LAS VEGAS – Not a summer goes by where I don’t hear about some local kid who drowned in the family pool while the parents were distracted. Lifeguards and common sense are the most protection against drowning, but iSwimband is an extra-layer of protection for parents monitoring multiple kids in the pool.
LAS VEGAS – Now that “selfie” has officially gone mainstream as the word of 2013, iPhone users are always looking for ways to take a better self portrait. Taking selfies with your front camera is easier, but if you want to use your iPhone’s full imaging capabilities you’ll have to do some weird hand contortions to get the shot framed and snapped. That’s where Hisy comes in.
LAS VEGAS — Think the only serious, affordable quiver of lenses available for iPhone 5/S iPhoneography are the ones from Olloclip? Nope. Wrong.
LAS VEGAS — We got a chance to hang out a bit with Daniella Hernandez at the Lenmar booth at CES in Vegas, learning more about the innovative Chug Plug, a 65W external power pack that you can use to extend the portable staying power of your MacBook.
The first-of-its-kind Chug Plug integrates into your already existing power plug set up, with your power brick attaching to the right side of the Chug Plug to both charge the external battery pack as well as use your MacBook at the same time.
When you need to leave that comfy seat near the wall plugs at the coffee shop, the Chug Plug then provides an extra two to three hours of portable power so you can continue your work or play away from the tether.
Chug Plug is available now for $159.99 at online retailers.
LAS VEGAS — It was only a matter of time before the behemoths of the fitness world jumped into the fitness-band fight; although considering Garmin has been making wrist-borne fitness gadgets for ages (in the guise of their Forerunner line) one might have expected their new Vivofit to have arrived much sooner.
LAS VEGAS — We’ve been SteelSeries fans for quite a while now, what with their stellar line up of headphones and gaming peripherals for both Mac and iOS.
The Chicago-based company just released what they’re calling the first Bluetooth-enabled official iOS 7 gaming controller, the Stratus.
We hung out with the team a bit at CES, and what we saw looks pretty damn sweet. Check it out.
Loop Attachment, the company behind the awesome Mummy cases for iOS devices, is at CES in Las Vegas this week showing off its latest product for the iPhone. It’s called the Straitjacket, and it fuses a hard plastic bumper with the silky smooth silicone that Loop Attachment is famous for.
LAS VEGAS – FLIR One debuted their all-new thermal imaging camera case at CES this week, that gives the iPhone 5 and 5s the power to pick up heat signatures up to 100 meters away from live people, animals, and pretty much anything else in your environment.
When Xbox Music finally made its debut on the iPhone last September, one of its most notable shortcomings was the lack of ability to store music locally for offline listening. But a new update that hit the App Store today rectifies that, giving subscribers the ability to enjoy their favorite playlists without a data connection.
https://youtu.be/_RenT6bTtis
LAS VEGAS — Webcams are such a thing of the past. The Canary is an Indiegogo-funded security camera and app that uses algorithms to detect abnormal movement in your home and send you an alert.
Which means, of course, that you can use the Canary not only to get notifications when there’s out-of-the-ordinary activity recorded, but also to capture video you can look at later that may not have tripped a notification.
We talked with the Canary crew at CES, as you can see in the video above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxuacwotoQw
Terry Cavanaugh is one of the more talented developers in indie game development right now, with his famously difficult game Super Hexagon taking one of our top picks for 2012 Game Of The Year.
One of Cavanaugh’s previous games was a Metroid-like retro space platformer called VVVVVV. It’s available on Mac, and super fun, featuring a reversible gravity mechanic that makes the game one of the biggest charmers to hit the indie gaming scene in years. And now, it’s coming to the iPhone and iPad.
One of the most popular reasons to jailbreak an iPhone is BiteSMS, a jailbreak tweak that supper charges text messaging with better messaging alerts, quick reply and more. Unfortunately, ever since the iOS 7 jailbreak came along BiteSMS has been MIA, but that’s all changed with the release of BiteSMS for iOS 7, which not only updates the popular messaging app to be compatible with Apple’s latest mobile OS but also adds support for modern devices with 64-bit A7 processors.
We’ve seen famed Apple concept designer Martin Hajek’s take on Cupertino’s possibly mythical, believed-to-be-forthcoming iWatch before, but that was before iOS 7 came along. So Hajek decided to adapt his design for the post-Forstall age.
The result? The iWatch S and iWatch C, which have not only been updated to support iOS 7 (at least in Hajek’s head), but which have taken some new design cues from the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.
Apple has opened an official online store on popular Chinese e-commerce gateway Tmall.
Run by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tmall was launched in 2008 and hosts more than 70,000 merchants — including global brands such as Nike and Gap.
While Apple hasn’t officially commented on its Tmall store opening, an Alibaba rep has confirmed that this is an official Apple page and that it opened recently.
LAS VEGAS –Your iPhone is dirty. You know how we know? We subjected our intrepid reporter’s iPhone to Corning’s on-site contaminant test at CES in Vegas.
Corning is there, talking to Cult of Mac about its new Gorilla Glass, which will have a layer of ionic silver embedded in it. That will decrease the amount of bacteria on your iPhone screen while still being crazy-strong and scratch-resistant.
The result? It’s pretty gross.
Okay, thanks to buyouts and changing leadership it’s not the same company that once inspired Steve Jobs, but Polaroid’s newly-unveiled C3 is still a retro-styled throwback to the brand’s glory days.
Taking the form of a cube-shaped 35mm machine, the C3 combines a wide angle lens that can take still images at 1.3-, 3- and 5-megapixels, as well as recording high-definition video.
I love everything about my iPad Mini’s Smart Case but for one thing: I can’t use it with the BlueLounge MiniDock, a super handy little charging dock.
The iPort Charge Case and Stand won’t help there, but it will at least let me charge the iPad while it’s inside a case. It’ll even work in landscape orientation.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales may be over for most of us — but lucky Apple fans in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan can pick up a cut-price iPad Air, iPhone 5s or other devices thanks to the company’s annual Chinese New Year online sale.
The sale, which lasts for one day only, takes place January 10.
What if you could control the color of your jewelry (provided you wear some, that is) using your iPhone?
This thought is behind the development of a new line of Bluetooth smart jewelry from UK-based chip maker CRS — able to connect to mobile devices so that wearers that customize the color and brightness to suit their mood, or match a particular outfit.
Amazon has made a huge update to the iOS Kindle app, bringing it mostly in line with the features on the hardware Kindle Paperwhite. Many of the new features concern the organization of books into collections, but there are also improvements to browsing notes, using X-Ray and even the reading screen.
One of the potentially coolest gadgets unveiled at CES 2014 so far is Sony’s virtual reality headset.
Named the HMZ-T3Q (a follow-up to last year’s HMZ-T3W), Sony’s new Oculus Rift competitor is designed primarily for movie fans and gamers, and offers a virtual screen reaching up to 750 inches.
Cult of Mac favorite Braven is showing off a wireless speaker at CES this year. It’s totally not what you’re expecting, though: The Vibe System is a range of hybrid Bluetooth/Wi-Fi speakers that can be used individually – hooked up to your iDevices – or in multiroom concert, Sonos-style. And being from Braven, it all runs away from mains power.
Braven’s new BRV-Bank is a ruggedized backup battery for your mobile devices, with some very neat/curious additions: It has Bluetooth, for one, and it can be remote controlled from your phone. WTF?
Apple is seeking the removal of Michael Bromwich, the court-appointed lawyer tasked with ensuring that Apple complies with e-book price fixing antitrust rulings.
An attorney for Apple asked U.S. District Judge Denise Cote on Tuesday to disqualify Bromwich on the grounds that he has shown a personal bias against the company.
This is the Ladibird, and it might just be the answer to the question, “What the hell are the camera makers going to do now that we all have iPhones?” The Ladibird is a camera case that slides onto your iPhone 5/s and lets it take great portrait photos, complete with the blurred backgrounds characteristic of a fast lens.