Christmas presents 9: Tweed iPad case

The thing about leather iPad and iPhone cases is that they all tend to end up looking the same. Go to a meeting and put your iPad down and you'd be hard pressed not to pick the wrong one up at the end.

So it's useful that iChicGear has issued iPad and iPhone covers in a very distinctive Harris Tweed design (pictured). They're reasonably priced, the one in the picture is €49 plus delivery. There's a little leather catch at the back so you can tilt your iPad on a flat surface for easier typing. Mine's brown herringbone tweed with orange micro-lining.They have magnetic closure so they'll switch the thing off, and although they don't feel like it they have hard shells built in for protection.

Actually I wouldn't have minded paying a little more if they'd put a bit more into them. I do like to have a couple of card pouches in an iPad holder, and preferably somewhere to put a pen. This is a lot more basic than that - but then I'd be back to my case looking like everyone else's.

These are a nice alternative to the norm, they're genuine tweed and aimed at the luxury market. They're distinctive - you can make your own mind up about whether you want any extras.

Christmas presents 3: iO PLAY 2

Some time ago the people at Armour Automotive put one of their iO PLAY products in my car. It's a Bluetooth kit that enables you to play music from your phone and receive calls whilst driving (please, please tell people you're driving and cut the call short, focusing on the road). You'd think when they offered to upgrade me to the iO PLAY 2 I'd have been delighted, but initially I wasn't. I didn't see how they'd improve on something this simple - pair a phone or two and it just works. Easy.

Nonetheless I agreed - for the blog they'd offered to do it for nothing, saving £159.99 plus installation, so other than curiosity about what they'd change there was nothing to lose.

I have to tell you it's marvellous. Many new cars now link their stereos with phones anyway, so there isn't much point in buying this, but if you have a relative whose motor doesn't do this it's worth considering getting one as a gift for them. First there's the built-in iPhone charger (for the iPhone 5 you'll need an adapter as the charger has changed). It doesn't stop there, though.

There's a little display. This tells you which phone you're linked to. It has called ID. It has a voice - through the speakers it tells you who's texting and will read texts. It will, if you're linked through the charger rather than Bluetooth and using Siri on an iPhone, accept spoken commands. It lets you switch between tracks, albums (displaying the title), car audio, look up numbers in your phone book and initiate calls without taking your eyes off the road (although I'd still recommend pulling over if you're going to be thinking about a call rather than the road hazards).

The original iO PLAY set my phone free - I'm not a massive headphone fan so driving with my music is where having a music phone comes into its own. This upgrade has allowed me to do more with it than just play music, and spares me the bother of fiddling with the handset finding music before starting the car, it remembers five devices so I can have my iPad as well as my phone ready to work without booting my wife's phone out of the memory.

It is, quite honestly, pretty damned good and well worth the money. Unless your car already does this stuff I can't find a single down point.

Power to your i's

First a bit of crowing. Last week I mentioned that I'd scooped the Times men's fashion pages in its Saturday Magazine two weeks in a row. OK, so last Friday I wrote about "A Suit That Fits" in John Lewis retail stores and then a day later - you've guessed it, they wrote about it too. Of course they come out on Saturdays and I can blog when I like so I'm working with an advantage here. And deadlines mean there's literally no chance I wrote my piece before they did. Nonetheless, you saw it here first.

So, we haven't looked at gadgets here for a while and it's time to set that right. One of the biggest drawbacks of a smartphone or tablet is that they're even thirstier than a people-carrier (other CR-V drivers will know exactly what I mean by that). They don't so much use power as inhale it. One possible answer is the smart cover; I've been using a Mophie Juice Pack Air Case for my iPhone 4, it fits snugly around it and I now find I get two or three days' charge out of the phone with normal use. Obviously if I'm driving and using it as a satnav while it's Bluetoothing music to the car stereo it uses a bit more, but it tends not to run out of juice by the end of the day which has to be a good thing.

The other gadget I've been playing with is the Mophie PowerStand for iPad + iPad 2 (pictured) from the same company. It charges, it allows you to tilt your iPad for comfort and adjust it for landscape as well as portrait viewing. This is actually more useful than I'd assumed it would be at first. Being able to look at a second screen whilst working is old news to many; I could see this replacing paper notes-holders for many typists. Better yet it makes the iPad more usable in the kitchen - as long as you have WiFi you just connect, set it up and suddenly you don't have to get the iPad greasy (or oniony or sugary or whatever else you were going to do to damage it) by constantly picking it up and putting it down when you need to use it. Add a Bluetooth keyboard and many people will be able to use the stand and the keyboard as their main computer as long as they're happy storing all of their media in the cloud (at 64 gigs even the largest of the Apple tablets isn't a particularly grand computer).

It's costly for what it is but for the transformation in the way I can now work it's worth it. Others may disagree and I freely admit I wouldn't have gone for it if I didn't write about gadgets and have the need to try the latest and best - but I'd be reluctant to let mine go now I've got it.

Declaration: the links in this story go to the products listed on Amazon, through the writer's affiliate agreement - I will get a small cut from any purchases made as a result. This has not prejudiced the writing in any way.

Pimp my iPad

In the run-up to Christmas one of the things I was looking at was presents for blokes. One thing that didn't quite make the shortlist this time around but is worth a mention isiPod/iPad skins. The ones I was sent to look at were from Gadget Glamour.

The idea is pretty simple. You peel the skins off their backing and stick them on your Apple treasures.

I've tried it with an iPhone 4, which now looks considerably greener than it did. If I just used the phone then I'm sure I'd find it useful as well as decorative because I'd be able to spot mine easily if it fell out of my pocket or something, or if there were any chance of it getting mixed up with other identical models.

This isn't all that likely in my case, what with working mostly alone and using a case anyway to get over the dreaded death grip. But coupled with matching wallpaper (supplied by the company) it'll work well enough and could be a fun thing for the gadget-obsessed partner of your dreams for Valentine's Day - and goodness knows we're going to need something cheap this year...