In my childhood home, a Dust Donut was what we called and cake or cookie that had gotten lost down the back of the sofa or under an armchair, only to be rediscovered weeks or months later, covered in (you guessed it) a layer of dust and lint.
However, the Dust Donut we’re talking about today is a simple aftermarket weather seal for your Canon SLR lenses.
Pocowool for iPad is the big brother to the Pocowool iPhone case, a minimal felted-wool taco which doubled as a clutch bag/purse. The iPad version draws more than a little inspiration from the Don’t Panic, another wool-and-leather case for the iPad, but opts for a slightly simpler design.
What could possibly be dorkier than taking photos with your iPad? Taking those same photos with your iPad on a tripod, that’s what. So if you’re wearing a polo shirt and chinos, and have a phone holster on your belt, then this is for you: The iStabilizer tabMount.
Home automation is here, but it isn’t cheap — unless you go the smart route with Securifi‘s new Almond+ router. For $100, this thing has much of what you’d expect from a top-tier router: Fast, next-gen 802.11ac compatibility (but still works with this-gen “n” devices), a claimed 5000 ft radius of coverage, four ethernet ports, a USB port and some slick mounting options.
We caught wind of the Mauz iPhone dongle from Spicebox last week during CES, and promised you a closer look; here it is. You’ll remember that the dongle connects to your Mac over wifi and lets you control it from your iPhone in three unusual ways: by flicking your iPhone, waving your hand over it or making a 3D-model on your Mac mimic the movements of your iPhone in real space.
If you’ve pre-ordered a Pebble smartwatch, the first thing you’ll want to do when it arrives is connect it to your smartphone. After all, that’s the whole idea, right? Then you’ll be pleased to know that Pebble’s official apps for Android and iOS will be available before the device arrives on your doorstep.
The folks behind this already-fully funded Kickstarter project for the ultra-thin AL13 iPhone 5 bumper case want you to help them reach and then spend their stretch goal money. They’re looking for you to hop onto their project page and leave a comment with your vote for your favorite color from the choices of Purple, Fuschia, Blue, White, and Gunmetal. The winning color will go into production if the project reaches $75,000, while the top two favorite colors will go into production if the project reaches a stretch goal of $100,000.
Since the original $20,000 goal has already been more than doubled, these are pretty realistic goals, especially since there’s still 28 days to go in the project timeline.
Analog media are great and all – vinyl, film, paper – but they all suffer by living in a non-connected vacuum. Lomo’s new Kickstarter project aims to fix that, for film photos at least, by turning your iPhone into a 35mm film and slide scanner.
Finally, you can post photographs with genuine light-leaks straight to your Instagram.
Rickshaw, maker of most of my favorite bags, is hawking this neat new sack on Kickstarter. It’s a version of the venerable Zero Messenger bag, with the addition of a glowing LED strip along the back.
We’ve been itching to get our hands on the Pebble smartwatch since it first hit Kickstarter, but that wait will be over later this month. At CES in Las Vegas today, Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky announced that the device has now entered mass production, and that shipping will begin on January 23.
No one really likes slapping a case on their iPhone — no matter how pretty or how protective that case may be. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll try to find the thinnest, lightest iPhone case on the market in an effort to preserve Apple’s sleek and sexy design. Mod-3 feels exactly the same way, and they’ve designed the Radius, a new iPhone 5 case that’s so minimalistic you’ll hardly notice it.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Roaming the halls of CES like a ghoul is a hard work. So when someone jumped out from their booth and offered me a free massage, I took it. The kind gentleman then tossed a weird vest over my head and ask me which pop artist I want to have massage me. I originally requested Lionel Ritchie, but had to settle with Carly Rae Jepsen – naturally.
The contraption hanging around my shoulders is called the iMusic BodyRhythm. It’s like one of those fancy massage machines you can buy at Brookstone, except the iMusic BodyRhythm hooks up to your iPhone and will massage you to the beat of your music. And let me tell you, Carly Rae Jepsen is a great masseuse. She should probably switch careers, because as much as I love singing-along to Call Me Maybe, I like it even more when it’s massaging the kinks out of my back.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Earlier today we posted a snippet about the Mauz dongle, and how it can turn your iPhone into a remote that can control your desktop through gestures, through either waving your iPhone around, or waving your hand over it. Now the Israeli-designed device has hit Kickstarter, with a funding goal of $150,000.
It’s not often that you get to say something like “Lewis and Clark RPG,” right? Not Lois and Clark, but LEWIS and Clark, the famous explorers from American history, who did a whole lot of exploring, have a trail named after them, and will always be associated with Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who traveled with them to serve as guide and translator.
The Meriwether Kickstarter project has 50 hours to go to get as far past the initial funding goal (which it hit today) as it can to help fund even more historical awesomeness, like special outfits for Lewis that raise his stats, the addition of a Girardoni Air Rifle, an endless arcade mode, and a bizarre nightmare dreamscape extra bonus level with giant sloths and wooly mammoths.
When I was a kid, magnets promised everything and delivered nothing. Wile E. Coyote’s scheme to feed the Road Runner iron filings and trap him with a giant horseshoe magnet mightn’t have work exactly as planned, but the magnet did at least drag any and every metal object in the vicinity into Mr. Coyote’s cave.
These days, magnets are as strong as the cartoons always promised. And they make things like Mesh’s JustMount possible.
Cregle, the makers of the iPen, a Kickstarter-funded iPad stylus, have upped their game with plans for a second generation digital pen, called appropriately enough, the iPen 2. It’s also gotten a Kickstarter project, and it’s also going to have an iPad model. What’s different this time, though, is that the iPen 2 will have a Mac version of the digital pen, allowing you to write directly on your iMac or Apple Cinema Display.
Two-man Detour Games wants to give the casual crowd a hardcore game, with RAW, a game currently in development. It will hopefully get funded as a Kickstarter project, too.
RAW will be a 2D action platformer/runner on rails for Android, OUYA, and desktop computers, and hopefully on iOS as well, if the project meets its stretch goals. In it, a cyborg juggernaut named RAW must keep running to stay charged up.
Last week, we told you about how Apple’s ridiculous Lightning rules forced a Kickstarter project to shut down after raising $140,000. The POP Station was intended to provide charging for multiple kinds of connectors, including Lightning and the older 30-pin. For users who own newer Apple devices and legacy 30-pin devices, the POP solved the problem of constantly switching out cables.
After raising the money, the makers of POP were informed that Apple’s new licensing rules wouldn’t allow Lightning and 30-pin connectors to be packaged together. There was such an outcry from backers and the online media that Apple has since reversed its stance.
Oh man! The Mac Belt is an amazing combination of flat-out utility and naively wrongheaded design. It is exactly the kind of thing you expect a mad professor to come up with, except this crackpot product is actually out there on Kickstarter.
Here’s a brief description: The Mac Belt is a belt (the kind that holds your pants up) with a giant novelty buckle. And that buckle folds out to make a little bracket for your iPad or iPhone. Yup. An iPad stand that mounts on your junk.
Apple’s guidelines for its new Lightning connector have forced a popular Kickstarter project that sourced almost $140,000 in funding — more than twice the amount it required — to close and refund all of its backers. Electronics firm Edison Jr designed a charging station compatible with a multitude of Android and iOS devices called the POP. But after exceeding its funding goal, it quickly realized that Apple wouldn’t approve it.
“Click!” You hear that? It’s the sound of an iPad turning into a Microsoft Surface, with the help of the Nibiqü keyboard cover.
Now that we see it, it’s obvious that this product was completely inevitable. And almost equally inevitable is the fact that it comes by way of Kickstarter.
While regular ol’ cameras race to add touch screens, apps and pinch-to-zoom even while they strip away their physical buttons, Snapgripp is doing the exact opposite for the iPhone.
The little case’n’handle combo adds a finger grip to the iPhone 4/S and – in concert with a companion app – lets you pretend like your iPhone is a real camera. Except for that tiny sensor anyway.
Here’s how you start an e-mail pitch:
In your last post about the Braven 570, I loved how you said that someday you might stop writing about candy bar shaped speakers. Well, today is the day for a Bluetooth speaker that shaped like, well, paper.
That speaker is the CoverPlay Mojo, a skinny speaker that will snuggle into your luggage between your shirts, instead of needing to be jammed inside a shoe like all its stupid, oafish rivals.
Alex Peake leads Primer Labs, an indie game development company that has been working on Code Hero, an innovative game that’s meant to teach students how to code software. The game was said to be in development for Mac and Windows, with an iOS version also in the works.
Code Hero was a huge success on Kickstarter earlier this year, as Peake raised $170,000 in just a couple days. The funding was supposedly going directly towards the development of Code Hero, and backers were promised physical copies of the game.
Since early in the year, Peake and Primer Labs haven’t been responding to backers, and now it’s been revealed that the educational tool will probably never see the light of day.
The WINGStand, from the guys at BiteMyApple, is another accessory that was born on Kickstarter. It allows you to combine your iPad, iPad mini, and iPhone with your Apple Wireless Keyboard in the simplest way possible — without carrying additional an additional stand, dock, or case.
Simply attach the WINGStand clips to the back of your keyboard — they cling onto its battery compartment — and they form a stand in which you can sit your iOS devices. As you can see from the photograph above, the two almost merge into one to create a pretty little computer that’s perfect for getting things done on the go.
When you’ve finished working, simply pull the WINGStand clips off your keyboard, clip them together, and throw them in your bag.
The WINGStand is available in white and “eco friendly” black and it costs just $15. Is it worth it?