Counter-intuitive though it may seem, taking a light source and putting it right up close to your subject’s face – as close as you can without getting it in frame – makes for softer light. Why? Because it makes the light bigger in relation to the subject. If that subject is a face, a bigger light can “wrap around” its contours and fill in its own shadows.
And the Photojojo Pocket Spotlight is a big light source for your iPhone.
Everclip is one of the most used apps on my iPad, despite being iPhone-only. Until now, that is. Along with an update to the regular iPhone Everclip, there’s now an iPad version. No, it’s not universal and yes, it’ll cost you another $6, but if you’re an Everclip fan, you really won’t care.
Autodesk has a stunning — and I’m not using the word lightly here — catalog of free design-focused iOS apps that do everything from applying filters to photos, to drawing on your iPad — or even turning the subject of an iPhone photo into a 3D model. Now, they’re taking their deep knowledge of modeling, physics and mechanics and using it to make iPad apps that’ll teach your kids cool stuff. For free.
The fact that we’re mentioning this game really hinges on one fact: It’s being released by Firaxis and 2K Games, two names behind some of the greatest games ever made: Sid Meier’s Pirates, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and of course, the Civilization series (and for a little bit here, let’s just forget that 2K is also responsible for the somewhat poorly received Borderlands Legends).
Rego is an app that answers the question “How do I remember this place?” It’s a question partially addressed by Foursquare’s check-ins, and also by Evernote’s location-aware notes. But Rego goes further than both, letting you save places you’ve been to, places you find, and places you have never even seen.
Did you wake up this morning thinking that what you really need is a new, hard-to-navigate news app for your iPhone or iPad? Then you’re in luck: Reuters has announced just that. It’s called “Reuters,” and it mixes the seriousness of news with the fun of frustrating gestures.
There’s some irony in the fact that David Sparks’ (MacSparky) book on Markdown – a format dedicated to being as simple as possible – is published as an iBook which contains audio, video, screenshots and everything else, along with its text.
But if you are either Markdown-curious, or a hardcore Markdown user who just wants to nerd out for an afternoon or two, it’s worth checking out.
We’ve seen a lot of iPad-enhancing accessories over the last couple of years. Speaker cases like the Belkin Thunderstorm, bring-your-own-keyboard cases like the Incase Origami, and even iPad battery cases. But here’s a new one: DOCKr, an accessory that brings all these advantages together in one Skittle-colored package.
Looking for an alternative to Google Reader? The might I suggest Skimr, a rather minimal web app which will let you read your feeds right there in the browser. It shows your feeds in a big, bright and beautiful single-column list, and when you open a feed it shows you the articles in a similarly cruft-free view.
It’s just about perfect, as long as you don’t have more than a few feeds.
Withings, the mobile-connected health-monitoring people, have just announced a brand new bathroom scale. Only this isn’t just another scale that’ll Tweet your weight to a disinterested world. It has hookups to monitor not just your body, but also the home you live in.
Tap Tap See is a camera app for blind people. Sure, any partially or non-sighted person could just snap bad, out-of-focus pictures of their shoes, or of the backs of their friends heads, with any camera app. But only Tap Tap See will then say to them, out loud, “Shoes,” or “Head.”
You see, Tap Tap See is like a sighted assistant that never grow tired of you asking “what’s that?”
Wacom has announced a new baby Cintiq graphics tablet. The new 13-inch model joins the plus-sized 22 and 24-inchers in the lineup, and will let travelling designers and artists work on the go.
Gramatica is just about the nicest Instagram-browser app I have yet seen. It’s essential on the iPad mini, on which the official Instagram app looks hideous thanks to the mini’s refusal to display Retina assets. And on the iPhone it’s even better than the Instagram app, thanks to its full-width pictures and fantastic gestural controls.
If you ever tried to explain Instapaper (or any other read-later app) to a “straight” (non-nerd) friend or family member, you’ll know why Apple added a reading list to Safari. Even without the terrible experience of adding a javascript bookmarklet to Mobile Safari, Instapaper requires way too many steps: save page; remember to open Instapaper before the internet goes off to load that saved page; remember to read.
Safari, on the other hand, just saves the page inside Safari. That’s it.
And so Amazon is now simplifying Instapaper’s Send to Kindle feature, allowing you to send a web page to your Kindle with one click.
Call Bliss is an app with its own, industrial-strength take on the iPhone’s newish Do Not Disturb feature. It takes Apple’s basic concept — blocking calls with the flick of a switch, or only letting through calls from selected contacts — and infuses it with management features and more powerful options. And now the app adds two more tricks.
We’ve been fascinated the stuff emerging from motorcycle-wizards-turned-iDevice-accessory-crafter Rokform ever since we took their machined alloy Rokbed iPhone case for a spin a few years back. Today the company revealed the Rokshield v3, basically a smaller, iPad Mini version of their Roklock case and mounting system.
Say hello to CubeSensors, sensitive little cubes that detect pretty much everything and tattle to your iPhone about it. The cubes are internet-connected, so you can get their information anywhere, any time.
There are a handful of apps that I have to have on every Mac I use, or things quickly start to get annoying. Launchbar is one. Dropbox is another, and TextExpander is one more. TextExpander is sold as a way to expand a short string of text into a longer string of text, so I can just type, say, “aadd” and my address magically appears. I use it all day long on both Mac and iOS for adding Markdown and HTML code to my Cult of Mac posts, and even to the the name Cult of Mac (shortcut: ccom).
But there’s a lot more in there, as this example will show. BEcause TextExpander can run scripts, it can query all kinds of neat stuff — including finding out about your Mac.
Mailbox might be getting all the e-mail press these days, but there’s a long line to get in, and it looks terrible on the iPad. Incredimail isn’t anything like Mailbox, but neither is it like any other e-mail client. Think of it as something like Flipboard fro you e-mail and you” get the idea.
As a reader of Cult of Mac, I’d say it’s a safe bet that you have a whole bunch of 30-pin docks around your home. And that those docks have been rendered useless by Apple’s evil insistence on equipping all of its new devices with smaller, tougher, easier to use Lightning plugs.
Now, we bring good news. With just €13, you can resurrect your pointless plastic paperweight.
You know what you need when you go away on a weekend trip? Along with your two suitcases worth of clothing, a laptop, a pair of iPads, a speaker maybe, plus case of shoes (rain or shine… Who knows?), chargers, your own personal pillow and, well, you get the point. Now you can add to that list the Traveler Laptop Stand from Magma. That’s right: a folding, portable stand for your folding, portable computer.
Or rather, “have someone drive you home.”
After being vilified so much for contributing to dangerous roads (along with all other smartphones, of course), the iPhone will soon turn Samaritan, and maybe help to make the roads a little safer. That’s thanks to the new Breathometer, “the world’s first smartphone breathalyzer.”
As you may already know, Google Reader will shutdown as of July 1, so now’s the time to look for a new RSS reader. If you’re a longtime user, you may not be familiar with the other options available to you, but don’t worry — there are plenty out there, so you don’t need to go without your news.
We’ve compiled a list of the best cloud-based and local news readers around to help you find the best solution for you. Check them out below.
Fingers is a concept design, but it’s so simple and clever, and so easy to make for yourself with just a piece of stiff card and a pair of scissors, that it seems worth taking a look. It’s yet another desk-tidying cable manager, but you’re going to love it, I promise.
My 27-inch iMac hangs on my wall, freeing up desk-space and terrifying me that it will fall off as I sleep and crush me in my bed. To get it up there I had to hit up Amazon and order the VESA wall mount, plus an adapter to replace the iMac’s huge foot with a VESA-compatible set of holes.
The result is very sturdy, and very neat. But there’s one problem: where the hell do I put that giant (and heavy) aluminum foot? If I were buying new iMac, I could just order a version without the stand, and instead equipped with a built-in VESA mount.