Just released yesterday, iPhone Modem for the Cydia jailbreak application repository promises tethering your laptop to your iPhone in just 10 seconds. We haven’t gotten around to jailbreaking our own yet, but this one is supposedly even easier than the official NetShare tethering app in the official App Store. ModMyiPhone forum says it works just fine on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Careful using this on AT&T, since too much tethering data usage you're not actively "paying" for will get you neutered. [modmyiphone]

The Gadget: Brando’s Power Station, a portable battery pack for your iPhone that slides easily into your dock connection for charging away from a socket or a USB connection. The Power Station, in turn, is charged from ITS dock connection, so you can use the same charger for both devices. Comes in white and black.

The Price: $25

The Verdict: Works as advertised. In our tests, it charged our iPhone 3G from 10% to 60% in about an hour, after which charging stopped altogether because the pack was out of juice. We then used another pack to take our iPhone from 60% to 100% in about another hour. Great for emergency days when you’re low on power from a frantic 3G browsing session earlier that morning.

The only complaint we’d have is that unlike other chargers that wrap around the iPhone to secure itself in place, the Power Station only connects via the dock. This results in a flimsy connection that might snap off if you’re not careful. So be careful and don’t stick the phone in your pocket when this is docked.

At a price of $25, it’s the cheapest iPhone battery pack that we’ve seen. Despite its drawbacks (only charges about half the phone’s battery and is sort of flimsy when connected), we’d still recommend it as a backup battery for emergencies. [Brando]

Side note: The original unit Brando sent us was defective and would alternate between charging state and plugged-in state, eventually going to DRAINING state. If you get one of these, call them up and get a replacement as it’s obviously not supposed to drain your phone.

The Gadget: The ViDock Gfx, a box with an ATI 2600XT inside that allows you to add two DVI displays to your ExpressCard Laptop (e.g. MacBook Pro). It doesn’t affect your current display setup, which might already have an external monitor being driven by the on-board DVI port, which means you can have a total of three external displays plus your MacBook Pro’s going at the same time. Mac and Windows versions are available in both 128MB and 256MB flavors, running at up to 2560×1600 resolution.

The Price: Still TBD

The Verdict: Multitasking bliss. We were able to add two 19-inch, 1280×1024 monitors to our 15-inch MacBook Pro without breaking a sweat. The two extra monitors (we were already running a 30-inch Dell off the internal DVI port) had very little slowdown while being powered through our ExpressCard port, and handled HD video like the Watchmen trailer without any signs of tears or imminent exploding.

What we did notice was that the unit was LOUD. In our pre-production unit, the fan ran started quietly on boot, but ramped up to 100% after a minute or two. It was loud enough to give us AND our unborn children a migraine. The people at Villagetronic said their release units would be softer, but note that the ATI 2600XT throws out a lot of heat. To us this means that you probably shouldn’t expect this to be too much softer. Just something to watch out for if you need to use this in a quiet production environment. The other annoyance we’ve found is that the ExpressCard connection can’t be hot-plugged on OS X, so you have to shut down your machine every time you want to swap in or out of the multi-monitor setup or else you’ll get that curtain of death. Villagetronic tells us that it’s a bug that Apple will fix in the future.

Is this great for multitasking? Oh sweet jeebus yes. You can have all your applications open at the same time, spread eagled across your four displays like Stalin planning to push the Nazis back into Germany (apologies for that undoubtedly historically inaccurate statement). Is it worth the as-of-yet-undetermined cost? Hard to say. Something like this won’t be cheap, but if you’re like us and value every pixel of your screen as if it’s the last chopper out of Saigon (sorry again!), you’ll look long and hard at the ViDock Gfx. [Villagetronic]

You know that problem of having to be signed into Xbox Live after you transferred your content from your old, broken Xbox 360 to your new, slightly less broken Xbox 360? The one where you can’t play your old stuff on your new machine without having an active connection? They’ve got a fix out now called the DRM Transfer Tool that solves just this issue. The whole thing takes “less than a minute,” and transfers your license for the content between machines so you can watch/play it without being signed on. Hit up the link to do it to yours. [Xbox via Gamer Score Blog]

Connect 360’s been out for a good long while, allowing you to stream music, movies and photos from your Mac to your Xbox 360. Why would you go with Rivet, an app that does just about the same thing but only costs $1 less? Mostly for its folder organization, which allows you to browse your files as it exists on your Mac, instead of in one gigantic list you need to scroll through. Other than this, there’s not a whole lot of huge difference between the two programs, but sometimes $1 is the difference between not having some Pocky and having some Pocky. [Cynical Peak]

Twitter Fans: an iPhone client called Twinkle was just released on Installer.app. What’s the difference between Twinkle and other apps? It’s true that you can let the world know that you’re getting a haircut or some taxi zoomed past you without stopping on any client, but Twinkle lets you use the iPhone’s location feature to add location data to your tweets. Not only that, there’s a “near me” feature that can show you tweets from people within X miles of you, which is good for organizing a meetup or party. Location information is only visible from Twinkle and not on the Twitter website, unfortunately. Hit the link to see how you install it on your jailbroken iPhone, then follow me (diskopo) for some good times. [Just Another iPhone Blog via Tech Digest]

Note: It looks like Twinkle automatically adds “Twinkleking” (their official user) to your followed list, which isn’t cool. Remember to remove this if you don’t want to follow them.

iPhone Devs should go grab the newest SDK release, which comes with a new tutorial and extends the beta 2.0 firmware. It also has various bug fixes and “support for the latest iPhone OS.” [Apple]

Fitting a 1TB into a box measuring 5.31 x 3.22 x 1.57 inches isn’t all that easy (most NAS boxes we’ve seen would crush a squirrel easily) but Buffalo seems to have not only accomplished this but shoved in a whole bunch of other features as well. The Mini’s got a Gigabit Ethernet port, support for RAID 0 and 1, Active Directory Support, UPS support (to shut down in case of power failure), and best of all, runs an on-board TwonkyVision DLNA server.

PlayStation 3 owners who want to shove a bunch of DivX/XviD movies onto a server to stream to their consoles for HD movie action will be thrilled. Less thrilling is the price: $699 in May. Those features aren’t cheap, nor are the smaller laptop drives they use to power it. Then again, for about $699 you could also get a Windows Home Server, which is quite full-featured but isn’t nearly as compact. On the third hand, we’re not sure why you would need a NAS to be all that compact unless you were living in a tiny apartment or wanted to sneak it through customs. [Buffalo]

The flash on most point and shoot cameras is harsh and makes your subjects look horrible. It’s fine if you’re just taking a night shot of your buddies in a bar, but when you want slightly higher quality shots for your eBay photos or your “personal collection,” you need something like this Marumi Ring Light to get more uniform illumination. This way there’s not just one harsh flash light spot on the person’s face. It still doesn’t help those people who photograph their naked junk being reflected off a teapot on eBay, other than, you know, making sure their junk is lit correctly. [Enjoy Your Camera via DVice - DSLR Version]

This Eject Powerstrip is an even more refined version of this raise me up powerstrip, adding a larger, foot-usable eject base and wider plugs for wider AC adapters. What’s the point? One, so you can unplug stuff with your foot without having to bend down under your desk, and two, allowing you to unplug certain plugs that are slightly too tight for their own good. Would we get one if this were real? Yes, if it wasn’t all that much more expensive than a standard powerstrip. [Core77]