Hasta La Gadget!

The Silent FIlm Director iOS app lets you adjust a variety of settings to create your own vintage style silent film or home movie.

Nothing adds nostalgia to a just-taken iPhone video like retro visual effects and silent film-inspired title cards.

The Silent Film Director app for iPhones can transform any video you take into a ’60s-style home movie or a 1920s-esque silent film, taking that Instagram effect and amping it up a few notches.

The app is available in Standard and Pro versions. With the Standard version, you can record or upload video and render it with a variety of video effects (including Black & White, ’70s Home Video and Sepia), add a soundtrack (default, or your own), and adjust the playing speed and quality of the video. With the Pro version, you get additional advanced features like title cards and transitions, and the ability to mix photos and video with separate effects.

The app is pretty straightforward to use. In Standard Mode, you’re taken to a screen that lets you choose the desired effect, quality, soundtrack and time scale, then you can either make or load a video. If, instead, you click on Pro Mode, you can add a project by clicking on the plus sign in the upper right hand corner, or work on a previously started project.

After naming a new project, you can adjust the same properties as Standard Mode, and click Add to start inserting customizable title cards, editable video clips and photos. You can rearrange and edit each section of your video using the Timeline.

I tried out the Pro version of the app with a video taken of me trying out a remote-controlled mechanical chair at a warehouse robot party (yes, I said warehouse robot party).

Although I wish the preloaded music options automatically “finished” with a couple closing piano notes at the end, the app is easy to use and a fun way to spruce up some unexciting video footage … or create your silent film opus.

The Silent Film Director App is currently available for $0.99 in the App Store.

Thanks Alex!

A dual e-ink and LCD screen could save your gadget’s battery life and your eyesight. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Many iPad owners have complained that its backlit screen is just too bright for bedtime reading.

A recently unearthed patent shows that Apple has plans to fix such a problem by developing a hybrid display: part LCD or OLED, part low-power electronic ink.

Uncovered by Apple Insider, the patent, “Systems and Methods for Switching Between an Electronic Paper Display and a Video Display,” illustrates a method for displaying static content in e-ink while other portions of the screen appear using standard LCD technology.

Apple’s idea to combine a traditional display and an “electronic paper” display isn’t new. Last year, Pixel Qi developed a hybrid LCD screen for netbooks that lets the user toggle between a low-power reading mode and a brighter, standard LCD mode. Also, a startup called Entourage has made a hinged dual-screen folding tablet with an LCD on one side and e-ink screen on the other.

E-ink, or “electronic paper” as Apple refers to it in the filing, doesn’t rely on backlighting, resulting in a screen that is highly readable (even in bright sunlight) and low on power. The technology is dominated by the black and white displays produced by E Ink, such as the screen of the Amazon Kindle, but color e-ink displays are also on the horizon.

Apple’s method would involve a screen with “multiple composite display regions” with individually activated backlights, so content could be displayed in “electronic paper” mode if, for instance, it’s mostly text, or in “video display” mode if it involves high-resolution video or animations. The operating system would control the switching.

Apple Insider says it could be accomplished by sandwiching a clear e-ink display between a capacitive touchscreen and an OLED or LCD.

Such a hybrid display seems like it’d be great for extending your iPad or iPhone’s battery life, giving the backlights a break if you’re reading from iBooks or Instapaper. Not to mention a welcome breather from staring at bright, retina-searing screens all day.

Spend just $170 and your iPhone need never lie flat again

If you ever thought that it might be practical to take the Power Loader from Aliens, put it in your kitchen and use it as a fruit bowl, then we may just have the perfect iPhone stand for you. It’s called the RokForm RokStand and it is possibly the most over-engineered accessory ever made.

Made from CNC-machined aluminum with rubber rings to cosset the iPhone within, the specs contain quite ridiculous bullet points. Here’s one: “Precision High speed bearing and cam adjustment” [capitalizations in original].

The stand works with one of the several dozen white iCharging cables you have already, clamping it into place with grub screws. Once propped agains the precision milled “billet 6061 T-6 aluminum” widget, you can set one of six angles of view by clicking around the little lever on the side. There are also shaped ports in the case to “enhance” the sound from the speakers.

At least you can be pretty sure that your phone never falls over.

The price for this monster is a whopping $170. If that seems like too much (although I can’t see why it would) you can opt for the portable version for “just” $120. It only has two angles of adjustment, but it does come with “Adjustment arms [which] ride on double sealed 36,000 RPM bearings.” 36,000 RPM! That should set your mind at rest.

I’m sure all of you have stopped reading already and are currently over at the RokForm site, desperately entering your credit card details into the shopping form. If not, then may I interest you in a new product I’m working on? It’s an oversized, hand-machined, aircraft aluminum pen-holder, which weighs a satisfying two pounds and will cost you just $200.

RokForm RokStand product page [RokForm via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Japanese Schoolgirls Go for Over-Engineered Lashes
• Deliciously Over-Engineered Gadgets Loom on the Horizon
• Hands-On With The Chunky, Unbreakable 3Feet Tablet Stand

Continue reading Oscium’s iMSO-104 turns iPad, iPhone into mixed signal oscilloscopes

Oscium’s iMSO-104 turns iPad, iPhone into mixed signal oscilloscopes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Search for "tilt" on the iPhone version of Google, and you get a tilted search results page. Screenshot: Michael Calore/Wired.com

If you do a search for the word “tilt” on Google, and you’re using an iPhone, you get a nifty Easter egg.

The search results screen that Google shows you is tilted a few degrees off perpendicular, as shown in the screenshot here.

Funny, right?

It only works with the mobile version of Google, and may not work with every phone (we got the trick working with an iPhone and a Motorola Defy, but not a Samsung Nexus S).

But there’s a hidden joke inside this Easter egg. For at least some searches, the results page includes a sponsored ad for AT&T’s Tilt — a smartphone that launched about 4 years ago. If you click on the ad, you get taken to an AT&T page that states “The AT&T Tilt(TM) you’re searching for is no longer available.” Instead, it shows you couple of outdated feature phones and a refurbished 3G modem.

That’s right: AT&T is paying Google when people click on ads for a phone it doesn’t sell any more.

If you weren’t already laughing at AT&T? You will.

Update 4:30pm Pacific: Google confirms that this is an actual, paid advertisement. The ad itself no longer seems to be appearing in search results.