Got a little corner of your property that you’d like to keep a closer eye on? Or are you just concerned that the babysitter is not shaking your kids hard enough when they start acting up? Then what you need is the Dropcam HD, a Wi-Fi video camera designed for remote monitoring.
If you’re approaching or have arrived at forty, and you had any kind of interest in skateboarding as a youngster, then I have some very exciting news for you, which I shall deliver in four words: Bones Brigade iPhone cases.
Apple’s iPhone and iPad docks suck. They look great, but they also grab onto your phone and won’t let go, they don’t fit if you use a case and they don’t do anything but charge the phone (yes, you can plug it into a stereo, but who does that?) The LIL KIKR, on the other hand, looks awesome, sounds awesome, and is made from tough, long-lasting aluminum.
Thomas Fulton’s Don’t Panic iPad case started life last year as a Kickstarter project. Now, after sending out cases to all his happy backers, the case is available for you and me to buy.
The case is made from floppy felt and leather, and is designed as much for using as it is for carrying and protecting. When closed, the felt closes up just like any other folio case. Open it up, though, and the fun starts.
The NoteBookCase for iPad2 is a freaky-deaky Bluetooth keyboard case which turns your iPad into a tiny ten-inch MacBook Pro. Kinda. The case, which looks most authentic with a white iPad inside, adds a keyboard and stand to the iPad within, but it doesn’t stop there.
I’m a complete neat freak. Add to this my weakness for bags of all kinds and you’ll see immediately why I love these new organizing wallets from ThinkTank. These four wallets are designed for tidying and storing SD cards, flash gels and cameras batteries.
If you hear the phrase “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” and nod in solemn agreement, then read on.
I have had to replace more than one frazzled MagSafe charger thanks to an uncharacteristically bad piece of design by Apple. Sure, the magnetic connection breaks away to save the connected Mac from a fall, and it’s great that the latest MagSafe adapters have newly-designed, tougher aluminum tips, but the junction between the cord and the chager itself is still pathetically weak. So weak it makes a sick kitten look like Chuck Norris.
Thinklabs’ Wrap Up is an effective solution to this.
One disadvantage of using an iPhone or iPad as a camera is that you’re stuck with a single, fixed focal-length lens. Optical zoom can work only so far before even Instagram photos start to look bad, and phones with built in optical zooms tend to resemble actual cameras.
The solution? Add-on lenses. Today, we’ll take a look at Photojojo’s four-in-one set of fisheye, macro, wide angle and telephoto lenses. These accessory lenses stick magnetically over the iDevice’s camera, changing the point of view.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LVssYtOJP2U
If you were to only read about his antics, Norbert Wittekindt might appear like some kind of psychopath. He takes top-end Carl Zeiss lenses and drops them onto hard floors. Not only that, he freezes them and then brings them into warm rooms and clamps them onto machines which try to shake the lenses apart. What’s going on?
Three words: Angry. Birds. Helicopter. What more do you need to know before you peel a crisp $50 off your money roll and place your order?
Panasonic’s GF5, leaked a couple of weeks ago on Instagram, is now officially official. The new Micro Four Thirds camera skips right over the superstitiously suspect name GF4 (which apparently sounds like “death” in Japanese), but does little more than add polish and a new sensor. But what a sensor.
Take a look at your cellphone. Now take a look at your camera. Pretty sad, huh? It’s a big chunky old thing, with knobs and dials for navigating menus. It’s also dumb, and disconnected. To edit and share your photos, you need a computer. To get those photos onto your computer, you have to plug the camera in with a cable. Did anybody tell Nikon or Canon that this is 2012 already?
Your cellphone, on the other hand, will let you snap, edit and share your photos in seconds, and even place them on a map so you can find them later. Camera manufacturers are understandably terrified by this, but what can they do? The answer might be Android.
True story: When I was around 14 years old, there was a kid who would come to school sometimes already wearing a condom. His reason? In case he suddenly got lucky. Needless to say, this never happened. If this kid is still around today, I imagine he’ll be the first in line for the Playa Case, an iPhone case which has a slide-open compartment for two condoms. Classy.
The Ledge, from designer Chris Blackburn, is the first iPad wall mount I would actually consider buying. Instead of the usual bulky cases with matching wall-mounted bayonet, the Ledge is just what its name suggests: a solid aluminum ledge which sticks to the wall.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZC8fX1HHx3A
The Fling controller from TenOne Design (soon to be reviewed) is a great way to add a physical to your iPhone or iPad, just by suction-cupping it onto the screen. This means that it works with any game on your iOS device that uses an on-screen “joystick.”
The downside is that it moves at the worst moments: I have wiped out in more than one GTA car chase this way. But designers at the Keio University in Japan have come up with another idea. A joystick which uses the iPhone’s camera as a controller.
A year after the launch of the Lensbaby Pro for DSLR cameras, the light-bending lens comes to mirrorless cameras. The upmarket version of the regular Composer can now be had in models that fit Sony NEX, Samsung NX and Micro Four Thirds cameras, and I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
After years of tweaking and improvement, ioShutter is finally here. ioShutter is a simple cable that connects your iPhone to your camera and allows you to control it using an app. Remote shooting, time-lapse sequences and even photos triggered by sound can all be programmed in easily using the free companion app. And best of all, no fancy dock connectors are required: ioShutter connects through the headphone jack.
If you’re going to launch a real product on April 1st, then you may as well make it seems as ridiculous as possible, and that’s just what Brian Holmes did yesterday when he announced The Littlest Black Book for the iPod Nano, the new tiny, nano-sized Moleskine-style case from Brian’s company, Pad&Quill.
I actually mailed Brian yesterday to see if this was for real, and it is. There’s even a Kickstarter page to prove it, which is already almost a quarter of the way to the $4,500 goal.
Thankfully for tech bloggers the Anglo Saxon world over, this year April Fools Day aka All Fools Day fell on a Sunday. That didn’t stop PR folk waking from a fitful, hungover sleep, dragging their laptops into bed and sending out a “funny” press release, which is why you should probably still watch out today.
But above the dross stands — as it does every year — ThinkGeek. In the past, we have seen such April Fool wonders as the Taun Taun sleeping bag for kids, the iCade iPad arcade cabinet and the 8-bit tie. This year, ThinkGeek went to town with a whole range of fake gear. Here we take a look at the best.
We love us a good iConcept design here at Cult of Mac, and we especially love those which appear to be better than the Apple product they are based on. So I’m happy to bring you Enrico Penello’s iPod Nano Touch, a great-looking update to the terrible iPod Nano.
You know what? You could probably do a blog about only iPhone cases and you’d still have something worth reading. Provided that the world keeps coming up with cases like this super-specialized iPhone Scuba Case, an underwater shell which gives you access to the camera app as you dive, that is.
You know, I used to think custom iPad stands were kind of a dumb idea, especially as the Smart Cover is already a stand. But I watch movies and TV shows in bed with The Lady, using an iPad and JamBox balanced on one of those breakfast tray/table things. And after one too many iPad tumbles, I’m ready for a sturdier stand.
And the iKlip looks as good as any.
This iPhone 4 money clip is either the best or the stupidest solution to the wallet/iPhone carrying problem that I have ever seen. The trouble is, I can’t quite work out which it is.
Do you have an old film SLR lying around that you promise yourself you will one day load up with film and take out shooting? Well, forget about that — it’s just taking up space and picking up dust. You should instead do what Etsy-er Roberto Altieri does, and turn it into a dock for the camera you actually use every day: Your iPhone.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=tN6jFuuQFVY
You might look pretty dorky these days if you make a frame from your fingers and start sizing up the world around you. But it’s actually a surprisingly good way to separate out parts of the landscape, especially for artists using pencils or paint who may not be carrying a camera.
But what about combining the two? That’s just what the nerds have done down at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences in Japan. The Ubi-Camera is a tiny digicam which uses your fingers as the viewfinder, and even allows you to zoom.
