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Vulture Bytes: How to Use Your iPad in Bed

This week: Yet another way to make Steve Jobs angry, a reminder that Google and Apple are at least on speaking terms, a bendable iPad stand, an Instagram for music, and a radio powered by your shower.

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Vulture Bytes understands you’d like to retain your status as an early adopter while also spending as little money as possible. Thus we bring you this remarkably simple hack to get the new iPad 2 magnetocase onto your iPad 1. It involves magnets. And glue. And that’s about it. Use one to stick the other to the side of your iPad … and you’re done. (Read TheRussianUsedaPencil, who came up with the idea, for the full description.The cover will now snap on just like it does on the iPad 2.It’s not a total hack: your old iPad won’t turn on and off when you open the cover—it doesn’t have the internal magnets to sense when the cover is there or not. But your iPad will at least look the part, which is sort of the point of all this gadget consumption anyway. PRICE: Other than the magnets, glue, and case — free.
Like a Montague showing up to a Capulet’s house, Google TV finally has a remote of its own inside Apple’s App Store. This isn’t the first Google app on the iPhone, of course. Its search app — and its perma-futuristic voice recognition feature — was one of the first apps on the iPhone, and a slew of others have followed from there. Still, there’s something delightfully subversive about seeing a Google TV remote on an iPhone. Brand diversity is still the exception in a gadget world dominated by homogeneity bias. The remote does what a remote should do, with some voice control features added in for good measure. Worth a download for the novelty alone — even if you have an Apple TV. PRICE: Free.
This doesn’t even exist yet — it’s only 45 percent toward its goal on Kickstarter — but Hanfree was too notable for us to pass it by. It tries to solve that eternal problem of how to watch your iPad in bed. It just happens to look like a Gumby designed by the Jetsons. The designers say that it’s customized to keep the iPad at eye level so you’re not straining to see the iPad, but its flexible neck also gives it practical uses around the house. (Especially in the kitchen for when you’re working your way through Giada’s chicken tetrazzini.) Granted, it’s so big it’ll be like having a third person in bed with you. Or, if you watch Netflix the way we do at 3 a.m. on a Friday night, a second. It won’t ship until May 10 at the earliest, and that’s only if it gets another 100-plus people to promise they’ll buy it. Might be a dud, might be the thing that actually makes your iPad comfortable to use. PRICE: $50 pledge, fully reimbursed if it doesn’t reach its fundraising goal.
Finally an app for those who get nostalgic for sounds, not visuals. We’re used to apps like Instagram that allow us to share photos across all our social networks at once — Soundtracking is like that, but with music. Start the app and tell it to capture whatever sound is going on around you. Then, using some type of Shazam-esque technology, it’ll identify the music, and tweet/Facebook/blast it out to all of your social network friends. If they’re likeminded music obsessives and use SoundTrack as well, they can like, love, and comment on your sonic share. What’s that? You don’t think you need another social network just to tell all of your other social networks what you’re doing? You’re probably right. But it’s free! PRICE: Free.
When Vulture Bytes’ parents used to schlep us to the mall on Saturday afternoons, we’d beeline for Brookstone. The massage chairs! The keyfinders! The ambient music CD samplers! How could a budding gizmophile resist? This shower radio reminds us of those halcyon days, when gadgets were cool, practical, and relentlessly gimmicky. The H2O Power radio is, well, powered by H2O. It hooks into the water supply and has a generator that gives it juice while you’re in the shower and automatically turns it off when you’re out. Granted, it doesn’t let you play your music. But who needs an iPod when you can have the radio? FM radio only, but still. Did we mention it’s powered by water? PRICE: 35 British pounds.
Vulture Bytes: How to Use Your iPad in Bed