Automatica is a very clever take on in-car audio. It’s a USB stick which grabs new audio content whenever it is in range of a known Wi-Fi network, and it can be managed right from your iPhone via a custom web app.
Photo-book printing service Milk has teamed up with overpriced notebook maker Moleskine to make overpriced photo books in the shape of – you guessed it – Moleskine notebooks.
I’m not sure what I like best about this fantastic lobster-shaped iPhone case. It could be that it puts protects your handset by putting it on the back of a creepy crawly crustacean. Or it could be that it is made by the improbably-named Noddy Boffin.
Or, most likely, it could be the name itself, which hearkens back to the days when just tossing a lobster into the mix was enough to earn the coveted “surreal” tag: “Lobster Mobile Telephone Case.” [emphasis added]
Did you read last week’s Cult of Mac post about copying your Instagram photos over to Flickr? Did you think to yourself “Well, ain’t that something? I’ll surely have to do something about that,” and then just do nothing? Well, I have good news – your laziness has at last prevailed, for there is another service that does the exact same thing, only better.
Australian earphone-maker Audiofly was just a fledgling outfit with scarcely a handful of models and a shaky toehold in the earphone market when I first encountered a year ago at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. After I had a chance to spend some quality time with what was then the company’s flagship set, the fantastic AF78s, I was pretty certain that, if the company did eventually fail, it would be in spite of the brand’s quality — not because of it.
But they didn’t fail. Now here they are, a year after debuting at CES, with a trio of new, more expensive additions — all decadently equipped with multiple drivers and balanced armatures — that shove the AF78 into the middle of their lineup.
I have resolutely been refusing to buy an iPad mini, but this new case from Lion Case might tip me over the edge. It’s a mini version of one of my favorite cases of the year, the New York Hong Kong Folio.
Sharing your holiday photos is always a pain, and e-mail is usually the “answer.” Mom wants the pictures in her Facebook, your smart sister wants them in her Dropbox, and her stupid hippie boyfriend wants them on paper, because bits are like, so ephemeral, man.
IBeam.it is a service that promises to make this easy, by letting you share photos from any service you like, and letting the recipient pick where they receive them. Sadly. it looks like a no-go.
After last week’s Instagram furore, many people threw a hissy fit and quit the free photo-sharing service for which they have never paid a penny. And a lot of those quitters went over to Flickr and its outstanding new iOS app.
Over the weekend, Flickr gave its regular free members a three-month Pro subscription. This is super smart, and not only as a way to entice yet more users away from Facebook’s newest toy – a Flickr Pro account ups your limit on photo uploads, which lets you bring in all your pictures from, say, Instagram.
And the best way I have found to do this is with the new Free The Photos service.
Screen protectors are big business, apparently, judging by the number of people I see with the filthy, peeling prophylactics stuck to screens, bubbles pushing through. But they all have one big problem – feel. No matter how fancy they are, those plastic skins will never feel as good as the silky, slippery glass of the naked iPhone screen.
Which is why Seidio will now sell you a tempered glass protector for your iPhone 5.
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.
Unbound app is a Dropbox-linked photo viewer. Imagine if iOS’ built-in Photos app linked to Dropbox instead of needing you to dick around with iTunes and the flakey Photo Stream, and you have pretty much imagined Unbound.
Instagram’s iOS app has been updated to v3.4.0. It fixes a few ridiculous omissions from the last version, and adds a new filter, no doubt as a way to get users to shut up about the Terms of Service debacle.
One doesn’t see too many battery cases for the Galaxy S3. Unlike the glass-fortress iPhone — for which battery-cases are more numerous than species of bird — the S3’s battery is easily removable, somewhat lessening the usefulness of an external battery. But that didn’t stop iWalk from coming out with the Chameleon Easy, an impossibly sleek monster of a battery case with 2800 mAh on tap — which iWalk says is the highest capacity of any S3 battery to date.
“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.
I usually avoid posting about concept designs because most of them are so lame. But the iPhone Theater deserves a special mention, somewhat ironically for the very same reason – it’s so lame.
Verizon continues its quest to leave no city unturned when it comes to its 4G LTE network. Starting today, 29 new markets will enjoy the blazing fast speeds of LTE and bring the total of covered markets to an astounding 470!
Apple’s quest for litigation has resulted in a few wins and a few loses. However, it would seem the big picture isn’t looking so good for Apple. The very patents Apple has been attempting to assert in its litigation crusade are now coming under high scrutiny and slowly being invalidated.
The excellent Autostitch Panorama app is now available for the iPad, and it is as fantastic as ever. Unlike Apple’s own implementation of iOS panoramas on the iPhone 5, the Autostitch app does things the old-fashioned way, quilting together a patchwork of separate images.
This has some advantages.
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.
Borderlands 2 from Aspyr is now available to download at the Mac App Store, almost exactly a month after it debuted on Steam — and there’s good news and bad news.
What could be tougher than a fire hose? Nothing, that’s what – not even a dragon’s hide can beat out these woven polymer wonders. And it turns out that they are also pretty damn useful: when not being used to quench fires or give civil-rights protesters a jocular nudge, a firehose can be used to protect your iPhone.
I’m pretty sure I have some speakers on my desk. I say “pretty sure” because, while I can hear them loud and clear, I haven’t been able to see them amongst the clutter for many months now. I’m just terrified of unplugging the little cable from my MacBook’s jack socket in case I can never listen to music again. Not that I can find my MacBook either.
But the UCubes might be the answer. First, they hook up via USB, sucking both sound and power out through the bus, meaning I can leave my existing speakers hooked up, just in case.
Second, they are so handsome that I might be inspired to do my annual spring clean a few months early to allow them full aesthetic access to my desk. Where by “spring clean” I mean “sweep everything but my computer into a box and start over.”
Just a few weeks back we brought you the then-cheap $100 ring-light for the iPhone, a cheap way to shoot flat fashion photos and videos with your favorite camera. Now, though, you can achieve the same thing for just $10.
Bonus: It’s a DIY project, so you have a great excuse to ignore your family this Christmas.
If you want a waterproof bag, forget about zippers, velcro, or any other kind of fastening. What you need is a roll-top bag – just ask Ortlieb, the king of waterproof gear.
The same goes for gadget bags, and Smithfly’s Digi-Pouch offers a tight-sealing, easy-access home for your cameras, iPhones and anything else you want to keep dry.
What I am about to share with you will likely blow your mind. It will change your perspective on the world forever, and give you a new understanding of the word “convergence.” Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Lens Strap, a device which hovers uncertainly in the quantum foam between iPhoneography accessories and collars for poodles from Beverly Hills.
I warned you.