I suppose that product meeting for the V-Moda Vamp went something like this:
Designer: Here it is! The Vamp case. It’s a metal case for the iPhone.
Boss: What the hell is wrong with you? That thing is huge. It’s an embarrassment to the good name of V-Moda. My god. With a box that size you could fit in literally anything. ANYTHING!
(Light bulb goes off over designer’s head)
Man, is the Diff case a neat little iPhone case. It starts out as a tough case with a tripod mount (Zzzzz) but quickly picks up thanks to a clever cover and a pro-level lens mount.
The Lady has been trying to get me to go swimming. Up and down. In a pool. Like an animal. I said that I would do only if there were a way to make it less boring, like, say, someone offered to send a waterproof iPhone case and headphones for me to review.
Well, it looks like I might beef up my weak typist’s arms and firm up my beer belly this summer, as ECOXGEAR (a company who’s name contains the word "cox") has launched the ECOXPRO which works with the waterproof ECOXBUDS.
Canon has announced a brand new video-shooting DSLR, the EOS 650D. This freaks me out a little bit as I used to sell the EOS 650 to people as a part of my Saturday job in a camera store. The 650 was a 35mm SLR that Canon made from 1987 to 1989, and it was the company’s first auto-focus SLR.
Back to today. The 650D has all that you’d expect from a modern camera, plus a swing-out touch-sensitive LCD screen.
I used to work as a the sole waiter in a restaurant where the cash register consisted of a wooden cigar box and a solar-powered Casio calculator. I’m an honest chap, and the chef was also the owner, so it worked just fine. But times have changed, and now there exists a modern alternative to our old cedar box. It’s called the Cashbox and it is fashioned from beautiful bamboo varnished to look like a hideous high-school craft project.
With pens, there are really only a few designs — fountain pens with nibs, ballpoints and felt-tipped markers. Anything else is pretty much just a variation on those. But with iPad styluses, pen designers seem to be going crazy with brand new ideas. One of these is the GoSmart Stylus, and at first look it seems like a terrible idea. Pick it up and use it, though, and you’ll be hooked.
Best Of Photo Accessories [Best Of]
We have noticed a big crossover between Apple users and camera geeks. And while the iPhone’s own camera continues to get better and better, your old SLR still has some life in it yet. And whatever you shoot with, there are accessories that can perk up your interest or let you catch an otherwise-impossible shot. These are the best of them.
SnapFocus is a clever camera gadget from Brandon David Cole. It’s a rig made from bike brake levers, cables and cogs, and it allows a single person to both operate a camera to shoot video, and to pull focus at the same time.
Cult of Mac’s favorite iPhone case for photographers — the Gizmon Rangefinder Case — has just been improved with new functions, plus a leather strap. And what’s more, it’s actually cheaper than it used to be.
Love the idea of a Thunderbolt docking station but hate the idea of paying $1,000 for an Apple Thunderbolt-equipped display? Then why not save yourself $750 and opt for the Matrox DS1?
I test a lot of gadgets, and so I inevitably have stacks of USB cables left over. I’m pretty sure that a geek like you also has more than his or her fair share of wires. But I’ll be that none of them is as handy as the Twig, a bendable, pose-able iPhone cable that doubles as a tripod.
Why carry just a tiny iPad charging brick and a few miniature USB cables to juice all of your gadgets when you could instead schlep this huge "Portable Charging Station with Cable Rack" along with you instead? That’s what AViiQ hopes you’ll do, and it also wants you to pay $80-$100 for the privilege.
We all know that the best cable management system is a Thunderbolt-equipped cinema display, but it is also just about the most expensive way to wrangle all the wires you need to support the life of your MacBook. So Rockpool Designs’ CableStrip might be the next best thing, and it costs just $10.
If William Blake was alive today, and was pitching an iPhone case on Kickstarter, he might have called it The Trygger. Alas, he dies in 1827, long before either the iPhone or Kickstarter were invented, leaving the fate of the Trygger in the hands of Scott Phillips and Joel Kamerman.
The Trygger is a bumper-style case with a very clever sliding back which houses a polarizing filter. And if you have a nagging feeling that polarizers are the new fisheyes in the world of iPhone accessories, you’d be right — we covered a clip-on polarizer just last week.
Problem: Your iPhone takes amazing pictures, but when the sun is shining, you can’t see the damn screen. Solution: a giant eyepiece that sucks onto the iPhone’s screen and offers you a viewfinder shielded from the light of the sun. It’s called the Daylight Viewfinder, and it is coming to you via Kickstarter.
Imagine a JawBone JamBox, complete with its cute combination packaging/display case. Now imagine that it has been shrunken down into a two-inch cube. Further, try to picture a box that has had the Bluetooth radio extracted and replaced by a high-end DAC (digital analog converter) and a quality headphone amp. Now, keep this picture on your head as you reach around and pat yourself on the back and hear the theme from Rocky in your head.
Congratulations — you have successfully imagined the NuForce Cube, whilst simultaneously engaging all three of your main sensory systems.
Imagine the scene: You’re in the middle of a particularly intense iPhoneography session, and the photos you’re getting are gold. You snap one keeper after another and then shift over to SnapSeed or some such app to really spice things up. But you’re so engrossed in the process of editing that you don’t notice your iPhone’s battery is almost dead until you get the dreaded pop-up warning.
If you are equipped with Photojojo’s keychain backup charger, then you needn’t worry. Just flip the top, plug it in and continue working.
The Halopad is — not surprisingly — an iPad stand in the shape of a halo. Not that you’ll find this halo floating over the heads of saintly prophets — instead it is simply a chunky, lightweight plastic ring which has slots cut into it for propping the iPad at various angles. It’s simple, it’s cheap, and it’s not ugly.
Another day, another neat, camera-like iPhone case. But I promise you that this one is different. First, it manages to be highly functional without doing very much at all. Secondly, it’s actually a case you will want to keep on your iPhone and carry around with you all day.
Vowels are dropped from names so commonly these days that it can only end with the leftover consonants becoming so jammed together that they will densify and densify into some kind of alphanumerical black hole, dragging in all words until us humans will be rendered mute, and I will be forced to shut up once and for all.
And if you thought that paragraph had nothing to do with the next gadget, you’re dead wrong. It’s called the Statc (missing vowel) and it’s a camera “tripod” consisting of nothing but a big lump of super-strong magnet (black-hole-like attraction).
It looks like somebody finally answered my prayers for an iPad 3 case which would let me take photos without dropping the thing or looking like a complete dork. Instead, I can look like I’m some kind of clipboard-wielding
corporate drone taking a photo with an iPad.
The case is called the SlateSHIELD (I think you’re supposed to shout the last part whilst punching the air with your free hand) and it has a rotating handle on the back, as well as a flip-out kickstand. And crucially, it isn;t huge and fat.
I scoffed whan I first saw the PR e-mail for this Bluetooth iOS remote. Literally: I made a weird, half-snoring, half LOL-ing noise into my coffee. If that doesn’t count as a “scoff,” I don’t know what does.
Anyhow, after my initial (and messy) reaction, I quickly changed my mind. This thing packs in so many useful funcions, and does it in such a (fairly) handsome package that now I’m considering buying one.
Not only do Gizmon’s Clip-On Lenses offer a smart and speedy way to mount them on your iPhone, but they also break with the now-common fisheye-telephoto-wideangle triumvirate (mostly at least), instead coming in fisheye, polarizer and “3-image mirage filter” flavors. Better still, they will also play just fine with your iPad 2 or 3.
Tivoli, maker of fine old-fashioned radios with new-fashioned guts, has finally got with the game and added Bluetooth to its classic Model One and PAL lines. So now, in addition to beautiful, warm-sounding (mono) radio and music piped in over the wire, you can also hijack grandma’s favorite program wirelessly.
Apologies in advance for yet another camera adapter post, but this one — as you’ll see — is a biggie: The Fujifilm M-Mount adapter. But first, a short bit of history.