Fact: Kids love Lego.
Fact: Kids love cameras.
Fact: Kids love to choke on teeny, tiny sharp plastic bricks.
Fuuvi’s special edition Nanoblock camera satisfies all of these passions: It’s a tiny little kit made of even tinier little nano-Legos, and any child, even a stupid one, can use it to make all kinds of neat working digital cameras.
It seems to me that the least vulnerable part of your iPhone 5 is the rear panel: The glass windows at the top and the bottom are tucked away, and the rest is aluminum, which might scratch or dent but it will never shatter (unless you freeze it in nitrogen first).
But if you think covering the tough rear panel with a thick plywood coating is a good idea, then the SkateBack might be just what you’re looking for. It’s a candy-colored cover refashioned from old skateboard decks.
Adobe has made available a new RC (release candidate) version of Lightroom, numbered v.4.3. On its own, this is clearly not worth an entire blog post, or even a tweet. But there’s one new feature that you Retina MacBook Pro owners might be interested in: HiDPI support.
It is becoming clear that some case styles are better suited to the iPad Mini than others. And it seems that Pad&Quill’s bookbindery cases are clearly way more appropriate for the little mini than they ever were for the bigger iPad.
Not that the regular-sized cases aren’t great — they are. But the whole bundle always seemed a little big. Now, though, the match looks to be ideal.
Oh man. I’m trying so hard not to buy an iPad Mini, and this new Skech case isn;t helping any. It’s a variation on one of my favorite iPad cases ever, and now it has been made tinier and cuter.
It’s called the SkechBook, and it looks good enough to make me buy a new iPad.
The little Jambox speaker isn’t the loudest, or even the best-sounding portable speaker out there, but somehow it is the most popular, and it’s probably the most portable. And it’s certainly the most cute.
I have one and I love it. Sometimes, though, you just need more. And that’s the idea of the Big Jambox, the best-named product of the year. Is it just a bigger version of its little brother? Kinda, but not quite.
I have a feeling that there are going to be many, many misguided attempts at making iPad Mini cases. Exhibit A: The Rubata Mini case from Padacs, a cheap and extraordinarily ugly keyboard case which turns the little iPad into a tiny laptop.
Where am I going with this? One word: netbooks.
The “world’s first panoramic monitor” might not sound appropriate for the Cult of Mac, but when you find out about some of its tricks, you’ll see why I’m bothering to tell you about it.
The monitor is from LG, measures 29-inches on the diagonal and has a wide, wide aspect ratio of 21:9, and a rather lame resolution of 2,560 x 1,080.
Still looking for an iPhone 5 dock? Yeah, me too. But I have found a BIY dock that not only looks cool but is pretty much free. If you have a printer and a sheet of thick paper around the house that is. And you don’t mid paying for the PDF.
We’re used to cheap software mimicking expensive hardware, and nowhere has that been truer than with tilt-shift photography. What was once an effect needing super-expensive and unwieldy architectural camera gear is now a free filter in many free apps.
But the trend sometimes goes the other way. Here’s the Tilt Shift camera from Photojojo, an actual physical digital camera with a tilt-shift lens. For $150.
In the age of tiny, efficient Thunderbolt and Lightning ports, stuffing a full-sized USB plug into a Mac now seems so very very old fashioned. Still, USB is still the oversized and awkward norm, and stuff them into our Macs we must.
Which is where Satechi’s “Premium 4-Port Aluminum USB 2.0 Hub” comes in.
I’ll be honest. The real reason I’m writing this post is because I get to say “Tally Ho!” in the headline, and to tell you an interesting fact about place names and exclamation points. But more on that in a second.
Tally is a new iPhone app from Agile Tortoise, the developer behind the most essential iOS app there is: Drafts. Tally is a very simple app designed to do one thing: count.
Still looking for an iPhone 5 dock that isn’t just your iPhone 4 dock, a Lightning adapter and a cable tie? Me too. Or I was, until Chris Jung from Braeburn Acoustics mailed me about his cool-looking acoustic amplifying iPhone stand.
Sometimes a problem is solved by sweating the details until a solution is reached. A solution so elegant that it appears to be the only possible answer to the problem. A solution so thoroughly worked through that it seems effortless.
Other times, the designer will think of something, grab the first parts that comes to hand and call it good. The solution might work, but it won’t be getting stocked at the Apple Store any time soon. The Clutch is one such solution.
I’m so desperate for a dock for my new iPhone 5 that I have closely studied the little perspex stands in the local Apple Store and scoured the local hardware emporiums for something — anything — that comes close to its acrylic simplicity.
I have so far failed, and am currently using the box the iPhone came in as a pretty handy stand. But I’m not really that serious about docks, unlike the people who dropped cash and patience on the Elevation Dock from Kickstarter, only to have it obsoleted by the new Lightning connector weeks after it shipped.
Anyway, all of this lede-burying is preamble to one thing: you can now buy a Lightning insert for your Elevation Dock.
With its pocket-sized price and pocket-sized, uh, size, the new iPad Mini looks to be the ideal iPad to carry naked. It’s tough, it can be gripped easily, and it never needs to be left face-down on the kitchen countertop as long as your pants have normal-sized pockets available.
But of course you’re going to buy a case. And if it’s bumps and scratches you’re worried about, perhaps you might consider the Smooth Series case from Ballistic.
Simply Write for the iPad is just about the closest you’ll get to an electronic piece of paper. The app is designed for handwriting, and for getting out of the way. And its clever close-up writing method for text input makes sure it does both.
If you use Evernote, it’s possible that you store everything in there that you possibly can. Now, thanks to the MySMS service, you can also archive your text messages in your favorite everything-bucket.
Nikon keeps busting out the new SLRs with the D5200, an upgrade to the D5100 that is bigger than the mere 100 extra numbers in its name would suggest.
Gizmon’s remote shutter release for the iPhone is simple, effective and cheap. But its novelty styling in the shape of a roll of film is likely to baffle much of its potential audience.
The Unmonday 4.3L is a $700 ceramic AirPlay speaker which comes with its own leather carrying case. It is gorgeous, and if you want to use it to its full potential, you’re going to have to buy another four of them.
IShredder is a curious app. It claims to securely erase the files on your iOS device using better-than-military grade algorithms. The idea is that you can then sell your device without leaving sensitive data behind.
The problem is that this is already built in to iOS.
The MagSafe 2 power plug is so intent on escaping from its socket that it doesn’t seem a great idea to hook it up to a portable battery, but if you need the extra power, you need the extra power. And right now pretty much the only way to get it is to grab one of QuickerTek’s MacBook Air batteries.
Quick Route is my new favorite routing app, not least because it’s so bike and pedestrian friendly (regular readers will know how I feel about those death boxes they call “cars.”) It’s optimized for the iPhone 5, it exhibits the level of design and polish you’d expect from a developer who also works for Panic, and it has a unique and neat way to pick your origin and destination.
Instagram: gimmicky retro filter-fest or serious social network? Time Magazine seems to thing it’s the latter, and despatched five pro photographers to go out and shoot the aftermath of super-storm Sandy with their iPhones, posting the results to Time’s Instagram feed.