accessories - page 4

Use The Essential iKlip 2 Any Time You’re On Stage With An iPad [Review]

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Time to come clean: I play guitar and sing in a disco band. I know, I know, the backlash against that kind of music has been going on since 1977. Trust me, I know.

But the way people respond to this still-valid, we-use-real-instruments form of music is so much better than the way they used to when I played guitar in modern or classic rock bands. In those days, the most reaction I’d see in an audience was a foot tap, or maybe–if I was lucky–a head bob or two. Happy, gorgeous people dancing their butts off? So much more fun.

iKlip 2 by IK Multimedia
Category: iPad Cases & Accessories
Works With: iPad 2, 3, 4
Price: $39.99

Now, playing in a cover band requires knowing a lot of music, like the chords for the 50 plus songs that we play. As I also take on half the lead singing duties, so I’m required to know the lyrics as well. I don’t do this for a living; I do it for fun and some beer and gear money. I don’t have tons of time to memorize all those songs, let alone the new ones we learn every few months. So I use lyric sheets. I used to use them on paper, but boy is that annoyingly old school and easily lost.

Now I use my iPad (and an amazing app called GigBook) to organize and keep track of my lyric sheets. And I also use the incomparable iKlip 2 iPad holder to attach that iPad to the microphone stand right in front of me.

CamRanger Turns Your iOS Device Into A Full-On DSLR Remote [Review]

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I just took a picture with my DSLR... from my iPad
I just took a picture with my DSLR... from my iPad

“Wow, this is cool.” That was my first thought when I saw CamRanger controlling a full-size DSLR for the first time, then wirelessly beaming picture previews to an iPad 15 feet away.

CamRanger
Category: iOS/photography accessories
Works With: iPhone, iPad, Mac
Price: $300

From ISO, to shutter, to aperture, white balance—-even live view and touch-to-focus—-the CamRanger gives you amazing control of any compatible DSLR from your iPad or iPhone. All it takes to get the magic going, is the tiny CamRanger unit and their free iOS app.

Smart Cargo Adds Smart Storage To Smart Cover

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Our serial-inventing friend Dotan Saguy is back, this time with yet another super-smart iAccessory. It’s a little carrying case for your everyday iPad essentials, and it is designed to integrate with your iPd Smart Cover. It’s called the Smart Cargo, and it’s as ingenious as Dotan’s other Kickstarter projects like the Smarter Stand.

The FitBit Flex Will Get Your Ass Off The Couch, But Not Through A Marathon [Review]

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Flex by FitBit
Category: Fitness
Works With: iPhone 5, Mac
Price: $100

The FitBit Flex is a $99 rubber band you wear around your wrist to track how many steps you’ve taken every day. It connects via Bluetooth to your iPhone, or through a dongle to your Mac. If you are utterly sedentary, it’s a fantastic gadget that may very well encourage you to make some slight adjustments to your lifestyle before your heart explodes in front of your computer desk one day. If you are already even lightly active, though, the FitBit Flex is a puzzle of a product that seems fetishistically focussed on how much you walk while utterly ignoring how much you bike, swim or even run.

Why iOS Accessory Makers Are Ditching Lightning For Bluetooth

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There was a time when every hotel room had a 30-Pin Dock Connector in it somewhere, but eight or nine months after debut, Lightning — the 30-Pin Dock Connector’s successor — still hasn’t really taken off, outside of a few docks and battery cases. Sure, it’s a new standard, and Apple was famously very slow in issuing MFi deals to accessory makers who wanted to support Lightning… but even so, it seems companies have been slow to pick up the new standard.

Why? Once bitten, twice shy, it appears. In the aftermath of Apple’s Lightning transition, more and more companies are opting to embrace cheap, open wireless standards like Bluetooth instead of Lightning. And that’s probably costing Apple revenue.

Spider Monkey Utility Belt Hooks Turn You Into A Photographic Batman [Review]

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There's some irony that the object now stuck to my Spider Monkey -- forever -- is a clock.
There's some irony that the object now stuck to my Spider Monkey -- forever -- is a clock.
Spider Monkey by Spider Holster
Category: Camera Gear
Works With: Anything
Price: $17

I was going to ditch the standard review format for this post and instead make a gallery of different objects hung on my belt Using the neat little Spider Monkey accessory holster.

That was until I discovered that the adhesive tab that helps hold the Monkey’s Tab onto the target accessory is not reusable. Well, that might not be strictly true. It might well be reusable, but I will never find out because it is almost certainly unremovable.

MOS Unclutters The Cables In Your Life With The Power Of Magnets [Review]

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You know when you unplug your iPhone and your $20 Lightning cable goes slithering to the floor? I hate that, and it used to happen to me all the time in the morning when I set free my phone from its charging cable, and each time it happened, I thought to myself, “there’s gotta be a way to prevent this.”

MOS (Magnetic Organization System) by MosOrganizer.com
Category: Accessories
Works With: Any cable!
Price: $24.00 for plastic versions, $40 for aluminum

Well, with the MOS securely attached to my bedside table, now there is.

Harnessing the power of magnets, MOS (Magnetic Organizing System) is a handy little puck that keeps your cables stuck to its surface and ready for use instead of lying listless and tangled on your desk or floor.

Suit Up Your iPhone With This Mark VII Iron Man Power Armor

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Tony Stark is essentially Marvel’s answer to Steve Jobs, if Steve Jobs looked like Robert Downey Jr., was kidnapped by the Taliban, had a nuclear reactor installed as a replacement heart, and built himself a set of power armor.

In every other way, though, the two are exactly similar, which is what makes it natural that Steve Jobs’s greatest creation — the iPhone — is now capable of “suiting up” in Tony Stark’s greatest invention, the Mark VII power armor.

At Last! The iSpoon, A Sauce-Stirring Stylus

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Sometimes an inventor comes up with something so mold-breaking, so truly original and – in hindsight – obvious that the world changes just a little bit. Today we bring news of such an Earth-shaking discovery. It’s called the iSpoon, and considering that it’s made for cooking, there’s a delicious irony in the fact that it mixes together two ingredients to make the perfect blend. It’s a synergistic, spoon-shaped supper, if you will.

Your iPhone Can’t Tell When You’re Too Drunk To Drive, But This iPhone Breathalyzer Can

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In my experience, the iPhone already has a built-in alcohol detector. You can tell if you’re too drunk to drive by pulling out your iPhone and seeing if you immediately drop it, shattering it on the floor or dunking it in a seedy bar urinal. Pass the test? You’re ready to drive!

Alcohoot has another method of measuring the same thing. It’s a Breathalyzer that you pair with your iPhone. If you blow into it and you’re abov e the legal limit, it’ll call you a cab.

Alcohoot isn’t out quite yet, but when they launch, they are hoping to launch soon at a $70 price point. Cheaper than breaking your iPhone using the drunk test outlined above.

Via: Macgasm

Finally, A Less Disgusting Way To Use Your iPad While Wiping Yourself [Humor]

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The problem with buying any iPad used is the undeniable knowledge that the previous user has, without any shadow of a doubt, used that exact same tablet while sitting upon the toilet. Yet if you try to use that fact as a negotiating point, it quickly becomes a touchy subject.

For the person who uses his or her iPad in the john unapologetically, yet doesn’t want to feel the icy cold touch of the aluminum casing against their exposed genitalia, how about this iPad Pedestal Stand, replete with attached toilet roll? $45. You’re welcome!

Source: CTA Digital
Via: Macplus

Forget iPod Socks, You Want An iPod Hoodie

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iPod socks are so passé. So passé, in fact, that Apple doesn’t even sell them anymore. The new hotness? These sleeveless $13.75 iPod hoodies, just like Rocky Balboa might wear during an inspiring montage filmed in the post-apocalyptic wreck of mid-70s Philadelphia. You’re welcome.

Source: Amazon
Via: MacGasm

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You’ll Never Lose Your Keys, iPhone Or Kid Again If You Buy The HipKey [Review]

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The HipKey: never lose your keys (or iPhone) again.
The HipKey: never lose your keys (or iPhone) again.

This is what I wrote earlier this month, strung out on CES and showing it at the edges:

“With irritating regularity, my girlfriend and I dance the same dance. She, or I, go to bed with our iPhones. She, or I, lose it somewhere within the ocean of the bedfolds. She, or I, find ourselves apoplectic. She, or I, demands that the other calls the phone to locate. And then she, or I, realize that we’ve lost our phone too. And then we murder each other into a spattering of bloody chunks in our festering rage, somehow to reconstitute ourselves, temporarily find our iPhones and begin this amphisbaena dance anew.”

The guys behind HipKey, a keychain dongle that can track your iPhone (and vice versa), were paying attention, and so they sent me over a unit for review. I’m not sure it’s revolutionized my life, but it sure has simplified it: now, instead of constantly worrying about misplacing my keys or my iPhone, I only have to worry about misplacing both at the same time.

Keep The Small Stuff In Your Bag Organized Neatly With Cocoon’s Grid-It [Review]

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You know what I hate? Detangling the cables, chargers, headphones, and other electronic accoutrements that always weave themselves into a ball while stored in my backpack.

Cocoon, makers of the Grid-It “ultimate organizer,” want to solve that problem. The Grid-It ($20), stows your accessories against a flat surface, all held tidily in place with a series of interwoven elastic bands. That sounds a heckuvalot better than what I’m doing. So with Earpods, chargers, and lightning cables in hand, I put one to the test to see how well it works.

Airport Navigator Is A Rolling Travel Bag For Your DSLR, Macbook Pro, And iPad [Review]

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As an Apple guy with a whole lot of photography gear, I’m usually forced to slug my computing devices in one bag and DSLR and accoutrements in another while traveling. I hate doing that.

Think Tank’s new rolling camera bag, the Airport Navigator ($249), with two wheels, a telescoping handle, and space for a DSLR, lenses, and an iPad and Macbook Pro, seemed to be the perfect portable home for all my devices to live. But how well would it perform on the road? I decided to pack it full, take it to Vegas, and cart it around with me on the over-crowded floors one of the world’s biggest technology shows, CES 2013, and find out.

Hipkey Will Help You Find Your Lost iPhone, Keys, Child… Or Vice Versa [CES 2013]

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CES 2013 bug LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – With irritating regularity, my girlfriend and I dance the same dance. She, or I, go to bed with our iPhones. She, or I, lose it somewhere within the ocean of the bedfolds. She, or I, find ourselves apoplectic. She, or I, demands that the other calls the phone to locate. And then she, or I, realize that we’ve lost our phone too. And then we murder each other into a spattering of bloody chunks in our festering rage, somehow to reconstitute ourselves, temporarily find our iPhones and begin this amphisbaena dance anew.

But no longer! At Digital Experience, I talked with a wonderful little outfit selling a gadget called the Hipkey, which creates a sort of blood bond between a dongle and your iPhone. The possibilities after that are pretty rich: not only can it help you find a lost iPhone, or a lost set of keys, but you can even do things like help find a missing child or be alerted by a pickpocketed smartphone with it.

The Endliss LED Case For iPhone 5 Is Lightning Charged And LED Alert [CES 2013]

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CES 2013 bug LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The iPhone has many hardware advantages over the competition, but it sucks at LED alerts. Smartphones like the ones offered by RIM have a dedicated LED that flashes when you get a message; on Android, you can even dictate the pattern of the LED flashes per contact with a staccato rhythm applied on the touchscreen with your index finger.

Your iPhone? Nothing. The LED can flash if you get a message, but it’s messy and unrefined. But that’s where the Endliss Hybrid Battery Case for the iPhone 5 by uNu comes in. It gives the back of your iPhone just as much information to display as the front.