Captured at 1/1 11:11

Happy New Year to everyone from the folks at GadgetMETER. GadgetMETER is now officially 1 year old and I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in that time.

One of my New Years resolution consists of simplifying my online and offline lifestyle.

• Get rid of junk in my house I haven’t used in years
• Eat less or no meat.
• Reduced the number of RSS subscriptions.
• Deactivated my Facebook account. (I’ll talk more about this later).
• Discovered http://mnmlist.com and http://minimalmac.com. These are two great websites if you feel you are too distracted with todays bombardment of information.
• Run a 10k
• Enrolled at UPenn for Graduate School.
• De clutter my MacBook desktop and menu bar

Now, if you are wondering how this screenshot is appropriate for this post. Well, I just happen to look at my iPhone at exactly 1/1 11:11pm so I quickly captured it. The background is a picture of Monica Belluci on my jail broken iPhone. Pretty cool huh? It must be a sign because I see it as a way to reset our tech lifestyle and look back at what’s really important: family, friend (true friends, not the persons you don’t know on your Facebook), health, and the environment. Today, we have way too many distractions in our life that really clouds our judgetment on what’s really important. Let’s take time to get rid of online and offline baggage and welcome the New Year!

So I propose this New Years Challenge for you.

• Go take a walk.
• Meet with a friend for coffee.
• Enough with Twitter already. It’s really just for celebrities!
• Delete contacts on Facebook you don’t ever engage with. Heck, deactivate your Facebook account like I did!
• Delete LinkedIn. Who really uses this anyway?
• Stop texting while having lunch or dinner with someone. Enjoy the moment.
• Volunteer at a community center or shelter.
• Donate to a charity: time, money, clothes, food. It can be anything.
• Read a long form book.
• Go camping or hiking.
• Call up a friend. No texting!

I was going to wait until after Turkey Day to start posting my “12 Things That Would Be Really Cool To Have For Christmas” list, but then I decided that the earlier I start, the more likely I am to actually get one of these things.
So here is number one (these are going to appear in no particular order of preference, btw):

The Eye-Fi SD wireless card.

The Eye-Fi card is the 1st wireless memory card for your digital camera. It is just like a normal SD card except that it is wireless enabled and can be synced with your home wireless network (actually it can be synced with up to 32 different wireless networks) so you can transfer your photos and videos to your computer without the mess of cables. And we all know how much I hate cables (fyi, A LOT).

There are four classes of cards.
Home ($49.99) – This is the stripped down version. It’s 2GB and only transfers JPEGs and only to your computer, not to photo sharing sites.
Share Video ($79.99) – This adds the ability to upload video as well as uploading directly to photo sharing sites like Flickr, Facebook and more.
Explore Video($99.99) - This adds Hotspot access and Geotagging to the package
Pro ($149.99) – Includes RAW support and “Ad Hoc” transfers (the photos get transfered to your laptop instantly while you shoot)… This is essentially wireless tethering without the need for a Hotspot or wireless access point. Awesome!!!

There’s a few other card options as well, so there really is a card to suit everyone’s need and budget. And of course, any Eye-Fi user get a free iPhone app that uploads all your iPhone images and videos automatically to your selected sharing sites.

And the best part, it works with your existing digital camera. Currently these cards are compatible with over 1,000 different models.

So of course the next question is: Does it work with the Mac?
Yeah. It totally works with the Mac. OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 in fact.

Here’s a rundown of system requirements:
An SDHC compatible camera. Not sure if yours is one of them? Find out here.
A broadband Internet connection
A Wi-Fi router compatible with 802.11b/g
A computer with Windows XP/Vista/7 or Mac OSX 10.4, 10.5, or 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
An internet browser, specifically Internet Explorer 7 (Windows only), Firefox 2 and 3 (Windows and OS X) and Safari 3 (OS X 10.4 – 10.6)

What it comes with:
A 2GB or 4GB (depending on model) SD Eye-Fi Share Video memory card with built-in Wi-Fi
Eye-Fi Manager software
Free USB card reader for easy setup
Quick Start Guide

specs:
Range: 90+ ft outdoors & 45+ ft indoors
Advanced power management that optimizes use of your camera power
Wi-Fi security: Static WEP 64/128, WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK

I know I sound like an advertisement for Eye-FI (I swear, I am not actually on their payroll). But it really is that cool of a product. And one day I’ll be able to dump out the entire drawer of cables I have dedicated just for that purpose. That truly will be a wonderful day.

Via Eye-Fi website

Twitscoop iPhone App

Have you ever wondered what people are talking about in the cyberspace cloud in real time? Well, now you can with the iPhone App Twitscoop.

Twitscoop allows visualization of real time trends and discussions on Twitter straight from your iPhone. The tag cloud grows and shrinks in real-time depending on the popularity of the topic.  The app has a trend algorithm that pulls buzz words, breaking news, and content such as pictures, links, and videos.

Strangely, the key feature lacking in Twitscoop is the lack of ability to tweet from within the app. It is such an obvious feature that they should include it in future updates.

Twitscoop is available for $0.99 on the iTunes App Store.

Ever since cameras have been small enough to hold with just one hand people have been taking hand held self portraits. I pride myself on being a master of it. I know just what angles work and about 95% of all self portraits I’ve done the last few years have turned out framed just right. But I think I’m in the minority on this one. So I’m surprised it took this long for a company to implement such a great idea.
Samsung will be releasing a point and shoot that includes a small front-facing LCD, so you can line up your self portraits just right EVERY single time. Alas, I spent all that time perfecting my technique for nothing. Oh well!

And it’s not just for self portraits. It can also display the timer as well as little animations to get your kiddos to look at you when you are trying to take that all important shot of their beautiful smiling face!
Not to mention all the other excellent features of this camera: touch screen capabilities, 720p HD video and facial recognition to name just a few.
The lower end T220 runs $200, and the higher end T225 (which includes a slightly larger screen and an HDMI out) will be $350.

Via Popular Science Gadgets

Novelty gadget accessories will continue to thrive as products for as long as companies continue to manufacture gadgets.  One of the newest such novelties is actually finding itself to be quite useful.

Meet the Digidudes.  Each Digidude is a tripod.  The legs pull out of the body area to create the base, and the head of the character screws right off providing a convenient base for most compact digital cameras, Flip cameras, and other related gadgetry.  (I wouldn’t trust the little thing to hold your DSLR with your super-zooming-large lens though…just a word to the wise out there).

These little tripods could end up coming in handy in travel situations where carrying a full-sized tripod is inconvenient or even impossible.  Digidudes are not available for sale on the mass market yet, but quirky.com is having a special pre-sale of them for the low price of just $19.99.

Remember how high-tech hidden cameras were in action movies? These rogue tools are now accessible to almost everyone. Miniature cellphones come with video recording capabilities like the iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 3G can also record video after it has been jailbroken with the Cycorder or Video Recorder app from the Cydia store. These devices are small enough to be hidden almost everywhere.  ESPN Reporter Erin Andrews was recently a victim of a spy camera.

KJB Security SF-103 Spy Finder Personal [Misc.]

The Spy Camera Finder will help you find hidden spy cameras in your hotel, locker room, or next vacation. Just look through the view finder and scan your room to detect the location of hidden cameras (even if they are off). It works by using “optical” augmentation” to locate video cameras.

For $87, it is reasonable and affordable way to protect your privacy. It is also small and lightweight enough to be portable.

Via Gadget Grid

I recently returned from a family vacation in Puerto Rico.  Aside from having a great time and seeing some great sights, I was able to play around with an iPhone app I’d installed some time ago.  I say “play around” but really the app became a core part of my vacation photography.  AutoStitch is one of the most impressive photography apps I’ve seen on any platform, iPhone or otherwise.

You may remember my review of an app called Pano.  AutoStitch one-ups Pano by removing the need to manually align subsequent photos to create the panorama.  Before I go into detail, let me show you a couple of the pics it created.  (All panoramas have been reduced to 60% of their original size to help them fit better on most screens.  Click on the images to see them in their full glory.)

The image quality is not bad at all, considering I took these using the iPhone 3G’s junky camera.  This app actually made me want to upgrade to the higher resolution/quality of the iPhone3GS, because I think the same pictures would have turned out even better.

If you recall, Pano used its own interface to the iPhone’s camera to do its thing.  You took a series of pictures that overlapped guidelines that Pano provided.  While I originally really liked Pano, I found it really difficult to use in real life because it’s tough to get the overlap Pano needs to make its panorama.  I also found that Pano was slow to snap and save successive images, making picture taking a pain.  AutoStitch solves both those problems.

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