The Future is Now – Top 5 iPhone Accessories

The Kogeto Dot 360 Degree Panoramic Add-On Lens for the iPhone

 

Yes, your iPhone is cool. Yes, you’re cool for having an iPhone. But wait- there’s more! Here are the top five coolest, craziest, best iPhone accessories for your iPhone.

 

 Be cooler.

 

1. Freeloader Pico Solar Rechargeable iPhone Charger

Everyone knows that whilst your iPhone is cool, the battery life is the least cool aspect. We all want our phones to last for as long as possible before we try and find our charger to make us tied to one spot. This a a great, environmentally friendly accessory to try and fight that tied-down feeling. Using advanced solar cell and lithium ion battery technologies, PICO takes only 30 minutes to deliver its power to your iPhone. PICO can be powered from both its own solar cell or from connection to a PC or lap top (cable supplied). $39.99

 

2. The Kogeto Dot 360 panoramic video

Once this is on your iPhone, you’re free to start taking fully 360 degree videos. This accessory makes your iPhone able to record everything. Everything. Once you’ve captured absolutely everything around you, wherever you may be, or be doing, you can share it with your friends via facebook, twitter etc. It’s like inviting your friends into a 3D version of your life. Started on the website kickstarter.com, this is an amazing app. While it seems futuristic, the future is, apparently, now.

Available in different colours, $49.00

 

3. iPhone Photo Printer by Hammacher Schlemmer

Using nothing other than a free downloadable app and this tiny teeny printer that you dock your iPhone into, you can get brilliant quality photo prints ( 1, 4, or 10 images on each 4 inch by 6 inch borderless sheet) from your iPhone photos. It takes less than a minute and is smudge proof, tear proof, fade and water resistant. Pictures are worth a thousand words right? $159.95.

 

4.Vuzix Wrap 310 XL Video eyewear

This wicked accessory lets you be kinda like a spy, wearing cool dark glasses, sitting there not actually watching what’s in front of you ( like your boring job or boring commute to said job) but instead watching any movie or video on your iPhone or iPad, through your sunglasses. It displays both standard 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios and is super cool. $169.99.

 

5. Microscope lens for iPhone 4 – 3B Scientific iPhone Microscope 100X Magnification

Want to see if you have bed bugs? Or the really tiny little bits of, well, everything? This is for you, and it’s kind of unbelievable that this technology is available. It’s literally an accessory that turns your iPhone into a microscope. You can even take photos of all that microscopic awesomeness and share it with your friends. Around $45 Amazon.

 

Go get ’em.

App of the day – iTranslate Voice

iTranslate Voice

iTranslate Voice

Fervent wannabe linguists rejoice- iTranslate is the best translator app since people realized that lazy people want to speak other languages too. Simply speak your chosen phrase or word into your iPhone, it senses when you stop speaking and not only spells out the phrase in your chosen language but speaks it too.

After lots of trialling by iPhone Antidote, with both American and Australian accents, it understands most sentences and phrases -even obscure- first go, and the translations seem startlingly accurate ( trialled with Slovak, Thai and Spanish).

You can even use it to learn if you’re smart and committed, but for the intended use, translating, the major ( but understandable) problem is that you do need to be connected to the internet to make it work. You would have to have a rather large data roaming plan to use it whilst travelling, but for emergencies, or the chance to ask questions or have a conversation with someone in another language whilst sitting in a wifi-connected hostel, hotel or cafe is unbelievable. On sale now for $0.99

Go on, design an app. I dare you.

Design an iPhone App!

 

A few years ago, if you wanted to skip the 9-5 rat race, sick of working your way up the ranks of middle management, always being at someone else’s ( your boss’s) mercy, you had the chance, if you had the balls and the smarts, to start your own business. It was very, very hard work, and extremely risky. Geniuses very rarely start their own businesses because they understand the risks involved. Both financial and emotional.

 

A lot of people who wanted to, never took the plunge, and a lot of people did, with one great idea. And they lost.
With the introduction of the iPhone however, under the guidance of Steve Jobs’ own creative smarts, we were introduced into a whole new business world. Apps. The first time in a long time a whole new and increasingly lucrative business market opened up.

 

You could take an idea, and you could run. Anyone can do it. Make millions. Think of the apps you use the most, or the ones you like the most- Instagram, Draw Something, Words with Friends, Angry Birds. Simple ideas. Some of them are not even executed very well but they made millions.

 

Here’s the thing- If you want to be your own boss now, you can design an app. Scratch that. DESIGN AN APP. Brainstorm with your friends. Think of anything and everything that someone could have use for or do for fun on their iPhone. Have an iPhone app designing night, hell, make it a drinking game. Just give it a try. You could make millions. There are companies out there that will give you a lot of money for a good idea, if not buy your app outright.

 

But…. but I don’t know how to do computer… stuff? I hear you say.
Well, hire someone dummy. Use one of the many freelancing websites out there (freelancer.com, elance.com, etc) .  Spend a small amount ( upwards of $300 depending on the idea) and people will do it for you. All you need is one great idea, a little bit of start up money, a little faith, and no guts at all. Easy, peasy. ( note, nine out of the top ten best selling apps of all time are games. Just so you know.)

 

iPhones, making millionaires out of anyone with a spark.

Some Awesome iPhone Shortcuts

A helpful time saving trick for using your iPhone is using shortcuts. Most useful for writing emails or texts, you can for example use the shortcut ‘hme’ and the phone will fill in your prescribed sentence, ” Will be home soon’ or, ‘meets’ for ‘in a meeting right now, I will call you back as soon as I can’ or ‘fce’ for ‘I’m sorry I drew genetalia on your face when you were passed out last night’.

 

So many uses.

 

You can set up your shortcuts on your phone by going to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts.

 

Just be careful- your friends could read this too and this could happen to you

How to Put an iPhone in Airplane Mode

It is pretty easy to do, but that doesn’t mean we all know how to do it.

How to Put Your iPhone in Airplane Mode

So I figured I would go ahead and post how to put your iPhone into Airplane mode.  This can be useful for when you are actually on an airplane, when you do not want to take any calls (maybe a really important meeting?), or when you just want to save some battery on your iPhone.

 

It is quite simple really, on your iPhone just:

1) Tap the Settings App

2) Swipe the Airplane Mode slider from Off to On.

 

Thats it!  Now you can be free and not have to worry about the outside world contacting you.  No rings, no calls, no vibrating, just you and nature.  Hey!  I wonder what my friends are up to…

 

It is pretty easy to slide back off as well 😉

Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs vs. Aaron Sorkin as Screen Writer

Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs

 

Coming along with all these updates regarding the two new biopics are pictures of Ashton Kutcher sporting a notably “Steve Jobs” look.  It shows we will be watching Ashton Kutcher as the lead in this show.  Something that’s also kinda cool, they even plan to begin shooting in the actual garage that Apple was started in.

 

It looks like things are starting to also roll along on another Steve Jobs movie.    Sony made the announcement earlier this week that Aaron Sorkin, the Academy Award winning screen writer for The Social Network, would modifying Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs for the screen.  This comes along with additional word that Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-Founder, would be hired as a consultant to help keeping the film true.

 

There should be more information coming up soon and we will definitely keep you updated on this interesting development!

I wanna see your face! Wireless Video Calls for Free

I Wanna See Your Face!

 

There have been videophone’s around since the 1960’s. Surprising? It certainly surprised me.  I’m not sure when I started getting used to the fact that I could see the people I was talking to no matter where in the world they were- but I think it was at least several decades after that.

 

What’s even more surprising is that videophones never took off. Huge phone companies still won’t even talk about the possibility of bringing them out.

 

What has taken off though; is that instead of using phone technology, now, we use phone apps that connect us across wireless internet. Now I’m pretty sure that was just a sparkle in..someone’s eye in the 60’s. And it’s easy. And wonderful. Here’s a few reasons you should download Skype onto your iPhone right NOW!

 

1) You can have date night when you’re thousands of miles away.

2) You can see Kangaroos, in the sunshine, on the beach, in Australia, when you’re in the middle of snow in Nantucket.

3) You can show a medical professional your symptoms.

4) You can watch a youtube clip on skype- on someone’s phone, through their computer, to yours, even when your internet has been limited by speed.

5) You can have, uh… intimate moments. Moving on…

6) The best two apps for seeing someone’s beautiful face are Skype and FaceTime. Both are extremely easy to use, and free on a wireless connection. Amazing.

7) Skype is especially awesome, because if your internet is capped by bandwidth to the point that you have difficulty even watching a youtube clip- Skype will still work, perfectly. It reroutes itself through another port.

 

Now go download it, phone a kangaroo and have an intimate moment with a healthcare professional.

 

You know you want to.

Cool iPhone Web Browser Features

iPhone Safari Tips

Are you looking to save an image that you have hit across the web suddenly? Well, here’s something that may come handy for you. When you are going through the picture on your Safari browser, simply hold on to the image and you will be prompted with an option to ‘save image.’ Just save it and you can use it as wallpaper or screensaver.

 

Well, the Safari browser also offers some short-cut options—like if you are looking to type a website address, you can easily omit the .com extension in the URL box and land directly into the website page. Also, you can choose the other extensions like .edu or .gov by pressing down the .com button for longer time period.

 

We’ve mentioned it before, but thought it might be handy to mention it in the context of the web browser.  Here is how to take a screenshot! It’s pretty easy—just press down the Home button while taping the Lock button—click! And you have your screenshot.

 

Hope it helps!

Taking Pictures Fast on the iPhone

You’ve maybe been hearing a lot of tips and tricks related to iPhone. We won’t bore you with those same ‘tricks’ which you are already aware of; we’ll keep this post short and simple.

 

Last night I was thinking, well, are we making the full use of our smartphone?  I bet not—there are so many cool features which most of us don’t have any ideas about.

 

Are we using it to it's full potential?

All of us are fond of taking snapshots on our iPhone—it’s pretty simple and robust. Just thought you should know you can take some quick pics even when it remains locked.

 

Many a times it happens—you miss to capture a ‘magic moment’ on your phone, only because of 1-2 seconds delay in unlocking the Phone. But, now with the iPhone you can even take quick snaps prior to unlocking the phone. Let’s explain how.

 

When it’s locked, just double tap the Home button—this would open up the camera icon on your screen.  Also, now you can just use the volume up button on your headphones to take the picture.  Awesome, right?

 

Why the next iPhone won’t be an iPhone 5

The Next iPhone Won't be Called an iPhone 5

 

The new iPhone that is having an anticipated release of either this summer or early fall won’t be called the iPhone 5.  Here’s why:

 

The iPhone has had some rather peculiar names in its past when you really think about it.  The very first iPhone was simply called an iPhone.  This makes sense as it was the first of its kind.  But here is where the confusion comes in.  The next year, Apple released the new iPhone, which included the 3G network.  Rightfully so, they labeled this iPhone, the iPhone 3G.

 

From that point on, the iPhone naming scheme got a bit more complicated.  For some reason, the first iPhone can be referred to as both a 1G and 2G iPhone.  One referring to the network before 3G (and calling it 2G) and the other referring to the 1st Generation of iPhone (1G).

 

Then to make matters more confusing, for Apple’s next release (their third iPhone), they simply added an S to the name, to make it an iPhone 3GS.  At this point, the naming scheme started to make sense again.  Their 3rd iPhone actually had a 3 in the name (albeit so did the previous 2nd generation iPhone, the 3G).

 

Then Apple came out with the iPhone 4 in June of 2010.  Their 4th iPhone, released with the quite simple name iPhone 4.  It seemed like the naming/numbering scheme with iPhones would all fall back into place with this generation, and it would be simple to refer to iPhone’s by their generational number.  The 4th iPhone could be referred to as the 4G, and so on.

 

Everyone assumed that the 5th generation of iPhone would be called the iPhone 5.  But…  It wasn’t.  It was called the iPhone 4S.  So the 5th generation iPhone is called 4S.  Seems a bit confusing, but thats the way it is.

 

This next iPhone, however, won’t be called the iPhone 5.  It would be a mistake on Apple’s marketing to do such a failure of a name.  Why would you name the 6th iPhone, iPhone 5?!  Especially when they had the lead-up setup from the 2nd iPhone to skip a generation (since the iPhone 3G was actually the 2nd generation).

 

I predict that the new iPhone will be called something new.  There is potential that it will be called the iPhone 6, but given that there was no distinct “iPhone 5” released, I anticipate they will choose a new name, something likely without reliance on the numbering system.  A new name for the iPhone could come with something like iPhone X, although it is unlikely that Apple would choose that name given that Droid has already used it for their hardware.  iPhone Z?  Maybe they will go back to the basics, and call it something simple “The iPhone” or “The New iPhone”.  iPhone Air?   iPhone Mini?  iPhoneHD?  iPhone Chrome?

 

I guess well just have to wait and find out!