Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts

Aug 3, 2012

Multicolor Penlight

In November 2012, Tomy will release a multicolored penlight that can be used for long exposure light painting on an iPhone or iPad.

Here is a LINK to see it in action. The subtitles are included below.

"Nowadays, penlight art is often used at wedding ceremonies and school festivals, but it requires an SLR and photography skills. We wanted to make penlight art easier, so people of all ages can enjoy it. What we've done is, we've created a simplified version of penlight art as an iPhone app."

"This penlight offers up to 27 colors at the touch of a button. It also provides straight lines, dotted lines, and gradation, so you can do a lot of things with it. This application really makes you want to get creative."

"You can also turn a series of photos into a video, like a flip book, and you can upload to Twitter and Facebook directly from the Album mode. So, you can share your photographic creations with everyone."

The multicolored penlight will be available for approximately $30 and the iPhone app can be downloaded for free. Beware, the site can be addicting because it has so much advanced, cool, fun, and useless technology.
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Mar 14, 2012

Better Bacon Book

The Better Bacon Book, which costs five dollars has been designed especially for the iPad and is an interactive book offers instructions on how to make your own bacon, build your own smoker, and find the best bacon to order.

It also has 31 interactive bacon recipes and 20 HD videos, 150 photos, and more tastiness than any human can handle at one time. Now we know why the iPad really sizzles. Disclaimer, I am not the author, although I wish I was.

Jan 21, 2012

Bloginalia 2011

 As I promised last month, Bloginalia 2011 is now available on Amazon.

A full year of Friday Thoughts in one convenient place. If you forgot any of the tidbits from last year or just want to impress your friends, pick up a copy. This rounds out the trio of Bloginalia 2009 and 2010. Great for Kindle or iPad or Nook reading and they look great on a coffee table. Thanks.
Bloginalia 2011

Jan 10, 2012

TV Types

LG just announced a new TV that has a 55 inch screen, is a bit less than one quarter inch thick (less than the width of a pencil) and weighs about 16 pounds. OLED means Organic Light Emitting Diode. It is the newest technology for TVs. It produces a picture far brighter than anything on the market. OLED emits light as opposed to LCD TVs which reflect light. This means that they are not good for outdoor viewing, but the picture is truly eye-popping good. Watch for much bigger screens with OLED displays in malls and other places.

At the Consumer electronics show (CES), beginning this week, Samsung introduced an LED TV, which is .3 inch thick. LED is newer than many of the current flat screen TVs and is brighter. Think of it as better than LCD, but not as good as OLED.

Am sure there will be many more goodies at the show and I will let you know if there is any wizbang technology ready to hit the street. In the meantime, do not buy a new tablet, like the iPad until the new models come out, because it always drives the price of the old ones down. That is not always true for TVs, because dealers are already marking down last year's models to make room for the new ones. TVs are not susceptible to new features every few months like other technology and we usually keep them longer than a few years.

Last year I got rid of a 30-year-old TV and it cost me ten dollars to have it recycled. None of the new TVs will last a third of that time, but each new one will be more exciting to watch. Already in the labs is the next generation AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) which claims to be viewable in direct sunlight.

3D TV is still a technology in search of an audience. It will not be ready for prime time until the producers make 3D content, we do not need to wear dorky glasses, and the quality gets better. Watch for sports to be among the first to adopt the technology. I am still waiting for glasses to replace the screen. They are almost ready for prime time and I hope to be first on my block to own a pair.

Nov 18, 2011

Who is Watching You

Each minute, 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, and it is only one of many video sites. There are millions of photos uploaded to Facebook each month. Flicker has 5 Billion photos and there are hundreds of photo sites like it. Millions of people have iPhones and Androids with video and still cameras. Google Earth is constantly scanning the globe from satellite and you can actually zoom into a view of your own home. I found one site where you can compare pictures from today, side-by-side with the same location from many years ago.

There are many thousands of cameras in public places around the world. One site that I enjoy has a collection of cameras available from around the world and it has a search capability LINK. Earthcam has locations of cameras that you can watch what is going on in full detail, live, up-to-the-minute color, and in full screen. Get a view from the Statue of Liberty, or Trafalgar Square. Check out the ski conditions in Switzerland. How about a live view of Hong Kong, or Melbourne? There is even a camera to watch the penguins in Sarasota, Florida.

Dallas has hundreds of traffic cameras that you can click on and watch traffic and weather. If you know someone it going to work on I75, you can actually watch them drive all the way to work, using the many traffic cameras. You can even set up a list of personal cameras that you want to watch. If a spouse or friend calls and says there is an accident, you can check the cameras and tell them what happened. Of course, if they have their iPad, they can look it up themselves while they are at a dead standstill.

Be careful if you call and tell your boss you are stuck in traffic, he or she might just check the cameras to make sure you are telling the truth.

Planning a trip, check the weather and traffic cams set up in the city you are going to and get a close up look at weather and traffic conditions. Tie these together with Google Streetview and you can look up pictures of the building, neighborhood, or house you are looking for. If you are going on vacation almost anywhere in the world, let your family back home know where you will be and they can watch you on a local camera. Of course, you can just stream your own video from your phone.

It is fun, interesting, distracting, and a bit scary at the same time. Big brother, big sister, and their nieces and nephews, cousins, and neighbors are all watching. Smile, you are on camera!

iPad Apps

App is short for application and an application is a program or bunch of programs that make iPads and other computers do things. Here are a few interesting apps people have found for iPads, Playing piano LINK,  Play drums LINK, a review of ten book reading apps LINK, many are talking about Alice for the iPad, fast, but shows it well LINK, and finally, we find out if it will blend with a blendtec that is a favorite for teens LINK.

May 25, 2011

Free E-books

Do you have a Kindle, or Nook, or iPad? Even you don't, here are ten sights you can go to to get free e-books to read. Also Barnes, Amazon and a few others offer some free e-books, but they are not the popular bestsellers.
  1. Authorama
  2. Bartleby.com
  3. Feedbooks.com
  4. Fictionwise.com
  5. Free-eBooks.net
  6. Project Gutenberg
  7. Literature.org
  8. Open Library
  9. Scribd.com
  10. Universal Digital Library at Carnegie Mellon University

May 19, 2011

Pocket Picks

Back in 1982, Sony came out with the 'Watchman', a flat panel black and white TV that was 7 inches by 3 inches, with a 1 3/4 inch screen and weighed about 22 ounces. It hit the US two years later, in 1984. It was amazing for its time.

Sony also had the 'Walkman' portable music player that you could carry with you. It came out in 1979.

Apple just took those concepts a few steps further with it's iPad, which combines TV, music, and computer technology in roughly the same size package. It just took 30 years for smaller, faster technology to catch up. I can hardly wait for the next 10 years, when all of this technology will be placed in a pair of glasses, and voice controlled.

May 13, 2011

Technology History

Television was first introduced to the American public at the 1939 World's Fair. World War II delayed commercial network programming in the US until the late 1940's. A popular black-and-white model, the 1948 Admiral, had a 7 inch screen encased in a large metal box four times the screen size. It cost $2,495 ($22,642.49 at today's cost) 

One of the earliest computers, ENIAC was introduced in 1946. It weighed 30 tons, had 6000 switches, 18,000 tubes and occupied an entire room.

The Apple iPad has a  9.7 inch screen and weighs 1.3 pounds.

Feb 18, 2011

Find Your iPhone

Here is a free app that you download to your iPhone, iPod, or iPad. Just download it and you are ready. Great if the device is misplaced, or stolen. It can find it, lock it, erase data, or whatever else you want to do. LINK

Dec 14, 2010

Call for Free

The free Vonage Mobile application for Facebook lets you call your Facebook friends anywhere in the world if they have the same app downloaded in their iPhone or Android.

It is available for Android phones in 48 countries and in 87 countries for iPhone or iPod Touch and is available from Vonage Facebook fan page. You can also invite your friends to download the mobile application.

After downloading this app, you enter your Facebook ID and password for the first time.
The software then automatically loads your Facebook contacts and separates them into two groups. One with friends who downloaded Vonage mobile app and you can call them for free. Other group shows Facebook friends who are available for instant messaging.
Just, touch the friend’s name from the Call Free list and your free call is connected.