iPhone accessories

The Master of All Views

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

my3d ipod viewerSome people collect souvenir spoons or bells..as a child I collected View-Masters. What a better way to remember your trip than by constantly revisiting it in 3D. I can go to Carlsbad Caverns from my couch, the Grand Canyon from my Kitchen and the Great Barrier Reef without getting wet. And not just real places either..I’ve peeped in on Barbie, Bambie and Strawberry Shortcake. The View-Master is a fabulous toy, and no batteries required.

But in a world filled with Navi that practically tickle you with their tails, and 3DSs that are rotting kids eyeballs, what place does the lowly View-Master have? Would it even wow today’s children or would they jadedly laugh at this pint-sized version of a slide projector?

I guess we’ll find out since Hasbro is throwing money into My3D, a View-Master toy that replaces slides with your iPhone and comes with interactive 3D apps my3d shark app. Now I was pants peeingly excited about this toy, but I worry what the response will be. The effect is great, no problems there, and I love the idea of being able to take 3D photos with one of the many 3D photos apps 3D camera app (even though they don’t REEEALLY work) and show them off to friends, but the usability is still strange and I question where this toy’s place is in relation to competitors. First of all, to play games, you have to slide your thumbs into slots on the underside. It’s an awkward position and doesn’t readily facilitate play. Hasbro is actively courting developers and it’s really time, and sales figures, that will determine the My3D’s success. One intriguing point is that Hasbro left the back camera uncovered, possibly alluding to some future AR abilities. Squeee.

Now as a children’s toy, the View-Master concerns me, but for nostalgic hipster adults it fit like a Cabbage Patch slide in view slow. Case in point – Retrollect retrollect. This app taps the same nostalgic crowd who are all over Hipstamatic and lets them build slides of their tweets, messages and photos. There’s no real 3D aspect, and frankly I find the fact that it’s developed on Phone Gap intolerable, but it’s a product that clearly will be lapped up like so much PBR.

Retrollect

Both these products are up my alley, but the ultimate question on my mind is the future of 3D on iPhone. With Android phones jumping on the 3D bandwagon, I wonder if iPhone will be a holdout?

High Pod

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

High Pod

Now come on, tell me I wouldn’t be THE COOLEST kid at WWDC if I was all rollin’ up smokin’ out Jobs with a retro iPod pipe (this is California! it’s LEGAL there! Steve is a sick man!) Dude, I actually own one of these golden oldies and I’ll tell you, it’s gotta be good for something because it sure as hell wasn’t any good at playing music. Plus I bet you get a sweet bonus brain-cell-killing high sucking in that melted plastic all around the bowl.

Hey Apple legal, you better get to putting this into that user agreement of yours.

Sexy Case

Friday, September 10th, 2010

I’m celebrating the arrival of my sexy new Junko Mizuno iPhone 4 skin from Infectious designs by making up a little stop motion animation with my Junko Pure Trance vinyl toys using one of my new favorite apps,  (StopMotion Recorder). I had to stop for a bit and decide how appropriate it was to walk around day to day with a phone skin featuring exposed breasts, but decided that in a world where phone balls exist, my phone’s bared boobies were just a drop in the bucket.

As for the app, I’ve always wanted to do stop motion and never really been able to pull together the equipment or technique to do so. This app however actually brings you an incredible suite for making animations which includes ghosted images to see how far you’ve moved, the ability to delete and replace frames and multiple export options including Youtube, Quicktime and yFrog. Plus it’s really good for making pens dance around your desk when you’re bored at the office.

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