Using your iPhone or any other device with a capacitive display is a real problem during cold winter conditions as the touchscreen won’t work if you are wearing gloves or mittens (or else you should be using the new iPad which makes sure that your hand stays really warm). Washington, DC-based inventor Alice Ning has a solution for the problem. Her TapCaps will allow you to use a capacitive screen while wearing any pair of gloves.

Currently in the prototype stage, TapCaps are adhesive capacitive stickers that are said to be capable of mimicking the capacitance of the human body. They stick onto the fingertips of any gloves, and capacitive touchscreens will simply accept them as fingers.

Of course, there are other products that you can use on capacitive screens such as conductive gloves (Agloves, Etips, or ISGLOVES). But, according to Ning, all those degrade over time. And there is also the Digit, a conductive disc that can be pinned onto the fingertip of your glove. But TapCaps appear to be more convenient.

Ning says that her product needs more work to be done on it. After the design is perfected, it will reportedly be cold- and waterproof, silk-thin, won’t result in adhesive residue on the glove, and it also won’t be delivering electric shocks to you.

But she needs your help to complete her project and is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. Head here to show your support, and if you pledge $25 you will get a pair when the product is launched.

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Waiting for a really, really rugged Android smartphone that looks like it’s from a bond film? The device that you see above might be what you are looking for. The G-Shock smartphone, which is the latest in a range of rugged smartphones from Casio, was apparently one we missed at CES 2012 and it’s full of testosterone.

The Casio G-Shock follows the rugged G’zOne Commando from the company. But the new device is the toughest of the two and a bit ugly as well. But you can’t have everything all at once, right?

As you might have guessed by now, the G-Shock is coming with all kinds of ‘-resistant’ prefixes, such as shock resistant (up to 10 feet), water resistant to 1.0 bar (10m) and pressure resistant to 1.0 bar. And, as you can see, the phone also looks similar to the company’s successful line of durable wrist watches.

The G-Shock features a metal case back and over there you will find exposed screws as well. On the software side, it will be running Android (most probably Gingerbread), but you won’t find the usual capacitive buttons at the bottom. They have been placed on the sides near the corners.

No hints regarding pricing and availability at the moment. But we will keep you updated. In the meantime, don’t drop your current phone to hard.

[ source ]

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Bluetooth headsets are pretty useful, especially if you’re in one of those places where handheld cell phones are illegal while driving. That said, it can be pretty annoying when your call gets routed to the headset when said headset is on your desk rather than on your ear. The new Plantronics Voyager Pro UC fixes that.

You see, this otherwise run-of-the-mill Bluetooth headset is a little smarter than that, thanks to the inclusion of capacitive sensors. These detect whether the headset is actually attached to the side of your head.

Assuming you’re already paired with your phone, the call will then go through to the headset if it detects you’re wearing it. If it detects that you’re not wearing it, the call will go through on your actual cell phone as per normal instead. Even if you put the headset on in the middle of a call, it will reroute the audio that way too. Pretty nifty.

That’s assuming that it works as advertised. Plantronics hasn’t announced pricing yet, but they’ll probably have that information at CES in January.

[Mobile Burn via Plantronics]

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