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My favorites from 2014: Mel Martin
So many apps and gadgets - where to begin? Well, let's start with some apps. Topaz Impression for Mac Expensive at U.S. $99.00, but this app beautifully transforms your images into what looks like fine art. The amount of control you have over your image is breathtaking. Canvas, charcoal, oils, just about any medium and surface imaginable. On the iOS side, Waterlogue does something similar but not as full featured for only U.S. $2.99 (!!) It was also a favorite of our own Steve Sande. Reflect+ for iOS I love this $1.99 app. Take an image and add water. It doesn't look synthesized, unless you want it to. A beautiful app that is easy to use. You can also add bird flocks, hot air balloons, stars, the milky way and other beautifully rendered objects. There is a lot of control, and it is easy to use, yet gives sophisticated results. X-Plane 10 for iOS The creators of the best Mac flight simulator have gone and done the same for iOS. It's free, although you can buy extra aircraft. The graphics are stunning, and the flight model is realistic. RavPower Wireless File Hub This is a great and innovative piece of hardware. It works with your laptop, or any iOS device. It's a battery backup, a wireless router that works as a WiFi hotspot, a NAS file server (network attached storage), and a media streamer. For $44.95 it's an amazing product. I use it to load movies on an SD card and take them on trips so I can stream them to my iPad. You hook up to the device via WiFi, and it connects to a primary WiFi connection and passes through email and any other internet traffic while you watch, and while it charges your iDevice. Perfect. Word Lens for iOS Absolutely amazing. Point your camera at a sign or menu in a foreign language and you get the translation. It's not just the translation. The sign remains looking the same. You have to see it to appreciate what has been accomplished here. Great for travel, or just getting along in a mixed language environment. So that's my list. Can't wait to see what 2015 brings.
Mi Casa Verde Vera review: Home automation, simplified
Home automation and jetpacks are surprisingly similar in that both of these space-age technologies have, for decades, been over promised and under delivered. Who here wouldn't love to tap a single button when exiting the house to activate the alarm, shut off the lights in the kids' rooms, lower the thermostat, and lock all the doors? That's the convenience, the promise left unfilled as we say goodbye to 2010. We live on a planet that still requires humans to manually close the blinds at the end of the day and flip on a light switch some 90 years since the commercial introduction of the incandescent light bulb. How primitive. And it's downright criminal in ecological and financial terms that we still can't easily monitor and control the power usage in our homes let alone the trickle of wattage vampired off the individual electrical sockets feeding our greedy horde of household electronics. How is this possible given all the advances we've seen? Wireless and sensor technology has advanced far beyond what's required to automate a home. Just look at smartphones, for example, that now ship standard with 3G (and even 4G) data, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios in addition to sensors for motion, temperature, moisture, proximity, and even direction. We don't have the answer to home automation's dilemma -- to dig into that topic we'd require a few thousand more words, at least. All we know for sure is that the biggie consumer electronics companies are reluctant to sort it out. As such, dozens of small companies are left to deal with a mess created by an industry incapable of coalescing around a set of interoperable home automation standards. One such company is Mi Casa Verde. A tiny startup that launched its linux-based Vera home automation server back in 2008 with a renewed promise to make home automation setup and control as easy for novices as it is robust for techies and enthusiasts. We've been using a recently launched second generation Vera 2 for a few weeks now. Sure, we haven't quite reached one-button nirvana, but as home automation newbies we're proud to say that we've automated a few helpful in-home lighting situations while skirting the clutches of the Dark Angel sequestered within our fuse box. Better yet, we can control it all from an iPhone -- including the Christmas tree. Click through to see how we did it. %Gallery-111569%
MIT students automate dorm room, add "party mode"
Even though they may have somewhat of a geeky reputation, MIT students party just as hard as the white hatters at your local state school, and probably graduate in larger percentages to boot. It should be no surprise, then, that a couple of dorm-dwelling party animals at the university decided to use their copious electronics skillz to convert their room into the ultimate cramped disco -- and because this is MIT we're talking about, everything goes live at the push of a single button. Using an X-10 control system, Zack Anderson and his roommate RJ Ryan hooked up strobe lights, black lights, a fog machine, laser light show, scrolling LED sign, disco ball, and an LCD projector to their computers so that all the effects would sync with whatever music was playing, and even retrofitted their window blind with a motor so it can drop down and act as a projection screen for some trippy visualization action. Calling their setup MIDAS (Multifunction In-Dorm Automation System), the pair also included a security alarm and camera for remotely monitoring their now-famous room, and situated small VFDs throughout the interior to deliver system status updates or other types of infoswag. Hey guys, if you don't land some hotshot jobs after college with your MIT degrees, we always have room for clever DIYers right here at Engadget.[Via MAKE: Blog]
