Charlie Sorrel - page 88

It’s a bittersweet irony that while The Lady looks as stunning in photographs as she does in real life, in fully 80% of those photographs she has her eyes closed, or half closed. That’s right – she’s a blinker.


Usually I get around this by snapping way more photos that I actually need, but inevitably the one picture that has her opened-eyed and not making some weird expression is the same photo that has captured somebody else mid-blink.



And that’s whre Perfect Shot comes in.



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Perfect Shot is a new iOS 7-only app (universal) which has smile and blink detection. You toggle either one or both of these and then point the camera at your group. The app looks for their eyes (using face-recognition) and watches everyone. The moment they are all bright-eyed and (optionally) smiling, the shutter fires.



It’s a little disconcerting as the app just takes the picture without you even tapping the shutter button to activate it. There’s also no shutter sound, so you have to rely on animations to let you know the picture has been taken – a real problem if you’re also in the shot and the iPhone/iPas is sitting unmanned.



The app is somewhat obviated by the burst mode in the new iPhone 5S, but as almost nobody actually has a 5S yet then this is still pretty useful. Available now.
 




Source: Perfect Shot


Thanks: John!


Just like the filters in the iOS 7 camera app, the super slo-mo mode in the iPhone 5S is somewhat confusing when it comes to exporting your work. In fact, it’s almost impossible to get your slowed down masterpieces out of the iPhone and onto sharing services without some rather janky workarounds. But thanks to Macworld’s Serenity Caldwell, we now at least know about these tricks.




Presumably thanks to hangovers caused by excessive in-flight drinking on the flight formthe U.S to the antipodes, the iFixit folks managed to not find the M7 chip inside the new iPhone 5S during their teardown before the weekend, leading to speculation that the chip didn’t even exist. Conspiracy!


And as with any drunken adventure, lost things start to reappear when the dawn finally rises. The M7 chip is there alright; it just doesn’t have a big "M7" label on the front. According to the Chipworks’ blog, the M7 still carries its factory label: NXP LPC18A1.


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> Luckily, we’ve been able to locate the M7 in the form of the NXP LPC18A1. The LPC1800 series are high-performing Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers.



The M7 is a separate chip then, but (as Apple already made clear on the iPhone 5S product page) it processes the data from the MEMS sensors on the main A7 chip, letting the iPhone 5S’s big brain stay asleep while the low-power M7 works tirelessly in the background. These sensors – compass, accelerometer, gyroscope – are mostly the same as in previous iPhones, with the exception of the new Bosch Sensortech BMA220 3-axis accelerometer. According to Chipworks, this is the first time a Bosch component has been found in an iDevice.

The A7 is made by Samsung, just like previous iPhone brains, despite Samsung’s continued and shameless ripping off of Apple’s designs in all other areas. I guess there’s no decent alternative yet.

Source: Chipworks Blog)


There’s no getting around the fact that you look like a total dork when taking photos with your iPad, a problem only slightly mitigated by using the iPad Mini. But id you start shooting video with the Padcaster Mini, all bets are off. Even with my finely-tuned DorkDar (like a radar for nerdiness), I have no idea whether the Padcaster Mini will make you look awesome or utterly ridiculous.

There were so many app updates tumbling out into the new iOS7 app store on Wednesday that we didn’t have time to cover them all, but the update to the iOS Kindle app is definitely worth a look. I do most of my reading on an actual Kindle device, but I love the fact that I can pick up on any device thanks to Whispersync. And now the iOS Kindle experience is way less ugly than before.

The new Google Translate is ready for the iPhone and iPad, and it’s a fantastic update. While other apps are better at giving you context and points of grammar, Google’s app is hard to beat for fast translations of single words or phrases.

And now it adds a third way to input words: handwriting.

Triggertrap Mobile has just released v2 of its camera-controlling software, allowing you to hook it up to any of 300 camera models by wire, and fire the shutter remotely.

Of course, that’s not all it does: Triggertrap can use any and every sensor in your iPhone to trigger the camera, along with timers.

I never make actual phone calls – they’re for people who don’t know how to use the internet. But I used to, and I remember one thing: real telephone handsets are way more comfortable to use than cellphones, especially for long calls.

Which is to say, the POP Desk handset will look great next to your fax machine.

Kids: Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re here to stay (unless they stop being born in some kind of Children of Men nightmare world). And one of the things we love and hate most about kids is that they are drawn to our iDevices like a hooker is drawn to dangerous situations.

Now, these monsters get their own section in the app store, which means that you should probably consider visiting the Restrictions section in your iPhone’s settings and switching off the store.

Grab your iOS7-running iPhone and activate Siri. Now say one of the following…

Change the brightness
Adjust Bluetooth

… and various combinations thereof. You’ll be rewarded with switches and sliders to adjust these settings right there on the Siri screen. Pretty good huh?

Boom! No, I mean it literally. This is a boom mic for the iPhone, although here is is pictured not on a boom but on the iPhone itself. Yes, for just $40, you too can make amateurish-looking movies where the mic dips into frame at just the wrong moment[1].

One of the things that makes typing long-form text on the iPad bearable is TextExpander Touch, the iOS version of Smile Software’s amazing snippet-substitution app for the Mac. Sadly, iOS7 has broken the clever hack Smile was using to let it share its snippets with any app on your iDevice.

But happily, there’ a new hack, and it just requires third-party developers to make some tweaks to their own apps.

With iOS7, Apple has upped the cap for app downloads over cellular to 100MB, meaning that if you carelessly hit “update all” for your apps when you’re out of the house, and you have a bunch of game updates pending for your iPhone, then you could potentially burn through your entire month’s bandwidth allowance in one go.

Simplenote was one of the first iOS note-taking apps that could sync with apps on the Mac or the web. And despite tweaks and added complexity over the years, it really didn’t change.

Unfortunately, what passed for simple and minimal five years ago looks like a Linux spreadsheet app today, and this – along with some weird bugs – ended with me removing Simplenote from my iOS devices.

But now Simplenote is back. It’s simpler, it’s fast, and it also comes on the Mac.

The Nikon AW1 might look look as awesome as the Nikonos, Nikon’s previous waterproof camera (pictured below), but it is the first interchangeable-lens camera I can remember since that iconic design that can be taken underwater without a housing. And having tried out underwater photography with an iPhone and a blurry-lensed case this summer, I can totally see the appeal of doing it with a proper camera.

iOS 7’s Photos and Camera apps have been completely redesigned. Or rather, the Photos app has, with the Camera app getting some great updates, but changing very little functionally (A good thing, too – it was always easy to use).

So what’s changed? Pull up a beanbag, put on your favorite Barry White playlist and pour yourself a glass of delicious wine, while we take a look at everything new.

Juicy external battery packs are definitely the way to go for the globetrotting nerd – I have had my bacon saved a few times by the 12,000mAh battery pack I carry with me on trips – they’re not only good for the iPhone, but the iPad min, a Kindle, and even USB bike lights (this is the best unknown use for these chargers).

But you know what would be even better? A ruggedized, waterproof battery pack. And – surprise – that’s exactly what I’m just about to tell you about.

Ready for another weather app for your iPhone? Me too! I love WeatherPro on the iPad, but the iPhone version (despite today’s new iOS7 update) is almost impossible to read on the smaller screen. So I’m excited for Perfect Weather, which promises to make all the info I need available in a neat card view. Or rather, I would be excited if it was available outside the U.S.

No matter how fast you can unlock your iPhone and launch Drafts app, you’ll still be slower than someone jotting down a note with a pen and paper. But that means you have to carry a separate notepad along with your iPhone, and then you have to dig around in your bag or pocket to find it.

Not so with the Paperback, a, uh, a paper back for the iPhone 5/s/c.

With the exception of latency, AirPlay beats out Bluetooth audio streaming any day. Fewer dropouts, way better (lossless) quality and less power drain on your iDevice, as it works over the Wi-Fi connection you already have on anyway.

Usually, though, AirPlay speakers are expensive. The Auris Skye is designed to fix that, turning any dock connector into an AirPlay receiver.

If you want to get serious about typing on all your devices (and I mean all) (and I also mean serious), then the new Kanex Multi-Sync Keyboard is what you want. It’s a full-sized keyboard with a number pad, and it can connect to one device via USB, plus three more via Bluetooth, switching between them at the touch of a button.

The Nimblstand is an accessory for the Apple wireless keyboard, a kind of organizer and iPad stand which can be used on the desk or the lap. As such, it needs to be compared to the InCase Origami Workstation, the established gold standard for such things.

Which isn’t to say that the Nimblstand doesn’t have its own distinguishing features.

What is it with wooden gadgets? Cases I can understand – cases have been fashioned from wood since cases were invented, but it seems like a poor material choice for most high-tech purposes.

Then again, it looks gorgeous, just like this wireless charging sleeve from Orée.

iOS7 has a ton of tiny touches that make life easier (like automatically zooming pixel-doubled iPhone apps on the iPad, and using the retina iPhone assets even on the iPad mini), but it looks like users of older versions of iOS aren’t being left out. Or maybe Apple really, really wants developers to go iOS7-only.

Who needs to carry a clutch of compatible cables just to charge a few gadgets when you could just toss the CrossLink into your pocket/travel bag and be done? Best of all, it costs less than many single dedicated cables.