Yesterday I stumbled across Shoko Miyamoto's Etsy shop, where she sells a bunch of handmade camera straps. Her shop lists about 80 straps of varying fabrics, colors, and sizes (all of which are $33 + $3 worldwide shipping). These are my favorites: Glen Check Dark Blue (DSLR | Mirrorless) Green Mix Tweed (DSLR | Mirrorless) Brown Chidori Wool (DSLR | Mirrorless) She…
This season's entry in the Field Notes COLORS lineup is the new "Arts and Sciences" edition. At 4.75" x 7.5", these notebooks are noticeably larger than the standard 3.5" x 5.5" Field Notes. Rather than shipping as a three-pack of the same notebook, this edition contains two distinct models: the wine-colored "Arts" notebook and the dark slate "Sciences" notebook. Each is respectively…
Add a little sci-fi to your morning cup o' joe.
The iGrill 2 is a Bluetooth-enabled grilling thermometer designed for pros and serious enthusiasts but simple enough for amateur grillers to use. Building on the design and features of the original iGrill, the iGrill 2 has upped its probe capacity from 2 to 4 (though it only comes with two) and can now be magnetically mounted onto the side of your grill…
Celebrity chef and dapper fellow Alton Brown has teamed up with hook + ALBERT to produce a limited-edition line of bow ties and pocket squares for the 2014 summer season. They've got a number of cuts and reversible prints available, my favorites being the "sweet and sour" tie and the "blueberry compote" pocket square. The ties are all $65 and the pocket…
The Stayhold is an ingenious divider that can keep things in your car trunk from falling down or rolling all over the place. It works great for groceries, toolsets, paint cans, and a lot more. You can reposition it as needed, but it grips the carpet wherever you place it so it won't slide around as you drive. You can get a…
The Essential is a sleek timepiece made by Greyhours that represents everything I want in a watch. This minimalist watch tracks only the time, day, and date—the only features I really care about—and it's beautiful to boot. And for $250, it's not outrageously expensive despite the use of high-end materials in its production, such as Italian calf leather and an IsaSwiss quartz…
Ride North is a Kickstarter project by photographers Sebastiaan de With and Stuart Philkill. They will soon be embarking on a motorcycle road trip from San Francisco to Alaska, and documenting the entire journey. The Kickstarter is not intended to fund the trip itself—they've already saved up for that accordingly—but rather a set of high-quality physical prints and a photo book with…
Just when I thought nobody could possibly innovate in the notebook space, along comes a Kickstarter project to prove me wrong. Magnote magnetic notebooks look like simple notebooks on the surface, but their covers and spines are comprised of neodymium magnets. This allows the notebooks to be attached to one another for easy storage, and separated only as needed. Each Magnote is…
This one could come in handy for those of you lucky enough to be at WWDC this week. The Limefuel Blast is a handy external battery pack for charging a full-sized iPad, iPad mini, or iPhone while on the go. It can charge two devices at once, even while being charged itself. When the battery isn't being recharged (which should be most…
Cinescope is an iPhone app that does one thing well: it lets you compose and shoot photos in any aspect ratio before saving them to your camera roll. It comes with several presets (2.39, 1.85, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1) but you can also create your own custom ratio—for example, 2:1. If you intend to post the photo on Instagram, Cinescope lets you embed…
This 5-port USB charger by Anker gets everything right. It lets you charge up to five gadgets at once—iPads, iPhones, Kindles, cameras, you name it—and intelligently adjusts the output of each port based on whatever's connected (or disconnected, for that matter). Awesome for families with a lot of stuff to charge. It draws very little power while idle, and it has built-in…
The LED Lenser T7 is a tactical flashlight that gives off a lot of light for its size. It measures only 5.4" long and weights less than 7oz., but its max brightness is an impressive 175 lumens, plenty enough for most jobs in and around the house. It actually has three brightness settings: full power (175 lumens), regular power (135 lumens), and…
I only buy peanut butter of the all-natural variety, meaning the only ingredients are roasted peanuts and salt. The stuff is delicious, but it separates in the jar and it can be a pain (sometimes even a mess) to stir it back together. That is, until I discovered this peanut butter mixer. It's a curved mixing rod that pokes through a "lid"…
The Orée Board 2 is a wireless, super-light, wooden keyboard crafted from a single piece of walnut or maple. It can pair with up to five different devices at the same time via Bluetooth, and its surface is coated with a varnish that protects it from finger oil and liquid spills. After being carved, each board is polished, oil-rubbed, and assembled by…
Editorial, the powerful text editor for iOS, updated to version 1.1 today. It might as well be called 2.0 though, given the sheer number of changes, overhauls, and improvements that went into it. On top of having a redesigned interface for iOS 7, Editorial is now a Universal app so it works on iPhone as well as iPad. Editorial on iPhone is…
From the makers of the popular (and super addictive) iOS game Dots comes its new sequel, TwoDots. The basic gameplay is the same: connect vertical or horizontal rows of same-colored dots to remove them and allow other dots to drop down, or connect them in a square pattern to eliminate all dots of that color from the screen. As you progress through…
When I was a kid, nothing caused more heated arguments between me and my friends than our game consoles of choice. As a Sega fanboy at the time—and a hardcore PlayStation enthusiast later—I was always in the minority at school. Console Wars, a new book by Blake J. Harris, explores the actual rivalry between the Nintendo and Sega corporations that took place…
After a successful Kickstarter campaign that far exceeded their funding expectations, Kendall & Hyde are just about ready to start selling their leather goods to the world. Everything they sell is crafted from vegetable-tanned, full-grain leather, some of which sport top-notch hardware—such as snaps made from real 1930s buffalo nickels. As of this writing (May 28th, 2014) they are still allowing pre-orders…
The Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover remains one of my favorite iPad accessories. The one I own is practically a part of my iPad at this point, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in using their iPad as a primary writing device. Logitech produced a version of the Ultrathin for iPad Air last Fall, but now there is a new-and-improved edition that…