griffin

Most modern business warriors don't need actual Swiss Army knives in the course of a typical work day. But they do love gadgets with Swiss Army-style features.

The Griffin Stylus + Pen + Laser Pointer not only sports a very long and specific name, it also delivers exactly what it promises. It's a stylus with a built-in pen and laser pointer.

This device is designed to withstand the rigors of the conference room battleground, survive the brutal world of tablet input, write grand poetry on actual paper, and amuse bored cats.

The pen part of the Stylus + Pen + Laser Pointer … Read more

Crayola has been offering a free iPad coloring app for a while. But Griffin, which makes styli for capacitive touch screens, is now shipping Crayola's full interactive coloring package for the iPad, ColorStudio HD, which includes a Crayola-branded iMarker digital stylus for $29.99.

One of the interesting things about the package is that the app can tell whether the stylus or your finger is touching the screen, which prevents kids from having their fingers accidentally touch the screen and muck up their creations.

You get more than 30 coloring canvasses with the app, and Griffin says there will … Read more

Vizio's upcoming 8-inch Android Via tablet could soon find itself on the shelves at Wal-Mart selling for $349, according to an apparently leaked photo.

Displaying what appears to be a photo of the product's placard, tech enthusiast site This is My confirms some of the tablet's specs, including a high-resolution capacitive touch screen, a front-facing camera, and built-in GPS. Though no release date was revealed, the site asserts that the tablet should reach the market soon.

Vizio, which is primarily a maker of LCD TVs, demoed Via--its first tablet--at CES in January.

A hands-on look from CNET … Read more

I recently got my hands on two military-grade iPhone 4 cases--the Ballistic HC and the Griffin Survivor.

One of my first thoughts was: could either survive the extreme tests that manufacturers and consumer sites love to throw at such products? Could you drive your car over one and still make a phone call? Could either absorb a smash from a 10-pound sledgehammer and still offer up Angry Birds?

But I'm not going for silly--or for hype.

These cases are actually designed to offer elite protection in everyday use. They give you peace of mind if you drop your iPhone, expose its surface to liquid, fall and land on it, etc. They're not for use in strong-man tests at your county fair.

For sensible uses, both the Ballistic HC and the Griffin Survivor more than suffice.

That said, which do I prefer? Both offer multiple levels of protection, including a main plastic case, a protective screen, a rubberized outer covering and a carrying clip. Both are impact ready and wrap the phone up tight. They cover all ports and connectors. They're similarly priced. … Read more

There's all sorts of information being processed by your car's sensors and computers to which the average driver simply isn't privy. Griffin wants to give you a peek behind the scenes with its CarTrip OBD monitoring system and CleanDrive app.

The hardware consists of a small CarTrip module that plugs into your vehicle's onboard diagnostics (OBD-II) port and collects data from the car's computer, storing to its internal memory or an optional SD card expansion. The unit is able to then connect wirelessly to an iOS or Android device via Bluetooth and transmit that data … Read more

We've covered a few useful Mac accessories lately, so we thought we'd wrap them up in one easy-to-find place. Click here for the full side-by-side run-down. You can also check out the accompanying slide show, if you're into that sort of thing.

Click-through and you'll find our reviews of Mac video adapters from Griffin and Kanex, the latter featuring HDMI input to the 27-inch iMac. We also have write-ups of Seagate's new FreeAgent GoFlex OS-agnotic external hard drive, and an impressive little BassJump from Twelve South, which gives your MacBook and MacBook Pro a bit … Read more

Long considered the fastest and most unobtrusive of the various torrent clients around, uTorrent announced last week a surprising step toward plug-ins with the introduction of an "app store" in the Windows-only alpha release of uTorrent 2.2.

Called the Griffin project, the HTML and JavaScript-based API system will display apps from within the uTorrent interface in an embedded browser window. The developer SDK has yet to be released, and there was no indication which browser engine was being used at the time of writing. Currently, four demo apps are available.

There's a VirusGuard provided by security … Read more

Bad news: the new MacBook Pros still lack HDMI, a very convenient and increasingly ubiquitous way for any laptop to output its audio and video on to an HDTV or receiver.

Good news: it's slightly easier to connect your MacBook Pro to a TV than it was before.

MacBook Pros now support an audio signal over the Mini DisplayPort jack. Believe it or not, the old MacBooks could only output video through that port, and audio had to be output via a separate audio cable connected to the audio-out jack. We can say from experience that connecting previous MacBooks … Read more

Does your iPhone battery never last as long as you'd like despite our tips to give it more juice? Do you need additional backup power? If so, then you need a battery pack.

Griffin's TuneJuice, which I tested this week, gives an iPhone as much as 2 hours to 3 hours and 30 minutes of extra talk time depending on the type of batteries used. I purchased it because it uses AAA batteries and I wanted to add it to my emergency supplies. I'll keep it primarily for hurricane season, but it will come in handy during … Read more