A round-up of this week's must haves
Autographer
Autographer is a camera that automatically documents your day in a series of shots, whilst recording lots of other data, such as location. Now, if it didn’t come from such a respected parent, you might easily put this down as a novelty gimmick.
However Autographer is by UK-based OMG (yes, unfortunate initials there), which makes high end, motion-tracking equipment for movies and computer games. So it has the technical chops to pull this off. And has priced it accordingly.
Autographer uses a 136º wide angle lens, with a fixed focus and locks up each shot with info from five built-in sensors including a GPS, light meter, accelerometer and thermometer. You can set it to trigger on changes of temperature or by PIR, of example, so that going from warm indoors to cold out or when someone walks in front of you will click off a snap. Your whole day’s environment, movements and interactions are recorded on to the internal 8GB memory. And if you’re looking for a little discretion, there’s a shutter to slide over for privacy. One imagines there are a few media-hungry B-list celebs out there who’ll have no need for that.
Autographer Available next month from autographer.com, approx. £400 (€493)
Blokket Signal Jammer
There’s a touch of the hammer to crack a nut about this, but it’s got nerd-appeal. The Blokket is a smartphone-sized RFID jamming sleeve that will cut out 99.7 per cent of radio frequencies. It’s a way to get the end result of powering-off your phone or putting it in airplane mode without actually doing that, ie blocking out calls, emails or texts. A side benefit for the travelling paranoid is you can stick a chipped passport or ID cards in there too and shield them from prying scanners. For the geeks, it’s effectively a little Faraday Cage. Of course, you can always use your power button, save the cash and skip any retail buzz.
Blokket Signal Jammer $24.99 (€19) from thinkgeek.com
BioLogic PostPump
An obvious idea perhaps, at least now that it’s made. It’s a full-capacity bicycle pump with a foot stand that fits inside the seat column. Mini pumps are good for storage, but hot and heavy on the elbow grease. Here you pull out the PumpPost, flip out the base and get pumping. This is the latest iteration of BioLogic’s design and includes a flip-to-fit adapter for both popular tyre valve types.
BioLogic PostPump $50 (€38) from premiumbikegear.com