With my own iPad on its way to me soon, I’ve been looking at accessories I can pair it with for the perfect experience. The video capabilities present me with a need for a good stand to put the iPad on while watching a TV show or movie, but most of the stands on the Internet are pretty lifeless and they’re all pretty similar in features. Then a stand found me.
UPDATE: This stand now has a web site and will be taking pre-orders in the near future : Perfect iPad Stand
Yeah… The bottom part is a bowl meant to eat food from. I’ve posted a couple times about Quirky, a site that takes product ideas through a community-driven process that refines the idea into a product, logo and all. This is where a site member, Jeff Tromp entered his idea for the perfect iPad stand. Just watch the video to see how it works.
A Better iPad Stand
What will make this iPad stand better than everything currently on the market? The thing that stands out the most to me is the full range of motion it provides. Jeff makes some great points in his video, showing how Apple’s stand sticks you with portrait positioning and walks away. His racing game demonstration in the video above (and additional racing-specific demo) show his iPad stand going beyond portrait or landscape, turning the iPad, itself, into the steering wheel for the game. From what I’ve seen, it really seems to provide the freedom that all the existing stands are lacking.
The amazing part about this new (hopefully) soon-to-be-product is that people are already reviewing it and consumers are lining up to buy one. Across the globe, a site in Korea posted a favorable opinion (translated) and views on his YouTube demo just keep going up. A lot of his video traffic is viral and that says a lot.
Make it happen (and make some money)
The two best things about Quirky are that you can help guide the development of a product and that you can make money doing it. This is no exception. Jeff’s Perfect iPad Stand is in the running to be chosen as Quirky’s Product 46 and I think it will win, too. Just click that link and create a free account at Quirky to vote for Jeff’s idea. If it wins, your vote will earn you a little piece of every single sale. Seriously. Not only can you say you helped it become a product, but when it’s ready for sale, you can wake up in the morning and see earnings from its sales. I know this because I’m currently earning on 21 products at Quirky and the highest earner for me is their Cloak iPad case.
I love to get my hands on a product for review, but this review was a little different. After a little setup, my hands hardly touch it. That’s because we’re talking about the Thrustmaster T-Freestyle NW.
It’s just like a skateboard deck and it attaches to your Wii Balance Board to give you more of a feeling of being on an actual skateboard than just the Balance Board. I brought it home and hooked it up, hoping to finally do better than my wife at the skateboard challenge.
Thrustmaster T-Freestyle Setup And Removal
Getting the T-Freestyle set up and ready to use was incredibly easy. You just flip the board over, set the Balance Board on top of it (also upside down) and secure it with the two plastic board clamps to the two handles on the bottom of the Balance Board. Removing it again is almost as easy as reversing the above steps, but it requires a little more effort. Because it’s so securely fastened, it’s hard to remove by hand, but the instructions suggest using a pencil or something similar to pry it loose. That sounds odd, but it was pretty easy.
It Feels like a Skateboard
After seeing all the tiny steering wheels and tennis rackets and learning to accept a small plastic baseball bat, I was thrilled to see that the Thrustmaster is not only made of genuine maple like real boards, but it really was shaped and sized like a real board. Positioning on it was far better than on the Wii Balance Board and it just felt like there was more room. Balance was a bit of a challenge because it acted like a real board, leaning back and forth more than the Balance Board, but that’s a good thing, even if it takes some getting used to.
One problem I had with all this realism was my want to kick the tail of the board down to “ollie”. In my younger years, I skated all the time, so being on a board, I wanted to do the tricks in the game like I was on a real board. That’s something else that will take some getting used to. You also don’t want to play on this with socks on and no shoes. Trust me. I first jumped on with my socks and no shoes and slid off at the first loss of balance. Additionally, the board has a safety stopper on each end to prevent you from tipping it over if you get too crazy.
An aspect clearly forgotten in many Wii sports add-ons is aesthetics. If you ever had a skateboard, you know there’s a ton of deck designs to choose from and the look of your board is important. Rather than just stick with a plain, one-color device, Thrustmaster took the time to paint a cool skull design on their board, and I like that.
Game Play And Conclusions
At the beginning of this review, I mentioned hoping that the Thrustmaster T-Freestyle would help me beat my wife’s score in Wii skateboarding. Well, it didn’t. Although game play was easier and more realistic, you’ll still need your own skill to get the high scores. Still, it did feel better to be on an actual board and it felt more real. The balance issue I mentioned actually made some game play harder, which I suspect will get better over time.
For the purchase price of $20-$30 or so (depending on where you buy), it’s well worth the money. If you’re going to play any skateboarding or snowboarding games on the Wii a lot, this is a no-brainer.
Earlier this year, it seemed that every television manufacturer was announcing a unit with either Skype built in or 3D functionality. Last week, I received an email inviting me to come check out Panasonic’s latest and greatest at their touring presentation that was coming through Scottsdale this week. The draw for me was the 3D, but I found a lot more when I arrived.
3D TVs With Skype
Maybe you’re thinking what I was thinking in the car on the way there… Can 3D stick around this time or is it just going to be hot for a while and die out again? It’s hard to say, but Panasonic is not only betting that 3D is here to stay, but they’re throwing in everything else just in case.
One of the VIERA CAST HDTVs I saw today, the VIERA TC-P50G25 Plasma (seen above for $1,499), included the ability to make video calls with Skype (requires an add-on camera), view YouTube videos, browse through photos on Picasa, view and stream movies instantly with Netflix or Amazon Video, and even peruse and update Twitter. To top it off, they threw in a weather screen with forecasts, Pandora radio, Bloomberg, and Fox Sports. You can even browse the web with it, which is probably why you can hook up a keyboard to one of the USB ports. Unfortunately, the demo played from a Blu-Ray disc, so it’s hard to say how the video streaming is and Skype won’t be available for use on VIERA CAST until June of this year. Regardless, it looks very promising. The geek inside me yearns to make a video call on a 50 inch screen without a lot of effort and that is a reality within reach. This model does not do 3D.
The PxxVT25 models, on the other hand, offer 3D and it looks awesome. To be fair, I haven’t seen any other 3D televisions first hand, so my basis for comparison is my 2D LCD and 3D at the movie theaters. That said, this blows my 2D away and makes the movie theater 3D seem a bit lacking. The first demo was with a movie, which looked great, but the real treat was the second demo I saw with some game playing in 3D. It looked incredible and the best part is that the games don’t all have to be made in 3D. There’s software that will make them work in 3D as long as you’re displaying them on one of these 3D TVs.
How To Watch TV In 3D
The televisions mentioned above display a 3D image, but where does that come from and how do you view it? Panasonic tells me they’ll have three channels loaded with 3D programming on DirecTV, and it sounded like 3D programming from other vendors will still work. All that’s left is those paper 3D glasses with the plastic red and blue lenses, right?
Not this time. This time, your 3D experience makes use of their special 3D glasses (TY-EW3D10). While I’d like to try the old paper glasses, I’m afraid these are the ones needed to make it work. They’re pretty cool and although the video doesn’t do the experience justice, you can see how they work below.
The problem is that the $150/pair price tag can be prohibitive, especially if you’re thinking about a family of four or five. They’re cheaper than some competitors, but still a bit up there. They definitely look $150 cooler than the old paper 3D glasses, though. I asked if Panasonic planned to bundle family packs of the eye wear and was told that it wasn’t planned yet but could happen as the consumer market accepts 3D more and more.
Cameras and Camcorders
In addition to all this 3D business, the tour included some new cameras of varying levels as well as video cameras. I honestly didn’t spend quite enough time with the video cameras, but it may have been due to all the time spent playing with the DMC-GH1K 12.1 MP digital camera. I’m not about to say I don’t like my Canon Rebel XTi because I love it, but the GH1K was wooing me with features I’ve been missing out on like 1080P HD video, a larger screen that swivels around, Live View, a more compact design, and a more widely used SD storage format (compared to the Compact Flash I use now). At $1499, it is almost twice what I paid for my camera, but still attractive.
Also attractive was the $399 DMC-ZS7K which more than a point-and-shoot, but not quite a DSLR. Every time I thought it had a lot of features I was shown one more. Personally, I’m looking to spend about half that on my next point-and-shoot camera but the feature list is enough to loosen up most any wallet. There’s the basics like auto focus and face targeting, but it also knows the difference between a face and, say, a cactus and adjusts photo settings the moment it makes the distinction. Better still, it can recognize specific faces and remember who it’s taking a photo of and label the photo properly. The 16X Intelligent Zoom was a nice surprise, too. The zoomed image wasn’t pixelated at all until zoomed all the way in and even then, it wasn’t much. Finally, the ZS7K records HD quality video as well, so I could replace my digital camera and my video camera with this one device.
The Touch The Future Tour
What I went to today was called the Touch the Future Tour. Panasonic is wandering around the country with all this cool stuff and showing people what all of it does. If you get a chance, the 3D is best seen in person. They’ll be dragging all their electronics to these cities next:
3/25 – 3/27 Philadelphia King of Prussia Mall – North Gulph Road
3/29 – 3/31 Minneapolis IDS Tower – 80 8th Street South
3/29 – 3/31 San Francisco One Market Plaza – 1 Market Street
3/31 – 4/2 Washington, DC Union Station – 50 Massachusetts Ave, NE
4/6 – 4/8 Dallas Grapevine Mills Mall – 3000 Grapevine Mills Parkway
4/6 – 4/8 Seattle Top of the Market – 93 Pike Street, Suite 307
4/7 – 4/9 Atlanta 595 North – 595 North Ave, NW Atlanta
4/12 – 4/14 Houston The Warehouse – 4108 Dupont Street
4/15 – 4/17 Miami Ice Palace – 59 Northwest 14th Street
Final Thoughts
Panasonic delivered more than I had planned for and showed off some really cool stuff. The new television offerings (3D and otherwise) were certainly giving me TV envy and I just bought a new LCD TV a few months back. The cameras (that I hadn’t really even gone to see) have me formulating evil plans in my head to convince my wife that I have two birthdays this year. I want it all, but would “settle” for any of the 3D TVs and the ZS7K camera.
I did it! I put the game down long enough to write a review of it. OK, to be completely honest, it’s not my all time favorite iPhone game, at least not yet, but it’s in the top two so far. The game I’m talking about, of course, is ColorBuster for the iPhone and it’s a lot of fun for a small price.
Game play
Game play is pretty simple. Your character is hect0r, a cleaning drone robot and you’re on an abandoned space station with all kinds of crates all over that need to be cleaned up. As hect0r, you must visit each level, pushing the crates around until it’s all cleaned up. There’s a few basic rules to play by:
* You push the crates around one space at a time
* You have to pack all the crates of the same color into one
* You need to push the last crate of each color to the teleport
It sounds pretty simple, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. For starters, after the first couple levels, you have to get pretty creative to move crates around. If you push a crate into a corner, for example, you’ll never get it back out. You also get bio hazard crates which need to be pushed out into space, but if you accidentally push a good crate into space, you’ll be unable to complete the level. While it can seem daunting, the first level starts out with some pointers to help you get in the right mind set. Here’s some video of the game play:
Design and functionality
No matter how good the premise of a game may be, the design and functionality can make or break it. This is especially true on the iPhone. One look through the reviews in some of the iPhone applications in the App Store will reveal a lot of people who get upset at an application because it doesn’t function properly (even the free ones). That’s not the case here. The game is designed beautifully with some good color and a good variety of levels and obstacles. Just when I’m feeling good about completing a level, there’s a new one with only one way to solve it. I don’t enjoy a game that I can beat quickly or becomes boring too easily, especially when I pay for it. In the case of ColorBuster, there’s plenty of levels and I think it’ll take some time to get through all of them.
The game functions really well and the controls are fairly smooth. I did have an issue initially with the first level freezing up the first time I played, but it hasn’t happened again in any of the several times I’ve played since. I imagine that was just a one time occurrence which is hopefully isolated to just me. I did install several apps at the same time and didn’t reboot or anything, so who knows. What’s important is that it didn’t freeze up any other times or show any other signs of functioning improperly, so my only frustrations will be at accidentally pushing a crate off the side or into a corner.
Conclusions
There’s a ton of games in the App Store, ranging from free to $10 or more. At only $0.99 (for now – normally $1.99), I can see this game being bought up quickly and running up the “Top 25″ list pretty easily. I try to add my review to any application I install on my iPhone, and this was no exception.
Out of five stars, I gave it a full five. It has the entertainment, functions well, and is priced to please. If you like games that make you think, fire up the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch, search for ColorBuster, and buy it before they kill the 50% off sale.
I’ve wanted a head mounted display (HMD) for a long time. I’ve seen them in movies and I’ve seen tons of work with wearable computing (and would like to build something, myself), so I was absolutely thrilled to find the Vuzix iWear AV310 in my mailbox just waiting to be reviewed.
Look, feel, and function
The first challenge, I imagine, in creating a good head mounted display system is in building something that doesn’t look to nerdy, isn’t too bulky, and fits comfortably on your face. Vuzix has gotten pretty close on all three, which is about what I expect from a consumer product, even a high end one. The bulk is the real hurdle. They’re essentially cramming two TV screens in to something smaller than most remotes. The fact that it’s so small lends to how comfortable it is to wear, of course. The AV310 is pretty light, so it sits there on your face, hardly noticeable. That is to say, hardly noticeable by the person wearing it. To the rest of the world, it jumps out and says “cyborg”. “Cyborg” is a couple steps up from “geek”, and the AV310 looks at least cool enough to surpass just “geeky”. It’s pretty decently designed, actually. It’s just dark and curvy enough to make people wonder about it and where to get one. The nose piece is pretty rigid and is designed to keep everything in place, perhaps at the expense of some comfort. I adjusted it to be the most comfortable and eventually got used to it enough that I forgot about it while watching YouTube videos on my iPhone.
I loved that it comes with the iPhone/iPod connector. Better still, this connector is equipped with a mini USB power port for keeping your iPhone full of juice. That’s smart thinking, but almost an obvious need if I’m going to drain my iPhone’s battery by watching a movie on it. Of course, it also comes with a standard RCA cable for connecting to just about any home theater or gaming system. What I would have loved to also see would be another connector for my computer, but two out of three is pretty good.
Visual performance and interface
All that stuff above about how it looks and feels doesn’t mean a lot if the picture quality were to suffer for some reason. Gladly, that wasn’t the case here. The video wasn’t as crisp as my HD TV, but it was really good. It did seem a little bit washed out on darker videos like the trailer for 2012, but everything else looked great. And for those darker movies, the settings come in handy. In between the AV310 and whatever you’ve plugged it into is a small remote on the video cable. The remote lets you turn it on and off, but it also gets you into the settings with a tap of the power button. Using the power button you can move down the list of settings such as contrast, hue, saturation, and aspect ratio. A couple of additional physical controls exist, too. Under each eye is its individual focus. With a little patience, I was able to focus each eye for a perfect picture.
Something that became a good thing during some use, but otherwise a bit annoying was the gap between my face and the AV310. Through this gap, I could see my laptop, Rubik’s Cube, or other visual noise. When I was watching an instructional video on solving a Rubik’s cube, that was a good thing. When I was watching a movie, it was a little distracting. It wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying my movie, but it was noticed. Fortunately, they have an eyeshield that you can attach to (seemingly) completely solve the gap issue. It goes for $14.95, but I think it’s worth it. It’s hard to really describe the experience, so I made this quick video to help give you an idea of what it was like to use the iWear AV310 video eyewear to watch an episode of Gadget Pron from G4TV.
How I used it
When I first tried the iWear AV310 with my iPhone, I thought it didn’t work. When I plugged it into the iPhone, I found myself looking at a message telling me that my device wasn’t made to work with the iPhone. I ignored it and eventually was happily watching video from my iPhone through the AV310. It worked great with a podcast and YouTube videos as well as videos I recorded on the phone. Next, I plugged it into my XBox. My wife loves her SyFy channel shows, so it was nice to be able to enjoy some gaming without taking over the big screen or making lots of noise. Finally, I hooked it back up to the iPhone and found a video on YouTube about how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. With the iWear AV310, I was able to see both the video and my Rubki’s Cube, but more importantly, I was mobile while keeping my hands free for other things or just being able to lay down without holding my iPhone up in the air to watch something.
Conclusions
Not all of the luster of owning a HMD wears off. After having it for a while, it’s still pretty cool to use and practical in some cases as well. The $250 price tag isn’t too bad for all it offers. It may scare off the casual gadget buyer or those who just want to buy it because it’s a really cool gadget to have, but those who have more practical uses for the AV310 have no reason not to buy one.
