Crave

Congrats to Gene W. of Highlands, Texas, for winning a Kanex Sydnee four-port recharging station in last week's giveaway. Is your iPad in need of a new outfit? This week's prize is for you.

We're giving away two sleek iPad cases from Kavaj, a purveyor of leather gadget jackets started by two former employees of Amazon in Germany. The winner gets one Berlin case in black that fits the iPad 2, iPad 3, and iPad 4, and one Berlin case in brown for the iPad Mini. Both slender, supple jackets boast a classic minimalist style and can … Read more

LAS VEGAS--iPad keyboard cases galore litter CES, but Belkin has some nice new models up its sleeve, including a clever one that converts your old Apple keyboard. I gave them a whirl over at Belkin's booth.

The Convertible Keyboard Case (top), announced at the show, costs just $49 and adopts a standard Apple bluetooth keyboard to become a pretty portable keyboard case. The foldable case essentially acts as a wraparound folio/stand, but its design is elegant, finding a way to fold the Apple keyboard's tubular back into the design without adding bulge.

The Ultimate Keyboard Case is … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Everybody walking by the CTA Digital booth at CES 2013 does a double-take at a colorful plastic object on the ground. They stop and stare. They take pictures. One woman declares it the best thing she's seen at CES. It's the iPotty for iPad, a toilet-training device for digitally connected kids. It's a fairly straightforward potty trainer with a holder designed for the iPad.

The first thing I look for is splash protection for the tablet and, fortunately, it's there in the form of a plastic sheet that fits over the iPad. There's a lid that turns the contraption into a seat. There's also a pee guard for the boys. All of it comes apart for cleaning.… Read more

Tablets are dandy just as they come, but sometimes you can really stand to have a keyboard at your fingertips. You can carry around something like Apple's wireless keyboard or a fat case with a keyboard built in. Or you can get behind the Nibiqu iPad keyboard project on Kickstarter.

I don't really know what Nibiqu stands for, but I do know it's mighty thin at less than a quarter inch in thickness. It doubles as a case, but the most compelling aspect is the full keyboard with keys that depress. The maker is advertising it as "the thinnest keyboard for your iPad," though it may have some competition in that department.… Read more

I was once served tea by Honda's Asimo, arguably the most advanced humanoid robot in the world.

Watching the machine sidle up to my table and serve the tea with the elegance of a veteran waiter, and then bow to me before retreating, was nothing short of astonishing.

The experience reinforced my belief that no matter how many times you see robots in photos or videos, nothing can match a real-life experience.

Asimo can be hard to meet, but with a lavishly illustrated new educational app from IEEE Spectrum, you can get interactive with him and 125 other bots -- from Rethink Robotics' Baxter assembly bot to Waseda University's keyboard-playing Wabot 2, and learn all about them. It's the next best thing to seeing robots up close. … Read more

The iPad is the perfect size for holding in your hands and playing racing games, it's just not very comfortable for long sessions behind the imaginary wheel. Kolos, an iPad racing wheel, is looking to give your sweaty iPad hands a better grip.

The Kolos wheel can be held on its own or attached to a base with an auto-centering mechanism. A table clamp keeps the base secure. The hand grips are made with an anti-perspirant rubber coating for those times when your heart is racing as you take a corner at full speed.… Read more

First off, a PSA: If you'd like links to the weekly Crave giveaway (plus other giveaway goodness such as hints and winners' names) beamed to your Facebook feed, please hit the shiny new Subscribe button at the base of my bio below this story. Pause for button press...

OK, now that you've done that, congrats to Stephanie D. of Saint James, Mo., for winning a custom-designed CNET-branded Timbuk2 bag in last week's giveaway!

For this week's prize: Have you ever looked at your iPad and wished it were a MacBook? Well, a Crux360 for iPad 3 … Read more

The search for evidence of an upcoming iPad Mini has become worthy of a plot line for one of those forensic investigation shows that make forensic investigation seem a lot more sexy than it surely is.

The latest lead in the case of an Apple slate with a smaller form factor comes in the form of some interesting entries in Instapaper's logs that show devices calling themselves "iPad2,5" and "iPad2,6" accessed the app recently. The most recent 16GB iPad2 now on the market identifies as iPad2,4 when the device interacts with an app.

Marco Arment, developer of the text reader and bookmarking app, speculates that the previously unseen device identifiers could be new GSM or CDMA versions of iPad2,4, but more likely they're the rumored smaller iPad that could be based on the second-generation iPad.… Read more

CruxSkunk sounds like it would add a bad smell to your iPad, but what it really does is turn your tablet into a little laptop.

Sure, we've seen lots of add-on iPad keyboards, but the CruxSkunk from CruxCase goes all out with imitating Apple's MacBook aesthetic. If there were such a thing as a MacBook Mini, it would look like an iPad in a CruxSkunk.… Read more