Hasta La Gadget!

Pictures speak a thousand words. A couple more hundred, if they’re really good. When arranged one after the other chronologically, you could even use them to tell your life’s story. Doing so, however, will take a lot of time and patience that you may not have.

Lucky for you, you can get Picturelife to do it all for you.

Picturelife is an app that you can use to sync all your photos from various social networking platforms to your computer. The app can grab images from numerous popular sites including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Dropbox. After the images are synced, organized and de-duped, you can access and browse through all your life’s shots on your desktop, browser, or on your mobile device via their iOS and Android apps.

Memories are free to make. Unfortunately, they may not be free to organize in this case, because you’ll have to purchase a storage plan in order to start using Picturelife to back up your pictures – unless your life can be summed up in less than about 1700 photos (or 5GB.)

[via Laughing Squid]

The first time we heard of the Trygger photo filter for the iPhone was last summer. The company behind the product, called BiteMyApple, announced in December of last year that it was working on version for the iPhone 5, and it is now shipping. If you’re looking for a way to improve your iPhone images, the Trygger’s polarized filter might do the trick.

The idea behind this photo filter is to help users of the iPhone take clear and vibrant photos anytime. The polarized filter removes glare from glass, water, metal, and hazy skies for richer colors and sharper images. The filter is made by placing a color neutral polarizing film between two layers of scratch resistant optical glass. The filter is also adjustable allowing the user to choose how much light is let in.

The version of the Trygger for the iPhone 5 slips onto the corner of the smartphone and sells for $39.99 (USD). They also make a version for the iPhone 4 that’s built into a case that sells for $49.99. Both versions are available in either black or white.

If the earlier images we saw are any indication of quality, it looks like it’s well worth the money.

Samsung tonight revealed the much-anticipated follow up to its insanely popular Galaxy S3 smartphone, the Galaxy S4, which will ship with the latest build of Android Jelly Bean, 4.2.2.

The Galaxy S4 has a more-than-ample 5-inch 1920 x 1080 Super AMOLED 441ppi display, that fills out almost the entire face of the phone. While the phone is a skinch larger than the Galaxy S3, it weighs virtually the same, at just 130g. Dimensions are appx. 5.3″ long by 2.7″ wide, and just 7.9mm thin – just a fraction of a millimeter thicker than the svelte iPhone 5.

The phone offers an upgraded 13-megapixel rear camera, with nifty features like a “Drama Shot” which can capture numerous photos in rapid succession and superimpose them, to create a composite motion image.

It can also shoot images from both the front and rear 2-megapixel cameras simultaneously so you can see a front and rear view on a single image, or can also be used for three-way chats. You can also annotate still images along with sound snippets that you can play back along with them – though I think that idea seems sort of silly when you could just shoot video.

Some of the whiz-bang features of the phone which may or may not prove useful in the real world are the ability to scroll up and down the screen by just tilting up or down, as well as the being able to interact with content by hovering your finger over relevant locations on the screen. Samsung also added a “Smart Pause” feature which uses the front-facing camera to automatically stops playing video when you look away from the screen, and resumes when you start looking again.

Other cool features include the S Translator, which provides voice-based translation service, S Voice Drive – hands-free driving mode, and Group Play, which lets you share music and sync it to up to eight other phones by simply bumping phones together.

The S4 has 2GB of system memory, and storage is available in 16, 32 and 64GB flavors, along with a microSD slot for up to 64GB additional storage. Plus, the phone also has a removable battery – thank goodness. Of course, it’ll offer both 3G and 4G LTE versions with global support, as well as 802.11 b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. The 4G LTE is supposed to offer data download speeds up to 100Mbps and upload speeds up to 50Mbps on supported networks. I also like how they built in an infrared transmitter so you can use the phone as a remote for your TV and other media equipment without extra hardware.

The phone will sport a large 2,600 mAh battery – 500 mAh more than the S3 came with. In order to enable some of the new features, the Galaxy S4 has a new front infrared sensor and a temperature and humidity sensor.

CPU specs haven’t officially been announced, but it’s been said that the Galaxy S4 is powered by a ridiculously spec’d Samsung Exynos 5 Octa-Core CPU, with Quad Cortex-A15 cores running at 1.6GHz AND Quad Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz or a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU clocked at 1.9GHz (depending on market), and a PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU running at up to 533MHz or the Adreno 320 GPU (depending on market.)

Numerous accessories are planned for the launch, including a wireless fitness band called the S Band, which can measure sleep and exercise data and transmit it the S-Health app running on the phone.

There’s also a game pad in the works which provides dual analog sticks shoulder buttons, D-Pad and everything else you need to enjoy tactile gameplay on the phone’s lovely full HD screen.

For more details, you can check out the full product reveal by jumping to 40 minutes into the video below. It starts getting awfully cheesy around the 60 minute mark, so be prepared.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IDXILsX7_QI?t=40m

Surprisingly, Samsung didn’t reveal the pricing or an exact release date for the Galaxy S4 tonight, but word on the street is that we should start seeing the S4 in stores sometime this April.

To register your interest in the Galaxy S4 and for a chance to win one, head over to the Samsung website and fill out this form.

While winter’s dry air here in Chicago is finally nearing its end, I’m sure there are many of you who live in dry climates where humidification is a must year-round. If your need to moisturize your nasal passages and are into photography, have I got something for you!

One of the latest wacky gadgets to find its way from Hong Kong via Brando, the USB Camera Lens Humidifier is exactly what it sounds like. This gadget looks just like a Canon SLR camera lens, but is actually a compact desktop humidifier. Just load it with water, plug it into a USB port, and you’ll be fogging up your eyeglasses in no time flat.

The USB Camera Lens Humidifier is available for just $25(USD) over at Brando. Just don’t try and mount it to your fancy DSLR and expect to shoot steamy photos with it.

I recently had a chance to test drive the LG 29″ Ultrawide IPS Monitor (Model 29EA93-P) for an extended period of time, and I thought I’d share my experiences with you in case you’re in the market for a new display. You’re probably saying to yourself, what’s the big deal about another monitor?

Well, I’ll tell you. What makes the LG Ultrawide special is its exceptionally high-resolution LED-backlit 21:9 LCD display, which makes it perfect for working on multiple windows at the same time. And for doing this…

When you take the display out of the box, the 21:9 proportion display is quite eye-catching. It’s got a nice anti-glare matte finish on the screen itself, and a thin black bezel which measures about 1/2″ wide. The case has a glossy white back, and attaches easily to a chrome base that provides the ability to tilt the display.

As a web designer, developer and editor myself, I always crave more screen real estate, and my workflow demands that I have both my editing window and website preview window open side-by-side. The LG Ultrawide’s crazy-wide 2560×1080 LCD screen is ideal for this sort of task.

Out of the box, the display works with any graphics card that supports 2560×1080 resolution, and you can immediately bring up multiple full-page browsers next to each other. At this resolution, you can have two 1280×1080 screens side-by-side, or just get a tremendous amount of real-estate on a single window.

The display also supports a variety of standard monitor resolutions, including 1080p, which comes in handy if you want to watch a movie in 21:9 format without bars at the top and bottom. It can even shift 1080p 21:9 content up just enough to allow for subtitles.

The display also ships with “Screen Splitter” software which basically allows you to automatically size and organize windows scattered on your desktop, so they each take a pre-set amount of display space, and will even force newly-opened windows into this pre-set grid.

It’s a handy feature if you’re a stock trader or have to watch lots of windows at the same time, but it is only supported on Windows. That said, there is  split-screen window management software out there for the Mac – in the form of SizeUp – but Mac users will need to buy that separately. Or if you’re just interested in side-by side viewing, you can go with Windows’ built in Aero Snap or Cinch on the Mac.

LG’s screen also has a “Dual Link Up” feature which allows you to connect two devices simultaneously, and view the content on a split screen, or in traditional Picture-in-Picture format. This could be very convenient if you want to view content from multiple devices at the same time, such as an HDMI-capable camera and your video-editing software on your computer. However, the dual-link mode doesn’t seem to support two HDMI devices at the same time – just the combinations you see below:

In my testing, I found the LG Ultrawide display to be sharp, bright, and easy-to-read – providing good screen uniformity and contrast levels. While it’s not quite as sharp as the display on my 27″ iMac, even the smallest letters were crisp and without noticeable fringing. The display worked immediately with the built in Intel graphics chipset on my Asus Zenbook Prime, connected via the micro-HDMI port on the ultrabook, as well as with the HDMI port on my PS3, and on a random Android tablet I tested it with as well. However, I did not get to test the display with a Mac, since I didn’t have the appropriate Mini DisplayPort adapter cable on hand to use with my iMac.

The controls on the display are set under the bezel at the front right, and seem to be using some sort of touch-sensing tech, since they don’t need to be pressed to be used. If I have any complaint about this display at all – and it’s a minor one – it’s that the buttons are a little too sensitive, and easy to accidentally trigger. I also didn’t care for the less than intuitive OSD menu navigation, but I’m nitpicking. You won’t be touching these controls very often unless you’re switching between multiple devices anyhow.

In terms of connectivity, the display offers two HDMI ports, a DisplayPort jack, as well as a DVI-D input and a built-in USB 3.0 hub with 3 ports. The second HDMI port also supports MHL, a growing standard for playing video from smartphones and other mobile devices. LG even is kind enough to include an MHL to HDMI cable in the box (though it would have been nice to get a regular HDMI cable too.)  It also supports VESA wall mounts, and Kensington security cables.

The display also has small stereo speakers built in, so if you connect via HDMI, DisplayLink, or plug in audio via the 3.5″ mini jack, you’ll get sound. It won’t blow your eardrums, but it’s plenty sufficient for office use, and you’re not buying something like this for the sound anyhow.

Overall, I’m impressed with the display quality and utility of the LG Ultrawide display. It provides a ton of screen real-estate, and a configuration that’s ideal for side-by-side window viewing, or watching 21:9 video content. It’s a great alternative to multiple monitors for graphic designers, web developers, video editors, and other creative professionals. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s also great for pencil pushers, since you can open massive spreadsheets on this thing as well.

You can order the LG Ultrawide IPS Monitor from Amazon for $699(USD), and can find more details on the LG website.

Disclosure: LG provided us with the device for review in this article. However, all reviews are the unbiased views of our editorial staff, and we will only recommend products or services we have used personally, and believe will be good for our readers.