By Chris Scott Barr

You know what I don’t see enough of these days? Bandoliers. It’s already been proven that they are stylish, I mean just look at Chewbacca, Rambo and Worf (at least I’m pretty sure that thing was considered an ornamental bandolier). What’s that, you’d like to wear one, but just don’t have a good enough reason?  Well have I got a surprise for you. The Dew Quiver iPod Shoulder Strap is exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Alright, in all seriousness, this thing is the fanny pack for the 21st century. No, that’s not some sort of compliment to the designers. Sure, it’s got a place to run the cord for your earbuds and build-in volume control. But this thing boils down to being the equivalent of a fanny pack. It’s not stylish, it’s just a big ugly pocket. Make that a big ugly expensive pocket, as it will set you back $85.

[ SmallDog ] VIA [ Coolest-Gadgets ]

Billed as the “World’s only Apple-certified solar charger carrying case” the new Solar Surge from Novothink for the iPhone 3G/3GS and the iPod Touch lets you harvest the sun’s energy to replenish your device’s less than epic battery. According to the Novothink website, “2 hours of direct solar exposure provides about 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network or 60 minutes of talk time on a 2G network”, but if the sun hasn’t made an appearance you can always fall back to the included USB cable for charging its built-in lithium-ion polymer battery.

A series of 4 multi-colored LEDs on the back of the case lets you see the battery’s remaining charge, and they’ll also let you know if there’s enough light available to actually take advantage of the built-in solar cell. In fact Novothink has even gone above and beyond the call of duty by providing their free Solar Planner app for either device, which provides an estimate of how long you’ll have to leave the Surge in the sun to maintain your iPhone or Touch’s battery level, depending on the current weather conditions and your location.

Eventually available in 6 different colors, the Surge for the iPhone runs $79.95, while the single colored iPod Touch model is currently on sale for $52.95.

[ Novothink Solar Surge iPhone & iPod Touch Charging Case ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Remember last month when we told you about South Korea’s brilliant use of the sausage stylus? Sure, it seems pretty bizarre, but it’s also apparently rather handy. The sausages used aren’t widely sold here in the US, but one enterprising company imported a whole bundle of them to sell as styluses.

That’s right, if you head over to CaseCrown, you can pick up your very own iPhone Sausage Screen Stylus. It’ll only set you back $.99, which is about as cheap as you’ll find a stylus. The site lists them as “not for consumption,” so I wouldn’t expect to snack on one of these when you’re hungry. I would, however, expect a number of people to as “is that an iPhone stylus in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

[ CaseCrown ] VIA [ TUAW ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Backup batteries for your phone can be great to have when you’re away from an outlet for extended periods. However, when you’re going about your daily life, the charger generally just sits in your bag like a useless lump. This new charger from Richard Solo tries to at least make your spare charger a little more useful when it’s not needed for juicing up your phone.

Sure, a laser pointer and flashlight aren’t the most useful devices in the world, but I always tend to keep a flashlight in my bag. It’s like a towel, you never leave without one. The charger itself is small and sleek, with the ability to charge your iPhone (or Blackberry) one full time, with a bit of juice left over. They’ll include the connector to hook it up to your phone, plus a USB charger, USB car charger and wall charger in the box. The $70 asking price seems reasonable for what you’ll get.

[ RichardSolo ]

As SlashGear points out, due to recent court-related shenanigans pursued by Apple, many of us who love our iPhones may not be as in love with the house that Steve built. So over on Hack N Mod there’s a tutorial on how to restore a bruised and battered iPhone, but it has the lovely side effect of removing all the branding and verbage on the back of the phone. It will take some elbow grease and a combination of wet and dry sanding, but the results look totally worth the effort.

[ Hack N Mod - How to Restore an Abused iPhone (or any gadget) ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

One thing that Apple has touted from the beginning with the iPhone is that it is great for gaming. I agree with that on some level, but the lack of a d-pad and physical buttons will always hold it back. One company has been hard at work on a solution that will give your favorite phone the features it needs to really let you enjoy games on it.

The iControlPad has been in the works for a little while now, but the developers have announced that they are finally going into mass production. The unit will give you four buttons, two analog sticks and a d-pad for all of your gaming needs. One model will even give you an internal battery for juicing up your iPhone. The only bad thing (for some people) is that it looks like you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone for it to work.  There’s no current word on pricing.

[ iControlPad ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

On Friday we brought you the i-tab which was a 5-inch touchscreen device I described as a “sort of musical teleprompter for guitar players.” It came complete with an online store allowing users to download new tabs, but with a price tag of $199 I wondered if the same thing couldn’t have been done on the iPhone or iPod Touch with a simple app, and a more reasonable price tag.

Well shortly after writing that post the good people at Agile Partners dropped us a line to let us know that the same thing does exist for the iPhone and iPod Touch, with their TabToolkit app. And the fact that it’s written by the same people behind the excellent and highly recommended GuitarToolkit doesn’t hurt either. With a price tag of just $9.99 available on the iTunes App Store right now, TabToolkit is useful for musicians learning songs on a wide variety of instruments, and includes other features like an audio synthesis engine for recreating the sounds of other instruments playing along, and the ability to upload your own tabs to the app, or download them from websites through its built-in web browser.

Of course it doesn’t come with a handy accessory for clipping your iPhone or iPod Touch to your guitar’s headstock like the i-tab, but that seems like a minor trade-off given the considerable difference in price.

[ Agile Partners - TabToolkit ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Some days it really does seem like the iPhone has an app for everything. Heck, if the phone lacks a piece of hardware that you’d need to accomplish something, there’s an accessory for it. At CES we saw the L5 IR Remote Dongle, which (as the name implies) turns your phone into an IR remote. While I thought the idea was good, a dongle like that is just asking to get lost or broken. A better solution is this iPhone case from Power A which adds the same functionality, only in a case.

The Power A iPhone Universal Remote Case is a rather ordinary-looking case, except for the larger bottom portion. This is where the IR remote is stored, which is connected through the standard iPod connector. As for software, you’ll be able to download a free app that will allow you to control virtually any device that uses an IR receiver. The case will be on sale sale soon for $60.

[ Power A ] VIA [ Geeky-Gadgets ]

By Evan Ackerman

Computers spend a lot of time thinking that they’re smarter than us. Like, with USB: your computer figures that it’ll just start firing up all of its software and whatnot whenever you plug something in, like your iPod or iPhone. Well, you know what? Sometimes we don’t want to sync our data. Sometimes we don’t want to automatically fire up iTunes and spend 10 minutes backing up our iPhones when we just needed a little bit of a charge, and God forbid the iPhone gets plugged into a different computer that tries to delete all of the music that’s on it…

You know what? NO.

Hence, this USB cable with a little switch that lets you decide whether you want a data connection, or just a power connection. The iPod/iPhone version is $13, and there are other USB adapters for $10 each. Yes, it’s more expensive than a cable without the switch, but if you don’t get one, you’re basically just admitting that your computer is smarter than you, and then the machines win. I mean, you don’t hate humanity, do you? Do you?

[ USB Fever ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Alright, hypothetical situation. It’s cold outside, so cold that you don’t want to remove your gloves. You get an important text on your iPhone and need to respond immediately. You’re also in a huge hurry, thus you can’t stop anywhere warm to shoot off a quick response to your text. What do you do?

Obviously, you’re going to use one of the individually-wrapped sausages that you have in your coat pocket. Everyone knows that such meaty products are perfect substitutes for your own digits, so why not keep one in your pocket for emergency texting? I can’t seem to think of a single reason why that would be weird. Obviously the citizens of South Korea can’t either.

[ INews ] VIA [ GearFuse ]