Voltaic makes tons of solar-charging gear, from laptop bags to backpacks, but what are those living in a post-PC world to do? Well, the company just unveiled its Spark Tablet Case — a thin, padded tote designed for your iPad or other slate that can generate 8-watts of power in sunlight. In addition to directly charging your iPad in about 10 hours, it can also bank the Sun’s rays in a universal battery pack, for use when those fluffy things in the sky don’t cooperate with your outdoor computing schedule. Optionally, the included V39 USB Battery can be charged (as you may have guessed) via USB, for extra insurance. The Spark is available now for $299 and extra battery packs can be had for $99.

Finding apps can be tough, especially when your ‘Store’ or ‘Marketplace’ is overwhelmed with a daily flood of spams. That’s not exactly a problem for HP, whose App Catalog for the webOS 3.0 TouchPad officially launches on July 1st and will be, the company admits, a little spartan at first. But HP has a plan for a future flood of apps: Pivot. It’s basically a curated digital magazine that will present a selection of apps someone at HP found interesting for whatever reason — a way for users to discover new downloads and, more importantly, for niche developers to not get lost in the shuffle. HP hopes this will attract developers, taking a different approach from the competition, which often resorts to outright promises of cash to pique their interest — but a few free TouchPads never hurts. At least HP isn’t trying to copy someone.

Tokyoflash is famous for selling geek-friendly and borderline indecipherable timepieces. However, and surprisingly, not every watch the company hawks is unreadable. One of its more easily interpreted wrist clocks, the Rogue, has been resurrected with an always-on LCD display (a rarity from the shop) and a brightly colored LED backlight in your choice of red, green, blue, or orange. Like the RPM, the Rogue SR2 tells time with a series of unnumbered, inner and outer rings that represent hours and minutes — all you need to do is spot the gaps. Sure, it requires you fire a few more synapses than that cheap digital Casio you’ve been wearing, but think of it as mental exercise — it’s like wearing Brain Age on your wrist. You can order one now for $179 at the source. If you can’t imagine how it works, then hop pass the jump for the demo video.

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Nothing livens the day like a blurry screen grab of some Javascript, especially when it hints at the ghostly form of a social networking tool that doesn’t officially exist. The code was spotted hiding in plain sight at Google Profiles by Austrian blogger Florian Rohrweck, who fortunately enjoys browsing computer-speak more than playing in the park.

Rohrweck noticed the word “circles” used repeatedly in the context of people adding and maintaining groups of contacts, and made the connection to the Google Circles social networking platform that was feverishly rumored and then vehemently denied earlier this year (a saga fully recapped at the More Coverage link). It’s impossible to know whether these few lines of code represent a forthcoming service, another social layer on top of existing services, or just pure experimentation on the part of Google devs.

In any case, the circular references have apparently now been zapped, leaving us with nothing more than that screen grab — oh yeah, and Facebook.

SOURCE via TNW

They’re hardly as exciting as the company’s two new Android 3.1 tablets, but if you’re looking for Android in even more places, look no further. Also being unveiled today is the ‘35 Home Connect’. It’s a self-proclaimed Android web radio that should do wonders by your bedside, or kickin’ it on the beach. You heard right — there’s a built-in battery here, as well as WiFi access to over 50,000 web radio stations.

You’ll also find a touch panel, pre-loaded TuneIn application and an alarm clock function that brings together traffic, weather and whatever’s happening in your neck of the woods. Finally, a video chatting app is tossed in for good measure, but it’s only useful when your front-facing camera isn’t handling baby monitoring duties (yeah, seriously!).

Moving right along, there’s the Archos 35 Smart Home Phone, an Android-based landline phone that brings users contact sharing with their Android smartphone, MP3 ringtones, caller photo display as well as access to your current stable of Android apps. In other words, this is likely the only home phone you’ll find that can also video call, check your email, look up a topic on Wikipedia and satisfy gramps. The above-mentioned 35 Home Connect should ship this September for $149, while the 35 Smart Home Phone does likewise for $10 more.

We already knew that Pioneer is developing an app called the AppRadio car stereo to cozy up with our iPhones, but we didn’t know how much its iOS integration capabilities would cost, until now. Turns out 400 bucks buy you one, and it’s picked up some new capabilities since we last heard of it.

In addition to letting you listen to tunes stored on your iPhone, access Google Maps, and make calls, the AppRadio now has access to your iPhone’s contacts, calendar, videos, and photos as well. Unfortunately, there’s still only four other apps (Rdio, Pandora, MotionX-GPS Drive, and INRIX) available, though Pioneer says more are coming. So Apple’s cool with that name huh?

Digitimes’ sources in Taiwan say that the iPhone 5 is likely to come with dual-LED lights to act as a camera flash (and the inevitable number of flashlight apps).

AppleInsider last week reported that Apple has reduced its orders of the LED Lumileds lights from Phillips. The reduction in orders could be linked to a part change as Apple transitions from the iPhone 4 to the next one, which will begin production in a few months’ time we presume.

Taiwanese LED firms Everlight Electronics, Edison Opto and Lite-On Technology are believed to be in the running for making the next LED flash for Apple, though all three have denied working on a dual-LED solution. Of course, that could just be Apple’s imposed policy of secrecy.

Dual-LED flash technologies are already being used on a number of high-end handsets on the market and made famous by Nokia that common use dual-LED or Xenon flash in their flagship smartphones few years back.

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ASUS first made that handsome slab of magnesium alloy on the left available to the US back in December, and now the ultra-portable laptop will finally grace folks in the UK. If you’ll recall, the 13.3-inch U36′s stand out features include a svelte 19mm thickness, standard voltage i5 processor, NVIDIA Optimus graphics, and a USB 3.0 toggle (for an estimated 11.5 hour battery life). The hardware seems chunky now that we’ve played with the company’s UX21 ultrathin, but with a price of £699 (just over $1,200) it’s hard to complain much. If your palms are beginning to sweat in excitement, it’s available at Micro Anvika today in your choice of black or silver, and should be at Comet by the end of the month.

SOURCE via Asus