As much as I love the Cosmonaut stylus, some note-taking situations call for a...finer touch. The Adonit Jot Script — Evernote Edition is about as close as you can get to writing on your iPad with a real pen (something I do not condone). Its mere 1.9mm tip would normally cause issues with iPad detection, but Adonit has solved that problem by…
If you like maps, this is the book for you. A Map of the World collects the cartographic designs of designers, illustrators, and mapmakers from all around the world. Some are surprisingly detailed and accurate, while others are of the 'artistic interpretation' variety. This is the kind of book you can get lost in for days, taking in all of its whimsical…
It's that magical time of year again when people start doing home DIY projects. Whether you're painting the house or cleaning the gutters, you'll probably be spending a lot of time on a ladder. To make your life easier, use a LadderLimb to hold your work materials securely. The rubberized end fits snugly into the hollow rungs of most ladders, giving you…
The Travelmate Kit by Buck Knives is a portable toolset for preparing and eating food while traveling or out on the trail. It includes a wide, serrated butter knife, a fork—with integrated bottle opener, can opener, flathead screwdriver and even grill scraper—and an injection-molded sheath to hold it all together when you're not using it. It's a bit of a novelty item,…
To develop their new T-series camera, Leica teamed up with the design team at Audi, and boy is it a beaut. Each camera body is milled from a single block of aluminum and hand-polished for 45 minutes—no seriously, you can watch the entire process—resulting in the most Apple-like camera I've ever seen. Almost all of the Leica T's functions are controlled via…
The Sketchnote Workbook is the upcoming follow-up to Mike Rohde's popular guide, The Sketchnote Handbook.* In the original book, Mike taught you how to use sketchnotes to visually capture ideas and remember key bits of information. In The Sketchnote Workbook he expands on those concepts, showing how to adapt your sketchnote skills to all sorts of areas outside of boring office meetings…
The SLIDE wallet by Stitch & Locke is a Kickstarter project for a wallet that is both eco-friendly and animal-free. A simple design, really—it sports a thin layer of cork on the outside and a thicker denim interior, with a notch cut at the lower corner that allows you to easily slide cards out (hence the name). They've already tripled their funding…
I'm at the point in my cooking "education" (part self-taught, part watching a lot of YouTube videos) where I'm starting to get fed up with my cheap knife set. Several of the knives are on their way out or were never really good to begin with, and the one knife still worth my time —a Santoku model—isn't the most versatile tool around.…
Blek is a game for iPhone and iPad that relies on your imagination to solve its puzzles. The goal seems simple enough—hit all the colored dots without touching the black ones—but exactly how you accomplish this is up to you. Draw any line or shape with your finger, and it will repeat that motion in a pattern until the line leaves the…
We mention a lot of fancy gadgets and whatnot around here, but sometimes it's good to think about the little things, like personal grooming. A common mistake I see people making is not taking care of the appearance of their nails—even people whose hands appear in close-up promo shots of iPhone apps (shudder). The first step to fixing this problem is getting…
I'm the type of guy that likes to carry a water bottle wherever I go. I'm a lot less likely to go out and buy a sweet drink if I've got some water with me, and refilling the same bottle over and over helps me use fewer disposable containers. That's why the Vapur Element collapsible water bottle is perfect for me. It…
When I recently recommended 1Password, I mentioned a few of its features but there is so much more to the app than I could possibly cover here. That's why you should pick up a copy of TidBITS senior editor Joe Kissell's eBook, Take Control of 1Password. In this book, Joe takes you from 1Password's initial setup and configuration all the way to…
If you record podcasts with a RØDE Podcaster USB mic, you should consider adding the RØDE PSA1 boom arm to your setup. After mounting to your desk, the PSA1 allows you to easily reposition your mic when needed, and also helps isolate it from noises you make while typing or moving around at your desk. It can rotate a full 360 degrees,…
Horn, a Zelda-like game for iOS, is currently being featured as Apple's App of the Week (today being Friday, April 18th, 2014). It had been on my wish list for a while, and when the price suddenly dropped from $7 to free, I leapt at the opportunity. I'm glad I did. This is a super fun and engaging game, with interesting characters,…
(Photo credit: Alex Bernson, Sprudge.com) While we're on the subject of coffee, we should talk about an awesome vessel for consuming the stuff. The KeepCup Brew—a brand-new glass version of the plastic KeepCup Original—is a reusable coffee cup that aims to do away with wasteful, disposable paper cups and look great doing it. If you frequently stop in for a quick cup…
Perfect Coffee at Home, written by former U.S. Marines Michael Haft and Harrison Suarez and available only on the iBookstore for iPad, is all about the joys and methods of brewing an awesome cup—you guessed it—at home. They explain all the factors that go into every cup, and how you can tweak them step-by-step to get the best results. Haft and Suarez…
Not a lot needs to be said about the Navigator wallet. It's made from oiled Nissan leather and waxed canvas, has six internal card slots and a single cash slot, and most importantly, it looks great. $50 on Amazon.
For serious coffee fanatics, having an espresso machine at home can certainly be an expensive affair. Most of us aren't world champion baristas though, and prefer not to break the bank to get our fix. The Rancilio Silvia V3 is a commerical-grade machine that, in the right hands, will brew espresso on par with what you'd get at your favorite local coffee…
If there's one tool digital designers love to hate, it's Photoshop. It's ideal for editing photos and creating complex graphics, but not so much for designing user interfaces. Sketch is a Mac app specifically designed for building UIs, icons, CSS-friendly web elements, and much more. Today, Sketch updated to version 3, bringing all sorts of new features with it such as "Symbols",…
Our friends over at The Prompt podcast have just put a t-shirt up for sale. They need to sell 40 of them in the next two weeks for the shirts to get printed, so if you enjoy their show as much as we do, head over to Teespring and help 'em out. Shirts are about $24 each.