Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re an avid photographer or videographer using anything from a traditional camcorder to a sports camera such as a GoPro, SteadyWheel is something that might interest you. This large circular device appears to be approximately the size of a small steering wheel. The device is made from ABS plastic with small weights embedded around the rim.

The device is designed to be a portable camera stabilizer meant to reduce shaking and improve stability when recording. The device is designed to work with smartphones, point-and-shoot cameras, still cameras, and just about anything else. Any camera that uses a standard 1/4-20 tripod mount can be secured inside of the wheel.

The device has no moving parts and is resistant to salt water making it usable for water sports. The SteadyWheel weighs 1.6 pounds and is 11 1/2 inches in diameter. Looking at the device, the diameter of the wheel makes it seem as though it would be very difficult to use in some settings. I can’t see the device being usable by a person who’s actually riding a motorcycle or driving a car for instance.

A pledge of $50 or more will get you one of the SteadyWheels during the early bird special. So far, the project has 200 backers and has raised $10,532 at the time of writing with 17 days to go. The project is seeking $27,000.

[via Kickstarter]

SteadyWheel hits Kickstarter and works with just about any camera is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Evernote has smashed past the two million active UK users mark, the cloud-based note-taking company has confirmed, doubling its footprint in the country within the space of a year. Perhaps more interestingly, the UK is supposedly Evernote’s biggest Evernote Business market in Europe, too. Nonetheless, the UK market base is still just a fraction of Evernote’s total userbase.

Overall, Evernote has more than 50m users worldwide, growing by 80,000 or so a day. The UK contributes around 3,000 to that daily figure, the company says.

Launched back in 2008 as a way to synchronize digital notes across multiple devices, Evernote has since expanded with native apps for iOS, Android, and other phone/tablet OSes, plus the ability to search text even when it’s included in a photo. The company has also inked deals with others to expand its footprint, including integrating Evernote into Samsung’s Galaxy Note series, and into Livescribe’s Sky WiFi smartpen.

In both devices, Evernote is used as a sync hub, with Livescribe going one step further and building an HTML5 sharing system that allows handwritten notes stored in Evernote to be reviewed by others complete with real-time audio. There’s more on that in our Sky smartpen review.

Meanwhile, Evernote hasn’t let up on Apple integration, even though the iPad lacks a proper stylus. Having acquired Penultimate, an app for handwritten notes on the iPad, it made it a free download and baked in search for cursive text.

Evernote hits 2m UK users as business tools accelerate is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Strip Doctor Who of its BBC production values, translate it into a 16-bit role playing game and you have something so deliciously geeky that it really ought be made a reality. More »

At first thought, an e-ink smartphone sounds like a terrible idea. Ugh, all that lag. But think about the light weight, low cost, and insane battery life, and you can see why eInk, the company behind the screen in Nooks and Kindles, is pushing its new prototype phone hard. More »

ANT Wireless has announced its next generation protocol, which offers improvements in both efficiency and functionality that the company says are essential to health, fitness, and sports, all areas where the company focuses. The new protocol has been launched on what ANT reports as the industry’s first SoC, offering advantages in multiple areas, including cost, speed, power, and size.

The result of all this will be an overall better experience for consumers, who will enjoy simpler operation, as well as a better security, more functionality, and longer battery life. Channels can now be encrypted between multiple devices, signal acquisition and data transport speeds have both been improved. Both event buffering and event filtering have resulted in overall reduced system power.

As part of the ANT+ “experience,” several improvements have been implemented, such as a quicker connection to computers and mobile devices. The power used between displays and sensors has been polished to provide better balance and less power usage, resulting in longer battery life. Downloads and data access are both hailed as thrice faster than previously, eliminating wait time.

According to ANT’s President Rod Morris, “Our fundamental goal is to always deliver ANT products that are forward-focused and future proof so that manufacturers can continually build upon what they do. “Because we deliver technology that works easily, consumers receive the very best available devices and can draw from an incredibly diverse and established ecosystem.”

[via This is ANT]

ANT unveils latest protocol, offers improvements in power and speed is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.