The Park Tool Cable Stretcher is a uni-tasker, but its single job appears to be so helpful that we’ll let it through.

The stretcher is a one handed (once set up) device with which to fit and adjust gear and brake cables on your bike. Fixie users, who have neither of these heathen features on their pristine machines, can stop reading now.

If you are anything like me, you tend to grab any tool at hand to do a job, even if it is the wrong one. I once ruined a neighbor’s needle-nosed pliers when tightening spokes to re-true a wheel, for example, and snapped an electrical screwdriver putting up shelves. And of course, kitchen shears are the ideal tool for stripping electrical cables.

So my usual MO when fixing brakes and gears is to use a pair of pliers and somehow try to tighten the nut or screw one-handed. The Cable Stretcher instead locks on to the end of the cable while providing a handy lever to pull the cable away from the fixing. Ingenious, and I’m surprised I have never seen one before.

These things have clearly been around for a while but, as the summer fast approaches, I thought it would be worth pointing out as the fair-weather cyclists get back on the road. Steel with chrome plate and padded handles, $40.

Incidentally, this reminds me of an upcoming project: I’m going to find an old beater racing bike and fix it up into a fixie — complete with top tube pad and playing card in the spokes (kidding on the last two). Any advice would be appreciated. I’ll make a full start to the project when I find the frame, and post pictures here.

The Park Tool Cable Stretcher is a uni-tasker, but its single job appears to be so helpful that we’ll let it through.

The stretcher is a one handed (once set up) device with which to fit and adjust gear and brake cables on your bike. Fixie users, who have neither of these heathen features on their pristine machines, can stop reading now.

If you are anything like me, you tend to grab any tool at hand to do a job, even if it is the wrong one. I once ruined a neighbor’s needle-nosed pliers when tightening spokes to re-true a wheel, for example, and snapped an electrical screwdriver putting up shelves. And of course, kitchen shears are the ideal tool for stripping electrical cables.

So my usual MO when fixing brakes and gears is to use a pair of pliers and somehow try to tighten the nut or screw one-handed. The Cable Stretcher instead locks on to the end of the cable while providing a handy lever to pull the cable away from the fixing. Ingenious, and I’m surprised I have never seen one before.

These things have clearly been around for a while but, as the summer fast approaches, I thought it would be worth pointing out as the fair-weather cyclists get back on the road. Steel with chrome plate and padded handles, $40.

Incidentally, this reminds me of an upcoming project: I’m going to find an old beater racing bike and fix it up into a fixie — complete with top tube pad and playing card in the spokes (kidding on the last two). Any advice would be appreciated. I’ll make a full start to the project when I find the frame, and post pictures here.

I was 17. About to finish high school, drop the girlfriend who later became my first wife—yeah, first: There are more—and I couldn’t stop listening to one song: Changes.

So I got Hunky Dory and discovered one of the most amazing albums I’ve ever listened to. From top to bottom, it’s weird and wonderful and perfect.

Beginning at CTIA09, Kyocera has been showing off mockups of concepts they’ve got lurking around the labs. While the hard plastic mockups they’ve shown previously didn’t do much for us, they’ve since moved on to 3D renders – and boy, are they pretty. We’re going to go ahead and ignore the fact that the technologies required for these handsets (such as practically priced flexible OLEDs) are at least a couple of years away, and just start drooling over them now.

First up is the EOS, essentially a big foldable OLED screen. But its got a couple of tricks up its sleeve: when partially unfolded, the back surface functions as a QWERTY keyboard. As you continue to fold/unfold it, kinetic generators within the device recharge it. Sound crazy? Sure! But that’s what concepts are for.

(Slightly) less abstract is the NXT. Take an iPhone, and pack 4 detachable OLED displays into the body. For good measure, toss a solar panel on the back. As long as you don’t go losing your screens, it could mean for some awesome on-the-go accelerator based gaming.

Want to see more? Core77’s got a couple more shots. [Via OLED-Info]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

If you’re looking to put an inline remote on your iPod, Griffin has one new way to do it — and it adds that oldest of old-school wireless music sources, FM radio.

Griffin’s Navigate plugs into the dock connector, bypassing the pesky requirement for chips that may or may not be DRM for headphones. This has another advantage — aside from piping the music, hot and steaming, to your headphones, the Navigate can also display track info in the OLED screen and give access to EQ, playlists and shuffle modes. And did we mention it has an FM radio? Try to stay awake at the back.

You might scoff — after all, this thing is bigger than an iPod Shuffle and it’s just a remote. But Griffin makes some good points, especially about restoring the tactile feedback of the clickwheel iPods to the Touch and iPhone. Apple has gone some way to addressing this with the clicky inline remote on the latest earbuds, but then you are limited to those same crappy earbuds. With Griffin’s widget you can plug in any cans you like.

All this and an FM radio for listening to ads interspersed with the occasional hits from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Available now, works with any recent iPod that has a dock connector, $60.

Last we saw of this thing, it was also being called the Galaxy 7, but all of the specs were already in place. Well, Asus has finally granted the P835’s wish and made it a real boy. Wait, no — they’ve just made an official announcement.

We knew all this stuff months ago, but it’s good to check in: last-minute tweaks to the UI or, say, built-in storage can have a serious effect on price and availability. It looks like nothing has been changed this time, but if you don’t believe us, feel free to compare this Russian review with the official spec sheet or the phone’s page.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.