The almost useless Camera Grip and the very handy Remote from Belkin

Belkin has popped out two new accessories for iPhone-wielding photographers — the LiveAction Camera Grip and the LiveAction Camera Remote.

The Grip adds a physical shutter-release to your iPhone, plugging into the 30-pin dock connector and working in tandem with a free companion app. It has two buttons, one for stills and one for video, and costs $50. A few months ago this may have seemed like a good idea, but now iOS5 lets us use the volume-up button to snap a photo, it seems rather pointless. Especially as it only works with the Belkin LiveAction App.

The Remote is handier.

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LED performance with incandescent looks. What's not to love?

CFL lightbulbs are horrible. They’re often cold, they take an age to get up to full light output and when they finally die, they need to be disposed of properly so they don’t spill their toxic innards. It’s enough to make you stick with incandescents.

But what about this incandescent-style LED bulb from Panasonic?

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Get real-time, real0life effects with the Holga lens case

If you have any interest in lo-fi Instagramography, then you’re going to love this iPhone case. It comes from Holga, the company normally seen making plastic-lensed, light-leaking film cameras, and it makes your wonderful 8MP iPhone 4S’s camera work just like the crappy junk of yesteryear.

Instead of mimicking analog glitches with software, the Holga iPhone Lens Filter Kit adds real-life analog glitches by way of weird filters. Like the dial of an old telephone, a disk rotates to put any of nine different effects before the lens, plus one clear hole for shooting plain vanilla photos.

There are red and green filters, plus yellow and blue filters with clear centers, a red filter with a heart-shaped cut-out, a macro lens and dual, triple and quadruple image lenses, which replicate the scene before you up to four times (the dual split is seen above right).

It’s a clever idea, and even manages to look like some kind of retro kids toy from the 70s or 80s.

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Flick user Jason Hull picked up a bunch of cheap, mass-produced plastic film cameras from flea markets and thrift stores, and gave them new life by turning them into these wonderful night-lights.

No pristine, functional cameras were harmed in this project, which is just as well, because the conversion is permanent. Jason ripped out the plastic guts from these retro machines, removing the shutters, film transport mechanisms and “as much plastic as possible” to both fit in a lamp and to make them light enough to dangle safely from a socket.

Seen here are just a few pictures from Jason’s great (CC-licensed) Flickr set. I love that they look so professional, right down to the neatly-installed plug prongs on the back. If I ever find myself sober enough at night to be scared of the dark, I’ll be making myself one of these.

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Fujifilm’s X100 is a great little camera, a Micro Four Thirds-style mirrorless number with metal body, clever hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder and lots of clicky manual dials. The only problem is that you can’t change the lens.

Rumors, and hints from Fujifilm itself, have pointed to an interchangeable lens version of the X100 for some time. Now, though, we have some leaked photos of what will supposedly be called the LX.

The photos popped up on Chinese forum Xitek, and were quickly removed. But not quickly enough that the folks at PhotoRumors couldn’t grab a copy.

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The Tango Bar looks great under an iMac, but will work with pretty much any machine

The Tango Bar might look right at home underneath an iMac, and it might come from XtremeMac, a company with “Mac” in its name, but the 10-watt amplified speaker will work with any computer that has a USB port.

The speaker is powered by USB, and also works as a USB audio device, which means a single cable for everything. Inside there are six speakers, and at the side there’s a backlit volume knob that will annoy as it glows at night.

If you want to hook it up to non-USB device, you can. Just plug a USB charger into the speaker to power it, and then attach your phone/tablet/minidisc via 3.5mm jack.

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The Kindle Fire gets its guts laid out, and what do you know, it looks like a tablet. Image: iFixit

The guys at iFixit didn’t waste any time. A single day after the Amazon Kindle Fire goes on sale, and they’ve already ripped it apart to gawk at its insides.

They found that the Fire wasn’t difficult to take apart at all, and (surprise!) its insides aren’t too different from other tablets on the market. It uses simple components, and would be a breeze to repair.

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Steve Jobs at the first iPhone event in 2007. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

When Steve Jobs first dreamed up the iPhone with his team at Apple, he didn’t want it to run on AT&T’s network. He wanted to create his own network.

So says Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Stanton, who spent a good deal of time with the late Apple CEO during the phone’s development period. Jobs wanted to replace carriers completely, Stanton says, instead using the unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi operates on for his phone.

“He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum,” Stanton said on Monday at the Law Seminar International Event in Seattle.

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The Motorola Droid Bionic launched in early September. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

The smartphone OS space looks a whole lot different than it did a year ago. Android has seriously stepped up to become the top dog, Symbian is a force no more, and iOS … well, not everything changes.

Gartner’s November mobile device report gives us the numbers. Android OS leads the pack with a 52.5 percent global market share, just about double the 25 percent it had last summer.

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Siri is Apple's virtual personal assistant. Image: Jim Merithew/Wired

Siri is the iPhone 4S’s not-so-hidden weapon. The artificially intelligent voice-recognition system is the biggest feature separating Apple’s sparkly new handset, which debuted last month, from every other smartphone available. So people naturally want Siri on their iPhone 4s, iPads, and MacBooks, too.

Hackers and developers have been working tirelessly to accomplish this feat. They haven’t yet succeeded in delivering a hacked Siri to the masses, but recent attempts show they’re getting oh so close.

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