Month: September 2015

Categories
Displays Tech Accessories

NoonWear One lets you see your screens in the bright sun

The screens on today’s smartphones, tablets and laptops produce vibrant, saturated colors — that is, as long as they’re not directly in the path of the sun. Trying to fight the greatest light source for millions of miles is a tough battle to win and so screens become washed out and hard to read.

While most sunglasses only make the problem worse by blocking half of a laptop’s emitted light, Noonwear One provides a new approach to this problem with a line of sunglasses that create a dramatic improvement in screen visibility. The specs use diagonal polarization to allow light from electronic screens to come through better while still blocking sunlight.

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Categories
Cell Phone Accessories Imaging

ScopeCam uses your phone’s better camera for selfies

Today’s smartphones put incredible photo taking capabilities in a device that’s always at home in a pocket. Their front-facing cameras have spawned millions of selfies. But the sad secret about these narcissistic snapshots is that the front cameras of almost all smartphones lag significantly behind their rear cameras in terms of resolution even as smartphone companies are steadily improving selfie features.

ScopeCam is a simple phone device that clips on to a smartphone, allowing you to use its rear camera to take forward-facing shots. This gives you the best of both selfie worlds, being able to use the big screen of the phone to frame the photo and the full power of the camera to take the photo — well, almost the full power as there’s no way to turn the flash to the front of the phone.

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Categories
Smart Home

Smitch smart light switch brings simplicity to smart home category

Smart home devices can make life easier for consumers, but too many such products are overly complicated to set up.

The same can’t be said for Smitch, a smart light switch that its makers say can be installed in a matter of seconds, and fits 90 percent of existing switches. It features an intuitive interface, and can control all of a room’s lights by just tapping on the corresponding picture that is shown on the companion Android or iOS app. Smitch begins shipping in November and will cost $69 each at retail, although it can be purchased via Kickstarter at reduced early bird pricing that starts at $32. Its makers set a Kickstarter goal of raising $21,949 by Sept. 8.

Smitch certainly seems easy to install and other features that should make it appealing to some consumers is its advertised long battery life of about 500 days. But Smitch may face an uphill battle because it just seems too much like many other smart light switches already available, including Switchmate.