The $5 iPad Dock

from Gadget Lab by Charlie Sorrel

For €4 (just over $5, or the price of a cup of expensive Seattle chain-store coffee), you could have yourself this rough but functional iPad dock. It comes from David Rudolph Bakker, Martijn Aslander and Simon Blazer, last seen in the pages of Gadget Lab with their ingenious binder-clip cable keeper.
Or, with an old block of wood, a saw, a chisel and a half-hour of your time, you could make your own free wooden dock. It is simply a chunk of ild tree with a channel cut out to hold the iPad at an angle, and a further section hacked out so you can get to the home button. It is limited: you can’t charge the iPad if you’re using it in portrait mode. Likewise, the speaker could get a little muffled by the wood.
But given that the iPad’s battery runs out just this side of forever, and that wood is both light and non-scratching, and this could be a great travel-stand. The €4 version, from Holland (it is inspired by the country’s national shoe, the clog), will be available soon, and by then David assures us it will be more polished (literally). Until then, get cutting.
€4 iPad Dock [Lifehacking. Thanks, David!]