Chicago Avenue Moon is an unexpected new app from Junecloud—the studio behind Delivery Status Touch—that blows my mind a little. It's designed to generate a personalized soundtrack for the listener as they move about, but that description doesn't tell the whole story so I'll just quote the source: “Chicago Avenue Moon is a responsive, generative music app that gathers a set of…
The Great Discontent is one of my absolute favorite web publications. Their interviews with creative people from all over the web can often be inspiring, entertaining, touching, and even funny. The site is quite beautiful and features some excellent photography. (I love the site so much that I was inspired to begin conducting some interviews of my own a while back.) And…
For a long time now, the only RSS reader I've used on my iPhone has been Reeder. I never imagined another app would come along that would be worth switching to, but that all changed last night with the release of Unread. Unread's philosophy is all about slowing down and really reading things that are worth our attention, not just flying through…
Flag is a recent Kickstarter campaign for a free photo-printing service. Yes, you read that correctly. The entire service—printing, shipping, and all—is completely free, at least for people in the U.S. It sounds crazy, but the way they plan to accomplish this is by putting an advertisement on the back of each photo print. I'm generally not a fan of obtrusive advertising,…
We've mentioned a lot of camera bags on T&T before, but a photographer who only carries one camera and lens around might want something even more minimal. Something they could toss in their normal bag and still protect the camera. Enter the Miggo, a new Kickstarter project. Essentially, it's a camera strap that wraps around the camera (lens and all) when not…
Our friends at Studio Neat have designed an awesome t-shirt ($21) that sports all of their products in one image. Not much more to say than that, other than that the sale is run sort of like Kickstarter, in that they need to meet a minimum number of pre-orders for the shirt to be printed. The minimum here is only 25, so…
The Spark Spl is a sleeping bag designed by Sea to Summit that can keep its occupant surprisingly cozy, given how light it is. It has a breathable, water-resistant 10D Pertex Quantum shell, a liner made from soft-yet-durable 15D nylon, and is filled with 850+ loft goose down treated with Ultra Dry-Down (a water repellant). The neatest part is that the whole…
The majority of water-filter pitchers out there are terrible (or at best, uninspired) but that doesn't have to be the case. Enter the Soma water filter, which is a beautiful and eco-friendly water filter that puts the competition to shame. Made of sustainable materials—including burnt coconut shell and a plant-based, bio-degradable casing—Soma is the first water filter I've heard of that is…
The ASUS WL-330NUL is a nifty little device that offers travelers a little more flexibility with their network setup. It's a miniature, super-light 802.11n router that can easily fit in your pocket or bag (it's about the size of my thumb). To keep things as simple as possible, it has just one ethernet port, one flip-out USB jack, and a power connector.…
There's certainly no shortage of great calendar apps for iPhone, but it can't hurt to try something new like Peek Calendar. On the surface it looks pretty simple, but there are some neat things under the hood. Tap on any given calendar date to "unfold" the list of events for that day, or hold on a date to create a new event.…
Searchpath, developed by Manton Reece, is a neat little search box you can easily embed on your website or blog. All you have to do is add a little Javascript snippet to your site (in the footer or wherever else you might want a search bar) and Searchpath will index everything so that it can be searched by visitors later. The results…
Certain industrial designers, such as Dieter Rams and Jony Ive, get a lot of attention within our community—and rightfully so—but one guy who maybe doesnt get talked about as much he deserves is Naoto Fukasawa. Some readers may recall this beautiful, wall-mounted CD player from 1999, which is arguably his most famous work, but he's designed all kinds of things that any…
On the latest episode of The Prompt, Federico Viticci mentioned an iOS app called WordBook that sounded interesting enough for me to check out. It's a pretty powerful English dictionary and thesaurus, and I think it might just replace my long-running "Words to Remember" list in Simplenote. You can bookmark your favorite words and have them sync between devices via iCloud, have…
LifeStraw Go is essentially a sports water bottle, but with a crazy-good filter built in. You can use it to scoop up water from just about anywhere in the world and then safely drink it through the mouthpiece. By the time the water has made it up the straw, the filter has already removed 99.9999% of waterborne bacteria and 99.9% of waterborne…
The guys at Wood'd have come up with an interesting line of iPhone cases that are made of real wood and feature some cool designs. Some look like maps, some look like a Tetris game, and all of them look great. €29.90 each (or about $41 USD), and available for iPhone 5/5s and 4/4s.
Instashare is yet another file-sharing app for iOS and Mac. You can send photos, PDFs, and more, all over a local Bluetooth connection (no WiFi or login necessary). The nice part is that the sharing goes both ways; it's not just Mac-to-iOS, but also vice-versa. It's all done via drag-and-drop—about as simple as it gets. The universal iOS app is free (with…
I've been a Spotify subscriber for a while (going on something like 2.5 years now), and although I've always loved the service, their iOS app has consistently felt a little lacking to me. I've tried Rdio as well, but never found a compelling enough reason to switch. But now I've had a chance to try out the new Beats Music iPhone app…
Storehouse is a neat new app for iPad that makes it super easy to create long-form stories that can be shared with the world. Using a combination of text, videos (30 seconds or less each), and photos (pulled from your camera roll, Dropbox, Flickr, and Instagram), you can put together something like this. Or this. Everything can be resized, moved around, and…
Ever since Saddleback CEO Dave Munson released this funny video (wherein he shows the best ways to cheaply knock off his products), I've been making my way through the Saddleback video catalog. They've got videos showcasing just about every product they make, and since I primarily work from an iPad, their iPad case video stood out to me in particular. The video…
Made by HoldFast (the company behind the awesome Ruck Strap), the HF Triple is a beautiful leather dopp kit for carrying your smallest travel/adventuring essentials. It's handcrafted from Kodiak oil-tanned cowhide by one of HF's own designers, Matt Swaggart, and every edition features a handle made from antique rope he happens to come across. $165 at HoldFast.