There are 33 games currently and more seem to be coming on a regular basis. As I began to write this review one new game was added, and it seems that one is added every week. My favorite games are Feed the Panda and World Wars.

In Feed the Panda your goal is to, well, feed the panda by cutting various ropes holding cookies.

In World Wars your goal is to take over the map. The game simulates dice rolling for your number of soldiers, and the computer opponent’s soldiers, and the winner either takes or defends their area depending who got the highest roll.

There are also games like solitaire and even a game to help you memorize the states and their location.

I really like this app and didn’t even mention many of the games. The games range from card games to “Zombie Burger.” Most of the games could be their own apps and still be fun, but there are a few that aren’t as fun and seem pointless like Potty Copter.

In Potty Copter you fly foreword and try not to crash. Thats about it…

This app is safe to put on your child’s iPod because, as far as I can tell, there are no In-App Purchases. There are a few games in this app that I haven’t tried yet. But from most of the games I have played they are fun and creative. I really enjoy the AddictingGames app and you should try it.

Eton got things right with their FRX3 Solar/Battery/Handcrank Charger. As soon as I saw it at their booth, I pulled out my iPhone and wanted PROOF that it would charge it. So many chargers had claimed to work with the iPhone that I really didn’t believe it would.

They gladly let me try it out.

It worked easily and the reason is quite ingenious.

Instead of depending on the user to crank the handle at the PERFECT speed to provide power to the iPhone, the Eton charges the iPhone with its battery. When you need to charge your iPhone, you must crank up their battery FIRST and then it will charge your phone without any problems.

Additionally, it can trickle charge the battery with its solar panel on the top, using an electrical outlet and with AAA batteries. I was really impressed with all the options available.

Here is a video of me attaching my phone to the charger.

It’s a good looking unit that comes in both black and red.

There is also a radio and a flashlight included, so it doubles as a great emergency tool.

They are going to retail for only $60 bucks, but there was no word on how soon they would be available. Until then, I’m checking the Eton website every few weeks to see if I can buy it.

• FRX3 Solar/Battery/Handcrank Charger

Hak5 did a FULL booth tour here:

You can understand why I was obsessed with waterproofed phones and other gadgets because my entire life had just been short circuited by a simple cup of coffee. That’s why Fujitsu’s booth at CES this year was so appealing to me.

The first thing we saw as we walked past the booth was a huge aquarium with a working phones and tablets within it.

My eyes were immediately drawn to the brightly colored phone at the bottom of the aquarium. Was it really running or was that just a fake screen?

The girl at the booth saw my fascination and reached her long arm into the aquarium to retrieve it.

She removed it and handed to me. Yes, it was a fully functional phone that had been sitting in that aquarium for at least a couple of hours.

I was shocked and amazed. My poor phone had been in my coffee cup for no more than a couple of seconds and it was completely destroyed. This phone could take hours in an aquarium with no problem. And, it wasn’t just the phone, there was a tablet with the same capability!

I was drawn in to the bank of phones available for hands-on play.

They were called Arrows and I loved that they came in a wide variety of colors. They felt really good in my hand.

Unlike the iPhone, they are made of plastic, so I was shocked at how light they were in my hands. After years of holding wafers of glass and aluminum, I had forgotten how light a phone could be.

The Arrows wasn’t the only waterproof phone they were showcasing. There was also a phone that claimed to be the thinnest smartphone on the market.

Actually, they only claimed to be the thinnest phone to be accepted by the FCC, so there must be a thinner phone out there that is still waiting for approval.

It was an impressive design as well.

The specs of the phone were the disappointing aspect, however. They only run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), so they are a few versions behind the curve and no guarantee that I’d be able to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich when it comes out.

I was really attracted to the waterproof feature of these Fujitsu phones, but I have been less than impressed with Android Gingerbread. The fact that these phones use an operating system that is so far behind makes them unsuitable for me, so I kept on looking.

A truly awesome earbud organizer would not only roll up into a untangled mess in a little package, but also be a cross body bag to hold your iPod or iPhone. These earbuds aren’t connected to the case, so they are just something that makes your earbuds more bulky, but less tangled.

Don’t worry, The Gadgets Page hasn’t been blocked, but it could be under the proposed legislation, SOPA and PIPA. This isn’t the first time the government has tried to squash innovation. As an example, let’s look at the Wireless Telephone.

• A mobile phone from 1922? Not quite. – Paleofuture

I recently came across a short, silent film from 1922 called Eve’s Wireless. Distributed by the British Pathe company, the film supposedly shows two women using a wireless phone. Apparently this video has been making the rounds for the past few years. Could it be an early demonstration of some futuristic technology? I hate to be the Internet’s wet blanket, but no. It’s not a mobile phone.

He’s talking about this silent film called Eve’s Wireless:

The truth of the matter is that when the radio spectrum was less crowded, people of the past were able to use it to communicate. Sure, it was a one-way communication, but it WAS a wireless communication device (although there are an awful lot of “wires” grounding the device to the fire hydrant and on the umbrella for an antennae). Once the FTC got involved, only the chosen few were able to broadcast on the radio spectrum and devices like Eve’s Wireless were considered pirate radio.

It’s a lot like what the government is trying to do the Internet right now. At present, anyone who wants to and pays for the server can put information on the Internet. The U.S. Government right now is considering two bills: SOPA and PIPA to put dampeners on that freedom. Just like when the FTC appropriated the radio spectrum, the government is trying to stronghold the Internet, only allowing approved content to be accessible, supposedly under the banner of protecting us from “piracy.”

Would we have had our cell phones YEARS before they came on the market if the FTC hadn’t appropriated the radio spectrum and deemed all other users “pirates?” We’ll never know where innovation would have taken us had the government not intervened.

Let’s not make the same mistake twice…

For more info:

• Stop Online Piracy Act – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can see a video of it here:

I have been using Powertech’s EZ GO Travel Outlet for the last few months and it has been a very reliable charger. The USB ports aren’t able to power my iPad, so I have to plug in the charger to one of the outlets, but other than that, it has been wonderful. I love that the cord is long enough to reach behind the nightstand in the hotel. That is one thing I DON’T like about this new Ultra Slim Charger. Without a cord, it makes me leave my iPhone, iPad and other things that need charging near the outlet. Sometimes nothing can beat a good old extension cord.

I came to photography as a hobby through Astronomy—Star gazing with telescopes. Astrophotography, the art of taking pictures of planets and nebula using telescopes as camera lenses, is the ultimate form of low-light photography. In this extreme form of low-light photography, cameras are modified to remove on-chip infrared filters, they’re cooled with exotic chillers to reduce thermal noise (heat inside the camera from its own electronics), and computerized mounts rotate the camera and telescope so the shutter can remain open for hours while the world turns underneath the sky.

That’s all much harder than taking low-light photographs. Having knowledge of astrophotography methods has made it really easy for me to avoid using a flash in photography, so I thought I’d share some tips on how to do it well.

Low light photography is more complicated than point-and-shoot. You have to learn and practice it to get decent results, and doing a good job requires a DSLR. I use (and love) the Canon Rebel T2i, but any modern DSLR will do the job.

Taking low light pictures means setting the camera up to absorb more light for a particular photograph than it would during the day. There are three low light parameters you will set on your camera to accomplishing this: Aperture, Shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity. Each of them comes at a cost so finding the right balance for a particular setting is the skill you will learn over time. The information in this article will tell you exactly how to get close to good “point and shoot” settings that usually work to get you started in low light.

• Use a fast lens (f/2 or below) on its widest possible aperture setting.
• Use your highest acceptable ISO setting.
• Set your camera to Aperture priority.
• Stabilize your camera.
• Focus manually using Live Preview and a point source of light.
• Shoot in RAW format.
• Use Exposure Bracketing.

The practice is simple: Make your camera as sensitive as you can get good result, open your lens to its widest possible aperture, and then control the shutter speed to get the light level you want to use. You will almost always need a tripod to prevent camera movement while the shutter is open, and you will need to select subjects that are not moving relative to the camera. Shoot in RAW format, and use auto-exposure bracketing to take multiple shots with different exposures in rapid succession to be sure you get the right shot every time.

If you don’t already know how to accomplish these settings, get your manual out and refer to it as you read through these steps.

Use a fast lens on its widest possible aperture setting

Aperture is the size of the lens opening. Because it is measured as a ratio between the focal length and the size of the lens, lower numbers mean a wider opening. f/ratio of a lens is typically between 1.2 and 5.6. Wider openings let in more light “faster”, so “fast” lenses have low numbers. The fastest commercially available lenses have f/ratios of 1.2 and they are extremely expensive. Typical lenses start at f/ratios of 4.0, and a lens is officially “slow” beyond f/5.6.

For low light you need a fast lens—f/2.8 or below, preferably much lower. I use and recommend Canon’s 50mm f/1.8 lens that costs just $100. It has junky build quality, it’s noisy, and it lacks image stabilization, but the optics are fantastic and its 1/5th the price of any other lens this fast.

I’ve not found a zoom lens that performs well in low light. Even the best zooms don’t get below f/2.8. Look to a prime 50mm or 85mm for night portraiture, and a 28mm for night landscapes or large subjects like buildings.

Use your highest acceptable ISO setting

ISO refers to the imaging chip’s sensitivity to light. The higher the number, the more-light sensitive the chip becomes, and the more noise you will see in your picture. My camera goes up to ISO 6400, but 1600 is the practical maximum for a good-looking photo. Likely yours will be similar. Set ISO to your practical maximum, which you can determine by eye after taking the same shot at each different ISO and blowing it up to the size you intend to look at it. If you can’t tell that there’s additional noise, keep going to a higher ISO until you can, then go back to the previous ISO level. This doesn’t really change much from session to session, so once you know your camera’s best acceptable ISO level, you can just set it and forget it going forward.

I don’t recommend using Auto ISO in low light situations. The camera usually prefers lower ISO levels and longer shutter times, which tends to result in blur for any motion. With a decent DSLR, you’re better off increasing the ISO to reduce shutter time in most cases. Canon cameras have the lowest inherent noise of all DSLRs and astrophotographers prefer them for this reason, but all modern DSLRs are reasonably good.

Set your camera to Aperture Priority

Aperture priority tells the camera to fix the aperture at the setting you indicate and then vary the shutter to achieve the correct exposure. Essentially, it “locks” the aperture and varies the time to achieve good exposure. Set your camera to Aperture priority and then open the aperture to its widest setting.

Stabilize your camera

If the camera moves while the shutter is open, the entire image will be blurry and appear to be out of focus. This never looks good. When you take low light photographs, the shutter remains open much longer in order to capture enough light to record an image. Any movement that occurs while the shutter is open will cause blur in the photograph. If your subject is moving, that’s unavoidable and you will get blur. This can be artistic, and in any case, there’s little you can do about it. But there’s no reason to allow your camera to move.

Many lenses include image stabilization, but the fast prime lenses that you will need for low light photography get expensive fast. Its far less expensive to use a non-stabilized lens on a tripod than to pay for image stabilization that won’t work well enough anyway. Hand-held photography rarely works well in low light conditions. You can solve this problem by mounting the camera on a tripod or monopod to eliminate shake.

Another trick I learned from astrophotography is to use a remote to fire the camera, even if you’re standing right next to it. Just the force of a person pushing the shutter button moves the camera. You can really improve your low-light photos by not touching the camera at all when you shoot. On my roof deck (where I shoot astrophotography) I can’t even walk around without causing camera shake that affects the image, so be aware of your floor surface as well.

Focus manually using Live Preview

It is very difficult for camera Auto Focus systems to perform well in low light—they hunt a lot and take a long time to confirm focus. It is also difficult for a human to focus manually through the viewfinder in low light, for the same reason: It’s hart to tell when you’re in focus with low light.

There are three simple tricks to focusing in low light: focus manually, shorten the depth-of-field, and use point sources of light to focus on.

Fast aperture settings shorten the depth of field and put most of the picture out of focus excepting the subject. Having a short depth-of-field makes focus more critical but also easier to spot because subjects will go in and out of focus quickly. If you’ve selected your lens’s fastest setting then you’ve also set the shortest depth-of-field.

The other way to make it easy is to use your camera’s Live View image on the LCD. This gives you a light-amplified image that is much larger to work from.

Try to pick point-sources of light such as lights or reflections on or next to your subject to focus on—when they are dots, you are in focus on that dot. When they are larger circles, you are out-of-focus. If your subject is a person, have them hold a tiny LED flashlight for you to focus on, which they can turn off before you shoot.

Shoot RAW format

If you are doing important low light work, use RAW mode. RAW creates very large, uncompressed images. The JPEG compression method used to condense the data that composes a photograph can create some very noticeable effects in low-light situations, such as halos around lights and dark “jaggies”. JPEG was optimized for broad color changes and can over-compress very similar areas as dark areas tend to be. Shooting in RAW format avoids this. If you can’t or don’t want to use RAW, use the largest and smoothest JPEG compression setting.

Use exposure bracketing

Exposure bracketing refers to taking multiple pictures of the same subject in rapid succession at exposures both above and below the standard exposure you’ve set. Essentially, the camera takes a darker, faster photo below your exposure setting, a photo with your exposure setting, and then a brighter, slower photo above it, all in a single button push or hold (depending on your camera). I recommend using 1 stop below and one stop above for your brackets—more than that seems to be well outside what I’d ever use.

Exposure bracketing does two things: Firstly, your eye sees light differently than the camera, and so you may not have a great idea which exposure setting is going to get you results similar to what you’re eye is seeing. Exposure bracketing takes the guess work out of it and gets a range of exposures, one of which is nearly certain to be what you’re looking for. Secondly, exposure bracketing creates the three exposures necessary to perform High Dynamic Range image manipulation with Adobe Photoshop, which is a complex topic beyond the realm of this article.

The sound quality is remarkable too! The headphones come with three different cable lengths, so if I have my iPhone in an arm strap I don’t have a long cable dangling down, or I can attach the headphones to my Nano and clip it on my shirt collar.

The cables are also flat so it doesn’t get all tangled up if I just throw it in the pocket of my gym bag (they come with a nice carrying pouch where they are normally stored). I would definitely recommend these to anyone who’s headphones routinely fall out, or if you’re just looking for a great pair of sport headphones.

As a new owner of the iPhone 4S, the first accessory I looked for was a cover for the screen. While the iPhone 4 and 4S screen isn’t exactly fragile, and has a nice fingerprint-resistant coating, I always keep my gadget screens covered. My phone spends a lot of time in pockets and tends to get scratched without it. The iPhone 4′s screen, with its retina display, looks beautiful—and the first few screen protectors I bought ruined its appearance, making everything blurry and indistinct. I peeled off and threw away several in frustration. Fortunately, I found one that works, the Splash Masque Clear Screen Protector. I’ve used it since I activated my new phone last month and it’s working perfectly.

Applying The Screen Protector

As with most screen covers, applying the Masque is a tricky process. First, clean the screen thoroughly—I use an alcohol-based cleaner. Next, rub it with a microfiber cloth (included) to remove any dust. Once the screen is spotless, peel the protective cover from one end and stick that end to one end of the phone. Carefully spread it out from there, smoothing out any bubbles. You might have to try several times, and watch for dust particles.

Here are some tips that will help when applying any screen cover:

• Apply the cover in a humid, dust-free area. Some people use the bathroom with the shower running.
• Use a bright light such as a desk lamp. Tiny dust particles are hard to see.
• One last bit of dust left? Avoid the temptation to blow on it. Your breath contains moisture particles and you’ll end up starting the cleaning process over. Worse, any dust you blow into the air will stay in the air for a minute and then settle on your phone just as you make your next attempt. Use the microfiber cloth instead.

Screen Clarity and Durability

Although it’s thinner than most of the other covers I tried, making it easier to apply, the Masque isn’t fragile. Once the Masque is applied, it stays on—unlike some others, it hasn’t started to peel after a month of use.

For the iPhone 4′s beautiful display, the one feature I really needed was clarity. The Masque is the only cover I tested that didn’t compromise the detail and readability of the screen. There’s a visible moire pattern when the phone is turned off, and it’s barely visible when the screen is mostly black. Other than that, everything looks great, from movies to Kindle books.

Conclusion

The Splash Masque covers come in a 3-pack, which costs under $10. Considering that many iPhone screen covers cost $20 for a single cover, this is a great deal, and it actually works better than the expensive alternatives. As anyone with screen-covering experience knows, it might take you three tries to apply a cover smoothly, and if you luck out the first time you’ll have spares.

As a bonus, the Masque 3-pack comes with two back screen covers. (This might sound strange, but the iPhone 4′s back is made of glass and equally susceptible to scratches.) These aren’t glossy like the front cover but instead have a matte appearance and a soft brushed texture. The back cover adds a bit of much-needed friction to the slippery phone and doesn’t interfere with the phone’s use at all.

As the cheapest, best option and the only one that doesn’t compromise the iPhone 4′s screen quality, I highly recommend these covers.

I love the snotty guy waiting in line:

Hipster: “I could never get a Samsung. I’m creative.”

Other Hipster: “Dude, you’re a barista.”

Personally, I decided against the Samsung phone because I wanted my stuff to WORK. With my iPhone, I have a little grocery list that Mike can add to and edit. With my iPhone, I have my music and playlists that easily sync to my phone. I’m sure I could get all those cool things with a Samsung phone, but I’d have to learn how to do it and go to the trouble of making it work. I’ve already done that work with my iPhone, so the thought of going to that effort again with a different ecosystem is unpleasant to me.

I could never get a Samsung. I’m too freakin’ lazy.

Apple products have the momentum to keep me for a while. Things will have to get pretty dang bad before I’m willing to move to a Samsung phone.

Via: Samsung Mocks iPhone Fans in New Galaxy S II Ad – Mac Rumors