Are having a laugh?
Price: $1,300
Website: lehmannaviation.com
It used to be that independent filmmakers
who wanted a dolly or a crane had to make their own out of a ladder and a
mate's skateboard, These days, if you want a 4K scenic shot from high above a
waterfall, or a nice long tracking shot over the surface of a lake, or a big
circling shot of a skyscraper, you don't need a helicopter and an Unpleasant,
cigar-smoking producer. All you need is the 10L-A100, a UAV (unmanned aerial
vehicle) built to carry a GoPro Hero3 action cam. Unlike Parrot's AR Drone, it
flies itself you just you program a five minute aerial loop on your phone and
launch it. Action!
As hot as... leaving your phone unlocked
and accidentally calling in an airstrike on your face
Lehmann
LA100
Span-checks
At 92cm, the LA100 has a wingspan equivalent
to that of a blue-footed booby, or a large kookaburra.
Light flight
Even loaded with a GoPro the LA100 weight
just 859g thanks to a foam – and – carbon – fibre build. By a comparison, a
Boeing 787 weight 250 tons when taking off.
One-eye Wonder
TheGoPro Hero3 Black Edition shoots 4K
video, but we'd use its 1080p@60fps mode: smooth and as sharp as your TV will
go.
Abus Kranium
Strong and absorbent
Website: bikerepublic.com
Cycling through a city wearing a cardboard
helmet sounds about as sensible as going polar bear-watching in a car made of
bacon. But melt, oh cynical one: the lattice structure of the cardboard Inside
the Kranium's plastic shell is based on the structure of a woodpecker's skull
and absorbs three times as much force as the polystyrene in a regular helmet.
In fact, it's so strong that the manufacturers claim it could be rated as a
motorbike helmet. It's also recyclable, obviously, and treated to be fine in
the rain. Its defense against polar bears remains untested.
As hot as... a chocolate teapot
Abus
Kranium
A real head turner
HP EliteBook Revolve
Website: hp.com
A lot of tech appears in the movies first.
For instance gesture control in Minority Report, and tablets in 2001: A Space
Odyssey. And Linda Blair's rotating head in 1973's The Exorcist was a clear
prediction of HP's commitment to convertible TabTops with swiveling screens.
They may have cracked it with this Win 8.12in swivel plate with up to 12GB
RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a Core i7 Ivy Bridge chip and a 360 twisting lid.
HP
Elitebook Revolve
Mag-neat-o
Anon M1
Price: $270
Website: anonoptics.com
Until we perfect our bat sonar well have to
rely on our eyes to warn us of bone- crunching hazards when smashing down a
snowy mountainside, that means they're worth protecting with goggles, but pack
the wrong ones for the conditions and you'll be folded around a tree in no
time. While you could wear three pairs of goggles around your head and hope the
trend catches on (it probably would), we'd rather don a pair of Anon M1s and
pack a couple of spare lenses, ready to snap on and off instantly with its
magnetic Magna-Tech mounting system.
Anon
M1
Quad-core sproglet
Fuhu Nab! 2
Price: $200
Website: nabitablet.com
Kids. eh? They might be rubbish at driving
and no good at arm wrestling, but they're not stupid. Well, some of them
are. But even the r hick ones can spot the difference between a cheap slate and
a quad-core, 1GB RAM, battery-stuffed minitab. The Nabi 2 is a 'nighty 7in
child let, and along with speed it delivers education, media streaming and
browsing from the safety of a heavily Modded Android 4.0. And as children like
to cover things in Nutella and chuck them at walls, it's hard as nails, too.
Fuhu
Nab! 2
Lug boots
Ugg Great Jones earmuffs
Price: $112.5
Say what you like about a good pair of ear buds
(seriously, say what you want. If they're good the person wearing them won't
hear you), they don't keep your ears warm. And say what you like about a good
pair of earmuffs, they don't pour music into your head. All except this
shearling-lined pair which do, via a reliable on a cold-day 3.5in audio jack.
Ugg
Great Jones earmuffs
The family that swipes together...
Ideum Pano
Website: ideum.com
Isn't it awful when you SC (a couple in a
restaurant, both absorbed in the glowing otherworld of their smartphones? Or
when you're sat round the table trying to have a family meal, but no-one's
talking because they're all messing about on their iPads? When will people
learn that the only appropriate screen for mealtimes is this handily table-like
100in all-in-one, with 40-point multi touch, a hardened surface and 3840x1080
resolution? The PC in the base is a quad-core i7 beast, too perfect for a
postprandial family game of FIFA 13.
Ideum
Pano
Get yer blend, you've pulled
Blossom One
Price: $11,111
Website: blossomcoffee.com
If you're the sort of person who feels a
pang of fear upon noticing a fork in the bit of the drawer where the spoons go;
if you're the kind of worrier who can't sleep at night unless your SD cards are
arranged on the shelf in order of capacity, then the One is for you. It offers
precise control of every parameter involved in coffee making, including grind
size, extraction time and temperature, and it can adjust all of these according
to recipes created by coffee roasters and other like-minded souls with an
obsessive interest in the perfect CLIP o' Joe. Even the price is a soothing,
symmetrical array of ones. Well soothing until you remember you could buy a new
car for that much.
Blossom
One
Lapse dancer
Veho X-Lapse
Price: $45
Website: veho-world.com
While taking a time-lapse panning shot of a
sunrise is a great idea, it does involve standing in the cold for an hour,
making tiny adjustments to a tripod every 30 seconds. Yeah, we thought so too.
But wait! Before you get back under the covers, how about we use the X-Lapse?
It sits on your tripod, holding your camera or phone and gradually turning,
adding a graceful pan to your time-lapse. It'll even go all the way round, for
a 360 panorama. Let's do it tomorrow, you say? Well, budge up then. And stop
nicking all the covers.
Veho
X-Lapse
Nerd upgrader
Arduino Esplora
Being a Maker is very much a thing these
days. There are two kinds. the ones who hack their own circuitry and software,
and the ones who knit badly fitting Ewok outfits and bake muffins shaped like
classic Apple Macs. The Esplora is the first Arduino controller with a set of
sensors already built in, making it a lot easier for you to stop impersonating
a Beek and finally build that motion-detecting Wicket the Ewok victoria sponge
cake you've always talked about.
Arduino
Esplora
