GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

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LAS VEGAS — Sony Ericsson’s new Xperia Arc packs some startling photo and video-taking features into a rather slim and arc-shaped package.

The phone runs the latest version of Android 2.3, Gingerbread, and slides it into a thin body that measures just 8.7mm at its waist. And it is a “waist”: the case has a pronounced concave-curve at the rear which gives it a swooping elegance. Onto the front of this body is grafted a huge 4.2-inch multi-touch screen. It is, with its 1 GHz Qualcomm processor, a competent Android phone.

Then we get to the camera, an 8MP monster with a wide maximum aperture of 2.4, coupled with the Exmor R sensor, a backlit CMOS sensor also seen in Sony’s proper cameras. If the promo videos are anything to go on (and obviously allowing for their inevitable exaggerations) then the camera is impressive, with image processing to take care of noise, tweak colors, enhance contrast and generally fix up cellphone photos into something worth keeping.

Android is great, but the handsets are starting to look more like giant slabs of chocolate than actual phones that can fit in a pocket. The Xperia Arc manages to not only buck this trend, but pack in some serious photography tools to boot.

Xperia Arc press release [Sony Ericsson]

Next Step Xperia arc [Sony Ericsson product blog]

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LAS VEGAS — 3-D Blu-ray discs alone aren’t going to make 3-D TV take off. Consumers have to be able to create and view their own three-dimensional home movies, student films, and the like.

To that end, Sony unveiled today a spankin’ new, 3-D-capable Handycam that promises to unleash your inner James Cameron, while also providing razor-sharp 1080p HD for those not quite ready to hop aboard the 3-D TV bandwagon.

On the outside, the Handycam HDR-TD10 boasts what Sony is calling “Double Full HD,” owing to the fact that each of the integrated dual lens (a setup necessary for shooting in true 3-D) contains all the key components for operation: A Sony G lens, CMOS image sensor, and image processor. Naturally, you’ll still need a 3-D TV to show off your custom content, but you can also view 3-D playback sans glasses on the Handycam’s optimized 3.5-inch LCD display.

Under the hood, the HDR-TD10 commands 64 GB of flash memory, as well as a 10-inch optical zoom for those extreme close-ups, 5.1-channel surround sound, and 7-megapixel still-image capability, if you’re just merely scouting locations for your next Avatar fanfic epic.

Look for the the HDR-TD10 on store shelves sometime in April, and be prepared to lay down about $1,500 for that budding director in your life.

Images: Sony

Erik is the editor of Playbook, Wired.com’s sports blog. He’s also the managing editor of Longshot and a contributor to Pop-Up Magazine.
Follow @erikmal and @wiredplaybook on Twitter.

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IPhone photographers get all the retro-licious fun. Apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram let you mess with your pristine digital pics and make them look as if they came from a low-quality plastic camera from communist-era Eastern Europe. Now videographers can join in the image-degrading hijinks, with 8mm Vintage Camera.

The app does exactly what you’d expect. It adds dusty, speckly artifacts to your footage, and you can shoot through a variety of virtual lenses (flickering frame, light leak and color fringing, for example) and capture the video onto one of several “films”. You can also add random jitter and movement to the movie, as if the projector was having trouble keeping the film fed neatly through its gate.

All the effects happen in real time, so you see on-screen exactly what you are recording. There are modern touches, too: you can light up the iPhone’s flash whilst recording, and the familiar touch-to-focus feature is in there. Exporting options are good, too. ITunes sharing is supported, as is email and saving to the camera roll, but you can also send movies straight up to YouTube.

Best of all, the app is just $2. Sure, my $800 Micro Four Thirds camera might shoot great-looking, hi0def video, but this looks like way more fun.

8mm Vintage Camera [iTunes via iPhoneography]

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Just as seemingly every year the number of blades on a disposable razor inevitably increases, so every few months a new iPad dock adapter adds yet another input. In August we saw the 2-in-1 camera-connector, with USB and an SD-card slot. The just last week we were treated to the plasticky wonders of the 3-in-1 adapter, which added micrSD to the mix.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, behold the amazing, nay, astonishing 5-in-1 dock adapter. Slot this overachieving little widget into your iPad’s port and you get all of the above functions plus a mini-USB port (for charging the iPad or connecting to a computer) and an A/V-out port. This last lets you hook up an iPad (or a video-supporting iPod) to a TV.

That’s a whole lot of features packed into one small box and – if experience of these things is anything to go by it will likely break soon after buying. On the other hand, this combines a whole shopping-cart full of Apple products into one, and even ships with the A/V and USB cables needed to use it.

What next? The same manufacturer also has an unholy version that will read Sony MemorySticks, but I’m hoping for something more practical (or plain weird). Comments, please: What oddity would you like to see here? MIDI would be nice for musicians. A crappy but functional webcam would be awesome for everyone. But I’m going to vote for a USB hand-warmer. Given the iPad’s huge battery, this should last at least a day, and keep me blogging from my cold, non-heated apartment.

5-in-1 adapter product page [Anguodz via MIC Gadget]

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Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit is a wonderful thing, although overpriced at $30. Not only can you use it to inject photos from your camera direct into the tablet’s brain, you can also hook up all manner of USB peripherals, from keyboards to microphones to thumb-drives.

MIC Gadget’s 3-in-1 adapter does all this, and more. It combines Apple’s two small, easy-to-lose widgets into one slightly larger, slightly harder-to-lose package, putting an SD card reader and USB port into one plastic box. The extra is a micrSD slot, which is actually all but useless: the only way it would work is if your cellphone saves its photos into a standard folder named “DCIM”, which is what will trick the iPad into reading them.

There’s one thing that MIC Gadget’s version had in common with the official Apple version: it costs $30. I’d stick with Apple’s overpriced kit: it works, you only have to carry the part you need and it is built to last. It is also available now, unlike this 3-in-1 solution, which ship after Christmas.

3-In-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit [MIC Gadget]

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This has to be just about the coolest watch ever made. What does it do? What doesn’t it do? Seriously: The Swap Rebel, as it is named, takes pretty much every gadget you own and crams it into this tiny, inch-wide wristwatch.

Phone? Check. Camera? Check. 1.46-inch touch-screen? Check. The list goes on, with Bluetooth connectivity (so you don’t actually have to talk into your wrist), an MP3-player, a USB-port for transfer to-and-from the 128MB memory and 2GB microSD-card (expandable to 16GB), plus a range of candy-colored shells. And you thought the new iPod Nano was neat.

It ain’t cheap, though. Over in the UK, you’ll have to put down 190 for the Swap Rebel, which is $300 of your American Dollars. And I can’t imagine the battery life will be too good. The 240mAh battery is rated for 85 hours standby and 130-160 minutes of talk-time. Actually pretty good for the size, but not the all-day-chatting we’re used to with the likes of the iPhone (8-hours). Available now.

Swap Rebel product page [SWAP via Dvice]

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At first look, $150 seems a ridiculous price for a Bluetooth dongle that lets you control your SLR from your cellphone, but digging into the specs shows that it ends up as quite a bargain. But first, what does it do?

Named the BlueSLR, the little box plugs into your Nikon SLR via one of its ports (there are three identically priced models with different plugs) and talks to your phone via Bluetooth. From a companion app, you can control the camera’s focus, shutter speed, and self-timer, or fire remotely from “up to 300-feet away” (that must be some powerful Bluetooth in there).

That alone might be worth it for some pros, but we tend to ask a little more of our gadgets. The BlueSLR also has a GPS unit to geotag your photos, writing the GPS data directly into the RAW of JPEG file. Given that GPS-only widgets go for around the same price, the BlueSLR starts to look cheap.

Right now the device is Nikon and iOS-only, with support for Canon, Android and Blackberry (!) coming soon. The iOS app is a free download. Wow. I think I just sold myself on this thing…

BlueSLR product page [BlueSLR]

BlueSLR app [iTunes]

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Osram, the lightbulb company, has come up with a bright new LED lamp for use in cellphones. Called the Oslux, it is 50% brighter than other LEDs, but more importantly for taking photographs, the light is flatter and “more evenly distributed”. This means that the light-falloff towards the edge, something common to regular and LED flashes alike, is reduced. This in turn gives a bigger patch of usable light.

The chip that does this all is smaller, too, at 2.5mm (shaved down from 3mm). How does it manage to be so bright? “New UX:3 chip technology that makes the LED capable of handling high currents.” That “high currents” part sounds like bad news for your cellphone battery.

Your photos will still be ugly, though, with washed-out faces and harsh shadows. Which brings me to a question about cellphone “flashes”. The lenses are tiny, so why not make a ring-flash that wraps around them? That way, shadows would be cancelled out (or, rather, filled in) and instead of bad snapshots you’d get a great fashion-shoot look to all your snaps. I’m serious. Why isn’t somebody doing this already?

The fancy Oslux lamps will find their way into cellphones as soon as a phone manufacturer decides it needs a new bullet-point on the feature-list.

Powerful LED flash for cell phones [Osram]

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Geeks like to show their colors. Bike polo geeks will wear jewelry made from old bike-chains, and the tackier car geeks will don Ferrari jackets and caps, hoping to trick people into thinking they actually have something better than a Ford Taurus parked outside,

Camera geeks already have their badge: a big swinging camera around their neck. But for the times when you can’t wear a giant 24-70 2.8 phallus on your chest, the F-Stop watch will do. It has a face with a “fetching” aperture-inspired design, and instead of boring old 1,2,3,4 running around the dial, you get markings at numbers 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6 and so on. The strap is faux-leather, like so many classy camera accessories, and it is made in China, just like almost everything in your kit-bag.

Want one? No, me either, but if you insist on inflicting a themed gift on a “loved” one this Christmas, you could do a lot worse, and it’s just $36. And if he or she is a Canon owner, may I interest you in my own entrepreneurial Christmas gift? It’s a “My other Camera is a Nikon” sticker (kidding!).

F-Stop Watch [Uncommon Goods via Oh Gizmo]

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How do you achieve the correct white-balance for your photos? Do you leave the camera on auto, like me, and fix things up later with RAW processing software if you need to? Or do you use the $70 Expodisc, a painstakingly calibrated piece of white plastic which fits over the lens and smushes together all the light in a scene into one big circle, ready to be processed by your SLR?

If you answer was “$70!? What the hell are you talking about now, Sorrel?” then I have the perfect hack for you. The Emergency Expodisc, a light-measuring device that consists of nothing more than the lid of a Starbucks coffee-cup.

Steve Bennett’s “invention” is simple. Grab an unused lid from any coffee-shop, pop it on the front of the lens, focus to infinity and take a custom white-balance reading. You should now have a setting either perfect for the scene (single light-source) or a good compromise (different sources).

And before the Expodisc folks come running, we know that a plastic coffee-cup lid isn’t going to be a perfect neutral white, but if you’re shooting JPEGs, it sure beats the hell out of the glowing red pictures you get when shooting indoors.

Emergency Expodisc [Steve Bennett / Flickr via DIY Photography]

Real Expodisc [Expo Imaging]

Photo: Steve Bennett

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Is this a Nikon Android tablet? Well, not quite, but it’s pretty damn close. The NF-300i is a 3D, 7.2-inch digital photo frame that runs the Android 2.1 OS. If it had a touch-screen, then it would be a tablet.

Nikon’s frame, available only in Japan, is as full of gimmicks as you could wish for. Aside from the glasses-free 3D, the “photo-frame” also packs a calendar, a clock and weather screens, and you can even browse the web, although with neither keyboard nor touch-screen, this could be a painful procedure (it does at least come with a remote).

But back to the 3D. The NF-300i uses the same lenticular technology as the Nintendo 3DS. It doubles the horizontal resolution and covers the pixels with tiny cylindrical lenses. These lenses split the stereoscopic picture, sending one part to each eye, while obscuring the other.

So how do you get your pictures onto this device? Buy one, along with some fancy new Nikon 3D camera and you’re done? Oh, no. Nothing so simple. First, you sign up with Nikon for the new My Picturetown 3D service, which costs 19,950 per year ($247) or 1,995 per month ($25). You then upload any 2D photos to the cloud service where you can choose to have them converted to 3D, via an unspecified method that requires no special effort from you. Then Nikon loans you the display with which you can download and view the photos.

Weird, right? It gets worse. These hefty prices include just three conversions per month. If you want more, you’ll have to pay another 300 ($3.70) per image, with a minimum order of four images.

Specs-wise, the frame is pedestrian (not to mention that it is styled after CRT monitors from the 1990s). It has a resolution of 800 x 600 in a 4:3 ratio, 4GB of storage, Ethernet and b/g Wi-Fi and support audio and video (H.264) along with the JPEG and MPO (3D) image files.

It seems doomed, but then I’m taking a western point of view. Even given the famous neophilic attitude the Japanese have towards gadgets, though, this seems like a hard sell. In fact, the best feature might be that Nikon demands the unit’s return when you cancel your subscription, hopefully keeping it out of the landfill. Available December.

NF-300i product page [Nikon via DP Review]

My Picturetown 3D [Nikon]

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Spider Holster has unleashed the Black Widow. Happily, it won’t inject dangerous venom into your veins – instead it will perform the much friendlier task of holding your camera at your hip, ready to grab and shoot.

The Black Widow is the newer, smaller cousin of the original Spider Holster, reviewed by us and found to be “so solid that you stop worrying.” This version is lighter and smaller, made to support small SLRs and mirrorless cameras instead of the beefy metal workhorses that the big Spider can hold on to.

Just like its big-brother, the Black Widow comes in two parts. A “holster” which threads onto your belt, and a plate which screws to the bottom of the camera. This plate has a ball which slips into the slot on the holster and locks in place, letting the camera dangle securely at your side, and hanging it upside-down so the lens faces towards the floor, out of danger.

I tried to use the original Spider Holster with a Panasonic GF1, a Micro Four Thirds camera. It worked, of course, but the wide plate and long, ball-ended spike were impractical on such a small body. This smaller steel and resin version should fix that.

The Black Widow also allows a tripod quick-release plate to be attached, something hard to do with the original.

Finally, there is an optional belt accessory, which is wider and spreads the load better than your own thin and trendy leather number.

The Black Widow isn’t yet live on the site, but I am told it will cost $55, half the price of the Spider Holster. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this mildly amusing line from the press release, which takes on a rather chilling aspect when you consider that a Black Widow sometimes eats her mate after intercourse.

Perfect for hands-free carrying, the Black Widow is ideal when setting up a tripod, cheering on a favorite sports team or pushing a baby carriage on vacation. [emphasis added]

Shiver.

Spider Holster product page [Spider Holster. Thanks, Zach!]

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I so wanted to laugh at the IPS, or Inflatable Photo Studio, when I saw it. Luckily it is easy to do so. The giant black plastic balloon is actually ideal for quickly setting up a controlled shooting environment in minutes, but its website is as laughable as the machinations of the fashion-industry itself.

This (annoying Flash) site could only have been built in the U.S.A, land of the lawsuit. Almost every part on the site, from the Q&A to a section marked “Important” has a warning of some kind. Here is one of the best, as transcribed from the Flash monstrosity by our favorite Strobist Mr. David Hobby.

It is not recommended that you smoke, cook or have any open flames in the studio. Also lights can become very hot and melt the studio. Do not rest lighting or position it against the sides. Curling irons, hair driers [sic] irons, and steamers can also melt the plastic causing rapid deflation or possible fire.

Or what about this one, concerning the use of the big bubble-tent in wind:

Its [sic] not concrete. But if you’re shoot in an air bubble in gale force winds then yes its [sic] going to move around a bit [...] It is not recommended that you inflate these on cliffs, dams or areas with strong wind gusts.

If you want more, then here it is:

DO NOT ALLOW ANYONE INSIDE WHILE DEFLATING! It is recommended that in the event there is a power failure that you crawl on your hands and knees to the nearest exit. In the event of a rapid deflation is is best to NOT PANIC, keep your arms up at an angle in front of you.

This last is accompanied by a photo of Shatner’s Kirk choking to death.

But back to the actual product. The 6-10mm-thick plastic is welded into a giant black balloon which is inflated by a fan connected to an entry tube. The tent is black inside to prevent light spill, and can be pumped up ready for action in 3-4 minutes.

There are two sizes, the smaller 12 x 7 x 10 foot version and a lager 20 x 12 x 12-foot model. Both can be had with or without fans, at $330/$400 or $350/$500 respectively. This is surprisingly cheap for photo gear.

Go check out the site. It’s worth it for a few minutes amusement. Especially good is the glimpse of what look like capri-pants on the boy-model in the video.

Inflatable Photo Studio [IPS via Strobist]

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The very best thing about the DeluxeGear Lens Guard is that it looks like it was designed and made by a three-year old. Take a look: it’s as if this protective cover had been squished out of Play-Doh and stuck straight on the front of the lens.

In fact the Lens Guard is a little more high-tech than that. An inner neoprene core is covered with Santoprene, a cross between rubber and polypropylene which can be molded when hot and sets to a bendy, waterproof rubber-like material. According to Wikipedia, Santoprene is also used to make the blades of “training knives, swords, and bayonets” which is awesome.

Back on the camera, the Lens Guard is like an extreme lens-cap. You pop the cosy over the end of the lens and the shock-absorbing cover soaks up bumps, whilst shrugging off dust and water. If you’re the kind of person who keeps a lens-hood permanently attached to your lens not to reduce flare but to protect the front element from whacks and smack, this is for you.

The Lens Guard comes in three sizes, to fit lenses from 2.5-inches to 3.9-inches in diameter, all of which cost $15. Or you could just buy a tub of Play Doh and put the kids to work.

Lens Guard product page [DeluxeGear via Photography Bay]

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Now: You bring your camera home, battery dead and memory-card full after a long day’s shooting. You remove the card and battery, track down your card reader and charger, plug them in, yawn.

The future: You walk in the door, put your Canon camera down onto the Canon Cross Media Station on the side-table and go grab a cold beer from the refrigerator. As you sip the well-earned beverage, the shiny black box slurps in your photos and videos whilst simultaneously charging the battery, all without wires.

And it is the future. Canon’s prototype is slick, but is still a few years from entering production, mostly because the cameras will need to be re-designed to work with it. Check out the video and you’ll see that the cameras – a compact, an SLR and a camcorder – all have annoying blue lights to let you know they’re talking to the Media Station.

The video, shot by Trusted Reviews at the Canon Expo 2010, goes on to demonstrate the sharing and display features, which group pictures together based on time taken, camera used or even by person (using face recognition). It’s impressive stuff, but eye-candy, and aimed at my mother, who would never buy this thing. Hopefully a final version will just slurp the pictures out and send them to my computer. Or better, to a hard drive that I have plugged into the back, from where I can grab them from an iPad or laptop on the same network.

One thing though, Canon. Don’t write any of this software yourself. I have used the stuff you package with cameras and scanners, and it sucks. I will, however, buy this cool Media Station, if only to add to my collection of 2001 monolith-inspired gadgets.

Canon Showcases Filesharing Cross Media Station [Trusted Reviews]

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Nokia has wowed us with its hot N8 smartphone, the flagship cellphone which packs in every function known to man, and controls them all with a horrible, old fashioned Symbian OS. Meanwhile, Nokia’s soon-to-be-leaving mobile boss Anssi Vanjoki said using Android was like “peeing in your pants for warmth” in winter, and Ari Jaaksi, head of Nokia’s Meego OS, quit this week.

It seems that the only thing Nokia is still good at is hardware. Luckily, iFixit has gotten hold of an N8 and – of course – taken the ting apart. Follow along to see just how Nokia manahged to fit so much in there.

The N8 is similar in size to the iPhone, but fatter. This is mostly because of the huge camera module inside, which sports a 12MP sensor and a five-element Carl Zeiss lens. This extra thickness does allow some wiggle-room, and might explain how the Finnish technicians managed to include a USB-port and HDMI-port along wioth all the hardware buttons around the edge. And of course, there’s that slide-out keyboard.

Showing just how serious the camera is, the N8 uses a proper Xenon lamp for the “flash”. Take a look: it’s not just an LED but a tube, just like you have in your compact digicam.

IFixit CEO Kyle Wiens likes the N8, as it is so easy to repair. The battery isn’t soldered in, the glass panel isn’t fused to the AMOLED touch-screen and the handset itself is easy to take apert. How easy? “even a Finnish caveman could do it (provided they were evolved enough to handle a Torx screwdriver,” says Wiens.

The N8 looks like a solid phone (literally: “this is the beefiest phone we’ve taken apart all year,” says Kyle), but is still crippled by the Symbian OS. Still, if nothing else, it should take a nice picture.

Nokia N8 Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Kyle!]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Apparently, somebody in Sony’s camera-phone department didn’t get the megapixel memo. While pixel-counts in real cameras have been shrinking in favor of bigger, better, more sensitive pixels, cellphone cams seems to be squeezing in more and tinier photo-sites.

The sensor is the 16.41 Megapixel Exmor R, a tiny back-illuminated CMOS sensor designed to boost the spec-sheet of any phone it is stuffed into. Exmor is Sony’s photo-processing engine, used in its cameras and seen here in a cellphone-cam for the first time.

In better news, Sony has also come with the “industry’s smallest and thinnest” lens module, which could lead to better camera in things like the iPod Touch. These modules have auto-focus and are designed for the new Exmor sensors.

But back to those pixels. Sony is actually proud that it has the smallest pixels in the world: 1.12m, if you’re counting (and we are). It has mitigated the light and color-bleeding problems of jamming so many tiny photodiodes so close together by inventing “a unique formation of photo diodes optimally designed for fine pixel structure.” What this means is less noise and higher sensitivity. Here’s a picture:

That picture is taken under perfect lighting in a studio. Don’t expect results like these in the streets at dusk.

I suppose I secretly like these crazy announcements. In squeezing ever more pixels into ever tinier spaces, Sony makes advances that will make proper cameras better. And it’s not stopping, either. Sony ash just invested 40 billion Yen ($485 million) in the Kumamoto Technology Center to make more CMOS chips.

Sony commercializes world’s first 16.41 Megapixe sensors for mobile phones [Sony]

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The Glif is a small piece of plastic with a tripod mount embedded within. It is also the most useful accessory you could buy for your iPhone 4. Made from injection-molded plastic, the simple shape of the Glif hides a surprising range of functions.

Designed by Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt, the primary function of the widget is to mount your iPhone 4 onto a tripod. To do this, it slips into a groove that wraps L-shaped around a corner and the long edge of the iPhone. It also works as a kickstand, much like the MoviePeg for previous iPhones. It’s easiest to see the configurations in the gallery below, but there is one more rather cheeky thing that the Glif will do that’s not shown: it works like a bumper. Leave the Glif on the phone, wrapped around the bottom left edge and it will stop you touching the antenna-strip and dropping calls.

The Glif is currently in development using Kickstarter, a service that lets people pitch-in money to get products into production. Provost and Gerhardt set a goal of $10,000, and almost $30,000 has so far been pledged, so the production-lines should start rolling soon. The price should be around $20.

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Glif product page [Glif]

Glif – iPhone 4 Tripod Mount & Stand [Kickstarter]

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Panasonic is teasing us with a few details of the Lumix Phone, containing a 13.2 megapixel CMOS sensor and a 3.3-inch VGA LCD*. It will be the same size as the iPhone, only twice as thick, at 17.7mm.

At this point, you’re probably expecting the standard rant about tiny sensors and high pixel-counts in cellphones. I don’t think that’s what we have here, though. It seems instead that this will be a proper camera with a cellphone built-in, rather than the other way around. This could be a fantastic idea. Why?

I carry a camera with me pretty much all the time. I also carry a cellphone, but use it only a few times a week. If I could make the odd call and send an SMS from my camera once in a while, I’d be happy.

What’s more, I could upload pictures to Flickr and other services, and have my photos geotagged automatically. And because I’d be thinking of this as a phone, I wouldn’t mind charging it every night.

The specs are being slowed teased onto the Lumix Phone site, but so far we know that the camera will have a flash, a dedicated shutter button and a flash. It will also have a touch-screen. An image and full details will be published on October 5th.

Lumix Phone product page [Panasonic]

Lumix Phone press release [Panasonic]

*Camera LCDs are usually measured in dots, which is actually triple the amount of pixels. This makes the Lumix Camera’s screen an impressive 900,000-dots: 640 x 480 x 3 = 921,600. I think. My maths is quite terrible.

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

When it lopped the click-wheel and camera off the iPod Nano, Apple sent a clear message: it hates you, sports fans. The video-shooting iPod was tough and light, and unlike the iPod Touch, almost unbreakable. That made it perfect for wearing whilst doing sports. It also made it perfect for recording sports.

If you have a 5th-gen Nano, or manage to buy one before stocks run out, then Rampant Gear’s head-mount may be for you. An elasticated strap wraps around the back of your helmet, and the iPod slips into a boxy rubber mount at the front, held away from the helmet itself. The whole thing looks pretty solid and the rubber absorbs the bumps.

This turns the little iPod into a helmet-cam for just $35, and lets you film your sporting exploits hands-free. The quality of the Nano’s video is hardly high, but you probably won’t care – the point of catching your awesome goals on film is not the video itself, after all. The point is your awesomeness.

Take a look at the sample videos on the site to see what you can expect. I would embed a video here, but I already used up my bike-polo allowance for the day.

iPod Nano helmet-cam [Rampant Gear]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Congratulations are in order for Joby – there’s a new addition to its Gorillapod family, the Gorillapod Video.

The bandy-legged tripod has the same jointed, prehensile appendages found on its bigger and smaller brothers, only it now has a different head. Designed for small pocket video-cameras like the Flip and the Kodak Zi8, The new ‘pod has a quick-release plate that attaches to a smooth-moving ball-head, giving 360 of pan and 135 of tilt.

Along with its grip-anything legs, the Gorillapod Video also has neodymium magnets in its feet for sticking to metal surfaces. Once you have stopped zooming during shots, the next best thing you can do to make your home-movies look more professional is to use a tripod to get rid of nauseating shake. Now you can do that for just $30, and remember, all the Gorillapods make great iPad stands.

Gorillapod Video [Joby]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Me last week: “A 1080p webcam? Who on Earth would want an HD webcam. This is stupid.” Me this week (after buying a 27-inch iMac) “Hey, my parents look terrible on this Skype call, blown up on this giant screen. What they need is a 1080p webcam.”

And that’s just what Microsoft will sell you, for $100. The LifeCam Studio Webcam shoots its video at 1920 x 1080 pixels and captures stills at 2304 x 1728. The foot is fashioned to either clip over the top of a monitor or to screw onto a tripod, and the box also contains a carrying case so you can make an even better contribution to the landfill this week.

The camera is also auto-focus, and has a built-in microphone (so you can toss that crappy headset, Dad. It doesn’t suit you anyway). Now, all you need is video-calling software that will support hi-def video and you’re done.

The LifeCam Studio Webcam is available now, from Best Buy.

1080p HD Sensor: Closest Thing to Being There in Person [Microsoft]

LifeCam Studio Webcam product page [Best Buy]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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Photo of locals dancing on a street by Zach Winter.

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Your all-in-one smartphone can’t take photos nearly as well as a DSLR, but there’s something special about that camera you carry everywhere. Every serendipitous or dramatic moment is subject to visual immortalization so long as you have a fast shutter finger.

Enthusiasm in the fleeting nature of smartphone photography has spawned a subculture called “iPhoneography.” Several iPhoneography blogs and photo groups have cropped up in major cities including London and New York, where smartphone shooters post artistic photos of their local communities.

“Everybody always has their iPhone with them, so you can get these photo opportunities that you’d never have with your giant DSLR,” said Zach Winter, a proud iPhoneographer. “You can be kind of sneaky with it.”

Despite the lack of manual controls on smartphone cameras, their photos can look pretty decent, and you can touch them up easily with photo-editing software sold through the iPhone or Android app stores (e.g. for the iPhone, we’re big fans of CameraBag.)

Winter is just getting started with an iPhoneography blog for the San Francisco Bay Area. He encourages smartphone users visiting or living in San Francisco to submit their best photos to build a stronger Bay Area iPhoneography community. Even though it’s called iPhoneography, Winter welcomes Android shooters to submit their pics, too.

“There wasn’t any sort of community in San Francisco, and I thought that was kind of odd considering that Apple is based in the Bay Area,” he said. “There’s some community struggling with San Francisco, as far as the arts go.”

Winter provided the photos in the gallery above as some excellent examples from photographers who submitted to his site, as well as some pics he shot with his own iPhone. They are indeed impressive.

Inspired yet? Wired.com invites you to submit your best smartphone photos to us. We’ll post the top entries here on Gadget Lab.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Today’s ridiculous Apple rumor comes from Apple Insider. The claim? That a new FaceTime-equipped iPad will be in stores in time for the holiday season, just six-months after the original launch. Bull.

That there will be an iPad with a FaceTime camera is certain, and it will probably be there in v2. But the idea that Apple would bring out a new model so soon after the first one is nonsensical in many ways. First, Apple can barely make enough iPads to keep up with demand. Only in the last few weeks have order-times dropped to a reasonable 24-hours, and with the iPad’s Chinese launch coming soon, it seems that Apple will continue to sell as many iPads as it can make. Introducing a new model so soon would be pointless.

Second, Apple runs its portable devices on a yearly update schedule. Every summer sees a new iPhone, every September a new iPod lineup. And while there is no precedent yet for the iPad, its safe to assume that it, too, will receive yearly updates. One year is long enough that early-adopters like me will be happy to buy every new model, and long enough not to piss off customers who feel that their toy has be obsoleted too soon. Remember the fuss about the iPhone price-drop? Imagine what would happen if a new iPad came out in a month or so.

Apple Insider’s source is “a person with proven knowledge of Apple’s future product plans” and says that:

A version of the tablet device with a built-in video camera and support for the new FaceTime video conferencing standard has already progressed to the advanced testing stages.

He also said that “there was an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year’s holiday shopping season.”

Which brings me to a third point. Why rush an update into stores with just one tiny, incremental hardware change? It seems very unlikely that there will be a Retina Display in a new iPad so soon after launch. After all, if the prices of such a big, hi-res screen were already cheap enough to keep to the iPad’s $500 price-point, wouldn’t Apple have put them in there already? The same goes for an SD-card-slot, which I’m guessing will be in iPad 2.0. The price of the rest of the hardware will have to drop before these are added, and six-months into a product cycle seems to soon.

I say this rumor is nothing but a rumor. If you want a new camera-toting iPad, wait until April.

Apple to move aggressively on FaceTime, camera-equipped iPads [Apple Insider]

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Photojojo’s Camera Strap Buddy is an almost ridiculously simple widget that could change the way you carry your camera. Nothing more than a small metal bracket and a tripod-screw, the Buddy lets you use your existing camera strap but makes carrying the camera a lot more comfortable.

The usual neck-strap is possibly the worst way to carry a camera. If anything heavier than a pocket-camera around my neck, it starts to get uncomfortable, fast. Use a longer strap and sling it across your chest like a messenger-bag and things get better, but bigger cameras can be bouncy, and knock against your hip. The Camera Strap Buddy lets you run a strap from one of the regular strap brackets to the bottom of the camera.

When slung bandolier-style, even a heavy camera sits comfortably at your side, and is kept out of your way but ready for a quick grab-shot. I haven’t tested Photojojo’s adapter, but I have tried others and it’s possible to carry something like Nikon’s hefty D700 around all day and still be comfortable.

Could you make your own? Indubitably, but why bother? The Camera Strap Buddy is just $15. Just make sure you screw it in tight.

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Camera Strap Buddy [Photojojo]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews