Initially released this time last year, the Jawbone UP, designed by Yves Behar, made its debut as a holistic life tracker worn on the wrist 24/7. As you may remember, the bendable band syncs with an iPhone app to record bodily information such as daily activity, sleep and diet….
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In an expansion of Art.com’s online service, Photos to Art, the eminent supplier of household decor is bringing personalized prints to social media. Photos to Art is now available as an iOS app capable of pulling images from phones as well as from Facebook and Instagram accounts, letting users…
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Long known for its nightlife and for being the unequivocal home of the cocktail—or, at the very least, the Manhattan—New York has slowly come up as a hub for the microbrew movement. With renowned leaders like Brooklyn Brewery paving the way for other craft enthusiasts, the city boasts…
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Anyone landing in London Town this week for all of the Frieze festivities will want to pick up or download a copy of the latest Gogo city guide—an essential travel companion for those who like to stay in the know and off the beaten path. Originally launched as a…
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Weave your way through the fair with a handy tool that fits right in your back pocket
Like many of the world’s art and design fairs, when the London Design Festival began 10 years ago, the biggest challenge was actually navigating the event itself. Always teeming with a surplus of exciting offerings from across the creative disciplines, fairs present a vast array of work under one…
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Shift reality with the simplistic slit-scan photography app for iPhone and iPad
Even with the plethora of photo editing, altering and sharing apps available today, there can only be so much variety among sepia-toned brunch photos. So as a slight departure from the camera app norm, DScan puts an analog touch on its user’s pictures. Shots produced with the “slit-scan photography…
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Explore the city’s emerging microbrew culture through a carefully curated iPhone app
As a city that created many of the world’s greatest beers, London has seen its brewing industry take on somewhat of a downward spiral over the last 25 years or so. This is quickly changing, however, thanks to a number of curious individuals throughout the capital whose newfound interest in the brewing process is leading to a huge craft beer renaissance.
To fully navigate the Big Smoke’s microbrewery movement beyond the three we highly recommend, check out the new iPhone app Craft Beer London—your geographical guide to nearly 30 craft breweries and the pubs and shops serving them. Using your current location, the app’s map allows you to see what’s nearby, while carefully considered reviews offer valuable insight on which beers you might like to seek out.
From Hackney, the hub of it all, to breweries south of the river Thames, Craft Beer London has it covered with a selection sure to impress any beer nerd. Casual sippers will also delight in the list of pubs, a thoroughly rated guide to some of the city’s finest drinking dens.
Updated regularly, Craft Beer London sells for for £2 (about $3 USD) from iTunes.
The augmented reality makeover of an Academy Award-winning short
From the outset, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” was imagined as a children’s book. The story is essentially about a man’s magical life among books, and it makes perfect sense as a picture book. Moonbot Studios—founded in part by “Morris Lessmore” author William Joyce—decided to go a different route by producing the story as an animated short. The short ended up winning an Academy award, and Moonbot went on to create an interactive iPad app, which was so wildly successful that it had librarians everywhere fretting about the end of the book as we know it. Now Moonbot and William Joyce have made a physical picture book with an augmented reality app that finally completes the picture for “Morris Lessmore.”
On its own, the book is brilliant. Joe Bluhm provides new illustrations that surely place the book among the top releases of 2012. Imag-N-O-Tron, the downloadable app that brings the book to life, cues voiceover and animated graphics for each spread. “We got a peek at this new technology called augmented reality—which I guess isn’t new now—but it’s new in the way that you are able to target images,” says Moonbot’s Brandon Oldenburg. “That’s where the magic happens. Augmented reality, up until now, always had to target a QR code. Now we’re able to target an illustration.”
Oldenburg points out that those uneasy about the story-telling power of the iPad app were delighted by the harmony of augmented reality. “The app isn’t replacing the book; it’s showing you a way to bridge the gap between the old and the new,” explains Oldenburg. Without overcomplicating the experience, Imag-N-O-Tron keeps the timeless integrity of the printed book while bringing in animated and interactive elements. Moreover, the framework of Imag-N-O-Tron can be used to enable future publications from Moonbot as well.
Oldenburg is right: this certainly isn’t the first time AR has been applied to a book, but it might be the most seamless integration to date. As the capabilities of the technology continue to expand, AR promises a niche future for the printed storybook—a way to bridge the analog-digital divide.
“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” available from Moonbot and on Amazon, and you can find Imag-N-O-Tron in the iTunes App Store.
Turn your iPhone into a waterproof wide-angle POV camera
As enthusiasm for compact personal POV cameras like GoPro and Contour continues to grow, iPhone accessory innovator Mophie recently released their solution to the dedicated camera system, Outride. The mountable case and app turns your iPhone into a protected video camera, allowing you to use your most readily available and familiar device for capturing the excitement.
Using multiple mounts the rugged, waterproof case can be affixed on a wide range of surfaces—surfboard, skateboard, bike—with minimal risk of damage to your device. The lightweight polycarbonate housing also features an integrated wide-angle lens with 170 degrees of capture, while the free Outride app lets you view footage, make edits and share videos through various social channels—meaning more than just your nearest friend can see the aftermath of the inevitable “watch this” moment.
Set to drop mid-September, Outride will be available directly from Mophie online for between $130 and $150.
Uncover treasures buried in your inbox with the new app
In the past we lost photos in attics, closets and shoe boxes stuffed under beds. Now, they just as easily go unnoticed deep in the depths of email inboxes. To bring these neglected snaps back to light, Lost Photos weeds through your email account of choice to find any photos that may have gotten forgotten in the shuffle, taking the legwork out of the otherwise tedious task of sifting back through old emails. Simply choose an email account, log in and give it a few minutes to work.
Lost Photos uncovered thousands of .jpg and .gif files among as many emails, taking us back to some of our favorite yet forgotten stories in the past year or so. If you want to expedite the task, the home page lets the user turn off .gif search or skip over images prior to an adjustable date. Once the images start popping up, share them among several social media outlets, or just hit “view photos in finder” to see the results neatly organized by date in a desktop folder.
Whether you’re searching for lost treasures or old assets, Lost Photos seems worth the $3 price tag. Visit Lost Photo online for more details and purchase in the iTunes store.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
