Charlie Sorrel - page 139

When I was a cub scout, I made my own backyard weather station. It was to get my science badge, or weather nerd badge, or whatever, and it mainly consisted of counting the millimeters of rain in a jamjar with an oversized plastic funnel perched on the top. And there was always rain: This was England.

If I’d had access to the wonderful technology of today, though, I could have stayed in watching TV and let the Netatmo do the work for me. The Netatmo is a weather station for both indoors and outdoors, and is sold as something that will stop you from worrying about your children and — therefore — the future.

There are a ton of ways to get fit and lose weight. And there are even more stupid books and fad diets that may or may not help you to slim down and get healthier. But there are really only two things you need to do: eat less and do more.

Of course, it isn’t easy. Luckily, those of a certain nerdy bent will find all the motivation they need in gadgets and apps. I have been doing just that for the past few months, and I thought I’d write a little about how to get thinner and fitter by using your iPhone.

Got a spare five minutes? Want to do something fun. Then take a quick look at Gutenberg Variations, a free iPhone app which takes your typed text and turns it onto sheet music. And then plays it.

Evernote’s Smart Notebook might cost $25 – double the price of the almost identical 3.5 x 5.5-inch Moleskine version – but it will likely sell by the pallet-load. Why? Because it is a genuine paper Moleskine which integrates with Evernote itself.

The Smart Notebook has special paper which – in combination with a new update to the Evernote iOS app – makes scanning and tagging easier than ever.

Farewell Nikon D700. You were one of the best digital cameras ever made.

The D700, the full-frame DSLR Nikon launched way back in 2008, has just had its life support switched off, and the doctors have pulled the sheet over its face and closed the curtain around its bed.

Four years isn’t bad in today’s world, and those wanting a non-top-end full-frame body can buy the D800, but that’s more about video and show-off (36MP) pixel-counts. Here, I’ll say it: the D700 was maybe the best photographers’ camera ever.

Last week I was in the tobacconist buying some Cuban cigars, and the girl in front of me was tattooed with an Apple logo. I got a crappy picture, but I snapped it out of horror rather than admiration.

Still, a tat is one thing. An Asymco T-Shirt, featuring a graph of, say, Apple’s increasing stock price, is another. These things are so dorky that they come out the other side being awesome.

Bluetooth speakers? Count me in. I love the things: portable, great-sounding, remote control right there on the speaker, and wireless. But Bluetooth headphones? Aren’t they bulky, and with crappy battery life? Not, apparently, the new Satchi BT Lite headphones, which – as the name suggests – are pretty “lite.”

What use could you possibly have for a washable keyboard? The obvious hand-shandy jokes write themselves here, but there are other reasons that you might want this easy-clean keyboard from Logitech.

Snapping a screenshot on your Apple device is dead easy: home-plus-sleep-button for iOS, and Command-Shift-4 (or others) for the Mac. But what about snapping a sound-shot, i.e. grabbing a snippet of your system audio?

Well, you could fire up Quicktime and start dickering around with that. Or you could install WavTap and then hit Command-Control-Space.

What’s the single standout feature that makes you want to buy Fujifilm’s retro-tastic X-series cameras? It’s that neat hybrid viewfinder, right? That’s the real innovation, and the real difference not only between the X cameras and your screen-only iPhone, but between the X-series and all mirrorless cameras.

Which brings us to leaked news of the forthcoming X-E1, a new budget-friendly X-series body which trims the cost by… ditching that viewfinder.

We I first wrote about the R*Case, I remarked with typical hyperbolic overstatement that it “looks very useful.” Well, the kind folks at TouchNS sent one (or actually four, along with a bunch of really bad styluses) for review, and it turns out I was right. In fact, it is now my favorite iPad skin.

If you want to power your bike’s lights and charge your iPhone as you pedal, you should have specced a dynamo hub when you got the wheels built. But either you were too cheap (like me) or couldn’t see the point. Don’t worry! There’s hope for both of us in the form or the ECOXPOWER generator, an aftermarket power and lighting system for your bike.

What if I told you there was a plugin for Lightroom which would mirror the latest edit of every photo in library in the cloud, and make it available in a neat, iPad optimized browser view right away?

You’d probably just call me a liar, skip to the next post and maybe take a sip of your coffee, muttering “That idiot Sorrel is doing it again. I’m writing to hi damn editor this time.”

Well, you’d be a fool. Instead, let that coffee cool a little and come take a look at Mosaic.

The various bookbindery cases for the iPad are great and all, but I always found them to be a little impractical. They look lovely, they offer a ton of protection, but they do tend to get in the way. But the Kindle, made to be read like a book, seems tailor-made for a book-like cover. And here it is, the Hardcover for Kindle Touch from Dodo.

Agile Tortoise has today updated its Drafts app for the iPhone, as well as launching an all-new version for the iPad. I have been using the iPad version for a little while now and it turns out to be pretty fantastic. The iPad app has an all-new UI, and incorporates the additions to the new iPhone app. Let’s take a look:

It’s taken a while, but the first iPad-specific camera apps are starting to trickle into the app store. The iPad 2’s camera was, frankly, a total piece of crap. The new iPad, however, sports the sensor of the iPhone 4 and the optics of the 4S. It was only a matter of time before the likes of ProCamera came along to take advantage of them.

Even in 2012, people still insist on giving us paper: bills, receipts, even business cards (!) all come printed on dead treeware, and all remain completely useless, unsearchable and easy to lose. What you need, until these people wake up and just e-mail you the relevant info — is a document scanner. Smaller and faster than all-in-one or flatbed models, these scanners can take a stack of paper and turn it into searchable PDFs faster than you can shred the source material.

Read on for our list of the best document scanners to use with your Mac, iPad or iPhone.

Nikon’s rumored Android-powered compact camera is here. It’s called the S800c, and along with a smartphone OS, it packs GPS and Wi-Fi, making it a possibly the greatest Instagram shooter out there.

Folding Text is a Mac app from Hog Bay Software’s Jesse Grosjean, and it’s kind of like a cross between a text editor and a terminal. It’s a beta, or maybe even an alpha, but the latest release is good enough to use as a full-time Markdown editor, and it also packs some neat extras.

The thing I like best about the Chromonaut camera bag isn’t the price (it’s a ridiculous $215), or the fantastic retro styling. Nor is it the name, which makes me think of 1970s pulp sci-fi magazines. Nope. The best part of this cool camera carrier is the removable padded inserts, which mean that the bag doubles as, well, a regular bag. An expensive regular bag, sure, but at least it won’t get left at home when you go to the beach.

11,666mAh. That’s the nightmare figure that faces you every time you plug the newest iPad in to charge. You really need to charge the thing overnight, otherwise you’ll be sitting there for hours and hours waiting for the battery meter to tick over to 100%.

And the myCharge Peak 6000 – like most external battery packs – will only make a small contribution to that yawning, ravenous battery. It will toss 6,000 mAh into the void before excusing itself for its own refill, but if you use it with, say, an iPhone you will be able to charge the thing several times over.

The Peak 6000 wins on design, too. The wall prongs are built in for fast hookup, as are a 30-pin dock connector and a microUSB plug. You won’t be losing any parts of this charger. It even has a pop-out USB input for charging from a computer, should there only be one wall-wart available.

The price for this well-designed back up? $99. Buy two and you’d have enough to fully charge the greedy, bloated iPad 3.

Source: myCharge

GeChic will soon sell you a 15.6-inch monitor for your phone. That’s right – your phone. The 1366 x 768 LED display comes complete with a pair of speakers, a 9,600mAh battery and inputs for MHL, VGA (!) and HDMI cables, and it’ll display anything your iPhone (or iPad, or Android phone) will allow it to.

Hey! Remember those old travel alarm clocks which would fold out from a pocket-sized, pillow-shaped package into a three-sided stand-up clock? No? Well I do, because that’s what my ever-frugal Nan used to use as a regular clock in the living room, and I never tired of folding and unfolding it – whenever she wasn’t around, at least.

Which is why I have a thing for this neat-o Bluetooth speaker from Geneva Labs. The handsome package folds up just like my Nan’s did, and even manages to hide a cute clock in behind the minimalistical grille.

Vectrex, the sent-from-the-future vector-based games console from 1982, is soon to come to iOS. The Vectrex Regeneration emulator, complete with the entire original game catalog, will launch soon as a Universal app, and will use optional expansion packs to enable extra features.