Yes, the speakers are visually appealing (perhaps not so much as the Harman Kardon GLA-55 speakers we showed off last month, that obviously inspired a lot of you) but there’s more to it than that.

Yes, it will dock your iPod or iPhone and do all the stuff you’d expect from that.

However, it will also improve the sound quality from any device you choose to plug in to it. Given the fairly poor audio output you get from the built-in speakers many items such as laptops and TVs, that has to be a good thing.

Now, granted, it’s not going to replace a dedicated surround sound home cinema system, but for those with modest tastes and wallets, it’s good. As well as the two stereo speakers there’s a separate subwoofer. Additionally, it comes with high-quality oxygen-free copper speaker cabling.

Inside the casing of each speaker you get 2 x 50mm midrange and 1 x 15mm tweeter, while the subwoofer packs a 155mm woofer. Total RMS output is 48W. Pricing at £229.99 (about $370).

IXOS

This compact desktop companion features a dock that’ll take a range of iPhone or iPod models, plus a separate dock at the back that is ready fitted with a 500GB, Mac formatted portable hard drive.

The dock has two USB 2.0 ports while the hard drive has a single USB and FireWire 400/800 port.

Naturally, as it’s ready to use with Mac, it offers Time Machine compatibility, and it comes with a variety of adapters to fit most iPod models.

Available next month at around £199 in the UK (about $300)

Clearly not, as there’s a big red line under it in my text editor, but I think it has to be one for next year’s update of the Oxford English Dictionary, because it seems that you can stick an iPod on just about everything these days.

Take an everyday object and iPodify it by sticking an iPod-friendly dock on it.

Electrolux wants to iPodify one of its own products: a vacuum cleaner.

My first impression is a definite WTF because vacuuming is not generally known as a quiet activity. Yet the home appliance giant reckons it has created a cleaner that is “as silent as normal conversation”.

In other words, you can do the vacuuming and listen to your music at the same time thanks to the dock and built-in speakers.

Of course you need to have conducted a research study, too, and Electrolux has found that people get the vacuuming done more quickly and with less stress when listening to music.

That’s all very well, but if this wonder cleaner is so quiet, why can’t I just use my regular hi-fi to listen to music?

Via

Designed by Rhea Jeong and inspired by water droplets and musical notation, it has a tumbler toy built in to the base meaning that it will always self right itself.

In addition, spinning or pushing the speaker in different directions can be used to operate the iPod. Left and right (with the Shuffle facing you) would skip back and forward a track, front to back would pause and resume the music, while spinning it one way or the other would adjust the volume.

How about one for the iPod touch?

Check out the Icon Factory’s latest collection of icons. Star Trek features a modest selection of icons, plus a few wallpapers (a bit boring IMO but there you go, that’s probably Paramount licensing issues). There’s also a special revamp of the OS X Dock that you can try out.

The icons are pretty easy to swap but if you want to use the Dock or change some hard-to-reach icons in Mac OS X then you’ll need to grab CandyBar first.

Check out more Star Trek stuff.