Charlie Sorrel - page 95

Possibly the most ridiculous omission from the iPhone’s camera app is a self-timer. If you want to take a selfie, or a group shot with you in it, or even a shake-free photo in low-light, then you’ll have to download a third-party camera app with a countdown timer built in.

Why is such a simple feature missing? Who knows? My cyclical side says that Apple is avoiding the inevitable lawsuits that would pour in when phones started getting snatched mid-photo whilst propped on the tops of inner-city walls.

Whatever the reason, Shuttr is here to fix the problem.

We all hate iTunes—it’s the fashionable thing to do. The smarter amongst us have switched over to Rdio and Spotify or another streaming service, and use iTunes solely as a way to sync our iDevices.

But Vox is a new app (launching today) which will give you access to your iTunes library without all the cruft that makes it almost impossible to use for, you know, tunes. It’s pretty sweet.

Meet the eleMount, a poseable aluminum mount for your iPhone or—if you’re feeling adventurous—the iPad mini. It’s like a little angle poise elbow for your phone, letting you set it at almost any angle you like.

Tasket is a service that syncs your Google Tasks list with your iOS Reminders list. It performs this magical feat pretty much flawlessly, using a Microsoft Exchange server to do the syncing, and letting you add and remove tasks from pretty much anywhere.

Nikon’s new SB–300 is an entry-level speed light that you probably shouldn’t buy. It’s a tilting, non-swivel model that runs off two AA batteries, costs $150 and has pretty much zero off-camera manual control.

Leica’s incredible Monochrom camera costs $8,000, and shoots only B&W images. That is of course an absurd price, but it does bring amazing light sensitivity and detail thanks to the fact that there are no color filters blocking light from the sensor, and that all three dots from each pixel are dedicated to grabbing luminance data.

New Zealander Raymond Collecutt clearly liked the look of a dedicated monochrome sensor, but didn’t like the price. So he did what anyone would do—he sacrificed one of his two Canon EOS 1000Ds to the cause, and scraped off the color micro lenses on top of the sensor.

Squaready is one of my most-used photo apps on iOS. It has one purpose: to take your rectangular photos and turn them into squares by padding the edges, letting you post them intact to Instagram.

The trouble is, it’s ugly as sin, with the kind of interface that you’d expect to see if Linux and Windows XP got drunk on cider one night and had a little “surprise” appear nine months later.

Happily, Squaregram exists, and its a lot prettier. It also now works with Camera+, and has had some UI tweaks to make it even better.

You’re going to love this one. What if I told you there was an iPad accessory that combined a full-sized keyboard, a case, a desktop tray and an iPhone dock, plus a compartment for storing a whole mess of charging and connection accessories. And what if I told you this behemoth was styled into a package that would make a 1990s-era traveling businessman proud to use it?

Well, as you may have suspected, this absurdity does exist. It’s called the Modus III, and it’s all kinds of awesome.

If there’s one thing I hate more than kids, it’s the thought of their filthy hands touching my pristine gadgets. Worse, these walking fetuses have brains so undeveloped that they will drop something the second they stop thinking about it.

For me, the solution is easy—just avoid the little monsters. But parents aren’t so lucky (although you could argue that they brought it upon themselves), and need a little help. And today that help comes in the form of Kensington’s “SafeGrip™ Rugged Case & Stand for iPad® mini.”

If you thought the switch from the squat screen iPhone of the iPhones 1–4 to the tall and slim screen of the iPhone 5 was bad, then wait for iOS 7. I have the beta in daily use on my iPhone, and when I go back to my iOS 6-encumbered iPad mini, it feels like I’m visiting my grandmother’s house. Worse: any apps with a lot of heavy UI chrome start to seem as oppressive as a serial killer’s basement.

Thankfully, there’s an easy fix in the simple and clean shape of Glyphish, a set of beautiful icons, illustrations and (not so hot) backgrounds.

Did you ever find yourself pinching to zoom a paper map, or tapping and holding on an unfamiliar word in a newspaper trying to pop up a dictionary definition? It always ends in frustration, no? Not anymore. Not the second one, anyway: Meanings is an app that lets you use the iPhone’s camera to look up up real-world words in the fake-world dictionary.

I have used a variety of Eye-Fi cards in the past, both top-end, RAW-compatible Eye-Fi branded cards, and SanDisk’s licensed versions. And all of them have sucked. But the folks at Photojojo insisted I try out the new 8GB Eye-Fi mobi, a card designed to pair with an iDevice and let you seamlessly transfer pictures from any camera to your iPhone or iPad.

And — to my huge surprise — it’s fantastic.

I know, I know. This is technically the third post I’ve written about the Panasonic GX7. But it’s also the first post since it has existed as anything except a Schrödinger’s Rumor.

The GX7 is Panasonic’s best-looking Micro Four Thirds camera to date, in terms of both styling (it’s retro-hot) and design choices. It’s also priced to go up against cameras like Fuji’s X-series, at $1,000 for the body alone, and $1,100 for camera and 14–42mm (28–84mm equivalent) kit lens.

Quip is an odd new app that looks like it could be incredibly useful. It’s billed as a word processor, but it combines text editing with instant messaging, change tracking and sharing — plus it has a very cool interface.

Oh, and it works on your iPhone, your iPad and your Mac (in the browser).

Poor Canon. When it comes to compact cameras, its heart is in the right place, but the market is shriveling so fast that sometimes it’s hard to see the point. Today’s example is the Vixia Mini camcorder, a video version of its quirky Powershot N. The Vixia Mini is a square box with a flip-out screen and a fisheye lens. And as a nod to smartphone users, it has Wi-Fi built in. But do we care?

Photowerks is a Smart Album app for the iPhone and iPad that you will actually use. Unlike previously-written-about SmartAlbums, Photowerks uses easy spinning dials to set criteria for your saved searches, and it is also quick and very nicely designed.

Today’s how-to will show you how to install the command-line picture-manipulation tool ImageMagick, and how to build an Automator system service using shell scripting. The Service will take any number of pictures and make one long photo that contains them all. It’s as if you laid them out in a row on a table, only without a table, and with a computer.

Amazingly, it’s all pretty easy.

There’s one great feature of the Lightning cable that I didn’t notice until just now: Its thinness compared to the old 30-pin plug means that it’s a lot easier to squeeze through small holes. And that in turn makes custom docks a simple, Dremel-free experience.

Take a look around you and see if there’s anything that could be improved by running a little cable through a hole in the top. That’s just what the folks at Photojojo did, and — almost inevitably — their eyes rested on a vintage film camera.

The very best part of the KEEO is the product video. And the very best part of that is KEEO’s creator Christopher Zenic. Just go and watch it right now and tell me you don’t keep expecting him to say “No, Mr. Bond – I expect you to die.”

Anyhow. The KEEO is a fancy key holder with some special iPhone-friendly extras.

Kanex’s MeDrive looks like an essential bit of kit for anyone with an iDevice and a whole mess of media files. It’s a personal file server, only unlike most solutions we’ve seen, it lets you hook up any USB drive to share and access its contents.

There’s something that happens to a certain kind of person when it comes to hobbies: The acquisition of gear becomes more important than the hobby itself. Take photography, for instance.

One short trip to the Internet will fill your browser with awful, pointless photos taken by men with cameras that cost them a fortune. You’ll see truly lame family snapshots taken on an $8,000 Leica Monochrom, posted with notes about the tonality and the bokeh, as if the gear makes these snapshooters into great photographers.

And you’ll see accessories. All kinds of crazy accessories that do little but fuel the need to upgrade to ever more specialized and expensive models.

Back when I worked a Saturday job in a camera store, we’d joke about the men who’d spend so much on a camera that they could only afford the cheap off-brand film. For these folks, there’s the Artisan Obscura shutter release, a tiny, $30 circle of wood that screws into a camera’s shutter release.

Cobook has updated its contacts/address book app, adding some long-overdue features, some neat new tricks, and – finally – a store, so you can give the company some money at last.

I got talking to an old man with a long beard yesterday. It was almost down to his jewel-studded belt. And he told me that “back in the day,” “where he comes from,” gentlemen would try to fill their living rooms with ugly black and silver boxes covered with flashing and pulsing lamps. They’d lay rope-like cables around the rooms of their homes, and the “coffee table” – as he called it – would be covered with smaller, button-covered boxes.

These gentlemen would argue with their ladies, who “just wanted to relax and watch a bit of TV for God’s sake WHATS WRONG WITH YOU.”

“Back in the day” was of course “the 1980s and 1990s,” and these boxes were stereo and home theater gear. Now we live in an enlightened age where these things are as beautifully integrated into our homes as, well, as baskets of potpourri, I guess.

Just like the Sound Spot.

You might – as I did – laugh at the idea of a solar-powered keyboard for the iPad. And then you will remember that independence from power supplies is one of the iPad’s main features. And then you will take a closer look at this aluminum and plastic slab and see that it looks a lot like my favorite iPad keyboard from Zagg.

All Panasonic’s hopes of a surprise launch of its GX7 camera have been dashed. The Micro Four Thirds body has now been fully leaked, with what look to be official pictures and specs. And what a camera. If you have had your eye on one of Fujifilm’s retro-styled but ultra-modern x-series cameras, but already own a clutch of Micro Four Thirds lenses, then this camera may well be for you.