Hasta La Gadget!

Video cameras are so last decade. Cinema cameras are the hot new thing. While companies like Canon, Blackmagic, and Sony are vying for the love of movie-makers, two ambitious Bostonians decided to build their own camera from the ground up, with a little help from a Mac Mini.

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The modern day nomad does not ride on a camel – no sir, we call him or her a road warrior instead, and he or she would have a plethora of portable devices at his/her disposal. Chief among them would definitely be a smartphone, and I am quite sure that somewhere in the equation would be a tablet or yet another device that needs electricity to run – it could be a dedicated GPS navigation device or something else. That would mean keeping up to speed with the battery life of all your devices each evening, making sure that they are all fully juiced up to meet the rigors of yet another working day. Enter the $69.99 iGeek 2.0 Large Capacity Portable Charger, where it boasts of a 11,200mAh capacity that is extremely reliable and simple to use, just plug it in and you’re good to go!

The iGeek 2.0 Large Capacity Portable Charger would play nice with non-Apple devices as well, which means it will work with Android, Blackberry, Samsung, tablets of all sorts, even portable gaming consoles like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, among others. Should you be tired of hearing the low battery beep any more, then the iGeek is the ideal tool to carry around to provide a quick boost for your ever power hungry devices.
[ iGeek 2.0 Large Capacity Portable Charger helps juice up your thirsty devices copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

As much as we enjoyed our time with the BlackBerry Q10, it looks as though it hasn’t been selling particularly well, according to a recently published report.

According to the Wall Street Journal, who is citing sources who claim to have knowledge of the situation, demand for the device has been very low. The source claims they spoke to phone retailer in the Midwest who sells the device across 16 different stores, who says he saw “virtually no demand” for the BlackBerry Q10. He then added the few he did sell at his locations were eventually returned by customers. Ultimately, his entire stock was returned to his equipment vendor, according to the WSJ.

In addition to some dude in the Midwest, a Canadian carrier executive was also feeling negative towards the BlackBerry Q10. The executive told the WSJ the BlackBerry Q10 “just hit the ground and died.”

The BlackBerry Q10 is available across a number of U.S. carriers, but unfortunately, it hasn’t been able to perform as well as BlackBerry would probably hoped it would, considering hardcore BlackBerry fans know how important a physical keyboard is to the entire experience. Whether or not the BlackBerry Q10 is considered a flop has yet to be seen, although we certainly hope it has some life out there, especially for hardcore BlackBerry users.

BlackBerry Q10 Sales Performing Poorly [Report] original content from Ubergizmo.

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset isn’t even available for consumers to buy yet but here comes the cut-price competition… While the Rift development kit  will set you back $300 — and still requires a PC to do the gaming horse-work — vrAse, a soon-to-be-launched-on-Kickstarter project, is approaching virtual reality from another direction. It wants to turn your existing smartphone into a pair of wearable virtual reality/3D specs. And do so for as little as £48/$75.

Since high-end smartphones are powerful computers in their own right, and come furnished with cameras front and back, why not just stick your phone right on your face, right? Provided you don’t mind looking like Mr Phone Face, of course. vrAse is one part Oculus Rift, one part Google Glass, one part sci-fi ski goggles — with gaming, 3D movie-watching and augmented reality use-cases envisaged by its creators, assuming they can get developers to make the apps to go with their goggles.

At launch there’s clearly not going to be a lot of ready to rock apps but they say they will offer demo content to show off vrAse’s AR and 3D gaming capabilities. Plus, any movies already made for 3D can also be downloaded or streamed in Side by Side format (SBS) for viewing on vrAse. And films and games can also apparently be converted to SBS for viewing on the device.

vrAse is effectively a toughened smartphone case, attached to a pair of wearable goggles. Your existing smartphone slides inside the case so you’re looking directly at its screen through vrAse’s dual lenses — which generate the 3D/immersion effect. And that’s pretty much it. Compatible smartphones at launch are the iPhone 5, HTC One, Xperia Z, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 2. In future the creators say they will make it compatible with any smartphone.

How immersive will vrAse be? That’s the key question. And the answer will depend (in part) on the smartphone screen you’re pairing it with. The higher the screen res, the better looking the picture will presumably be. Beyond that, vrAse’s creators aren’t going into detail about what sort of field of vision to expect from vrAse so it’s hard to say how it will stack up against the likes of Oculus Rift. It is looking considerably cheaper to buy, however, so set your expectations accordingly. Update: vrAse says the range of vision is configurable but currently the device offers more than 105 degrees of binocular vision field. 

vrAse’s makers are hoping to raise £55,000 via Kickstarter. If they hit their target they’re aiming to ship to backers in February. Their crowdfunding campaign kicks off on Saturday.

Facebook has videos, pictures, polls, weird “feelings” comments, long statuses, short statuses, and lots of ads, but until now, it didn’t have those flashing reaction animations that really prove your wit. No more. Giphy announced today that it has created a code for embedding GIFs from its site onto Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson sent over a blunt official statement in response: “Facebook does not support animated GIFs.”

OK, except with Giphy’s workaround, it kind of sort of does.

GIFs on Facebook is big news, folks. Such big news, in fact, that Giphy.com briefly went down after releasing this groundbreaking workaround.

You can do it one of two ways: first, by hitting the Facebook button on Giphy itself and uploading directly from there; or second, by copying the URL code for the GIF and pasting it into a status as you would a video or article to share.

(Credit: Screenshot by Emily Dreyfuss) It’s awesome. But not perfect. The GIF doesn’t just flash natively on your timeline; it shows up like a video post. This is, we suppose, what Facebook’s spokesperson meant by the insistence that Facebook does not support GIFs. Like with videos, there is a play icon that you must push in order for it to go into its GIFfy goodness.

But maybe that’s a good thing… [Read more]

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