You know those tacky wooden cabinets that people of “taste” use to hide their TVs, pretending that we are living in some pre-electrical age where everything was better? Now you can get one for your iPhone: It’s called the Appstand, and it’s only $20.

Fire up a slideshow application, for example, stick your iPhone into the waiting hole and you have a picture frame. Or perhaps run a video of a fish-tank and make your own tiny, iPhone -sized Macquarium. The possibilities are limitless. Almost.

The product’s specs are padded somewhat. The claim of “enhanced speakerphone experience with exposed microphone and speaker” just means that it blocks neither of these parts, but the in-built cable management does sound useful. The best part of all is that the suggested applications list lead me to the “Ambient Channel”, a $1 iPhone app that does nothing but relax you with video and sound: Koi Fish Pond, Deep Space Travel and Rushing Clouds are amongst the delightful loops, although I don’t think I’ll bother with House Party Background very often. Available December 1st

Product page [Appstand Store]

These wonderful whimsies come from Mintpass, a design company “founded to create the future”. And in that future, we will delve into our computer screens and fish out an actual, working version of the picture on-screen. Think of it as scanning in reverse.

These “OS Calculators” could also be called “physicalcs”, but we don’t recommend it. Modeled on the software calculators the come with Windows and OS X, they appear as fully functioning (prototype) pocket calculators. Here’s what the designer has to say: “It will produce a big empathy and therefore inducing smiles and laughter.” I love them, and I did indeed feel laughter and smiles induced when I first saw them.

The folks at Mintpass are looking for a manufacturer (and hopefully and IP lawyer). They may already have been waiting a while: the brushed aluminum calculator was dropped from OS X a few years ago, and that Windows calc looks distinctly XP to me.

Product page [Mintpass via BBG via Raw Feed]

See Also:

• IPhone-Connected Weighing Scale for Your iDiet
• Wooden Photo Frame Mimics Photoshop Window

If there was an opposite to “hemorrhaging”, that’s what I’m doing with bikes. The recent addition of a fixed-gear beater to the “stable” is testing the Lady’s patience and causing house-guests some painful collisions on their night visits to the bathroom. I need an intervention.

Or a home-made, double-decker bike rack, just like the professional looking Ikea-hack seen here. This simple bike-hanger consists of a powder-coated, aluminum Stolmen post ($30), a couple of brackets, some square-section tubing and a some hooks. The post stretches between floor and ceiling like a vertical shower-curtain pole and the two brackets are clamped on and used to mount the hooks. A half-hour job that comes in at around $40.

I’d be all over this for the apartment, but I don’t actually think it is the growing family of bikes that is the problem — it’s the tools in the kitchen and the oily hands I take to bed with me.

Stolmen Bike Rack [Ikea Hacker]

Product page [Ikea]

Marcus Sandeman’s Product Tank toaster prototype is a minimal, modular design that would be welcome in my kitchen. The list of innovations is long, so let’s get started.

The two sides “clamp” the target food between them like a hot vise, allowing the elements to stay at minimal distance from the food’s surface and also accommodate anything from a tortilla to a baguette. The knob that winds the sides too and fro is duplicated in the toast lowering mechanism, a spring-free design which is similar to the lever on that toaster of ages, the Dualit.

The elements are hidden behind ceramic vents to keep crumbs away and prevent burning, and any un-scorched crumbs that do fall will make it to the crumb-tray, itself an improvement on the slide-out kind we know and hate. The tray is actually a slotted block on which the toaster sits, making it easy to remove and toss in the dishwasher as well as acting as an insulating pad.

We’re sure that a production model would be colored or besmirched with logos, but imagine this as a white ceramic monobloc sat on your counter-top, shaming all your other fancy, over-decorated gadgets. And I have already started thinking about hacking it: a combo of heat-resistant ceramic and that wonderful tray/mat should let you put this on its side and make grilled cheese. Yummy!

Product page [Product Tank via Core77]

Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale already stands out in your bathroom: sleek, smooth and fully functional, the very opposite of the sagging meat sack you drag into the shower every morning. Now it can beam your insecurities to your poor Twitter followers, automatically, before you have even thought about brewing a wake-up cup of coffee.

The Withings scale, you may remember, records body mass, fat levels and other paranoia-inducing statistics and compiles them for presentation on the web or on your iPhone. Now, the $160 scale adds Twittering to its list of “encouragements”.

Set up your account details and the scale will reveal your weight to the world every time you hop on. It can be configured to Tweet daily, weekly or monthly and will post the amount of lard you have to shed before you reach your goal. The upscale scale has support for up to eight people and their accounts, making it easy to organize an ongoing bulimia marathon amongst housemates.

The most amazing part about this story, though, is that it features a weighing scale that can receive software updates over the air. We’re clearly living in the future.

Product page [Withings. Thanks, Jessica!]

See Also:

• IPhone-Connected Weighing Scale for Your iDiet

Seeing as most ergonomics guides tell you not to tilt your keyboard up, a laptop stand may not be such a good idea for the desk, but AViiQ’s “Portable Laptop Stand” has other uses.

The obvious feature is that this stand folds, and when collapsed to its quarter-inch minimum can easily be slid into a laptop bag. The mechanism itself is quite neat, almost origami-like: The aluminum sheet is hinged with plastic. Two hinged sections swing under the main body and then the corners tuck through a pair of holes. These corner tabs both secure the “leg” in place and act as feet for the notebook above.

Aside from folding, the stand will keep the screen slightly higher if using the computer with an external keyboard. Most important, though, in these days of red-hot “laptops” is cooling, and the thin aluminum and ample air circulation whips away heat and lets your computer’s fans stay off for longer. It would also be perfect for in-bed movie watching: those warm sheets play hell with a notebook’s heat dissipation.

I’d probably grab one right away to replace the inverted baking-tray I normally use when working from bed, but the AViiQ Portable Laptop Stand cost $80. Ouch.

Product page [AViiQ]

For a busted video game accessory, the trash can is not the only place. In the hands of a creative DIY-er, a broken Dance Dance Revolution game pad got a makeover that is likely to have many women gamers drooling.

When Liz McLean Knight’s DDR dance pad stopped being good enough to jump on, she cut it up to see what was inside. And the first layer turned out to be a piece of fabric so pretty, she decided to turn it into a purse.

With a standard purse pattern, some lining, foam and zipper, McLean Knight created a colorful tote that could be a fun DIY project for anyone to try. It’s simple, easy and there’s documentation with photos for those who may want to replicate it.  Too bad, though, McLean Knight didn’t use the internal circuitry of the dance pad in her purse. That would have made this the ultimate go-to bag for DDR fans.

Photo: DDR Purse (Liz McLean Knight)

Apple’s latest Snow Leopard update breaks compatibility with netbooks hacked to run the Mac operating system. But it’s unlikely that the move signifies the company’s future plans to clamp down on the “Hackintosh” community, observers say.

That’s because Apple’s Mac OS doesn’t support non-Apple products to begin with, so it would be misleading to say the latest update (10.6.2) “pulls” that support. In fact, Apple might not have even been aware that it was “breaking” support for hacked netbooks with this update at all.

“Apple doesn’t have any hardware that relies on the Atom processor, so making sure that OS X supports the CPU probably isn’t just low on the priority list; it’s probably not even in the same zip code as the priority list,” said Brad Linder, writer of Liliputing, a netbook enthusiast blog.

Still, Mac clones should be a touchy topic for Apple. For a brief period in the 1990s — when Steve Jobs was still exiled from Apple — Apple CEO Michael Spindler licensed the Mac operating system to several manufacturers. The move did not fare well for the company: Apple was near bankruptcy when Jobs retook the helm in 1997. One of the first items on Jobs’ agenda was to destroy the clone program, closing the gates to the Mac OS.

More recently, Apple has also been in a legal battle with Psystar, a startup selling computers hacked to run Mac OS X. But that legal pursuit is a move to protect Apple’s intellectual property against other companies that could threaten the Mac marketshare.

Thus, although the latest Snow Leopard update seems to disable “support” for netbooks, it’s likely Apple still doesn’t care enough to take action against consumers hacking away at their netbooks. A more simple, and probably true, explanation is likely that Apple is cleaning up Snow Leopard and optimizing code, said Michael Gartenberg, an Interpret technology analyst.

“People are always ascribing these nefarious Oliver Stone-like notions about Apple, but they’re often wrong,” Gartenberg said. “If Apple were really serious, there are a number of ways to make it impossible to run OS X on any system.”

Apple’s lack of a netbook offering doesn’t appear to affect the company. Last month, the company posted earnings results for its most profitable quarter ever. Apple also set a record for selling more Macs in a quarter than ever before, with 3.05 million units sold.

“The financial results show that Apple’s not feeling any hurt from not having a netbook,” said Jason Snell, editorial director of Macworld magazine. “It just keeps selling more laptops, and making more money on them.”

See Also:

• Hack of the Clones: Why Apple Can’t Stop the Copies
• Psystar Marches Forward With Beefy Mac Clone
• Genius Bar Clones and Other Crazy Apple Conspiracies

Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com

Called Samsung bada, the platform will allow developers to create applications for more commonly used feature phones, says the company. To that effect, Samsung will offer developers a Software Development Kit (SDK) to program apps for the platform.

“By opening Samsung’s mobile platform, we will be able to provide rich mobile experiences on an increasing number of accessible phones,” says Hosoo Lee,  executive vice president at Samsung Electronics.

Details about bada are sketchy and Samsung hasn’t made it clear if bada–which means ‘ocean’ in Korean– will be a new mobile operating system based on a Linux kernel or if it will just be an extension of the company’s proprietary OS.

Samsung, also, did not offer any details on how the bada platform will fit into its existing app store. In August, Samsung launched a mobile app store for Europe.

With more than 60 million phones sold worldwide in the third quarter, Samsung is the second largest mobile handsets maker. But most of the company’s sales come from less expensive handsets known as feature phones. Currently all app stores are focused on powerful smartphones.

For software developers, bada’s SDK could offer an easy way to tap into the installed base of Samsung phones through native apps instead of using Java (for GSM phones) or BREW (for CDMA devices). Bada is expected to make its debut on Samsung phones in 2010.

See Also:

• Samsung’s Flexible OLED Screen Goes Under the Hammer
• Review: Samsung NC20
• Samsung Blue Earth Phone Made From Old Plastic Bottles
• Samsung Fields Green, Ultra-Slim LCD TVs

Photo: (Cyrillicus/Flickr)

Motorola’s Droid phone may not be an iPhone-sized hit yet, but it is flying off the shelves.

More than 100,000 Droid phones were sold in the first weekend since the device’s launch, estimates Mark McKechnie, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech. That’s about half of the initial stock made available to Verizon and Best Buy stores nationwide.

“Demand seems brisk,” says McKechnie. “While we heard of no stores that were completely sold out, the majority reported that more than half of the initial stock was sold, and some said they had just a few remaining.”

By comparison, Apple sold more than 1 million of the latest iPhone model in its debut weekend, and also sold 1 million iPhone 3G units in that phone’s opening weekend.

Motorola Droid, available currently on Verizon Wireless, went on sale Nov. 6. The phone costs $200 with a $100 mail-in rebate (available instantly at Best Buy stores) and a two-year contract.

The Droid, which runs Google’s latest Android 2.0 operating system debuted to excellent reviews as experts appreciated the phone’s crisp screen, easy user interface and turn-by-turn navigation feature. But the device’s difficult-to-use physical keyboard and smaller app store are seen as drawbacks.

Still, the Droid could put Motorola back into the game though it has a long way to go before it can catch up with Apple. Motorola could sell 1.3 million Android phones in the fourth quarter, estimates Citigroup research analyst Jim Suva.  That compares to about 8 million iPhones that Apple will sell in the quarter.

See Also:

• Review: Motorola Droid
• Why I’m Not Getting a Droid Today
• Video: Hands-On With Motorola’s Droid
• Verizon Attacks the iPhone, Hints at Upcoming Droid
• Verizon to Offer Tethering for Motorola Droid

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com