I love gadgets. Especially small, nifty gadgets that are fun *and* useful.

A New York-based company called Kogeto has been developing Dot, a cool new lens attachment that turns your iPhone 4 into a 360-degree panoramic video camera. To date, they’ve raised over $95,000 on Kickstarter (another one of my favorite things) to support product development.

Dot is expected to launch this summer, and I’m this close to giving in and pre-ordering one. It looks like it would be so much fun to play with for shooting travel videos, no?

American travelers headed to Europe this summer should read this NYT article as part of their pre-trip planning. Higgins offers useful advice on how to avoid common credit card problems that you may run into across the Atlantic due to system compatibility issues (us: old-school magnetic strips, them: sophisticated chip-and-PIN technology). Great tips to tide continental travelers over until we’re all paying for everything with our iPhones.