Reviews
Review: TinTac Hoxton messenger bag
Inspired by cockney rhyming slang (TinTac = sack = bag) and the Hoxton area in London, the TinTac Hoxton is designed as an everyday commuter or casual bag. The Hoxton is a casual messenger-style bag that is big enough to carry a 13″ MacBook, but is probably best suited for iPad users.
Design
The bag is made of soft but sturdy canvas and has a very comfortable nylon shoulder strap. The 3 internal compartments and 2 pockets offer plenty of places to pack things and thanks to the bright interior colours, you’ll be able to find your things later as well. The Hoxton is available in beige, grey, green and brown with matching interior fabric colours.
Yay!
The bag is fairly simple – in a good way. There aren’t thousands of internal compartments with subdivisions to get stuff lost in, it’s just a well though out bag for everyday use.
It’s nice and light, so it’s comfortable to wear for long periods of time. It’s also not too bulky and fits easily underneath the seats on a plane or on your lap if you’re on public transport.
A magnet keeps the bag shut and two front slip pockets with headphone cable flaps allow you to get at your music player or phone without digging around inside the bag.
I was afraid the light beige colour option I picked would get dirty easily, but after several weeks of being dragged to Brussels, Hamburg and all around Munich, it still looks great.
Meh…
The overall quality feels very good, however I did notice the zipper on the back compartement came apart once or twice. But since it’s an internal zipper, it’s not a real worry.
Conclusion
I really like this bag. It’s a bit too small for most notebook computers, but in a pinch I can fit my MacBook Air in it. But it’s perfect for an iPad, camera and the other bits and bobs I usally lug around.
It’s more of a “lifestyle” bag than a computer bag, but for those of you that have embraced the iPad way of computing, the TinTac Hoxton is highly recommended.
At £40 / €47 / $60, it’s great value for money and I could see this bag being a popular gift this holiday season.
Review: Eye-Fi Pro | X2
What’s the most annoying part of digital photography? That’s right, fiddling around with the memory card or USB cable to copy your photos to your computer.
Well the Eye-Fi cards promise to have a better solution for copying photos: these cards can transfer your digital snaps wirelessly. Yep – despite being the same size as a normal SD card, an Eye-Fi card can connect to your computer over a wifi network. Let’s take a closer look at the Eye-Fi Pro | X2 – their latest and greatest.
Getting started
You need to download special Eye-Fi software for the initial setup. You connect your Eye-Fi card to the supplied USB adapter and configure it to connect to your existing wireless network, or you can either have it create its own ad-hoc network for when you’re on the move.
Then, just pop the card into your camera and away you go.
How to use the Eye-Fi card
The Eye-Fi card works just like any other fast SD card. Pop it in your camera, take pictures (RAW or JPEG or both) and movies – that’s it.
Once your camera has been on a few seconds, the Eye-Fi card will power up its wireless feature and look for your existing network. Once connected, the special Eye-Fi software on your computer will copy the photos over the air onto your PC or Mac.
If you haven’t got a wireless network nearby, the card can alternatively create its own wireless network. You connect to this network (named something like “Eye-Fi 132456″) and then the copying magic starts.
Performance
Despite having pretty impressive wireless performance, it will take a bit longer to copy the huge files produced by today’s modern cameras over wifi than it would over a USB card reader. However, you can optionally choose to only copy your JPEG images, leaving your RAW copies on the card ready to by copied over USB later.
The software is an Adobe Air app, so it isn’t the best Mac app I’ve ever seen, but overall it isn’t too bad. Once you have your card configured, you won’t need to use it too much anyway. Kudos to Eye-Fi for having a cross-platform solution for us Mac users that works.
Other handy tricks
Geotagging
Certain Eye-Fi cards can also make use of the wireless chip inside to geo-tag your photos. They do this by looking at nearby wifi networks. These are later matched by the Eye-Fi software to a database that knows the geographical location of tonnes of wifi networks around the world and uses that to give your photos a rough geographical location.
It’s not perfect, but it’s usually good enough to help you figure out which side of town you took a particular photo.
Endless Memory
Need to take a ton of pictures? No problem! If you’re on a wifi network, your Eye-Fi card will shove pics over to your computer and free up storage for new pictures, which means you’ll never run out of storage. This is only useful for certain scenarios, but if you need to take a lot of pictures and don’t want to have to switch cards it might come in useful.
Picture uploads
I didn’t test this feature, but Eye-Fi also offers an online storage and sync option, that allows you to share pictures with friends or between devices.
iPad app
One other great feature is the fact that you can use the Eye-Fi card with the free companion iPad app, allowing you to use your iPad as a giant photo preview screen: snap a shot, wait 2 seconds and it shows up on the iPad. I used this feature to turn my iPad and a camera with an Eye-Fi card into a rudimentary homemade wedding photo booth.
Conclusion
If you just need to grab a few photos quickly, the Eye-Fi a great solution. I could see it being particularly useful in scenarios where you’re frequently taking a small number of shots and need to quickly preview them on a larger screen.
The geo-tagging feature is also quite nice and a good alternative to using geo-tagged iPhone pictures as a reference.
The Eye-Fi Pro | X2 does exactly what it claims. The wireless performance is pretty good and it can be a huge timesaver if you often need to preview your pictures in between shots.
Recommended
Read MoreReview: Waterfield Cargo bag
I’ve been on the lookout for a new laptop bag for a while. I was recently given a new MacBook Air for work and as my old bag was starting to fall apart and I often cycle to work, I needed something a bit more rugged than most typical commuter bags.
Waterfield bags are designed to be very tough (not surprising as the company was founded by a former bicycle messenger), so I was keen to take a closer look at the Waterfield Cargo bag.
Features
The Waterfield Cargo looks like fairly typical messenger-style bag at first. It has a shoulder strap, front flap and a buckle. But there are ton of nifty design touches that make the bag very practical in everyday use:
- The top zip makes it easy to get stuff from the main compartment without lifting up the main flap
- The interior fabric is a bright colour, that makes it easy to find things inside
- The back pocket is great for your iPad or a folder with papers
Design
This bag looks pretty good, but the design isn’t the main reason you’d buy this bag. It’s a very functional design and it’s“tidy” enough to take into any office, without looking too corporate.
You can also customise the look quite a bit by choosing various trim and colour options.
Quality and Durability
Waterfield state that the bag was inspired by ruggedized bike messenger accessories and it certainly feels every bit as durable as its heritage. The nylon fabric is extremely tough and feels much more durable than the fabrics used on similar products from other well-known manufacturer’s bags I’ve owned.
This is how much I can easily fit in the Waterfield Cargo:
Contents of my bag
As I mentioned at the outset, I plan on commuting by bike quite a bit with this bag, so I want something that can be strapped to the back of a bike rack and withstand a bit of wear and tear. So far, the Waterfield Cargo has been more than up to the challenge: Despite being bumped around on the back of a bike for several weeks, kicked around on the floor of the subway and dragged halfway across Malaysia on my honeymoon, it still looks like new. Any dirt or muck you get on the bag easily brushes off, and all the seams and zips are rock solid.
Bonus Round
There’s a lot to like about this bag, but here are a few extra tidbits I particularly like:
- The strap can easily being adjusted just by lifting an adjustment flap at the side, but it doesn’t accidently lift or slip
- Underneath the front flap are two slim pockets that are almost hidden – perfect for storing your passport or other valuables somewhere hard to access while travelling.
- The interior pockets don’t get in your way, so you can use the space inside the bag to the fullest.
- If you do need extra compartments, the Sleevecase accessory is perfect for documents and laptops (it has two compartments, perfect for a MacBook and iPad), while the Cablepouch is great for all your accessories and cables:
Conclusion
At $189, the Waterfield Cargo is certainly one of the more expensive laptop bags out there. But this Waterfield bag, which was handmade in San Francisco, is extremely well made with high-quality materials used throughout, so I’d argue that the price is more than justified. If you’ve got a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air you’re carrying around, it’s worth investing in a good bag to protect it.
Unlike other messenger bags that I’ve owned, that have all started to fall apart at the seams after a few months of owning them, this bag feels as though it will give me a good few years of use.
The attention to detail and everyday practicality is very obvious — someone really thought about every aspect of this bag while designing it – and it is very versatile, equally useful as a travel bag for longer journeys or as a daily bag for the office.
Overall, highly recommended.
Read MoreDIY iPad Wedding Photobooth
When we were planning our wedding, we saw lots of wedding photo booth ideas. You can either rent a traditional photo booth, or there are various DIY setups involving digital cameras.
I started thinking and thought it would be cool to have a setup that would allow people to see their snaps rights away, without having to go around to the camera itself. With a DSLR that supports remote control from a laptop, that is fairly easy to set up, but as it turned out, my cameras don’t support remote control over USB. So I started looking into alternatives and soon hit on the idea of using an EyeFi card and my iPad. (A few weeks after I started planning our photo booth, a story popped up on Engadget about a similar, albeit more professional, setup.)
What you’ll need
- A digital camera with remote shutter release (I used the Panasonic GF-1 with a cheap wireless remote shutter release from eBay)
- An EyeFi SD card in the camera (make sure it’s a newer EyeFi card with support for “direct mode”)
- An iPad connected to the EyeFi network running the free EyeFi app
- A tall tripod
- A table or stand of some kind for the iPad
- (optional) A frame, backdrop or props of some kind for guests to pose with
Camera, remote shutter, iPad and EyeFi card
The photo booth setup – the iPad is just off to the side on a table
One of the snaps from the photo booth
Other Tips
- Turn on face recognition if your camera supports it and make sure the autofocus is correctly detecting your guests.
- Turn off any power saving options on the camera and iPad.
- If your setup is indoors, connect the iPad and camera to AC adapters, if possible.
- You’ll need a fairly tall tripod or something to stand it on to get the camera up high enough. Ours was a bit low so I ended up adjusting the perspective using Adobe Lightroom.
- Explain the setup to someone beforehand and ask them to keep an eye on things to make sure everything runs smoothly.
First Impressions: Panasonic GF-1 vs. Olympus E-PL1
I’ve been a fan of the Micro Four-Thirds format since I first played with the Olympus E-P1 shortly after it was released. Last year I picked up the Olympus E-PL1 and absolutely love it. It’s certainly not without flaws, but it’s a cheap and fun way to get started with “proper” photography and to learn about aperture, shutter speeds and other mysteries.
I had been on the lookout for the Panasonic 20mm prime lens, as it’s considered to be one of the best Micro Four-Third lenses out there. When I spotted a package deal that offered the 20mm lens with the GF-1, I couldn’t resist. Although both the GF-1 and E-PL1 have both been succeeded by newer models, I thought I’d share my impressions after using the GF-1 for about two weeks.
Read MoreReview: Dodocase for iPad 2
The first accessory every iPad 2 owner buys is one of Apple’s Smart Covers. But as elegant as the Smart Covers are, they do not offer much in the way of protection and my iPad already has a number of alarmingly deep scratches on the back from being in my bag with my keys and camera.
Enter the Dodocase for iPad 2 – a hand-made, book-like case with an elegant wooden frame. The DodoCase has a moleskine-like design and elegantly encloses your entire iPad like a hardback book. On the right side of the book sits a wooden frame that has special cutouts for the iPad, while the left has a trademark ownership label and customiseable colour lining.
