Way back in 2009, I reviewed the Lightscoop, a miraculous mirror which reflects your camera’s built-in flash up an off the ceiling, effectively turning the whole top surface of the room into one giant soft light source. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the fact that it was bulky and tricky to carry with you.
Now there are two new Lightscoops, both of which are a little more portable,
Crypstagram is a neat service for encrypting messages inside your photos. And as an added bonus it also ruins those photos along the way by adding glitches to them. You probably won’t want to actually use it for good (or evil) though, as the images you use are posted right there on the site in a gorgeous glitchy gallery.
Tick is a brand-new ToDo app (yup, another one) that offers one big feature not found in the built-in Reminder app: Color. Actually, that;s not quite true; Tick offers bright, 1980s-style neon color, unlike the tastefully bright hues built into to iOS 7.
Love Pad&Quill’s sweet bookbindery iPhone cases, but don;t love the big Baltic birch frames that bulk them up? You’re in luck! The new Bella Fino is a leather taco for your iPhone 5/S/C that does away with the frame in favor of a reusable, re-stickable 3M “clean release” adhesive panel.
Just like those isolated soldiers that used to be discovered from time to time thinking that WWII was still on, years after it had ended, there’s a designer hidden deep in the offices of Porsche who thinks we still need to use USB thumb drives. Yes, it looks beautiful, just like Hiroo Onoda’s doubtlessly crisply-pressed uniform, but that doesn’t make it right.
You’re probably sick of Kickstarter projects that turn your iPad or iPad mini into a giant camera, so here’s something a little different. It’s an iPad mini camera rig, but this one is actually available to buy. Now. From Amazon.
Bitdrop is an interesting new app/service for sending encrypted files to anyone over the internet, with the big advantage that the receiver doesn’t need to install anything. This is pretty good for the paranoid and careful alike, letting you share files using e-mail, but without sending them over the open internet.
Here’s a fantastic tip for iPhoneographers: did you know that you can transfer photos from your Wi-Fi-enabled SD card to your iPad while it is connected to the iPad using the camera connection kit? This amazing nugget was discovered by The iPad For Photographers author Jeff Carlson.
Behold, the iKettle, a water-boiler that can be almost completely controlled from your iPhone while you laze around in your bed.
There isn’t much to say about Cloudpaint in the cloud other than it’s MacPaint… in your browser. That’s right – go browse to the site and enjoy the wonders of 1984-style B&W ink and square brushes.
Just when I thought I’d kicked my bag-buying habit, along comes Waterfield and dangles the Staad backpack in front of my wallet. The Staad is a classic-looking waxed-canvas and leather backpack with some distinctly modern touches. And I want one. Now.
According to all the fashionable studies these days, sitting is about as dangerous as balancing a TV set on the edge of the bathtub while you have a soak, sip a martini and smoke a fat Havana all at the same time.
I avoid this deathtrap by doing my work as fast as possible and then going back to bed after a couple of hours spent in the danger zone, but apparently standing desks are another good solution. And if you own a Mac, then you’ll want a standing desk designed to work with it, like the new WorkFit for Apple range from Ergotron.
Maybe you have an iPhone, an SLR, and perhaps a couple of weird old lenses that don’t fit either of them. Fear not, my gadget-hoarding friend, for the answer is nigh. It’s called the Beastgrip, and it attached pretty much anything to anything else.
Amazon’s Whispersync for voice was always an interesting curiosity: You can read a book on your Kindle, seamlessly switch to the Audiobook version, and then switch back again, all without losing your place. This works thanks to the fact that Amazon owns Audible, the biggest audiobook seller around.
The service just got a lot easier to use, thanks to a doubling of compatible titles, and a new Matchmaker service which automatically pairs up any books you already own, and lets you grab the audio version for a big discount.
Dr. Drang is on a roll these days. After letting us organize our photos in the Finder with his fantastic shell scripts, he will now change the way you use your iOS reminders app. Are you ready to have your mind blown?
The Satechi Smart Travel Router might just be the most useful travel adapter ever made. Not only can it plug into a wall socket pretty much anywhere in the world, it can also charge your iPhone and create a wireless network.
Back in March we took a look at the SIMPLcase, an iPhone case which stored your spare SIM cards and a SIM tray eject tool inside. One Kickstarter campaign and several months later, the SIMPLcase is a shipping product, and one which I which I have been testing out in a recent move from sunny Barcelona to gray Germany.
Does the SIMPLcase pass? Yup. With flying colors, in fact.
I think I might finally have found a screenshot app for OS X which is simple enough to replace the built-in screen-capture tools. It’s called Inboard, and it further distinguishes itself by having one of the best app icons ever.
Imagine that you had a stick of gum that could be bent into any shape. OK, that part was easy – all you had to do was imagine a normal stick of gum. Now imagine that that stick is weight-bearing, and that it would actually stay in the shape you gave it.
If you were doing it properly, then you just imagined the Gumstick, a rubbery, pose-able stick of gadget goodness.
Sadly, the “Mobislyder” isn’t a way to make delicious, tiny steamed hamburgers with your cellphone, but it’s almost as good: It’s an aluminum track rail for your mobile phone, letting you make amazing tracking shots when shooting video with your iPhone.
Apparently Nikon’s D600 was already pretty much perfect, because the new D610 that replaces it is little more than a tweak. Let me put it this way: If Apple released a “new” iPhone with such a minor spec bump, the company would be “finished.”
There’s something very ironic about an optical drive for the upcoming space-shaped [1] Mac Pro, like adding a fax machine to an iPhone. Better still is the fact that it’s not just any old optical drive, but a bag-of-hurt Blu-ray drive. And best of all is that this USB-connected optical drive is shaped to fit neatly underneath the Mac Pro as if it wasn’t there.
Everpix – in case my constant droning on and on about it wasn’t clear enough – is my favorite cloud photo service by far (I’m currently auditioning Picturelife as a possible alternative, but so far it’s not close). Now the web app has been updated to make it even easier to use. So easy and fast, in fact, that you could use it to replace iPhoto on your Mac.
There’s a lot to be said for organizing your photos into folders in the Finder. In fact, if you’re using an app like Lightroom to organize your photos, then you’re already doing this, albeit with a super-helpful cataloging and editing application laid on top.
But you need some sort of organization, right? And that’s where the amazing Dr. Drang comes in, with a couple of shell scripts do the work for you.
This amazing KnowRoaming sticker looks too good to be true, but as it’s from Canada, it must be the real deal. The KnowRoaming is a sticker which covers your existing SIM card and automatically switches your iPhone to a local network provider when you travel abroad, avoiding crazy roaming fees when you travel.