You know what time of year it is? Spring. And you know what kind of product is perfect to launch in your store during spring? According to the folks at Reign23 who sent me the PR email, the perfect spring accessory is gloves. Warm, hand-toasting gloves.
Or rather, a dab-on liquid which turns any gloves into touchscreen-friendly gloves.
I kinda like the little Modulo. It’s a set of battery packs for charging your gadgets, with the gimmick that they are stackable and work on concert, letting your tune the weight/power ratio depending on which gadgets you’re using, and how long you’ll be away from mains power.
They also look cool, like little game carts from the 1980s.
Remember the Slate Mobile AirDesk, which I described as resembling a “neatly-drilled chopping board”? Did you look at it and think “I like that. I could see myself using one of those, if only it was a little smaller, so I could carry it in my bag.”
If the answer to either of these is yes (or to the second question, mostly), then you will be ecstatic at the news of the SlateGo, a slightly smaller version of the laptop lap-desk.
You know the old saying: “Give a man a router, and he’ll turn a piece of wood into a perfectly-designed desk for the iPad-toting Mac user”?
Or was it “Give a man a router and he’ll set up a wireless network in your home office”?
No, wait, it was “Offer a man a router, and he’ll be forced to infer from context which device you mean to give him.”
Anyway, it’s a good saying, and it might apply to Artifox’s Desk 01, a desk which is equal parts beautiful and functional.
The Mobile Home is a one-thing-well kind of product. It connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth and lets you trigger Siri remotely. Which brings me to that excellent name – this is literally a mobile home button.
Remember when the coolest brag for a gadget was that it was “credit card size”? Those times are back. The Revi Charger is a credit card-size iPhone charger with a built-in backup battery, and could really be just the thing in an emergency.
Remember the Elevation Dock? Yeah, me too. The Kickstarter took so long to ship that everybody who’d ordered one had upgraded to the iPhone 5 by the time the dock shipped, so they needed adapters to make them fit their new phones.
Still, that won’t happen with the new Elevation Stand, which is a simple $100 aluminum brick that adds a few inches to the height of your iMac.
Barely two months after I bought the original, Logitech has updated the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad, with matching new models for the iPads Air and Mini. The Bluetooth keyboards still work as covers and stands for your iPad, but now they also hold the iPad at an adjustable angle, and have a hidden hinge that pops out when your need it.
Lytro’s new Illum field Camera is the first of its products you’ll want to buy. The original Lytro Field Camera was a nice proof of concept, but the low resolution images were pretty crappy, and the unit itself was one of the least ergonomic camera designs I’ve ever seen.
The Illum still has some ergonomics issues, but promises much better pictures.
Apple has released security patches to fix the Heartbleed bug on AirPort base stations, and SSL-based security updates for Apple TVs and Macs.
You should probably go and update all of them as soon as possible.
Summer’s (nearly) here! And that means we are forced outside to use our devices in places that remain inhospitable to our iPhones and iPads.
The Incipio Atlas ID is a slimline waterproof iPhone case that lets you keep using the iPhone 5s’ Touch ID scanner, even while it’s in the case.
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Evernote’s new Business Notebook (made my Moleskine) lets you share just a part of your handwritten notes with other businessy-type folks, and it also lets you check a box on each page to set a reminder. And of course it does this in concert with the Evernote suite of apps.
It’s hard to come up with a reason you wouldn’t buy the Jimi, a little dongle that plays the hell out of your iMac, then smashes it all over the stage and sets fire to it, all while continuing to kindle sweet electric guitar music from its dying body.
Wait, that’s not the same Jimi? The Bluelounge Jimi is a little j-shaped USB extension that lets you plug your peripherals into your iMac from the front? That sounds pretty cool.
This week we get ready for springtime excursions with three portable speakers that shrug off splashes and are happy to be used in the shower. Which one will you take to the lake, pool or beach? Let’s take a look.
On a Bags is at it again, launching three new bags for the laydeez and gennelmen out there. Do you like leather and canvas? Do you like style? Do you like protection for your camera gear and iOS devices? Then read on.
This combined Bluetooth attack alarm, flashlight and pepper spray is called the Peacekeeper. LOL.
The Peacekeeper keeps the peace by letting its user deliver a does of “military-grade” pepper spray into the face of another human being. Here’s what that means, according to a paper from the European Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA).
The effects of pepper spray are far more severe, including temporary blindness which lasts from 15–30 minutes, a burning sensation of the skin which lasts from 45 to 60 minutes, upper body spasms which force a person to bend forward and uncontrollable coughing making it difficult to breathe or speak for between 3 to 15 minutes.
Sometimes the simplest things are the best. A pen and paper for writing shopping lists. A broom instead of a Roomba. An Aeropress instead of a crappy K-cup. And now, a Lifta iMac stand instead of, uh, more complicated iMac stands.
I have a Libratone Zipp speaker, and it works great – within five line-of-sight meters of my router that is. Any further and it just goes nuts, shows me a red light and refuses to play.
What I need is a way to extend my network throughout my apartment, but without spending a fortune on AirPorts Express. If only there were a $30 box that not only extended my network but came in a package so tiny I could dot them around the house.
Wait, what’s that? The Gramofon?
Macally’s BTKEYPRO looks like a nice do-everything keyboard, for all your devices. The main selling point is that it can pair with and switch between up to five devices, letting you use it with your iMac, MacBook, iPad, iPad Mini and iPhone, all at the touch of a key.
But it does more than just that.
Grovemade’s neat iPhone bumper cases offer protection to your phone, and although they’re a bit bulky they’re light and they look great. This new MacBook Back, a self-adhesive walnut panel, offers no useful protection, but it only adds 1.8 or 2.5 ounces to the weight of the whole package.
This week we look at lightweight, easy-to-carry camera bags that are perfect for carrying a mirrorless camera, an iPad and a couple of other bits – because the days of crushing your shoulders with a giant backpack filled with DSLRs and MacBook Pros are over.
You know how when you pull that rank-looking piece of meat from the fridge, you don’t really know whether it’ll fill you or kill you? Is that chunk of chicken still fresh? Should you grill that fish or toss it?
Now (or soon anyway), you can use the Peres to answer those questions. It’s an electronic nose that sniffs your meat and tells you whether it’s still good to eat.
In the olden days, format snobbery was a little bigger. Real photographers used medium format cameras, stuffed with big rolls of 120 or 220 film, and they laughed at folks who struggled by with little toy “full-frame” 35mm cameras.
These medium format cameras were also distinctly old school, without much automatic control.
Back then, the Pentax 645 was an odd camera, an affordable medium format camera with auto-everything. Well, not everything, but way more than you’d get in the Mamiyas and Hasselblads at the time.
Which is all to introduce the Pentax 645Z, Ricoh’s new 51.5 megapixel body with a price tag of $8,500, not much more than a top-of-the-line full frame SLR body.
This is the Gallery Waist Pack. It’s the answer to the question, “What if we made a fanny pack for the iPad?”
That’s not quite as simple as it would seem. After all, the fanny pack is the preferred bag of the middle-aged and style-free. It’s the bag for somebody who values practicality over everything else.
And while the iPad is not completely the opposite of this, it is at least opposed to the beige pleated-pants crowd.
Mixing the two is like crossing the streams.
Samsung has redesigned its SD and microSD cards with color coding that makes it easier to spot the difference between product lines – regular, Pro and Evo. Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to color-code cards.