David Pierini - page 46

GoPro owns the action camera market it invented and the routine emergence of new competitors only seems to make GoPro’s sales go up. Why would anyone try to compete?

In creating The People’s Action Camera, Utah-based Vidi did not set out to target GoPro. It is instead aiming for more budget-conscious consumers who aren’t necessarily into gadgets. The result is a camera that requires little to no study to use, provides pro-grade high-def footage and has software that edits video for you.

One other thing – it costs less than $100.

Best List: Fujifilm X100T camera

My professional DSLRs are starting to look good in retirement. Just ask my neck, back and right shoulder, which are still angry after years of toting the heavy cameras and lenses around.

In their place to sate my photographic wanderings is the Fujifilm X100T, a diminutive, mirrorless, rangefinder-style camera that records gorgeous files. Its exterior is also easy on the eyes — it tends to stop passersby, who ask questions like, “Is that a Leica?”

While working for Apple alongside good friend Jony Ive on special projects, like the Apple Watch, industrial designer Marc Newson found time to devote his celebrated sensibilities to two very simple objects.

Behold his take on the toaster and the teapot. Simple and clearly fitting for kitchens right now and 100 years from now.

You have your reasons for not owning a smartwatch, one of which is you happen to like the timepiece presently on your wrist. What if you could make your primitive wristwatch a little smart?

Chronos is like slapping a brain on the back of your favorite timepiece. It is an ulna-thin disc with 36 hours of battery life that brings curated notifications and health tracking to a watch of any age.

We were all supposed to have personal jetpacks by now. But keeping them in the air for any length of time has made them impractical, so to get our futuristic fix we have to settle for Buzz Lightyear or James Bond from the 1965 movie Thunderball.

But check out jetpack pilots Yves Rossy and Vince Reffet, of the Jetman Dubai team, who recently conducted a fantastic formation flight over the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai with an Emirates A380 commercial jet.

If you upgraded to an iPhone 6s, chances are the case on your old 6 fits just fine. But if the old case is waterproof, don’t go dropping that 6s in a puddle.

The iPhone 6s is taller, wider and thicker by 1/100th of an inch in either direction, hardly noticeable in hand but enough to compromise the protection on a waterproof case.

Catalyst, an accessories company favored by Apple users unafraid of a little water on their devices, has rolled out a new waterproof case for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

China’s legendary black markets have goods and services for every need, from organs to counterfeit designer handbags. For cashed-strapped Apple fans in this communist country, there’s also a thriving market around iPhone upgrades.

For as little as $100 U.S. dollars, the 16GB iPhone can get upgraded to 126GB. That’s a big deal to Chinese consumers, who have trouble affording the 16GB iPhone 6 at just over $700, let alone any models with more capacity.

The openings to my ear canals are small. There, I said it. Hearing is not a problem, but finding earbuds that fit is a pain in the, well, ears.

Apple’s customary earphones that came with every iPod or iPhone I bought got tossed in a drawer. At least there, they wouldn’t fall out.

Decibullz, a startup company when they hit it big with moldable earbuds last year, is now trying to bring to production a set of wireless earphones with the moldable tips. The molding process requires nothing more than a glass of hot water.

The art that flows from Salavat Fidai’s pencils actually never leaves the pencils.

A curvy stallion, a row of circus elephants or the Eiffel Tower remain on the tips of pencils thanks to Fidai’s steady hand and patient craft knife that carves the soft lead into a sculptural symbol easily recognized in the most unexpected place.

There’s now a faster way to flip the middle finger or display a steaming pile of poop – along with your other favorite emoji.

EmojiWorks has introduced what is probably the first portable keyboard with built-in emoji shortcuts. Each letter key displays two or three different emoji, which can be inserted into a message by pressing a dedicated emoji key.

The tech accessories industry had better get to work on coming up with a protective case for a new Apple product that appears to be fragile – the remote control for Apple TV.

The above remote fell onto a tiled floor from a person’s lap and shattered. It does not work, costing the owner an extra $79 to replace it (nope, he did not purchase Apple Care).

Do you want to be known for carrying a stylish computer bag or would you rather be known for being stylish? The Shadow by booq will let you stand out without calling attention to itself while it works to earn a different label: your everyday bag.

The Shadow blends seamlessly with whatever personal style you front with a simple silhouette sans leather or metal accents. You have to look hard to find the brand name. Thick, water-resistant ballistic nylon conceals the ample padding that protects any laptop up to 15 inches.

Cupertino, Calif. and the swamps of Louisiana may sound like a mismatched marriage. But the luxury design house Bianca Mosca knew the two would make a beautiful pair when it launched alligator bands for the Apple Watch.

If the Apple Watch fell flat with some fashion critics when it first arrived earlier this year, it could possibly change some minds with a lushly-textured exotic skin band that comes in 11 colors.

When I moved to Minnesota, I was warned there would be some winter days when I don’t dare take off my gloves while outdoors. My warmest gloves, though, do not have touch-enabled fingertips, which is a problem when shooting photos or using my phone in the winter.

Instead of buying new gloves, I could try a solution called Nanotips. It is a conductive liquid polyamide solution you paint on the fingertips of any gloves and it is formulated to mimic the touch of human skin.

Smartwatches have been around for a few years and as a must-have device, they haven’t quite caught on. Analysts say there are two barriers, price and people not seeing the advantage of owning one.

But a new report shows Apple is making a dent in at least one of those barriers. A survey of 11,000 people by Kantar US Insights shows 92 percent recognize the Apple brand more than any other brand. Fitbit came in second with 47 percent with Google and Samsung scoring in the low 30s.

With the watch now reinvented, a pair of avid runners believe it’s time to reinvent the watch band.

They have created a band that moves the face of a smartwatch to the spot on the hand just below where the thumb and forefinger meet. The result for runners, cyclists or anyone using the Apple Watch’s health tracking features is the face of the watch remains in the line of site.

So maybe fans and friends of Steve Jobs think the Aaron Sorkin film was a bit of a hatchet job on the late mercurial genius who started Apple.

An IT company in the Ukraine called QuartSoft released an animated biography of Jobs this week as a way to thank him “for letting us enjoy the perfection of the products you created.”

Pulling the plug and getting the new MacBook with its single USB-C port doesn’t mean pulling the plugs on your peripherals. Plenty of companies, Apple included, offer adapters.

But one of the most versatile and elegant adapters arrived Wednesday from Satechi. Its hub adapter offers three A-type USB ports, an SD card slot and a micro SD card slot, allowing a user to seamlessly carry on.

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has had a couple of good months as it aims to shed its image as a manufacturer of cheap devices. It released a new and now popular premium phone in September, surpassed rival Xiaomi in sales in their home market and, like Apple, had a glowing Q3 earnings report.

And with Apple boasting of rapid growth in China, Huawei answers the challenge by hiring Apple’s former creative director, Abigail Brody, to be the company’s chief user experience designer.

China’s rising middle class has been good for Apple and the iPhone. CEO Tim Cook said iPhone sales in the world’s largest smartphone market has risen 112 percent over the last year.

Cook reported the China earnings during Apple’s third-quarter conference call as the company gets to set to release an earnings report Tuesday afternoon for the last quarter that many analysts are predicting will be underwhelming.

You may soon be able to make purchases in the iTunes store without a credit or debit card.

Apple has been working with a phone carrier in Germany on an agreement that would let people pay for items as part of their phone bills. Users’ phone numbers, rather than credit cards or bank account numbers, will be used to make purchases that will show up on the next bill.

You’ve got an idea for a shot with your GoPro camera. But you don’t have the right mount, or the tripod you carry won’t go low enough or fit in a space with that great angle.

Photographer Ruogo Zhou has designed a hunk of plastic that cradles the GoPro and provides it 20 different angles for shooting. It’s a small polyhedron support that can fit in tiny spaces and it goes by the name SLOPES.

My female friends who are photographers bristle when you bring up the idea of a camera bag being designed for women. The few women’s camera bags they’ve seen have tended to be cutesy – and cutesy doesn’t cut it.

They want the same things in a bag as the men – roomy, stealthy and sturdy. Why should gender matter in the design?

ThinkTank, an industry leader in camera bags for every kind of photography, may have found the right combination of aesthetic and function in a new line of bags created for women.

A memory chip that originated from the first digital computer on a manned space flight will be up for auction next month in Dallas. For those calling in a bid, the smartphone in their hand has more than 250 million times the capacity of this chip.

The onboard computer for Gemini 3 aided astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young with several phases of their March 1965 mission, including prelaunch and re-entry. The 4.25-inch chip, a Random Access Non-Destruction Readout Memory Plane contains 4,096 bits of information, equal to about half of a K.

We know that keeping our smartphones and tablets plugged in over night, well past the point of a full charge, will deplete precious battery life. But who among us purposely gets up in the middle of the night to unplug?

The team at UsBidi assumes very few, which is why its developers believe they have something special with a charging cord that automatically cuts off the power to a device when the battery is full.