I know what you’re asking: Yet another activity tracker? But LIT tracker from NZN Labs has a big secret ingredient that most others don’t — and that special ingredient makes it perfect for action sports like snowboarding, surfing and mountain biking.

I suppose it’s not actually a secret — or if it is, it’s not a very good one. In any case, here’s the deal:

Most activity trackers — for instance, the Fitbit, Nike+ Fuel Band, Jawbone Up and most others — use an accelerometer to track a user’s movement. That works perfectly well for activities like walking or running, but doesn’t work for activities where steps can’t be measured.

Just like the others, the LIT tracker is equipped with an accelerometer; but NZN Labs paired the accelerometer with a gyroscope, giving the little device the ability to record forces associated with that huge wave you just carved on your surfboard, or the big jump you just landed on your mountain bike.

All that recorded data doesn’t mean much without a useful way to make sense of it, so the outfit has spent much of its time creating and testing data sets for a variety of action sports. They’ve gotten so good at differentiating the different activities from each other that LIT will automatically recognize what sport you’re participating in.

Another really impressive aspect to LIT is that a user can choose to superimpose activity data over video being shot on an iPhone during the activity through a free companion app; data is sent to the iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0.

So far, data sets have been crafted for surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and motocross, and LIT’s creators are currently working on a mountain biking model next.

The LIT will sell for $149 when it ships, according to NZN Labs, in August. If you want to grab one for considerably less at $99, better hurry — the LIT’s Indiegogo campaign ends in less than twelve hours.

Here’s a video clip of one of what the data looks like when superimposed onto a video clip of the activity.

This post was written by Eli Milchman from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

One word cropped up over and over at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, and it wasn’t “speakerdock” (yes, that may be two words; but I’m merging them here because that’s what I’m doing). In fact, the word was “Bluetooth” — a word discordant with the very idea of a dock-equipped speaker.

And yet, amid the tsunami of Bluetooth-equipped speakers at CES, there were holdouts — adherers to the Old Way of doing things, of physically connecting a device to its speaker.

One such holdout is the Aud 5, iLuv’s first speaker dock to harbor a Lightning connector.

The dock’s key highlights are a swiveling Lightning connector, touch-sensitive controls and a 3.5mm input. Streaming Bluetooth docks are wonderful, but my guess is there’s still plenty of room for speakers that give devices a place to sit and charge.

The iLuv Aud 5 hits store shelves today at $150.

This post was written by Eli Milchman from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Polish-based Infinite Dreams has seen pretty sizable success with their iOS games. Can Knockdown, a physics game that gives the player a row of balls with which to virtually smash stacks of cans, is so popular that the second game in the series (Can Knockdown 2) was even super-sized into a coin-op arcade game.

Now the third game in the series has arrived for iPad and iPhone, Can Knockdown 3. And just like its predecessors, it’s beautifully engineered, gobs of fun and horribly, horribly addictive.

Infinite Dreams stuck with the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” adage here; CK3 doesn’t stray from the original formula, but it’s tweaked in all the right places.

The explosive cans and extra-ball cans are there, but the game now adds devilishly frustrating moving cans that roll down slopes and ride on conveyer belts. Later on, the game gets even more challenging with swinging hooks  and moving grates.

As in the previous games, you can still fire off a virtual fastball or lob a slow, arcing ball; only the fastball can now sometimes turn into a “powerball” with more explosive effects.

Smashing a stack of cans in the Can Knockdown games is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done on an iPad, and CK3 makes the whole experience even better.

Don’t want to take the chance on a buck? Try the original for free. If you like it, grab the new one.

This post was written by Eli Milchman from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Snapshots is a fantastic idea, and one I can see being used pretty heavily at weddings — or by, say, a gaggle of journalists who shoot an event and might need to pool their images.

The concept is spectacularly simple: Get a bunch of people together, and make sure they’re all running SnapShot on their iPhones; then have them upload all the images or videos they shoot via SnapShot to an “event” that you’ve all picked. Voila! Your BBQ/beach party/wedding/gadget press event has been covered from every conceivable nook and cranny.

The app has all the standard stuff, like posting stuff to Twitter and Facebook, and a comments area for the images and videos. But who cares. It’s the main feature that makes this app so brilliant .

This post was written by Eli Milchman from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Microscope-like macro lenses are super neat — and not just because they let you see the little hairs on a ladybug’s leg. No, macro lenses can show you a whole new world. Or macro lenses can spark (or rekindle) a love affair with photography. Heck, at the very least, they’re good for hours of amusement.

There’s no shortage of macro lenses for the iPhone: There’s the high-end Olloclip, which also comes with a fisheye and a wide-angle lens; then there’s also this rubber-band macro from Photojojo, and these magnetic specimens.

Add to the list the new Carson ML-515 LensMag, a pair of iPhone macro lenses that clip magnetically onto the iPhone 5 — pretty standard fare. Only there is something different.

The LensMag packs a lot more macro punch than most of its brethren. One of the lenses is a 10x, the same as the Olloclip. But the other is a 15x — a higher power magnification than any other iPhone lens I’ve come across. It even comes in a cloth bag, and the whole thing is $19.

This post was written by Eli Milchman from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.