Turn your iPhone or iPad into a journal, a dream catcher, a sketchpad or even a thought recorder with This Is Not an App. Designed as an interactive adaptation of Keri Smith’s thought-provoking “This Is Not a Book,” the imagination-driving mobile app from Penguin Group for Apple and Android…
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Earlier this week, many of us here on the Eastern Coast of the USA endured hurricane Sandy’s assault. As a resident of coastal Massachusetts, I spent last weekend preparing for the storm. There’s a lot to be done, and you’ll find an excellent overview from the American Red Cross here. Now that the worst seems to be behind us in my particular neighborhood (I know it’s not this way for all those affected by the storm), I’ll share some simple tips I picked up from this event to ensure that your tech gadgets are ready to go the next time emergency strikes. Getting things organized ahead of time can lessen the stress of dealing with the event itself.
It’s likely that you’ll lose power during a major storm, so charge all of your devices ahead of time. When power does go out, unplug your devices, as it could be restored with a jolt. Also, if you’ve got a generator, it’s best not to run electronics like phones, laptops, and tablets off of it.
I live in a small town, so we lost power at the drop of a hat. Once it’s gone, it stays gone. A good backup battery is great to have on hand. iPhone owners should check out the Mophie Juice Pack. It starts at $80 and provides several hours of additional life to your iPhone 4 or 4S (an iPhone 5 version is under development). It’s a case that charges separately from your phone, and features an on/off switch so you needn’t use it until you need it. If that’s not enough, consider the Mophie Powerstation Pro, an external battery that provides even more power to your iPhone.
There are several options for Android phone owners, too, like the Samsung Galaxy S III Power Bank External Battery Case.
You can also extend your phone’s battery life by disabling certain features, like Wi-Fi (your router’s probably out anyway) and Bluetooth. Also, dim the screen brightness and avoid playing audio at a high volume. If your phone is set to check email automatically at regular intervals, turn that off, too. All of those processes drain battery life.
If you’re forced to evacuate your home, it’s helpful to have important documents with you, but not always practical. One solution is to store copies in the cloud. Evernote lets you store digital files remotely and access them from nearly any Internet-connected phone, tablet, or computer. Simply scan your documents or take photos of them. Create a new notebook in Evernote (I suggest the name “Emergency Documents”) and add the digital copies.
The American Red Cross has released several great apps for both the iPhone and Android devices. For this storm, I installed one called Hurricane App. This free, full-featured app provides tips on preparedness, push alerts for your area and so much more. You’ll even get location-based NOAA weather alerts and can monitor alerts for far away regions of the country where loved ones are. There’s even a flashlight, strobe and alarm included.
iPhone owners who are interested in NOAA weather radio should check out NOAA weather radio app for iPhone. It provides live NOAA weather broadcasts for a huge variety of locations across the USA. A crank radio is best, as there’s no battery to exhaust, but this works if you have power on your phone.
Back up your computers, tablets, and smart phones before the storm hits (you’re doing this anyway, right?). It’s nice to have a backup in your house, but inadequate if that’s all you’ve got. Create remote backups with a service like Crashplan, Dolly Drive or Carbonite.
Finally, keep an eye on social media. It’s amazing how significantly these services affect our lives. You can follow The American Red Cross on Twitter for up -to-the-minute information. Also, look for relevant hashtags, like #Sandy.
Of course, the best advice is to follow the instructions of emergency personnel in your area. Be safe, be careful and be prepared. And our thoughts continue to be with those most affected by this horrible storm.
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L’accessorio per mettere il vostro smartphone un po’ dappertutto. Si chiama The Bobine e lo trovate su photojojo!
Three new point-and-shoot models from the compact line of digital cameras
The latest addition to the ever advancing world of photography sees three new cameras announced from Nikon today. Joining the COOLPIX line is the more advanced P7700, the tiny, credit card-sized S01 and the Android-powered S800c. Set to release in September 2012, the three point-and-shoot cameras each approach the…
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Voici la nouvelle publicité vidéo pour Google Chrome, réalisé par le studio Süperfad. Vantant les mérites du navigateur que cela soit sur écran d’ordinateur mais aussi sur Android ou tablette, cette création de papier simple et efficace se dévoile dans la suite.
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Five add-ons to raise your level of mobile photography
While running around the labrynth of CES last week we noticed more than a couple standouts in the category of iPhone photography. From snap-on fisheyes and tripod-compatible add-ons to an app that sends physical post cards with the swipe of a finger, the following are five iPhone photo accessories that bring a new level of sophistication to cameraphone photography.
To improve upon the already-impressive HD video capabilities of the iPhone 4S, the Pico Flex Dolly allows the user to mount their device to shoot smooth tracking and panning shots. The pared-down roller sets up in 30 seconds, allowing you to conveniently add some cinematic magic to your next cat video. The comprehensive kit, which includes a friction arm, shark clip and carrying case in addition to the dolly, sells for $100 while the stand-alone dolly goes for $70 from Amazon.
Perfect for travelers, Postcard on the Run is a new app that allows users to send physical postcards with snapshots from their phone and a personalized message. For around $2 via credit card or Paypal, the app takes care of postage and mailing with a few swipes and taps. Plus, you can add a GPS location and, even, a special smell.
The latest from Liquid Image is the Apex Series of goggles with a built-in HD camera. Features include an adjustable 1080p camera and GPS that connect to your phone via wi-fi, which allows for the phone to act as a viewfinder for the googles to review footage. Although the exact released date has not been announced, the Apex Series is expected to retail for $400. Keep an eye out in the coming months for more info.
For more variety than Instagram’s filters can offer, the Olloclip for iPhone equips the camera to shoot in one of three modes—fisheye, wide angle and macro. The little gadget slips over the camera corner of your phone to produce the desired effect with its respective lens. Unlike the multitude of other removable lens adaptors, the Olloclip slides on and off without adhesives or magnets. Olloclip is available online for $70.
For a steadier shot or focused zoom we’re liking the Mosy Mount, a tripod-mountable adapter that offers stability without being too clunky. The Mosy Mount works with bost iPhones and Android devices, as well as with most tablets. Available online for $15.
A new app curates mood-based music playlists
A mammoth music library should inspire pride, not anxiety. The problem is, how do you begin to sort through tens of thousands of tracks? Shuffle functions are too dumbed down, and there’s no time to create a custom playlist for every occasion.
Enter HABU, the mood-based music app that auto-generates playlists from your library based on how you feel, designed by Gravity Mobile leveraging music mapping from Gracenote. The emotional interface is all about intelligent entertainment, filtering information to enhance the user experience. “HABU was created for people who’d rather spend their time discovering new music than creating custom playlists,” says Jeff Benson, director of product management for Gravity Mobile. “With the average customer listening to 17 to 19 hours of music per week, we saw the need to design and develop a music app that could surface highly targeted playlists and music recommendations.”
HABU comes with an intuitive “mood map,” a circular visualizer that groups songs based in their position on two axes. Songs are plotted between “positive” and “dark” on the y-axis and “calm” and “energetic” on the x-axis based on their classification by Gracenote, which takes a range of variables into consideration when assigning them a specific emotional tag. The results get placed into 25 mood groups with 100 individual moods. That way, your gloomy, energized, yearning and upbeat personas are never without a constant stream of music. The intensity of a mood’s plot signifies the quantity of content for that mood, and users can share their maps with friends over Facebook.
The app uses Gracenote’s “sonic attribute technology” to create mood profiles for more than 30 million tracks. This allows HABU to generate tailored playlists at the touch of a finger, empowering the user to browse even the most prolific music collections. Reading user tastes, HABU finds similar tracks and lets you preview songs before downloading them. According to Benson, the app “is set up to interface with a customer’s own content as much as it is to discover new content via song recommendation and mood-based discovery.”
HABU is currently available in the Android Market for 99 cents; the iPad app is set to drop this Spring.
Three eco-friendly chargers designed to shut off automatically to save your battery and wallet
Claiming to be the “most eco-friendly and efficient way to charge mobile devices,” Bracketron‘s GreenZero battery and chargers eliminate stand-by energy consumption by automatically shutting off once your device is charged. Set to be released at CES in Las Vegas later this month, the series includes Mushroom and Stone style chargers as well as a Stone battery— for use with iPhone, USB and microUSB devices.
The Mushroom GreenZero charger is the standout due to its ergonomic design and device compatibility—available in iPhone, USB, and Android specific models. The large top, which earned the charger its moniker, acts as a button to be pushed with either hand or foot to turn on. And once the charge is complete it shuts off to save energy and avoid top-off stress on device batteries.
Dropping the large button for a slightly sleeker design, the Stone GreenZero charger is the more travel friendly of the two, featuring a universal USB outlet. And like it’s bigger brother, the Stone shuts off automatically once your device is charged. The third in the family is the Stone battery. This 100mAmp pocket sized power supply offers up to three hours of charge and is available in microUSB and iDevice models.
The GreenZero line will officially launch mid January 2012 at CES and sell for between $22 and $29 from Bracketron online.
Just in time for Halloween, from the depths of the Android 4.0 laboratory emerges a frightening cross-breed creature called Roboto.
It was built from scratch and made specifically for high density displays. Google describes it has having a “dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms are largely geometric. At the same time the font’s sweeping semi-circular curves give it a cheerful demeanor.” — GottaBeMobile
This is pure PR BS. I know it when I see it because I’ve had to write a few glowing descriptions about typefaces that don’t really glow.
I’m all for the strategy of developing a unique identity typeface, and I commend Google for employing type designers in house, but this is an unwieldy mishmash. Roboto indeed has a mixed heritage, but that mix doesn’t have anything to do with the gibberish from the press release. Its parents are a Grotesk sans (like a slightly condensed Helvetica) and a Humanist sans (like Frutiger or Myriad). There’s nothing wrong with combining elements of these two styles to create something new. The crime is in the way they were combined: grabbing ideas from the Grotesk model, along with a Univers-inspired ‘a’ and ‘G’, welding them to letters from the Humanist model, and then bolting on three straight-sided caps à la DIN.
When an alphabet has such unrelated glyphs it can taste completely different depending on the word. “Fudge” is casual and contemporary. “Marshmallow” is rigid and classical. This is not a typeface. It’s a tossed salad. Or a four-headed Frankenstein. You never know which personality you’ll get.
For now, I can only speculate on how this beast came to be. The font files credit the design to Christian Robertson, whom I know to be a very bright professional with some decent work under his belt, including the convincing handwriter Dear Sarah and the adorable Ubuntu Titling font. Either Google tied him down and made unreasonable demands or there’s something nasty in the water down in Mountain View. To be fair, I haven’t seen the fonts on a phone, in person, and Google promises that they are built specifically for that medium. But I can’t imagine that would erase the inherent problem with the design. There are some good shapes in Roboto, they just belong in multiple typefaces.
In any event, Roboto probably won’t terrorize mobile screens for very long. Helvetica and Frutiger are immortal. Hodgepodge brutes like these usually have a short lifespan.
Download the Roboto fonts
See Roboto in action
For a multi-class combo done right, see Fakt or Breuer Text.
Update: Robertson has replied with his rationale for the design:
Here’s the thinking with the open terminals on the ‘e’ and ‘g’. It has been the hard and fast rule for sans serif types that the a, c, e, g and s must agree as to their angle of exit. Interestingly, this is not the case for serif types, and certainly isn’t true for any kind of handwriting. It is common for the lower case ‘e’ to be more open than the ‘a’ for example. If there is a single story ‘g’ it will often remain open, or even curve back the other way (up until it forms a two story g).
As I experimented with this thinking I realized a couple of things:
1 / I have always hated the way Helvetica and all of her acolytes close the terminal on the ‘g’. It is just so awkward. You can’t do it with a pen; the terminal always wants to end somewhere other than straight up (note that this is not true of s or a). It’s like a ‘t’ or ‘f’ that hooks all the way around. It’s just gross. It’s even worse with the geometric bowl on top. You get such an awkward double curve. I equally hate any calligraphic ‘g’ that closes with a ball terminal.
2 / I discovered that the type with a closed ‘a’ and ‘s’ and an open ‘e’ and ‘g’ has a really beautiful texture across longer blocks of text. The rhythm has this kind of a swirl that is actually really nice to read. You are correct that Fudge and Marshmallow may initially disrupt some expectations, but over the course of actually using the font, you forget that ‘e’ is decreed to be closed like ‘a’ (it doesn’t want to be anyway and ‘g’ needs a friend). Despite the PR speak, the variation in exit vectors does make for a more cheerful type.
As for the other two monster heads, I’m ignoring the part about the straight sided caps, since I don’t find it a problem that the lower case aren’t equally straight sided. Also, I find your disagreement with the K hardly worthy of justifying another head; possibly a finger or toe.
Note that there are still some bugs in the font that has been extracted from the SDK. Many of these have been corrected already, and you can expect to see some fixes to minor kerning issues and some diacritical misalignments. Also, since Android doesn’t use much of the nastiness that is TrueType hinting, Roboto is not hinted to support older Windows browsers, for example.
Update: Jan. 12, 2012 — Google offers the full 16-font Roboto family and specimen book on their new Android Design site. (Thanks, Reed Reibstein.)
A l’occasion de nouveaux téléphones HTC fonctionnant sous Android sur le marché belge, la marque a cherché à capitaliser avec une véritable “invasion” d’une armée de la mascotte Android aux gares de Bruxelles, Namur et d’Antwerp. Plus d’images dans la suite de l’article.
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