Charlie Sorrel - page 86

The NewTrent Gladius case isn’t the first iPad case we’ve seen with a grabby handle on the back, but it is the first we’ve seen that uses a leather strap on a plastic case. This also makes it the first case that would let you play a game of “My Little Subway Car.” Just glue the iPad to the ceiling of your bathroom and hang from the strap. For extra realism, piss in a corner a few hours before “embarking” and have family and friends pass through from time to time, asking you for money.

Netflix 5 brings HD video and AirPlay to iPads running iOS 7. You may have thought you had HD video streaming to your retina iPad, but you didn’t. 5 fixes that, and it also lets you throw your TV shows and movies up onto your big screen via Apple TV with native AirPlay streaming.

Braven’s 855S is the companion speaker to the 850. The internals are much the same, but the cases are as different as can be, with the heavy, rubberised 855S looking more like something you’d find in a military tank rather than on a tasteful shelf next to your fish tank.

That said, it looks and feels great. But how does it sound?

Ebook subscriptions are on their way, and I don’t know whether to be happy or terrified. The newest service to let you pay a flat monthly fee for as much as you can read is Scribd, the popular ebook and document sharing site.

The Mission Cycling Wallet is a lot like those iPhone card wallets you see all the time, only this one zips your iPhone safely inside, and lets it face out through a see-through screen so you can read it and use it without taking it out or opening the case.

You can even use it in the pouring rain.

DP review has tested the iPhone 5S’s camera and – surprise – it’s awesome. At ten long pages (all requiring a click to reach, as is DP Review’s annoying style) it’s an epic read that you’ll probably want to add to your Instapaper queue, but you can always skip to the conclusion and read the rather amusing list of “bad” points that the reviewers have come up with to make the article “balanced.”

What color is that lovely jacket your friend is wearing? And that movie poster up there on the side of that building? Wouldn’t that blue make the perfect color for your new website’s background?

But how can you make sure you’re getting the exact color? After all, your cellphone camera is affected by all kinds of external factors, including the color of the light falling on the jacket/poster, as well as the colors of the surrounding items. What you need is a handheld, iPhone-controlled colorimeter.

Pincase is yet another great Pinboard client for iOS. It’s $2, it’s universal, and it is ready for iOS 7. Oh, and it looks lovely too. What more could you need for managing and reading your bookmarks. What? You want more? Okay…

I’d noticed that calendar events created from the iOS 7 Mail app now contain a clickable URL that links back to the original e-mail message, but what I didn’t know is just how rad this is. Federico “another espresso please” Viticci over at Mac Stories knows exactly how rad it is, though, because he dug in and found out that it’s not only system-wide for iOS 7, but hooks into something similar that the Mac has done for years.

Want to check out the new M7 MoCoPro in your iPhone 5, but don’t have an app to do it? Then check out David Smith’s Pedometer++, a free app which grabs data from the low-power motion-tracking chip and shows it to you.

Belkin’s new Express Dock for iPad lets you dial in the perfect fit for any Lightning iPad, whatever case it’s in. Literally: there’s actually a dial on the back to adjust the dock’s size.

The new GoPro Hero3+ makes jumping out of an airplane in a squirrel suit just a little bit more tempting. The new camera is smaller, faster and apparently much better.

Even if you love screen protectors, you probably hate applying them. Even the best bubble-proof tempered-glass covers have to be lined up before pressing them into place, and those wasted seconds are seconds that allow dust to creep twixt screen and cover, to be petrified in place forever like a dinosaur-DNA-carrying fly in amber.

What you need is the Alin, a screen protector with a big plastic guide to line things up for you.

Kanex Keyboard

I used to keep three keyboards around the place, just to use with my two iPads and my iMac. This was clearly absurd, and I have since settled on the still-excellent Logitech K811, a Bluetooth keyboard which can easily switch between three Bluetooth devices at the touch of a button.

The Kanex Multi-Sync Keyboard offers a similar feature set, but is more geared towards the desktop. It’s pretty good, but won’t replace my K811. Let’s see why.

As I write this, I’m sitting in Stuttgart airport waiting to take a connecting flight to my new home in Leipzig, Germany. And what is my biggest fear in my new life? The unbearable winters? The fact that smoking is still allowed in bars and restaurants in 2013? Nope. The scariest thing is that I may not be able to use BitTorrent to download the latest TV shows, thanks to pesky German traits like upholding the law.

If only there was a German equivalent of the new BBC download-only iPlayer app.

There are two things I love about these Kransen headphones from UrbanEars. Actually, there are three: that woven cord looks great in red. The other two are cable-wrangling tricks that would be welcome on any pair of earbuds: not that Apple would ever make an accessory so useful.

Pixa is our favorite alternative to iPhoto for the Mac, and it just got a solid v1.1 update. In addition to lots of polish (some of which you will have already seen in the recent 1.0.x updates), Pixa now makes snapping images and searching hem a whole lot easier.

To paraphrase serial sheet-folder Jill Cooper, one of the biggest challenges you’re going to face in your life is to control your cables. And although there’s no Jill Cooper to teach you how fold your cables into a perfect bundle, there are now two new gadgets to make things a little easier. They’re called the Rolio and the CableDrop Mini, and they’re from BlueLounge.

Edgar Rios is not only a Photoshop whizz, but also pretty good at imagining the future. Extrapolating from iOS 7, Edgar has come up with what he thinks could be the next version of the Mac OS, and I really, really like it.

The MiStand might look like a big, heavy, over-engineered iPad desk stand, and it probably is. But it has one standout feature that makes it interesting: A big magnetic ball.

You know what’s great about Spotify and Rdio? The fact that they both exist, and that they’re both great services. Why? Competition. It’s hard to think of two other arch rivals which are adding great new features to their services so quickly.

Today it’s the turn of Rdio, which has slipped recommendations into its music-streaming service, taking the pressure off you to pick a song for yourself.

Whatever it is you want to know about cellphone camera sensors, you’ll probably find it in DP Review’s absurdly in-depth article on the subject. It details not only the common misconceptions about megapixels, but also many real world differences. And it contains the diagram shown at the top of this post, showing the size differences between the sensors in various phones, measured in pixels.

The SideCar is a lump of silicone that’ll let you use a dual-monitor setup even when you’re on a plane. It’s a simple connector that hangs your iPad off the side of your MacBook screen, either just to keep it handy, or to use as a second monitor using one of many screen-spanning apps in the store.

Lusting after an iPhone 5S for that sweet slo-mo camera? Don;t worry, because there’s an app that’ll add the same function to your lame old iPhone 5. Well, kinda – it’s not 120fps, but it’s close bad.

Google+ already lets you upload RAW photos to the service, but now the rendered JPGs from those RAW files are going to look a lot better. Working with the boffins at NIK software (which Google bought when it acquired Snapseed), the G+ RAW conversions have been tweaked to give some dramatically better results.