The notion that the wristwatch has fallen out of favor among smartphone-reliant youth is apparently a fallacy, as a Kickstarter project to fund a modern timepiece accessory called the Pebble has raised nearly $10 million with a week still to go. (It’s funding goal? $100,000.) Indeed, the booming crowdfunding site has facilitated a wave of indie technology product development leading to several innovative new gadgets, including those below.
Digital Bolex: The ubiquity of the digital video camera has afforded the everyman the ability to test out the director’s chair, but as evidenced by about 90% of the content on YouTube, most people are more interested in capturing images like the antics of their cat than crafting thoughtfully framed narratives. For more serious filmmakers, the appealingly retro Digital Bolex may become a fundamental tool in their aesthetic arsenal. The first consumer-oriented “digital cinema camera” shoots raw images rather than compressed video, meaning that the filmmaker can alter the color and white balance, contrast, and more, without spoiling the quality of the imagery. Aaaand action!
Last year, tablet ownership was eight percent; by 2016, it’s expected to be 40%. With an adoption rate that swift, it’s hard to ignore the changing face of the publishing landscape. Even the most stagnant proponents of tactile reading are coming to realize that what’s lost in paper is gained in multidimensional interactivity—and publishers are acting fast to reinvent their industry to reflect this dramatic shift in consumption.
Next Issue Media: The scenario is familiar: Select a Watch Instantly series at random “just to check it out” and, one weekend/three seasons later, you have a new favorite show. Next Issue Media, a JV from a marquee roster of publishers (Condé Nast, Time Inc., Hearst, Meredith, and News Corp.) is now delivering a similar media buffet to readers with its Netflix-inspired service for tablet magazines. For $9.99 a month, subscribers can access an unlimited number of monthly and biweekly titles. With most tablet editions going for $1.99 a month, it’s a deal for anyone who reads five or more tablet rags. Not to worry, New Yorker fans: a $14.99 premium plan includes weeklies.
Sleep tracking, calorie counting, outfit monitoring and fitness recording are just a few of the ways people have been utilizing life-tracking technologies. Designer Nicholas Felton even developed a life-tracking app that turns mundane daily activities into beautiful visualizations. Now, new happiness-tracking apps are emerging to help people recognize and record their good moods in order to potentially capitalize on the elements influencing them.
Happstr: Finding a ‘happy place’ has never been easier, thanks to Happstr. Developed during a SXSWi hackathon, the app aims to spread positivity among friends. As one of its creators explained in an interview with The Atlantic, “There are studies that have shown even a third degree friend with a higher happiness level improves your own happiness by 6 percent.” To put the statistic into action, Happster users check themselves in during their happiest moments. Similar to Foursquare, an icon pinpoints their locations on an interactive map, which can be tracked over time. It also displays check-ins from other nearby users, encouraging people to share the exultant moments happening around them.
Just as the ways that we shop have undergone dramatic alterations over the past decade (think online auctions, cyber sales assistants, and flash sales), the retail transaction is poised to see tremendous transformations in the years ahead as well. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of digital wallets quite yet, but with more merchants and consumers alike looking to ditch clunky cash registers and doorstopper billfolds, the technology is evolving.
PayPal Here: Square has become a vital tool among small business owners who operate between the online realm and the real world, whether it be by running a flea market stall or making guest appearances at curated retail events. Looking to capture that expanding mode of entrepreneurship, PayPal recently launched a competitor. Called PayPal Here, the credit card-swiping smartphone attachment, designed in an au courant triangular shape by Yves Behar-helmed firm Fuseproject, works with a companion app to do the work normally done by a cash register. Besides processing financial plastic, the app can also issue invoices and can even, through photos of checks and credit cards, process payments minus the magic triangle.
From South Park to Star Wars, stop motion has been a force behind some of the most culturally important TV shows and movies of all time. The laborious process of adjusting a character’s expression and position manually was one of the only means of animation in the pre-CGI era, but iOS applications are reviving the nostalgic form of entertainment with apps suited even for the most amateur animators.
iStopMotion: DIY stop motion videos have sparked creative interest among Gen Ys, and now iPad app iStopMotion is introducing the technique to younger “Z”s. With the help of a yellow, spike-haired claymation assistant, the app demonstrates how to create simple 12-frame per second animations. To make a video, users simply set the stage, take a shot of the scene, slightly adjust the characters, and take the next picture. Once all the frames have been captured, a movie is rendered instantly. iStopMotion caters to novice animators, flaunting options like Camera Overlay which shows a live image of the previous picture so that changes can be monitored as they’re created.
