CyberStep KDJ-One – Neat Mobile DAW for DJs and Musicians

Posted on Friday, January 27, 2012

[Via TheVerge]

Valve’s Steam App Arrives for iOS & Android – Don’t Get Too Excited

Posted on Friday, January 27, 2012

So you’re undoubtedly familiar with Steam – Valve’s game management/download application that is single-handedly combating piracy by offering good service, convenience and decent pricing in one juicy cross platform hunk of gaming love? Yea, me too. Steam’s great. And now you can get it on iOS and Android.

Does this mean that Half-life or Portal are coming to either mobile platform? Course not. The Steam app is a front-end for the shop and the social elements of the app. Now personally speaking, I’m a scrap gamer who plays solely on public servers and has no interest whatsoever in joining a clan. However if I was the sort of dude or dudette that need some wack name in square brackets after my gaming handle, then I’d probably dig the access to Steam’s chat facility. If I was in a clan or, you know, had friends, then I could use the chat facility to hook up some games for later in the day.

Oh and there’s a shop too, like we hadn’t noticed, you tricky so-and-so’s, Valve. The idea here is that instead of browsing the App Store for games Zynga have ripped off from independent coding teams, you splash out on Skyrim for your PC, or some four game indie-gaming bundle that you try once and never go near again. Anyway – you can find Steam mobile, here.

PriceWatcher – Track Price Changes on Amazon

Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012

You’re probably familiar with eBay price trackers – handy applications that monitor auctions and let you know what the price is doing. Well PriceWatcher does the same thing – only with Amazon. It supports US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, Italy, Spain and China stores and can be configured to alert you when the price of something you have your eye on, drops in price. It’s free (for up to five item watch) and is available for Windows and Mac.

Bedhead – Another First World Problem Solved

Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wunderkit – First Look

Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012

You’ll recall that I did a little write-up a couple of months ago on Wunderkit, the new cloud based time management suite from the 6Wunderkinder team who make the awesome multi-platform to-do app Wunderlist. Well, along with a whole load of other eager people, I got my invite to the Wunderkit beta through and have been taking the new system for a spin. I should preface everything I’m about to say by pointing out that this is early days for Wunderkit and anything might change before launch and/or work differently.

The first thing to point out is that at this stage, Wunderkit is purely browser based. I’m sure that there are iOS, Android, OSX, Linux and Windows applications waiting in the wings, but they’re not available yet. Once you’ve created an account, you log in and are offered the opportunity of importing your friends lists from Facebook and Twitter. Personally speaking, I like have separate accounts for my online services, but if you want you can log-in with Facebook.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the basic interface of Wunderkit is pretty similar to Wunderlist. You get your project areas over on the left and your tasks over on the right. Projects are referred to as Workspaces on Wunderkit and they can be customised to stand out on the bar. Clicking on a project takes you into a separate screen for that particular workspace.

The most obvious difference between Wunderkit and Wunderlist is apparent when you enter a project’s workspace. There’s a dashboard, a tasklist and a notes area, not just a tasklist. This is because Wunderkit has been designed to be used by groups as well as individuals and so for instance the dashboard screen lets you quickly see what updates, task changes or completions have taken place by other people.

When you create a task, you’re given some new controls. There’s a calendar window that enables you to set the completion date and, more importantly, repeat that task daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. You can also assign the task you’re creating to someone else. People can be added on a per-project basis, so it’s easy to tightly control who is allotted which tasks. The other big addition to tasks is that you can now comment on them.

Along with the dashboard and the tasklist, there’s also a notes section within each project section. This is for saving any information pertaining to that project that doesn’t warrant a task of any kind. As with tasks, any notes you add can be tagged for quick easy searches in the future.

One key area that deserves mentioning is notifications. Tasks, notes, comments, requests, invites, followers and friends joining can all trigger notifications either within Wunderkit or by email or both. By default all of those notifications are turned off – I hope that’s something that’s carried through to the 1.0 release.

Of course the big story with Wunderkit is the social aspect. It works in the same way as Twitter or Google+ in that you can ‘follow’ interesting and/or like-minded people and view their public status updates. So for instance, if a band signed up then they could use the app to arrange gigs or studio time and the public update page to keep fans informed about developments. It’s early days of course, but I can’t say I’m convinced by this particular aspect of the suite, but I thought Twitter was a load of crap when it first came out, so who knows.

Anyway – I’m very impressed by the task management side of Wunderkit. I like the project management definitions, I like the interface, I like the easy management of people within projects, I like the repeating tasks and I like the dashboard functionality. Once the smartphone, tablet and desktop applications are released, I’m pretty sure Wunderkit will have as much success as Wunderlist. All that remains to be seen is how much 6Wunderkinder will charge us for that ‘Pro’ account when it goes live.

Ridekick – an awesome battery powered trailer that boosts bicycles by 19mph

Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012

[Via Springwise]

App Launchers for Windows, Mac and Linux

Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012

Those of us who began our computing journey with the typed command line interface have always had a penchant for keyboard shortcuts and, many years later, the ability to navigate your system using just the keyboard has always marked out the hardcore Windows users from an easily befuddled point-and-click-only punter. With today’s sophisticated WIMP interfaces and multi-touch displays you’d be forgiven for thinking that the keyboard’s days were numbered. But you’d be wrong.

The app launcher is a pretty unique bit of software that leverages your speedy typing abilities to quickly and simply launch apps and perform other useful desktop related tasks. Typically these utilities are launched using a hotkey sequence that pops up a floating command prompt in the middle of the screen. You then just type what you want the launcher to do – so for instance, typing ‘Word’ and hitting return would launch Microsoft Word. Most app launchers can do a hell of a lot more than that of course.

Pictomio – Photo Management and GeoTag App for Windows

Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012

It’s been around for a few years now, but Pictomio is well worth checking out if you’re looking for a free photo management suite. Amongst its cooler features are an EXIF editor, GeoTaging of photos and a cool 3D image carousel for previewing your images. Please note that this app also installs the OpenCandy adware which is how the developer pays the bills I guess – if you want to remove it, just use MalWareBytes after installation.

BlenderBottle – Low Tech Cool Idea

Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012

We’ve all been there. You make a milkshake from a packet, give it a really good stir with a spoon, sit back and take a big gulp of your refreshing beverage, only to cop a golf ball sized nugget of powder that makes you cough your lungs up. That particular first world problem won’t affect you, if you invest in one of these trendy looking BlenderBottles.

The secret to the BlenderBottle is ball-shaped wire whisk made of 316 surgical-grade stainless steel that lives in the bottle. You add your ingredients (powdered shake, smoothie, whey protein, fajita mix etc), drop in the ball and give it a good shake.  The manufacturers reckon that the ball will not rust, chip, or peel, so you can leave it in there if you’re just drinking water. No word on price yet, but the bottles will be out early this year.

Plasma TV that pops up from under your bed? We got you covered …

Posted on Saturday, January 21, 2012

So here’s a pretty awesome setup. The Underbed Lift is a chassis mounted TV system that lives under your king (or queen) sized bed. When you want to watch some TV, you simply press a button and the TV emerges from under the bed and into a perfect viewing position. Prices start at $15k, so I guess I’ll make do with my iPad and Plex.