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Vulture Bytes: USB Outlets and Time-Traveling Hard Drives

And we’re back. This week: USB power outlets, (practically) infinite music, a way to make your winter gloves iPhone-compatible, another PC-TV streamer, and a special kind of e-reader.

As always, e-mail VultureBytes@gmail.com with your tips, suggestions, and pitches.

Let us take a moment to discuss the dongle. A silly word, and an even sillier device, the dongle is that ridiculous square block you plug into the wall to charge your iPods Nano and Macro. It’s a go-between for a USB cord — and it’s the item that’s most easily misplaced whenever Vulture Bytes travels. But now with the U-Socket, we finally have a chance to render the dongle extinct. The U-Socket is an electrical outlet with a USB slot. Sweet, right? The installation manual looks simple enough. Down with the dongle. PRICE: $19.95
When socially anxious at a dimly lit, mildly smelly house party, Vulture Byes likes to ask either/or questions to the person standing in the corner closest to ours. Sparks or Four Loko? MySpace or Friendster? Shuffle or album play? Unwilling to answer the last question, Matthew Irvine Brown decided to create a collection of songs that was specifically designed to be played on shuffle. No matter which order they’re played in, they stitch together to form a kind of ambient mosaic. The whole thing is available for download on his site. The album only lasts a couple minutes each time, but in theory it can go on nearly forever without repeating. According to colleagues in the Vulture Mathematics Department, there are 4,537,567,650 different combinations. PRICE: Free.
Vulture Bytes is no fan of winter, but not because of the cold and the snot. Because winter months mean we have to wear gloves, and gloves mean we can’t easily fidget with our gadgets. Those gloves our grandmother knitted are too precious to keep in the closet, but the yarn doesn’t play well with touch screens. But our touch can be restored with Digits, a set of four finger pads that you pin to the outside of your gloves. The pads are made of silicone, so they communicate with the touch screen far better than whatever material your glove is made of. They’re bad for throwing snowballs, but great for launching Angry Birds. PRICE: $13.99
When Vulture Bytes was in Boy Scouts, we built a Pinewood Derby car in an ill-fated attempt to prove that we, too, could be crafty with a sander. Suffice it to say, that thing was still wobbling and sputtering down the track as our Webelo rival hoisted a trophy. If only we were asked to build a hard drive, not just a car, we might have put more effort into it. Which is why the Delorean hard drive is so remarkable. In the end, it’s just an external hard drive. But it’s an eternal hard drive shaped like the most iconic car of the eighties. And when friends come over and ask what it is, you can say that it’s a 500 gigabyte hard drive capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts. Then, when they roll their eyes, you can pretend you knew the joke was a groaner. PRICE: $250
MegaReader is one of the many e-reader apps on the iPhone that promises access to more free books than you could ever possibly read. The catch, of course, is that the free books are also the ones you don’t want to read. But maybe that doesn’t matter — because MegaReader lets you read the books and look where you’re going at the same time. Similar to Email n’ Walk, MegaReader turns on your camera while you’re reading, turning your phone into a window with the text superimposed, meaning you never have to walk into a pole while reading The Secret Garden ever again. Yeah, that was us laughing. PRICE: $1.99
Vulture Bytes: USB Outlets and Time-Traveling Hard Drives