It’s well known that creating a sense of urgency is one of the best tools a salesman can use when trying to sell a product. Whether or not this is a sales tactic we’re aren’t sure, but Apple has an availability tool on their website that shows which Apple stores in different states have iPhones available for the following day. Granted, the tool’s not very reflective of the fast-paced digital times that we live in but if nothing else it’s doing a great job of creating a sense of urgency in Apple fans.

We had heard shortly before the iPhone launch that AT&T stores were not going to be stocked with the number of iPhones that the Apple stores would be, and that the Apple stores would in reality have many, many iPhones available …

There’s a company in Japan called Arigatou that’s in the business of etching words and symbols into food products such as beans, nuts, rice and pasta. Staying true to there niche they’ve now perfected a way to laser-inscribe text and company logos on the outsides of peanut shells, despite the uneven surface.

The product they’ve created is called “Taberu Me” which comes from the Japanese word “eat”, and most likely an abbreviation for the Japanese word for “business card”. The machine that makes the engraving uses a CO2 laser and can efficiently print out these edible characters at a rate of 700 per second.

You can get yourself a set/jar of 150 Taberu Me business card peanuts with your company logo, name, phone number, etc. for around $50, which is not for peanuts but still not a bad price. …

HTC already has a nice accessory for that HTC Advantage X7500 unveiled earlier this year. This docking station made specifically for the smart device includes a spot to charge a second battery, a couple USB 2.0 ports, a mini-USB port and A/V connections including VGA, S-Video and a 3.5mm audio jack. And of course it works like most docking stations where you’ll be able to connect your Advantage X7500 to the dock and use a USB keyboard and mouse with your little, super-mobile computer.

HTC has the docking station available for about $140, and there are some more pictures of the dock in action available from MEDC Europe 2007.

Source: Gadgetell

This little attachment for your iPod is an FM transmitter that will send the music on your iPod through your FM radio at home or in your car through an FM frequency of your choosing. There are plenty of FM transmitters on the market that work with iPod’s, but this one from Proporta has got a few stand-out features.

It’s compatible with the 1st and 2nd generation iPod nano, 5G iPod with Video, iPod mini, iPod Photo, and 4G iPod, and fits right into the docking port, only expanding the dimensions of the player by a little over an inch in length. You can set which channel you want the FM to come through on and the tuning information is displayed right on the iPod screen. Also, even though this gadget takes up the docking port, it extends it and offers the port …

If you’re wondering what happened to all those bricked phones that used to have the 20 foot coiled cord in your kitchen before everything went cordless, you’ll be happy to see that some of them have been put to good use, maybe. It appears that at least a few of them ended up in hands of Netherlands designer Henk Stallinga where he turned them into salt and pepper shakers.

It actually seems to work out well, where the earpiece has fewer holes and the mouthpeice has more just like a salt and pepper shaker would, respectively. The clearer back pieces are salvaged as well from the light indicators off of old Morris Mini cars, which apparently match up nicely size-wise.

Even though this is kind of a cool idea and the salt and pepper holes thing works out, …

Argard has launched a stylin’ new Bluetooth headset to coincide with today’s iPhone launch called the ARGARD M10. This headset breaks the mold of the common headset with an over-ear piece and a protruding microphone.

The M10 has a small, solid, stainless steel-looking frame with a diameter no larger than a quarter. It’s designed with three different sized silicone ear pieces to fit different sized ears and will fit and stay inside your ear. A large button on the end (probably the only place you can push anyway with it in your ear) will answer and end calls. Volume controls are also around the outside of the device and it supports the ability to adjust the volume from your mobile device through the Bluetooth connection. The cradle also contributes …

First class passengers often are fortunate enough to have an outlet in-flight while the rest of us have to scramble at the terminal looking behind chairs for an open outlet to charge our gadgets between flights. Inflight Power has a charger cable that may even things out a bit.

The Inflight USB Power Unit plugs into the headphone jack available in most coach seats, (now that most don’t use the two little “sound holes” any longer) and makes that electricity available through USB ports on the device. I’m not sure exactly how much juice can come out of the headphone jack, but it can’t be a whole lot. Either way, you can then plug any USB powered gadget into the Inflight Power adapter to charge it up on the go, making those first class seats seem just that much less special.

The Inflight …

Hitachi has been busy this week showcasing their Fall 2007 line up of plasma displays for the masses. These models range in size from 50- to 60-inches and price from around $3,000 to $8,000.

The most impressive of the models Hitachi is preparing is a 60-inch Director’s Series plasma (P60X901). This model, like select others in the new plasma line up, comes loaded with cutting edge viewing technologies. These include, in a nut shell, 1920 x 1080 resolution, 2-million pixels and something the company is calling Reel60. This last feature is designed to “accurately and automatically eliminates the jittery or stuttering visual effect called ‘judder’ which results from outdated methods for 3:2 pulldown correction (i.e. converting from 24 frames used in film to 60 frames used in television).”

I always like other nice touches like stylish looks, a remote control with glow in …

iPhones are already showing up on eBay for auction, listed as high as $1100 in some instances, and one we saw already had a dozen bids up to $760 in the first 30 minutes. Another had only been posted for a few minutes with a $0.99 starting bid.

If your bold enough to trust these folks that somehow have the iPhones “in hand and ready to ship” you can try your luck, but it doesn’t look like eBay is trusting them. Listings keep cropping up but we don’t often see the same one twice since eBay is pulling them almost as fast as they are showing up.

Here’s an interesting design for a lawn chair – an chair actually covered in some lawn allowing you to comfortably lie in the grass in a place that normally might not have any. This functional chair comes with one of three different bases ranging from sturdy to rolling to move it around. The actual frame of the chair weighs 25 pounds without the sod, but I would imagine this weight could increase quite a bit depending on how often you water (and mow, I guess).

The chair comes with an irrigation system where you can connect a garden hose to keep the grass hydrated, but you will have to weed and fertilize on your own.

Source: Fung + Blatt

Since today’s the day the public can actually get their hands on an iPhone, Apple thought they may want to get some accessories too and unveiled the accessories lineup on their website, showing off headsets, adapters, travel cables and of course docks.

For $129 you can get the black iPhone Bluetooth headset which delivers 5.5 hours of talk time and up to 72 hours of standby time. The headset comes with the iPhone dual dock which indeed will hold and charge both the iPhone and the headset. It also comes with a USB travel cable (pictured here) which can also charge both the iPhone and the iPhone Bluetooth headset at the same time. Both the dual dock and and travel charger can be purchased separately for $49 and $29, respectively.

The accessory page also has a blurb on it about a new “Works with iPhone” logo …

Uh oh. Science fiction writers and directors have mined the idea of a robot revolution for decades, producing such classics as the “Terminator” film series. Doomsayers will take this next bit of news as evidence for humanity’s downfall as the Taser International corporation announced that it has teamed up with the iRobot Corporation to produce a new line of robots capable of delivering a shock charge to people.

These taser-equipped sentries will be sold to the military and police forces in the hopes of being used in a situation where non-lethal force is required to subdue an opponent. A human operator is still necessary to give the robot a command to subdue someone but already critics are warning that the day may come when the robot’s software is smarter and it doesn’t need a flesh …

This is for that “Star Wars” fan you know that has already collected everything and we admit too that we would love to have it in our home theater room. Behold the R2-D2 video projector and DVD player, the perfect way to experience all six films in George Lucas’ sci-fi epic.

This rec droid measures 341x328x519 mm and weighs 8 kg. The DLP projection, which shines through R2’s main optic eye, produces 1800:1 contrast and 1500 lumens of light output. The dome head moves side-to-side, its legs move back and forth and it can be positioned on its wheels to find that perfect view. Video/audio ports are concealed in the back of the robot via a panel, but what really elevates this to must own status is the iPod docking slot under a front panel and the Millennium Falcon remote control that …

It looks like some security plans for the iPhone launch are falling through a little in some fronts. The 6pm local time launch on the 29th was apparently by design to give the iPhones time to arrive to AT&T and Apple stores that day. This would help avoid any ill-thought temptations employees might have with access to the iPhones the night before the launch.

It appears that the FedEx trucks have already started delivering iPhones today, and even though taking photos of them, or cameras for that matter, have been banned from the back rooms of the stores some photos have already leaked. In fact, according to the thread on MacRumors, “arn” actually used the iPhone to post to the forum.

Steve Jobs held a town hall meeting with employees today on the eve of the iPhone launch, and as part of that meeting announced that each full-time employee of Apple will receive a free iPhone. That’s over 17,000 iPhones that will be given away for the full-timers, plus any part-time employees with a year or more under their belt will get one too. Jobs has done this before a couple years ago with the 1GB iPod Shuffle, but the price tag is a little spendier this time around.

The Apple employees won’t get a chance to try out the iPhone right away on tomorrows launch but they should expect to receive them by the end of July as it looks like Apple is concerned about adequate product availability out of the gate. According to a ThinkSecret report, …