(You're reading all posts by Eli Milchman)
About Eli Milchman
When he was eight, Eli Milchman came home from frolicking in the Veld one day and was given an Atari 400. Since then, his fascination with technology has made him an intrepid early adopter of whatever charming new contraption crosses his path — which explains why he's Cult of Mac's test editor-at-large. He calls San Francisco home, where he works as a journalist and photographer. Eli has contributed to the pages of Wired.com and BIKE Magazine, among others. Hang with him on Twitter.(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)
‘Snapshots’ Lets Everyone at an Event Pool Their iPhone Photos and Videos [Daily Freebie]
Snapshots is a fantastic idea, and one I can see being used pretty heavily at weddings — or by, say, a gaggle of journalists who shoot an event and might need to pool their images.
Take Closeup iPhone 5 Photos With This Pair of Carson LensMag Macro Lenses
Microscope-like macro lenses are super neat — and not just because they let you see the little hairs on a ladybug’s leg. No, macro lenses can show you a whole new world. Or macro lenses can spark (or rekindle) a love affair with photography. Heck, at the very least, they’re good for hours of amusement.
There’s no shortage of macro lenses for the iPhone: There’s the high-end Olloclip, which also comes with a fisheye and a wide-angle lens; then there’s also this rubber-band macro from Photojojo, and these magnetic specimens.
Add to the list the new Carson ML-515 LensMag, a pair of iPhone macro lenses that clip magnetically onto the iPhone 5 — pretty standard fare. Only there is something different.
Easily (Really Easily) Make Storyboards on Your iPhone with Disney Story [Daily Freebie]
So far, it’s been an interesting few weeks for digital publishing. Late last month saw the introduction of Flowboard, a digital publishing platform centered around an iPad app.
Now Disney has come out with their (highly simplified) take. Disney Story is a free iPhone app that lets you easily create a storyboard from photos on your iPhone, with accompanying text, which you can then share via email or on Facebook.
The Boa Squeeze, Yet Another Bag from Booq That Looks Like it Was Designed by Aliens (The Space Kind)
Of course, I have no way of knowing whether space aliens actually had a hand in designing the Booq Boa Squeeze. I ran into a couple of Booq bigwigs in an elevator at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas once, and they seemed pretty cheery, completely normal, and not at all alien-like — too not-alien-like, considering Booq is based in Southern California (I consider myself a Southern Californian; we’re all weirdos). And Booq’s Sierra Madre HQ is suspiciously close to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories…
Anyway, whether or not of alien origin, what’s clear is that Booq’s bags are unlike any others on this planet — and their new lightweight, zillion-pocketed Boa Squeeze laptop backpack is no different.
‘Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol’ Miniature Dogfight Strategy Game is Here, It’s Free, and It’s Fantastic [Daily Freebie]
If you didn’t catch our post the other day about the newest game from living legend Sid Meier, the creator of Civilization and a heap of other ground-breaking games, here’s the nitty-gritty.
Meier’s newest masterpiece is called Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol; it’s a sort of turn-based tabletop miniatures game of whirling World War I dogfights, digitized for an iPad’s (or iPhone’s screen). It’s also partially free, looks amazing and is bound to be an instant classic.
These Beautiful Scosche RH1060 Cans Are Completely Wire-Free
If there was one concept I came away with from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this year, it’s this: Bluetooth has quickly seeped into everything audio.
Nowhere was this more evident than with higher-end headphones; it felt like every manufacturer we visited that week had an obligatory wireless Bluetooth headphone on display.
One booth I didn’t get to stop by was Scosche’s, so I missed a chance to get ears-on with their new Bluetooth-enabled RH1060; but the details about these cans have my interest piqued.
Tiny, Juice-Packed PhoneSuit Flex Battery Now Available for iPhone 5
It’s not much bigger than a (large, fat) thumb — but this PhoneSuit Flex battery has more juice than all but the very, very largest iPhone battery cases. While it’s been available in 30-pin and Android/micro-USB flavors for months, it’s now also available for the iPhone 5.
Rosetta Stone’s Free Navigator iPhone Apps Put Pronunciation Lessons in Your Pocket [Daily Freebie]
Most Mac users will experience one of three reactions after reading the word “Rosetta.”
The first involves breaking into a cold sweat, and possibly hives, after remembering that Apple no longer supports the translator that ran all those old, useful apps written for PowerPC-based Macs after Apple switched over to Intel chips.
Option two, imagining the Rosetta Stone itself, the magical key to unlocking ancient script, stumbled upon by Napoleon’s troops
Or there’s an association with foreign phrases, mall carts and almost certainly the most recognizable name in language software, Rosetta Stone.
We’re focusing on that last one here, and about how Rosetta Stone has finally brought their language software, in the form of the Navigator series apps, to the iPhone — for free.
The Best Real-Time Tactics Game for Mac Gets Skirmish Mode, Now on Sale for $10
Company of Heroes: Campaign Edition is hands-down the best pure real-time tactics game available on the Mac to date; there’s nothing yet ported to the Mac that can even come close to matching the WWII squad-based game’s tactical action and realism.
While you won’t get many arguments about the above statement, gamers have had plenty to say about the fact that the Mac port has lacked a sorely needed skirmish mode since the day it arrived at the Mac App Store.
Not any more though — skirmish mode has just been added to the Mac App Store version. And Aspyr has sweetened the pot further by slashing the title’s price to $10.
Ace Patrol Is Sid Meier’s Newest Strategy Game, and It’s iOS-Only
With deep strategy titles Civ Rev and Sid Meier’s Pirates in back catalog, just-released Haunted Hollow and the hotly anticipated iOS version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown due out this summer, one could argue that 2K Mobile isn’t the hottest name in iOS strategy games right now — but it’d be a steep uphill battle.
Then add this bombshell to support the argument: Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol, due out next Thursday, may be the best 2K iOS strategy game yet.
