A MONSTER Video Review of the iPhone 5S from a Windows Phone/Android User

apple iphone 5s gold camera lens sensor dual LED flash review somegadgetguyIt’s time folks. I was there for the iPhone 5S launch day. I’ve played with the phone for a while now.

It’s time to talk iPhone.

I have not used an iPhone since the 3G. I’ve recently become a fan of Windows Phone, and I still use Android as my daily driver. iOS7 has brought some pretty significant changes to the Apple ecosystem, and now we have the first generation of iPhone purpose built for this new software.

Let’s see how it holds up to the expectations and ramblings of an angry smartphone geek.

Related:
Our comprehensive iPhone 5S camera and speaker tests!

My Fave Halloween Freebie: A Legal Blu-Ray Quality download of ‘Night of the Living Dead’!

Night_of_the_Living_DeadI’ve been peddling this one for years now folks, and I’m always amazed by people who don’t know about it.

George Romero redefined the zombie genre with his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, but it wasn’t originally titled that. It was originally called Night of the Flesh Eaters, but when the distribution company changed the name, they accidentally deleted the copyright from the titles. Romero’s greatest work fell instantly into the public domain.

You can own, share, and edit the film any way you want. All totally legally.

The movie is still remarkably effective. It’s claustrophobic and paranoid. Plus there’s just something fun about old black and white horror flicks. There are several ways to watch the movie today. Several versions have been uploaded to Youtube, there’s a version on Netflix, but by far my favorite is the one hosted on Archive.org.

On the site is a high definition rip of the film which clocks in at over 16GB. It’s one of the best looking copies of the film I’ve ever seen, and looks incredible on HD TV’s and monitors. Give yourself plenty of time for the download though. That’s a pretty big file for Archive’s servers to dole out.

Enjoy and Happy Halloween!

Night of the Living Dead in HD on Archive.org (FREE!)

Continue reading “My Fave Halloween Freebie: A Legal Blu-Ray Quality download of ‘Night of the Living Dead’!”

Google announces TONS of new features for Hangouts, Google Plus, Photo & Video sharing!

morning with google plusA whole suite of new features for the folks using Google Plus!

In the Hangouts app, users will now be able to share location with a simple button press. I’ve been in situations where people have asked “where are you” and now a simple tap can share a Google Map location with them.

hangouts where are you location sharingWhat most people have been itching for though is SMS integration, and now the Hangouts app is including the ability to add text messaging to chat.

For people broadcasting with Hangouts on Air, you’ll now have the ability to plan a Hangout ahead of time, and this will create an event page you can use to promote the Hangout. It’s a nice one-piece solution as we’ve been doing this manually to share our Hangouts with people online.

hangout spotlight background blurNew broadcast tools allow hosts to control the microphone volume of HOA participants. Increase or decrease their chat volume, and now we can finally remove someone from a Hangout. This is welcome control for those of us trying to create professional videos during live broadcasts.

For standard Hangouts video calls, users now have more creative tools to play with, like blurring the background behind themselves. Also we’ll be able to see animated gifs, for all our stop motion photo animation needs.

Moving to Google Plus, over 1.5 BILLION photos are uploaded every week. Google will be unleashing new organization and editing tools to help back up and share your experiences.

auto awesome google plus photo editing 3Photo scanning will allow for searching the content of a picture without tags. If there are pics of your dog un-tagged, searching for “dog” on G+ will bring up your pet pics. New photo editing tools can help improve the look of your pics. Either via “Auto-Awesome” or Snapseed integration, you’ll be able to touch up your pics before sending them out. Snapseed is introducing a new HDR filter to help improve pics which might be a bit under or over exposed.

auto awesome google plus photo editing 4Auto-Awesome will now track through multiple exposures to create animated gifs, composite images, or use the new Eraser tool to eliminate moving objects from your photos. Say you have a series of shots from a vacation, and someone walks in front of your frame, Eraser can scrub that distraction out of your shot. This’ll pretty much encourage people to take series of photos for every set up instead of just one pic and done.

auto awesome google plus movie editingLastly a new auto movie feature is being added. Collecting all of your pics and vids from a time or place, Google will auto-magically combine them all and add background music to present you a share-able highlights reel of your latest adventure. Users can manually edit elements, or select themes which will change up the music, editing, and effects.

If you’ve been jamming on G+, there are going to be a bunch of new features to play with. You can catch the whole announcement video below!

Video: ‘Light Goes On’ – Over 700 individual Light-Painted Frames set to Music

light goes on youtubeArtist/Photographer Darren Pearson spent over a year painting with light to produce this video which includes over 700 individually light-painted frames, and I’m just sitting here blogging…

What’s insanely impressive is the detail painted into each shot. Darren takes us on a tour of the city, but he doesn’t just paint a person walking through, nope. He paints a skeleton riding a skate board and breakdancing. Each shot is accomplished by setting a camera up for a long exposure, then drawing with a flashlight in the air with little to no reference for where you are in each photo. You just have to keep that straight in your brain.

Not enough people have seen this video. It’s incredible work.

The iPhone 5S in Action! Testing the Speakers and Camera of Apple’s Newest Phone!

apple iphone 5s gold camera lens sensor dual LED flash review somegadgetguyI’m almost wrapped up with my full long term review of the 5S, but I thought I’d tease some of the videos we’ll be using to showcase the performance of Apple’s newest handset.

Starting off with the most comprehensive camera test you’ll find on this phone online, shooting in a variety of scenarios including bright outdoor scenes, low light, indoor, night time, tracking movement, and we played with slow motion video. If you’ve been curious to see how this new image sensor stacks up against Nokias and Androids, we have a ton of samples to show off!

apple iphone 5s gold speakers headphone jack audio quality review somegadgetguyAlso, no discussion of a multimedia phone would be complete without some speaker tests. The iPhone is a svelte slab of phone. I was really curious to see if Apple could cram in a speaker which would be able to compete against recent outings from Nokia and HTC. I was very surprised by the results of our speaker test, and you can hear the iPhone playback movie clips and music in our video below.

Be on the lookout for our full long-term review in the coming days!

Microsoft Posts Video Showing XBox One Dash and Multi-Tasking

xbox one home start screen dashboard live tiles kinectGetting really hyped up for the next console generation!

Microsoft is teasing us with this short video showing off the Xbox One’s Kinect integration and giving us a sneak peek of what the UI will look like. Kinda nice seeing some Live Tiles on a TV screen, and it’s certainly clear that Microsoft wants to be the front end interface for your entire living room, as we also get to see IE and Skype in action. Thankfully they remembered to include a little game play footage as well. Because, you know, it IS a game console and all…

Check it out below.

Hands on with Nokia’s Lumia 2520 Tablet, 1520 & 1320 Phablets

WP_20131024_19_19_31_ProNokia is looking really hot right now. I think we’re hitting a Windows Phone tipping point where Live Tiles are starting to be taken seriously as a third place alternative to iOS and Android. This has been built pretty much solely on Nokia’s back as they’ve been making the most compelling hardware for the ecosystem.

Taking that up a notch, we’ve got some footage to share of the up coming Lumia 2520 tablet, and two large screened phones, the Lumia 1520 and 1320. Enjoy!

Quick Tip: Your HTC One Alarms Still Work Even With the Phone Powered Completely Off!

WP_20130503_003GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY!

This is a great little piece of mind addition to the HTC One! Following the update to 4.3, alarms set on your HTC One will still work even if you power the phone completely down.

Extremely helpful if you do dopey things like I do. Say you’re out at a conference or on a business trip, maybe you meet up for drinks and run you phone battery all the way down. You get back to your hotel room and plug it in, but forget to power it back on. No worries, HTC has your back.

Let’s take a look!