Cool and useful gadgets for the savvy road warrior

As any reader of the gadget websites knows, there’s an amazing array of gadgets and tech tools vying for your attention. Some are even real products you can buy. I’ve come across two that any business pro should seriously consider for his or her toolkit, even if you’re not always on the road. I’ve also found a highly promoted product that I don’t think works for most people.

The first cool gadget is Kanex’s $59 ATV Pro, a godsend for presenters. I’ve argued before that the Apple TV makes a great way station for presentations and should be standard in any conference room or event where slideshow, video, and Web presentations are made. The ability to beam your presentation, including live Web access, from an iPhone 4 or later, iPad 2 or later, and soon Mac running OS X Mountain Lion through Wi-Fi to the Apple TV and from there to your display is priceless. And it gets rid of the whole cord-swap ritual that slows you down.

But an Apple TV has only an HDMI port, and most projectors and many conference room TVs use VGA. The ATV Pro is an HDMI-to-VGA adapter that simply works — some of the cheap adapters are no good because they don’t handle the content licensing protocol that HDMI enforces. There’s nothing more to say: Connect your project or TV to the adapter, then the adapter to the Apple TV; you’re ready to rock. If you have audio, connect a standard 3.5mm audio cable from the ATV Pro to the speaker input. (People using other devices can still do the cord-swap dance, if they prefer.)

Before I get to the other unqualified cool and useful gadget, I want to alert you to the $100 Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, which looks great and has some ingenious characteristics. The cover uses the magnets in the iPad 2 and third-gen iPad to snap on. The cover itself is a Bluetooth keyboard that is truly thin, as well as sleekly designed to match the iPad’s aluminum skin. It goes very well with the iPad, and when on, the combo could appear to be a new type of MacBook Air.

Where the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover fails is in use. First, although it attaches to your iPad, you have to detach it, then awkwardly mate the detached iPad on to the keyboard’s magnetic rail. I really wish it would somehow fold back like the Apple Smart Cover does and stay attached. Worse, if you have a protective skin on your iPad, it can’t mate with the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover; the rail that holds the iPad is precisely fit to the iPad’s width to ensure it stays in snug. I’ve learned the hard way that an iPad’s aluminum skin can get banged up in backpack, and a skin is a must.

If you don’t use a skin and don’t mind the mating contortions, you still may have an issue with the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover: the angle of the iPad’s screen. Basically, it’s too steep, so you have to bend your neck uncomfortably to see and touch the screen (unless you’re fairly short in the torso). Plus, the magnetic hinge doesn’t hold on well, easily sliding side to side.

It’s not as high-tech, but I prefer the $69 Logitech Tablet Keyboard for iPad, though it’s not nearly as hip-looking. It converts into a sleeve to protect the iPad, works with skinned iPads, and has a better viewing angle in its built-in stand.

The second unqualified cool and useful gadget is the $199 Wimm One, an Android-based watch. At first blush, you might mistake it for an Apple iPad Nano in a watch strap and sporting a clock face — a popular conversion for the Nano that Apple has encouraged by selling downloadable watch faces. But the Wimm One is much more than that.

If you know the “Dick Tracy” comic strips, you can guess where Wimm Labs is going with this concept: It’s a watch (with, yes, a choice of faces and the option to buy more) that connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi and to your iPhone or Android smartphone via Bluetooth. It has a simple touch interface, and you can buy “micro apps” for the Wimm One, such as for viewing Twitter feeds, monitoring news, seeing the world weather, and providing a calculator — there’s even an app to control an Android device remotely.

The Wimm One itself comes with two handy capabilities that someone on the go will love, even if they don’t use the other capabilities. One is its ability to connect to your Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange calendar, so you can see what’s on tap for your schedule.

The other is the Bluetooth integration with your smartphone. If you install the iOS or Android app on your smartphone and pair it with the Wimm One via Bluetooth, the watch buzzes when someone calls and displays the person’s name on its face (if the person is in your address book) or the phone number (if not). You can’t talk through the Wimm One, but you can see who’s calling and decide whether to get your smartphone out of your pocket. If you don’t want to talk to the caller, tap the Dismiss button on the Wimm One’s screen to send the caller to voicemail — no more fumbling for your smartphone only to find you don’t want to answer the call.

I have to be clear that the Wimm One is essentially a beta product, sold for developers to create apps with. It’s not as elegant as what a company like Apple would do with it, and there are issues that betray its beta status: The screen is not always responsive, and the battery life barely lasts through the day. (The device comes with a charger that uses a standard USB-to-MicroUSB cable.) Fortunately, when the battery runs low, the Wimm One disables access to its installed micro apps and to its color screen and light, leaving just the passive, monochrome LCD for the clock face. That passive LCD is quite good, and the time is very readable even in dim light at night. The included strap is a bit cheesy and bulky, but fortunately not blinged out.

The Wimm One is best suited for those who don’t mind being on the cutting edge. It certainly gets attention in a crowd, thanks to its unusual cool factor. And it really is useful, in an addictive way.

This article, “Cool and useful gadgets for the savvy road warrior,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.