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This article originally appeared in TidBITS on 2005-04-01 at 12:00 p.m.
The permanent URL for this article is: http://db.tidbits.com/article/8040
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Cooling Factor and Cool Factor in One Package

by Glenn Fleishman

The Plasticsmith has done it again. The company that brought the newly minted Mac mini its own "mini skirt," a plastic riser with an optional glow, have added a new stand to their line-up: the mini hover skirt.

<http://www.plasticsmith.com/miniskirt>

As fans of science fiction and unusual watercraft know, a hover skirt is set of air jets ringing the bottom of a craft; the downward-pointing jets provide air pressure to raise the craft enough off the ground to avoid friction, allowing less-expensive propulsion over both liquid and solid surfaces.

The mini hover skirt is a combination of goof and practical: the unit which snaps onto the bottom includes a quiet but high-powered air blower which cools the often toasty Mac mini while producing a space-age sound effect.

For those who invested in the Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme options for their Mac minis, the mini hover skirt can be equipped with an optional battery to remove all wires. Unfortunately, the battery option does raise the sound pitch from ocean waves to vacuum cleaner.

But if you enable follow-along mode and install Salling Clicker, you can have the Mac mini follow you around the room. For instance, using a Bluetooth Jabra headset, you could use the Mac mini in headless mode to read Web pages to you that it retrieves over a Wi-Fi network and relays to you via Bluetooth.

<http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/ Clicker/>
<http://www.jabra.com/JabraCMS/NA/EN/MainMenu/ Products/WirelessHeadsets/JabraBT800/ JabraBT800.htm>

The mini hover skirt's price is expected to float between $800 and $1,000 depending on options. A tracking device for Mac minis that manage to get away is an extra $50.

<http://www.plasticsmith.com/minihoverskirt>