This, apparently, is a new Android-powered phone from Nikon. As budget compact cameras become lass and less relevant thanks to camera-packing smartphones, manufacturers are essentially turning their cameras into phones.
One of the best things about using an iPhone to shoot your photos is the huge range of accessories you can buy to help out. But what if you’re on a budget? Or you just aren’t really into photography enough to spend more money? Or if you’re just bored today and feel like playing around?
Then you’re in the right place, because we’re about to take a look at DIY iPhone photo filters. And lenses. And other modifiers. And best of all, you probably have most of them around your home or office, ready for some instant procrastination. Let’s go!
This is the SuperTooth Disco 2. It’s the sequel to one of my favorite Bluetooth speakers ever, the SuperTooth, only smaller, a little quieter, and a lot more stereo-er. It also has a quirky little flower-vase style which will probably grow on you, especially if you have small tables.
Camalapse is short for “camel prolapse,” although oddly it has nothing to do with either ungulate mammals or slipping organs. Instead, the Camalapse is a clockwork stand for your camera which takes 360˚ time-lapse sequences.
How long would it take you just to read the names of all the apps in the iOS App Store? According to an infographic (what we old timers used to call a “chart” or “poster”) by Tap Mag, this simple task would take you a whole week. And that’s far from all…
I have no idea how many apps there are in the iTunes store that let you add filters to your photos. But I do know how many there are to remove those filters, and turn your picture into something that you can look back on in ten years’ time without cringing: One. It’s called Normalize, and it comes from Joe Macirowski.
Are you ready to have your mind blown? Then take a look at this 360-degree panorama of the surface of Mars, complete with cameo appearance by the Curiosity rover. And here’s the (literal) twist: the picture is gyroscope-friendly, so you can scan the surface of the Red Planet by sweeping your iOS device up and down, left and right.
IPad 3. Hired: Retina screen, speedy 4G internet, lots of lovely RAM. Fired: Weight. Heat. Girth. Retired: That damn battery.
Yes, if the iPad 3 were to be leaping over a fence to escape its doom, and Paris were to fire an arrow to stop it, the arrow would hit the iPad 3 in its battery charger, not its heel (sorry about the extended and twisted Greek adventure story there). Sure, the battery lasts long enough, but it takes forever to charge the thing.
Happily, Exogear’s stackable battery packs are here to help.
It used to be that bike handlebars were for holding on to, and for telling your bike just which direction you wanted it to go. You might add a bell, or wrap around some fancy colorful bar-tape, but that was the limit of directional decoration.
Now there are so many accessories that can be clamped and clipped to the bars that touring cyclists even add an extra stumpy bar to their stems just for bags, computers and lamps. And now we can add a tripod mount to that list.
Hey! do you have 16 iPad’s and a 13-inch MacBook that you travel with regularly? Are you sick of plugging and unplugging them, and having to roll them in newspaper every time you take a plane?
Well, if you’re happy to put all your iEggs in one tough, roll-along basket and entrust it to the notoriously light-fingers of the airport baggage handlers, then Parat Solutions has just the, uh, solution for you.
Say what you like about Windows 8, but Microsoft seems to have knocked developers into line when it comes to interface design. Exhibit a: Skype for Not-Metro, which not only matches the minimal tile design of the OS, but manages to make the iOS version look positively baroque.
Question: Do you have any idea what the following terms mean?
Multiply, Screen, Layover, Soft Light, Hard Light, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Addition, Difference, Darken, Lighten, Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity.
Answer (if you didn’t answer “yes” yourself): They’re blending modes. And a new iOS called Layover lets you use them to combine layered images. Still confused? Read on…
Back up your photos. Always shoot in RAW. After a while all the good advice starts to sound like the adults speaking in Charlie Brown cartoons. Wah-wah-wah-wahwahwah.
Especially now iCloud manages our backups and our iPhones only shoot JPGs.
But one piece of advice is still worth listening to: “always rotate JPGs losslessly.” What?
Hidden Radio, a Bluetooth speaker and radio so minimalist it makes a sheet of blank paper look like something from a Jules Verne story, has finally emerged from a lengthy Kickstarter pupation to go on sale in a web store near you.
It’s stylish, it’s loud and it lasts longer than most other Bluetooth speakers around. What’s not to like?
When it comes to iPhoneography, “retro” usually refers to adding some light leaks, desaturating some colors or adding fake grain. But for Jake Potts, it means taking the iPhone’s rear glass panel, turning it into a wet collodion plate and taking a real photograph with it. And because he’s a true photo nerd, he also documented every step of the process.
QuickDraw is about as apt a name for a gadget as any we’ve ever seen. And the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that obviousness extends to its function: Quickdraw is a lens bayonet that hangs on your belt and lets you clip any spare lenses around your waist, read to for – you guessed it – a quick draw.
This handsome retro-styled accessory is the Textile iCable from Eastern Collective, a dock-connector with its wire wound in cotton to make it look like an old-timey kettle lead or even a bicycle pump adapter. And if I wasn’t banking on Apple switching over to a new dock connector for all future iDevices (and if I didn’t already have a drawer full of white cables), I’d probably already have ordered a few.
You lucky thing. The summer’s over, or nearly over, and you’re already planning on heading back to school. Just like last year, you will begin this year fresh and full of energy and enthusiasm, only to be ground down by the man. Luckily, we’re here to help with advice on the best apps and gear to get you through the year and into next year’s summer vacation with the least effort possible.
So sit back, relax and take a look at the Cult of Mac back to school/college superguide.
It’s widely know that that the MagSafe 2 connector found on the new Retina MacBook Pro likes to sever its connection at the slightest chance. But who cares, right? After all, if it comes loose, you just plug it back in – it’s not like it’s the cable to your boot drive or anything.
I’ll tell you who cares: Lukas Mathis. Lukas didn’t notice his weak Mag”Safe” connector disconnecting, and the result was a cracked and ruined Retina screen.
What resolution is Retina resolution? 220 ppi (like the new MacBook Pro)? 264 ppi (like the iPad 3)? Or the amazing 326 ppi found on the iPhone?
What about 10,000 ppi? That’s the resolution of an image printed by researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore. It’s the picture you see above which, at just 50 x 50 microns, is the same size as a single pixel on an Apple Retina display.
By huge coincidence, I downloaded the brand new Withings app moments after its launch, almost by accident. The new app, which is iPhone-only (or pixel-doubled on the iPad) until a future update arrives), does a much nicer job than the old one of tying together the data from Withings’ various health devices, and remains completely free.
Pop quiz: what color is the mirror inside your camera? If you answered “No color. It’s a mirror. What the hell are you on about this time, Sorrel?” then you’re dead wrong. Kinda. It turns out that mirrors are ever-so-slightly green.
Meta is yet another photo filter app for the iPhone, but if you have any interest in this kind of thing, you should just go and buy it right now (it’s just one lousy buck).
Meta gives you a bunch of live filters through which you can snap pictures, and lets you share and upload to the usual places. The difference here is that the filters are genuinely new, and that you’re going to love them.
It’s pretty clear that the original Macintosh and the iPad are the same device, separated only by almost three decades of technology. So it’s somehow fitting to clip ThinkGeek’s latest offering onto the back of your modern-day computer-for-the-rest-of-us and pretend that it’s an old 1984-vintage Mac.
I do all my work these days on an iPad. From organizing reviews through gathering story ideas to actually writing posts and features, and even photographing and editing gadgets for those reviews, it’s all — every last bit — done on Apple’s tablet. I just spent two weeks away from home using the iPad’s 3G connection to work, only opening up my MacBook to sync my FitBit.
And they still say the iPad is just for consumption.
One of the biggest problems with the iPad has been writing blog posts. You really did need a Mac to take care of the multiple browser windows and — most of all — the image uploading. Now, though, while there isn’t quite a wealth of options, there are certainly several credible methods to do this all from the iPad. So make a coffee, sit back and enjoy this how-to: