hours of music playback, and there’s a nifty little counter keeping count of how many of your calls, messages etc are available after you’ve left in the sun (no word on how much music you get for leaving it exposed to sleet though, as of yet).

In keeping with the Puma theme, there’s also  a pedometer, stopwatch and GPS tracker, so you can keep track of where you’ve been expending all that kinetic energy.

Loose cables are the bane of my working life. Between my phone, netbook, Nintendo DS and iPod, I’ve got wires all over the place.

Even with an extension lead, I’m still using all the available plugs. So how can I reduce the amount of cable clutter in my room?

The designers at Powermat think they’ve got the solution, and they’ve sent one over for me to try out.

The Powermat Home & Office edition is a hoverboard- shaped charging mat for a multitude of devices. The mat connects to the main with one cable….and that’s all the cables you’ll need.

To charge your gadgets, you click the phone/iPod/Nintendo DS into a receiver, and place it on the mat. Then with a joyful little beep, it starts to charge at the same speed as if you’d plugged it straight into a normal charger.

The benefits of this device are varied, including:

• Space saving: You can charge up to four devices at once (with the extra USB port) so you’re not tripping over a web of cables.
• Easy to use: Once you’ve clicked the receiver on, you just need to place the device on the mat and it’s charging. Job done.

However, it loses points for

Additional receivers: The mat doesn’t come with any basic receivers, so you’ll need to order one for each device you want to charge separately. And they’re not cheap at around £30 per receiver.

You’ve still got clutter: Unless you want to walk around with the receivers clipped to your gadget all day, you’re still going to have to store them somewhere. So you’re replacing wires with chunks of plastic.

Conclusion

For the ultra tidy gadget queen, this is a tempting product. Stylish, compact and convenient, it’s a clever gadget. It’s worth remembering though that you’re effectively paying around £70 for the mat, and an extra £30 per receiver to simple save you a little space and mess.

You can buy the Powermat from Amazon for £67.80. You can also get a package deal of the Powermat, iPhone 3G receiver and Powercube for £131.85.

There is a thin line, between being a normal run-of-the-mill dork, and becoming The Uber-Dork.

Buying this iPhone bedding set on the right would shove you right over that line.

The set is from Swedish website Ellos, and is aimed at the teen and ‘tween’ market. Displaying the standard iPhone icons and a mini iPhone for the pillow, you can see why this particular line of bedding has sold out until March.

Perhaps the next step is for them to expand into the double duvet market, emblazoned with the Apple iPad?

I’ve lost count of the amount of time I’ve spent puzzling over why a gadget is refusing to work. A recent study suggests I’m not alone in this area.

Research carried out by Confused.com has discovered that consumers constantly come across problems and confusion with their gadgets. And what was the biggest offender? The Wireless Router, of course.

Having spent hours in my old student house sitting on the phone to BT after conceding defeat to my router, I can sympathise with this top choice.

Coming in a close second is the iPod or MP3 player. I’m assuming this is more down to the actual set-up rather than the day-to-day use.

Perhaps one of the reasons behind all this confusion is that in our excitement to try out our latest purchase, we skip past reading the directions. Of the 2,000 participants in the survey, 48% admitted that the instructions book sits gathering dust. This leads to 55% of participants connecting up the leads incorrectly, and 45% incorrectly inserting the batteries (seriously? How hard is it to insert batteries?).

So, aside from the Wireless Router and MP3 player, what other gadgets made it to the list?

1. Wireless router (27%)
2. iPod/MP3 player (16%)
3. Mobile phone (20%)
4. Digital camera (19%)
5. Sat Nav/GPS (14%)
6. Sky+ (10%)
7. DVD Player (9%)
8. iPhone (7%)
9. Ninendo Wii (6%)
10. Video camera (6%)

Source: Confused.com

What gadgets have caused you the most confusion?

I doubt there’s a single mobile phone owner out there who hasn’t been guilty of this modern malaise. It’s easily done, after all. But if you recently got yourself an iPhone, I’m prepared to stake a small sum that you’ve been making quite a habit of it of late. After all, crank calling and the iPhone go hand in hand.

Not intentional crank calling, you understand. I’m talking about the kind of crank calling performed by your backside when your phone is in your pocket. The kind where your handbag rings your nearest and dearest so they can listen to your keys disturbing some sweetie wrappers while you talk in muffled tones to some unseen companion. Or the sort that dials home at 1am to broadcast your drunken night out to your innocent, sleeping partner.

We’ve all done it, but when it comes to crank calling, the iPhone is king. I always know when someone has just changed their usual mobile for an iPhone because, after finishing a phone call, their bum always rings me straight back just to check that the phone lock hasn’t activated. It hasn’t.

Maybe it’s a special iPhone feature designed to give owners the opportunity to say “sorry, I’ve just got a new iPhone”. That way, they get to brag about their new lifestyle choice without having to resort to a vulgar “look at how fabulously shaggable I hope I’ve miraculously become”.

But crank calling isn’t the only way I can spot a new iPhone owner. Emails and texts that were once rendered in a perfectly coherent and well-spelled manner are now more akin to something you’d expect the kids in the special class to scoff at. “Hrllo, hpw’s it goinf? Linch later?”

People seem reluctant to admit it, but a touchscreen is not as good as a proper keypad no matter how much more attractive you feel while using it. And emails aren’t just filled with typos, they’re also a whole lot shorter than before because the iPhone owner just spent the best part of 10 minutes trying to write 3 sentences. I may have  a rubbish browser and an ugly phone, but at least my BlackBerry lets me write emails that don’t sound like I’ve had a stroke.

If a new iPhone owner has yet to make a bum call or send a nonsense text, it’s only a matter of time. Assuming their battery doesn’t run out first, of course…