News - page 16

A few months back, I spent far too many hours trying to find an app which would scan a page of text and turn into actual, editable text. I found none. Or rather, I found nothing good. There are plenty of OCR (optical character recognition) apps in the store, but they were either inaccurate, or ugly, or (most often) both.

And while Evernote is excellent at letting you search on scanned pages and even your handwritten notes, you don’t get to touch the text itself.

I gave up, and now – as usually happens with my “urgent” research projects, I’ve forgotten why I needed it on the first place. Which is a shame, as Pixter Scanner has been launched,and it is quite excellent – with one huge annoyance, for me at least.

The Keyper isn’t strictly a Mac-related gadget, or even an iOS-related one. But I’m writing it up for a few reasons anyway. One, it’s gorgeous. Two, leather confections are a favorite of our esteemed deputy editor John Brownlee. And three, it actually is pretty iPhone and iPad friendly because it’ll stop your keys from scratching up their screens if you toss the lot n a bag or pocket together.

Owners of the Big Jambox are in for a treat. Just head over to the MyTalk page and administer a new firmware update. You ill be treated to two whole hours of extra battery life (in addition to the 15 you already enjoy) plus a host of genuinely hand new features.

You could easily make your own iPhone amplifier dock from a shoebox. Or better, an old wooden wine case. Or best of all, you could get out your clamps, drills, router and hot glue and go medieval on some pile of wood’s ass. If you choose the latter route, then you should download the plans (totally SFW) from Renee at Red Bird Blue – her amazing creation is what you see in the picture above.

What’s your favorite Instagram filter? We all have one. Mine is X-Pro, and I almost never use anything else (except for no filter, which – according to Statigram – is my second most used “filter.”)

But what does this excessive use of one particular look say about me? Or – less importantly – about you? Luckily, there’s an info graphic for that, and it tells you your personality type according to InstaFilter Preference:

X-Pro II

The Optimist

The users see the world a little brighter and they want you to see it that way too. So what if it’s a gray day? They’ll make sure those raindrops pop against a windshield – and will then make the photo their new wallpaper.

Better is the definition of a “Normal” shooter. Anyone who goes commando in Instagram is either a techno-illiterate idiot, incapable of even tapping on a brightly-colored thumbnail, or “tech-savvy frauds, passing off pictures they fixed in other applications as #nofilter works of art. You’re not fooling anyone.”

As somebody whose first Instagram picture was a “#nofilter work of art,” imported into my iPad 2 from a Panasonic GF1, I can say that this entry at least is pretty accurate. Go check the rest out at the links below.

Source: Marketo

Via: Apartmant Therapy

It seems like just yesterday that I was complaining about the lack of sharing and export in iOS reading apps… Maybe that’s because it was only yesterday. I was actually moaning about Read Later apps, but I mentioned Kindle and iBooks as being equally bad.

Now, just a day later, I discover that there’s a free Mac app which will suck the notes and highlights out of your iBooks and package them up in a nicely-formatted PDF, or direct to Evernote. It’s called Digested, and it does exactly what it says it does.

If you’re the proud owner of a Fujifilm X100s camera, then today is yet another happy day for you: Lightroom has been updated to v4.4 and now supports your camera’s wacky X-Trans sensor, the clever sensor which removes the need for an anti-aliasing filter by placing the color pixel filters in an irregular grain-like pattern.

And of course the update supports a whole bunch more camera (listed below), as el as fixing bugs.

Just before the weekend, a new Read Later app launched. Yes, you rightly shout, there are a ton of these apps around already. Hell, even Safari can save pages off line for reading later. But the new app/service, called DotDotDot, shows what these services should be. It’s not polished (it’s an early beta), but it already shows up the competition.

Which brings me to “the competition.” I just ditched Instapaper, the grandaddy of read-later apps, for Pocket. Why? Read on.

Just Mobile, the folks behind many handy aluminum Mac and iOS accessories (like the pencil-impersonating AluPen stylus, and the AluRack laptop mount) has just busted out three new gadgets. There’s the AluCup – a plastic and aluminum desk-tidy in the shape of a cup; the HeadStand, which is a headphone holder/hanger for your desk, and the AluFrame, a fancy aluminum bumper for the iPhone 5.

Hold the phone! Or, rather — don’t. Martian Watch models see much of its promised potential unlocked With the launch today of iOS and Android apps, just ahead of their estimated ship date(s).

The app finally adds two major features to the watches — remote camera control and social media updates — along with a few smaller ones.

Glympse is a clever — and potentially lifesaving — feature that we’d love to see in more smartphone-connected cars.

It started out as a free app that can broadcast the user’s location to selected contacts, Facebook friends or Twitter followers. But it’s become a valuable tool for drivers of smartphone-connected Fords and Merecedes-Benzes, allowing them to broadcast their location without taking their hands off the steering wheel.

Now BMW and Mini have partnered with Glympse, raising the marque total to four.

Do you use an Eye-Fi or other wireless card to send pictures from your camera to your iPhone or iPad? Or maybe you have one of those fancy cameras with built-in wifi? Well, be careful: If the card’s network isn’t locked down, then it’s as vulnerable to hacking as an unsecured home network. And depending on your setup, attackers could gain access to your camera and its photos, and even seize control of the camera’s functions.

Having just discovered that my beloved PadPivot iPad stand also works great with a closed MacBook Air (the 13-inch), you’d have a hard time convincing me to buy another iPad stand, especially one which only has a single angle of view, and which only holds the iPad in horizontal mode.

However, the Sne Stand, fashioned as it is from beautiful bent Baltic Birch plywood, is certainly tempting. Right up until you get to its $90 price tag.

If you’re not using 1Password on your Mac and iOS devices, you might as well just package up your bank and credit-card details, your passwords, your passport and your ID, and mail the parcel off to Russia or China, clearly marked “FAO: Identity Thieves. ”

If you are using 1Password, then you’ll be pleased to know that the Safari extension just got a great update. Sure, it brings lot of improvements under the hood, but what we’re interested is the new animated form filling.

What if you tok Twelve South’s neat Plugbug Mac charger extension and shrunk it down to work with the iPad charger? You’d get Scosche’s CoverCharge, that’s what. Just like the Plugbug, the adapter slides onto its host and adds an extra USB port.

The iPad is great for photographers, but the built-in Photos app sucks. You can’t change the viewing order. Making albums and moving photos is a multi-tap pain in the ass, and navigating is confusing even for the experienced user.

That’s where Focus Point comes in. It’s a photo-viewing app that’s been around for a while, but the latest update adds enough new goodies to make it worth a look.

Tempted as I am by the likes of the amazing Fujifilm X100s, I know that I’ll keep coming back to my iPhone 5 camera thanks to its combo of convenience, quality, connect-ability and apps. But the Sun & Cloud camera has just the right balance of price to quirky novelty to get me interested.

I used to use a sleeve-style case with my original iPad, and I loved it. Sleeves protect the iPad while you carry it, and let you experience the full slimline awesomeness of a naked tablet when you take it out to use. Then Apple made the iPad 2 and the Smart Cover and that was it. The only time I change cases now is if I need something rugged, or if I’m testing one for review.

But I’m tempted by the Calypso Tab, a lovely leather sleeve for the regular iPad and the mini. It’s a softish hard shell, and it looks fantastic.

The Touch is a cool-looking new way to control Adobe Lightroom, either using your Magic trackpad or your iPad. It’s a small app that runs alongside Lightroom (or Final Cut Pro X) and lets you control it using all manner of gestures, taps, and swipes, letting you focus less on which slider to grab and more on looking at the image itself.

A picture is worth… $1. That’s what Printic will charge you for a single, Polaroid-shaped print, sent to your (or anyone else’s) door and ordered from the easy comfort of your own iPhone.

I don’t really care about measuring the wind – I prepare for a bike trip using WeatherPro, which tells me how bad the wind will be, not how bad it is right now. But the Vaavud wind meter is notable for another reason: it communicates its wind-speed readings to your iPhone wirelessly, yet uses no electronics whatsoever. How? Read on…

Soulver is pretty much the best calculator app on the Mac and iOS, mostly because it doesn’t tie itself to the UI of old pushbutton calculators. But Llumino will probably win the award for the best-looking calculator app in the App Store, coming on like a 1970s flashing disco floor and, uh, a pushbutton calculator.

Moshi’s Luna backlit Mac keyboard is a weird device. It’s a desktop device through-and-through, connecting via USB, but doesn’t have any USB ports itself – one of the major advantage of using a wired keyboard.

It also uses scissor-switched chiclet-stlye keys instead of something more substantial like you’d find in the Matias or DAS keyboards.

It does, however, sport Mac-friendly media keys, and packs a numerical keypad, perfect for moving your mouse further to the right and causing extra RSI.

If you had asked me yesterday what I thought a “couch player” might be, I would have guessed that it was some stoner kid sat at home in his parents living room, checking the price of Glocks online and listening to bad hip hop.

But that was yesterday. If you asked me right now, I’d tell your that Couch Player is an awesome new music player for the iPad.

The Bikespike is a GPS-enabled cellular device which lets you track your bike. And while you can use it as an iPhone-connected bike computer, complete with speed, calorie and location stats, its main purpose is as a security device.