Hasta La Gadget!

Over the past several weeks we’ve gone through a surprisingly simple process with the folks at WOODCHUCK with some premium customized wooden bits for some of our favorite devices. What … Continue reading

A new Kickstarter project called Tooga Gear based out of LA wants to provide a versatile, durable camera mounting solution for capturing tricky shots in a modular package that can support DSLRs, GoPros and other action cams, and even smartphones, all in a package that can fit in a small sling bag.

Tooga Gear includes a dolly, suction mounts, a ballhead tripod mount, a protective guerrilla cage and a shell component that ties everything together. The pieces can be switched out depending on your needs, to make for smooth rolling pan shots, footage taken from a camera mounted to any smooth surface, including, to quote the project description, “the side of a plane.”

This is nicer than many similar rigs (of which I’ve used and own a few) because of the accessory mounts built into each leg on the dolly wheels, which can support additional accessories like external fill lights, off-camera flashes and mics. The Tooga Cage, too is designed with two cold-shoe mounts, along with threaded mounts for additional gear. That suction mount kit seems a little more specialized in usage, but you could quite easily mount it to a car window for doing your own follow shots on (hopefully not illegal) chase scene filming.

The entire Tooga kit can be had starting at pledges of $449, which sounds like a lot but is actually a pretty great deal when you compare against the price of any of the components individually (from a decent manufacturer). The team consists of mechanical engineers Shan Kim and Chris Anderson, who has built a number of camera gadgets before, and design students Kay Kim and Benson Lam. The founders have an existing supply chain in place, they say, so that should help them hit their March 2014 anticipated ship date.

The Tooga team is seeking $45,000 to turn its prototype into a shipping device, and it’s just starting out with a little over $3,000 pledged so far. As a sometime videographer, it’s something I’d definitely like to see become a reality.

This week the roll-out to the 2013 line of DROID devices begins with the DROID Ultra, the DROID Maxx, and the DROID Mini. Believe it or not, Motorola appears to … Continue reading

We have seen our fair share of smartphones that hail from BLU in the past, and this time around, here are a couple more devices that you might just want to check out if you want a highly affordable Android-powered device that does not really skimp on the hardware specifications – and they are the BLU Advance 4.0 and BLU Studio 5.0. BLU has been in the US for some time already, selling highly affordable off-contract Android-powered handsets, and these would certainly make the already cheap Motorola Moto G look expensive, relatively speaking. Of course, BLU’s offerings will not be as technologically on par with Motorola’s, but hey, you get what you pay for.

The $139 BLU Studio 5.0 II will come with a 5” 480 x 854 pixel IPS display, a MediaTek MT6572 ARM Cortex-A7 dual-core processor, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, a 5MP camera at the back and a VGA front-facing camera, 512MB RAM, 4GB of internal memory and a microSD memory card slot.

As for the BLU Advance 4.0, it will cost just $89, sporting a similar processor, wireless capabilities, memory and storage as the Studio 5.0, except that it has a smaller TFT display at 4” at 800 x 480 pixel resolution. Both of these smartphones will arrive in either black or white colors, just in case you were wondering.

BLU Advance 4.0 And BLU Studio 5.0 Smartphones Unveiled original content from Ubergizmo.

While the release of a Samsung Galaxy S5 wouldn’t seem to be all that near – surprise – rumor would have it that the company is planning an outing party … Continue reading