Maintaining A Charge Is Key

Hurray, CableOrganizer.com sent me a BlueLounge® Kii™ Portable iPhone/iPad Charger to review! Kiis get their name from their neatest feature — the ability to carry the charger on your keyring! This super-slim portability means that I can always have my charger with me, whether  I’m on a barn pick, American Pickers‘ style, yacking on the phone while on the road, or just draining my device’s battery playing games at home.

kii portable charger for apple devices

Kiis are dual-sided. At one end is an Apple connector to connect to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod; the other is a USB to plug directly in to your laptop or solar charger for charging.

The Kii connector comes in in 30-pin and Lightning versions; 30-pin is for older devices, Lightning is for iPhone 5, iPod Touch (5th gen), iPod Nano (7th gen), iPad (4th gen), and iPad Mini. This review is of the 30-pin version; but other than a few design aesthetics (which you can see in this photo from Bluelounge), and the adaptation for newer Apple devices, the products are the same.

bluelonge kii chargers

My main worry about this portable charger was how well it would stay attached to the “cap” when on the keychain, after all, that’s the cool feature of this portable charger. But it snaps securely in place and remains on the charger until you remove it — aces!

30-pin kii charger

It looks like the Lightning chargers are even more secure, so you should have no worries there.

The uber-portable BlueLounge® Kii™ chargers come in black and white. If you need several of these chargers in your house, say one for each of your kids, you can personalize the plastic “fob” — or you can always add different keyrings, etc. for easy identification.

Tally-Ho, The King’s Crown Goes To Aladdin

I was researching the old King’s Crown hotel and casino in Las Vegas in order to see if that’s was the King’s Crown on this vintage keychain. I didn’t find any concrete evidence (even when asking my casino-knowing pals; if you know anything, please do tell!), but why waste the info I did find?

The old King’s Crown casino was the second name of the original Aladdin, located at 3667 Las Vegas Boulevard South. The property originally opened in 1963 as the English Tallyho Motel. It was built in 1962 by Edwin Lowe, inventor of Yahtzee, who was going to prove that a resort motel without a casino could be successful. It wasn’t and the Tally-Ho became the King’s Crown (or the King’s Crown tally-Ho) in 1964. The King’s Crown was dethroned after just six months when it was denied a gaming license.

Milton Prell then purchased the property, and created the Aladdin casino, which opened on March 31, 1966.

Along with the legendary kitsch design, the Aladdin is probably most famous for hosting the wedding of Elvis & Priscilla Presley on May 1, 1967.

And the fact that the casino property has had a lot of problems; a lot of owners.

In 1969, Parvin Dohrmann Corporation took over the Aladdin, and in 1972, using the name Recrion Corporation, sold it to Sam Diamond, St. Louis politicians Peter Webbe and Sorkis Webbe, and St. Louis attorney Richard L. Daly. The resort was sold to Wayne Newton and Ed Torres in 1980; Newton sold off his share to Torres within two years. In 1984, the Aladdin went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In 1987, Japanese businessman Ginji Yasuda purchased the Aladdin, but state regulators stepped in, removing Yasuda and putting the resort in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 1988. In 1994, Jack Sommer and the Sommer Family Trust purchased the hotel, only to close it on November 25, 1997. And the old Aladdin was imploded in 1998.

Sommer took on London Clubs International as a partner and a new Aladdin re-opened, late, in 2000. But it was sold in bankruptcy on June 20, 2003 to a partnership of Planet Hollywood and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

A more complete story of the Aladdin, aka The Vegas Jinx, can be found here.