TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

The iPhone is set to take over your entire toolbox, and the latest hardware to help its march to total workshop domination is the iDVM, a digital multimeter which uses an iOS devices for its display.

The iDVM creates its own Wi-Fi hotspot to which the iPhone (or iPad) can connect. Thus you can take readings with the multimeter and have the results beamed back as long as you are in range — about 30 yards.

The Pinwide is a plastic pinhole for Micro Four Thirds cameras. The little injection-molded cap bayonets onto the camera like any other lens, only instead of focusing the image using glass, it has a precision-etched, circular pinhole at its center.

You could make your own, but at just $40 it’s a deal even for DIY types. It looks like fun to use, too. The high-quality pinhole gives some fairly sharp images, and because it has an aperture of around ƒ96-ƒ128, everything from front to back in your image will be in focus.

Ever wish you could Google your car keys? Well, keep wishing, as that day hasn’t come yet. But the Cobra Tag is the next best thing, and may stop you losing those keys in the first place.

The tag can be attached to keys, a bag, or pretty much anything that is easy to lose or to forget. It then talks to your Android phone via Bluetooth and from there can do one of several things. You can set the app — called Phone Halo — to sound an alarm when the tag goes out of range.

David McCourt has come up with the idea of Slow Photography. Essentially, it’s a bulky, analog version of all the photo grungifying apps for the iPhone. The big difference, though, is that you’ll look way cooler when you’re doing it.

David’s Slow Camera is a box which treats your cellphone like a piece of film. You pull the front open like a drawer, slot in your phone and close the box back up. Now, you frame and view the image by peering into the top of the box, and select from three lenses by twisting a turret at the front.

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet launched Tuesday, and the tablet turned in some limp results in the wired city of San Francisco.

Wired.com contacted every San Francisco store that agreed to carry the PlayBook, including Best Buy, Office Depot and Radio Shack, to get an idea of how well the tablet was selling. The results were a mixed bag, but for the most part, underwhelming.

Technology observers typically view a product launch as a strong indicator of how well they’ll perform over their shelf life, because Day One tends to generate the highest number of sales from enthusiastic early adopters.

You now how sometimes a strong brand, known for making one thing, and making it well, branches out and slaps its trademark on all kinds of other goods? We call it a “cash-in”. On a completely unrelated note, Moleskine has expanded its product rangie.

The “iconic” notebook company has added a whole range of bags and pens to its lineup, and the results aren’t pretty.

If Willy Wonka had invented a home brew beer machine, it would have been the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery (is it a coincidence that they share the same initials?). The stainless steel, floor-standing factory will give a chilled, ready-to-drink pint in seven days, which is impressive enough. Better, though, is the clever way it does it.

First, a quick recap on manual home brew (we’ll assume you’re using a kit and not mashing your own wort). First, sterilize everything. Second, mix the ingredients, heat them and add to the bucket. Place in a warm spot, cross your fingers and wait.

Then, drain the clear beer from the sediment beneath, into a second sterilized container, or into a pressure barrel, or bottles.

A young man with artistic aspirations could not have resisted the crowds of Market Street on a Saturday night. Nothing was more San Francisco than the street that cut through its heart. Like a weekly fair, all classes of society and the many flags of a port town mixed on the promenade from Powell to Kearny. “Everybody, anybody, left home and shop, hotel, restaurant, and beer garden to empty into Market Street in a river of color,” wrote one young woman of the time.

Among the throngs of sailors and servants, we could almost certainly have found a young Jewish kid with an overbearing father and a canted, humane take on human foibles.

It is officially barbecue season or, for those to whom “barbecue” means burying a pig in a hole in the ground, “grill season.” And it is official because I had a barbecue up on the roof terrace this past weekend, and it was warm enough to stay up there for long enough to get properly drunk.

If only I’d had a Bodum Fyrkat grill, instead of the primitive homemade rig I usually use. It would have transformed my crude sausage-fest into a sophisticated soiree, full of beautiful people sipping cava instead of my dull friends chugging beer.

I could have marveled at the elegant conical shape of the kettle (and cleaned up easily thanks to the pointy ash-collecting base).