If the 'Night Sky' edition of Field Notes wasn't enough of an astronomy fix for you, I'd recommend checking out Sky Guide for iOS. This thing had been sitting somewhere in my AppShopper wish list for a long time, forgotten, until Ben Brooks wrote about it yesterday. I'm glad he did, because this is such a cool app. The way it works…
The Lumu is a light meter built for the iPhone. The small orb plugs in to the headphone hack of the iPhone, giving you detailed information about the light affecting your photograph. The app will allow users not only to measure light, but attach all sorts of metadata to the moment: location, voice recording, notes, pictures, photo parameters more. The Kickstarter project…
This won't be the first time we've mentioned VSCO Cam – one of the best iPhone photography apps ever made, in my opinion – but I felt that the recent 2.0 update was worth another look. They've completely overhauled the interface, adding new features such as separate focus and exposure rings while shooting, as well as a white balance "lock". They've also…
Tunebox is a neat iOS app that acts as an audio player for your Dropbox account. It automatically scans your entire Dropbox folder for any MP3 or MP4/AAC audio files, then organizes them the same way the built-in Music app does: by Artist, Album, and Song. You can save any track for offline playing, or just stream whatever you want as long…
Apple's Passbook for iOS is a great concept, but one that – in my opinion – has never really lived up to its full potential. Luckily, a third-party app called Lemon Wallet has stepped up to the plate, offering features you won't find in Passbook. Lemon Wallet allows you to store credit cards, insurance cards, loyalty cards, and receipts by snapping photos…
There have been many Chess games available for iPhone since the App Store opened up a few years ago, but most of them aren't really designed with the iPhone's screen in mind. Rather than taking advantage of the available screen real estate, they're typically cluttered with ugly and unnecessary UI. Not so with Tall Chess, released only a few days ago. All…
The Pocket Tripod is a Kickstarter project that aims to make a sturdy iPhone stand that can hold your device at almost any angle. The twist is that it folds down and can fit in your wallet. There's an iPhone app that explains it better than I can. Go check it out.
I don't have a dock for my iPhone, and as I often charge it at my desk throughout the day, I find myself picking it up and setting it down a ton to more easily look at notifications. The Just Mobile AluPocket is a new product that is designed to solve this exact problem. Mounting to a wall or partition with 3M…
Today seems to be the day for somewhat unusual iPhone stands. The SETA Smartphone Stand is an interesting Kickstarter project that proposes to hold your phone in place using a "NanoSuction" surface. You push your phone against the suction pad to hold it in place, and pull or twist to remove it — no sticky residue involved. It doesn't have its own…
While some think heavily-filtered photos are so 2009, the guys over at Realmac Software disagree. Which is great, since their new, $2 photo app is pretty awesome. While it packs just 8 filters, the interface crazy fast and very clean. Sharing to Camera Roll and Photo Stream is easy, as is sending the photo to Instagram or straight on to Twitter or…
Limelight for iPhone is a gorgeous new app for tracking movies. You can list movies in two ways: "Watched" and "To Watch". Pretty self-explanatory there. You can rate movies on the "Watched" list, and it will display them in order of rating. Both libraries appear as shelves of beautiful movie artwork, as you can see in the first panel below: Adding movies…
The Classic Station by iSkelter ($40) is a handsome, handcrafted bamboo dock/caddy that will seat just about any smartphone, along with some of your smaller personal items. There is no dock connector, nor any wires to fuss with, just a nice little solution for keeping your workspace tidy and beautiful.
I keep a Field Notes notebook in my back right pocket at all times, with my iPhone 5 riding solo in my front left pocket. But what if I could combine these items? Enter DODOnotes. With 30 tear-off sheets of Mohawk Superfine paper nestled in US-made bookcloth fabric, the DODOnotes' trick is right up front — where an iPhone-shaped tray and elastic…
This one's for the musicians out there. ScoreCleaner Notes allows you to play, hum, or even whistle a tune, and it will write out the musical notation for you, including the correct time signatures. It can even pick apart multiple voices at once and arrange them in the proper order of lead voice, second voice, and bass line. After these notation sheets…
Yesterday, the developers of the Hueless photography app released an update that added the ability to save photos in Lossless TIFF format and max-quality JPEG, as well as improved shutter response. After seeing this update and running a quick search on Tools and Toys, I was somewhat surprised to see that Hueless has never been mentioned around here before. This app has…
I must be on a gaming kick this week, because I've got another one to talk about. This one is called Star Command, and it's essentially a Star Trek-influenced RPG simulator for iPhone and iPad. You start off by designing a Captain avatar and a small ship, then you build different types of rooms on the ship and staff each one with…
Most gamers need no introduction to Bastion, being one of the most critically-acclaimed games of the last few years and all. In case you haven't heard of it though, it's an adventure game where you play as The Kid, who wakes up after some kind of catastrophic event and must navigate through a series of floating ruins, fighting monsters along the way.…
The developers of the popular Screens VNC client for iOS recently released another great utility called Mini Display. The two apps are similar in that they both require a free Mac app to be running, but what Mini Display does differently is turn your iOS device into an external display for the Mac (as long as they're on the same WiFi network),…
WWDC is right around the corner, which likely means San Francisco will soon be seeing a sudden influx of international tech enthusiasts. Many of them will be buying drinks for one another, and they might want to keep track of exactly how much money they're losing spending back home. Instead of doing mental calculations on the spot, they should use the Currency…
The Bowers & Wilkins 'zeppelin' family of speakers has always been a popular lineup, and for good reason. Each one has an interesting design, they all sound fantastic, and B&W continually adds awesome new features with each revision. The latest model is the Z2, which resembles their previous Zeppelin Mini model from a few years ago, but now has a Lightning dock…