Hasta La Gadget!

The Camera Lens Cap Holder eliminates distracting dangle

I have seen a bunch of different “solutions” to the problem of lost lens caps, but none of them really worked. Worse, they usually leave the plastic cap dangling which is both annoying and can potentially ruin your photo if it gets in the way.

My current solution is not to use a cap at all, relying on the camera’s hard case to protect the lens when not in use. If this Kickstarter project is successful, though, I may switch to the Camera Lens Cap Holder instead.

The holder is simple. It threads onto your camera strap like a belt buckle and adds a simple disk of plastic, secured at both side for dangle-free positioning. Then, when you need somewhere to put your cap, you just clip it on as if you were clipping it to the lens.

Each holder can work with three or four different sizes of cap. This is done by putting two circles of plastic on each side of the holder. To get access to the send side, you just slip the holder off the strap and reverse it. This is easier with quick-release straps.

It’s so simple I have a feeling the inventor, Mark Stevenson, is going to have a success on his hands. To get one of the first production run, you’ll need to pledge $15 to the Kickstarter project. That’s cheaper than a couple of replacement lens caps.

Camera Lens Cap Holder [Kickstarter]

See Also:

• $72 Retractable Lens Cap for the Olympus XZ1
• Home-Made Protection: Rear Lens-Cap Pad for Stackable Storage …
• DIY Lens Cap Saver Is Ingeniously Inventive
• White-Balance Lens Cap. Possibly Pointless?
• Pinwide: Wide-Angle Pinhole Lens for Micro Four Thirds Cameras …

iOS 5 will bring a lot of new features for photograpahers

IOS 5 adds plenty of new features to the iPhone, but one group of users who will be particularly happy with the new operating system will be photographers. The most obvious feature is the update to the camera app itself, but there are lots of other tweaks which will make things a lot easier.

First, the camera application. The headline feature is that you can now use the volume switch to fire the shutter. This is a lot easier than tapping an on-screen button. Ironically, a third-party app which enabled this — Camera + — was booted out of the App Store in August last year.

You also get auto-focus and auto-exposure lock. A long press on the screen will set both and then lock them to that subject. This lets you recompose and shoot without those values changing. And pinching will now let you zoom in and out. It’s a digital zoom, but still — most of our photos end up on Instagram anyway.

IOS 5 is designed to let you use an iPhone or iPad without a parent computer. This carries over to the Camera app, which now offers basic image processing. Users can remove redeye, crop and enhance photos. It’s no Photogene, but it’s certainly a handy quick fix for casual snapshooters.

This independence carries over to the Photos app, too. Now you can arrange images into a folder on the device itself. Previously this was done within iPhoto on the Mac, which was frankly a pain.

Another feature, which may cause lost sales to developers of alternative camera apps is shooting direct from the lock screen. When the phone is locked, double-tap the home button and a camera icon will appear. This will take you to a restricted version of the Camera app, allowing you to snap pictures but denying access to photos already taken (including the ones you just took).

This is a nice way to allow quick access to the camera without compromising security. Just don’t leave you phone lying around at parties or you’ll be sure to end up with photos of somebody’s junk.

The thing I’m most excited about, though, is Photo Stream. this uses Apple’s new push/sync iCloud service to send photos automatically between devices. Snap a pic on your iPhone and it appears magically on your iPad and your computer. The last 1,000 images are kept on iOS devices, and of course everything is stored on the Mac or PC. This might convince me to finally buy an iPhone.

I wonder if Apple will open this up to third parties. Imagine if the wireless Eye-Fi SD cards could use Photo Stream. You’d be able to take pictures on your regular camera and they’d immediately be backed up and sent to all your devices.

Finally, a kind of related point: The LED flash on the iPhone 4 is now open for developers to abuse. Apple itself now lets you set the lamp to flash as an alert for messages or calls. Who knows what other annoying uses it can be put to?

Who knows what changes will come between now and the public release o iOS 5 this fall. One thing’s for sure, though — taking photos on the iPhone is about to get a whole lot more fun.

iOS 5 product page [Apple]

If you live in the US or Canada then the iTunes 10.3 beta is ready to rumble on your PC or Mac. Automatic downloads and access to your purchase history is limited to iOS 4.3.3 users on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (GSM only, sorry Verizon subscribers), iPad and iPad2, and 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch devices. Once you meet those requirements, the iTunes in the Cloud beta promises to keep all of your newly purchased iTunes music in sync between devices while giving you the choice to download previously purchased tracks whenever you want at no additional cost. 10.3 beta also brings the Automatic Downloads feature to your apps and books, now allowing you to purchase tomes from your desktop while keeping them in sync with the iBooks app running on your iOS devices.

Naturally, we couldn’t help but test it out ourselves from both a Mac and iPhone 4, so click through for our first impressions.

Continue reading iTunes (in the Cloud) 10.3 beta available for download, we go hands-on

iTunes (in the Cloud) 10.3 beta available for download, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on July 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

It was a big disappointment when the FastStone screenshot application turned to shareware, but there is another free alternative available that has some really nice features (especially for Vista users). It’s called Window Clippings and it is available for Windows XP, Server 2003, and Vista. Using it is a piece of cake since there is only one executable file (weighing it at only 237KB) that doesn’t require any installation.

There are some benefits that you’ll get by registering the software for $10, but overall most people will be more than satisfied with the free version. The best thing about it is that it’s intuitive, and yet offers several options for customizing the application. Here is a list of my favorite features in Window Clippings:

• As seen in the screenshot to the right, you can include one window in the screenshot or multiple windows. This is done by holding down the control key after Window Clippings has been activated.
• One of the coolest things is that Window Clippings has full support for capturing and retaining Vista’s transparency and shadow effects.
• You can have the resulting screenshot automatically saved to a file or copied to the clipboard. Heck, you can have it do both with every screenshot if you really want to.

The only thing I wish you could do with the free version is select a certain region of the screen to capture. Having that would reap the full benefits of the application, but I’m sure that the developer will continue to receive support through registrations and will keep adding new features. I’m pretty sure that this can become an amazing screenshot application with a little more work, and I look forward to seeing some new stuff!

Window Clippings Homepage
Source: I Started Something

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Despite its oddly intercapped name CineXPlayer is a great DIVX movie player

iPad movie player CineXPlayer has just gotten a big update. Version 2.1 not only adds some features, it gives my go-to XVID movie app a much-needed lick of paint.

CineXPlayer lets you load up your iPad with all those movie files and TV shows you — ahem — acquired legally. It’ll play pretty much any format you throw at it (AC3 sound isn’t supported). Just drag the movie files into the app via iTunes and you’re good to go.

There are plenty of other apps that do this, but CineXPlayer stands out for its stability and its excellent support for subtitles. Drop an SRT file in and you can select it to playback over the movie. Font size is adjustable and the text rendering is clear and smooth. And if the subtitle file has the same name as the movie file, they get paired up automatically.

One thing CineXPlayer wasn’t was pretty. Movies appeared in an ugly, text-only list and when you hit the “help” button, you were treated to a super-cheesy video featuring either the developer or the developer’s friend. This was enough to get me to buy and try many prettier apps.

Now, though, CineXPlayer has an icon view (although the text labels are horrible) and proper help pages. It also has search, draggable subtitles and the thumbnails show a frame from where you are in the movie (the app remember your position for you).

It also has — via in-app purchase — live 3-D conversion. You can choose between two kinds: anaglyph (red and blue/green) or “grilli 3-D.” This cost an extra $2. I bought it, but can’t test how well it works due to a lack of 3-D specs.

Other in-app purchases let you password protect folders (porn!) or disable iTunes backup to keep your computer’s hard drive a little less full.

Finally, you can now sort the movies into folders from within the app, as well as rename and delete files.

In all a great update, which is free for existing owners, and just $3 if you don’t have it. Recommended.

CineXPlayer [iTunes]

See Also:

• Free App Plays AVI Movies on iPad
• Hands-On With VLC Movie Player for iPad