Because your disposable income knows no end, Vulture Bytes is back with a new grab bag of gadgets, apps, and hacks to help you consume culture. This week: a camcorder with a built-in projector, a better way to use iTunes, a way to get a free iPhone at Target, and an app to help you learn how to play your favorite songs.
Between now and next week, we want your tips, recommendations, and spam! VultureBytes@gmail.com. We’re friendly.
Over Thanksgiving, we grew bored of the adult table’s chatter and wandered into our family friend’s room. She’s a teenager, which means she was scrolling through her pictures on Facebook. She told us this is what she does when she gets bored — not only uploading pictures to Facebook, but clicking through them again and again. For her, living in the present was exciting because it could one day be relived as the past.
3M’s Shoot n’ Share is made for people like her. Gone is the interminable wait to upload a photo or video to Facebook or YouTube. 3M’s device shares the moments immediately after they happen via a built-in projector that tosses images onto a flat surface nearby. The quality isn’t superb, but the immediacy is unrivaled. And after all, memories are supposed to be a bit blurry.
PRICE: $249 on Amazon, but you may be able to find it cheaper elsewhere
An open secret among Apple apologists like ourselves is that iTunes has become a bloated pig, snorfling all the food at the trough and not leaving enough memory for the rest of the programs. But there are ways to circumvent iTunes and still play music. One of the simplest is
Ecoute, which accesses your iTunes library without actually opening iTunes. It’s as barebones as your old WinAmp player, but communicates with iTunes so the program still knows how many times you’ve played a song, in case you’re a completist about those kinds of things. Most important, the program is fast, no matter what kind of computer you’re running.
PRICE: Free for fifteen days, then $10
This iPad case deserves its own infomercial. It treats your tablet like they’re leftovers. Slip the plastic sheet over the iPad, drain out the air with the attached pump, then seal that thing right up quick. Voilà! You have an invulnerable iPad. Sand won’t get in! Water won’t get in! Even jellyfish won’t get in! We can’t imagine life before
the DryCase. It’s the future in a vacuum-sealed bag! PLUS: Order now and get a DryCase big enough to fit any device! Kindles! Phones! Even magazines!
PRICE: One easy payment of $59.99. Shipping and handling not included.
Vulture Bytes understands your pain as an impoverished early adopter. You bought the iPhone 3GS when it came out two years ago, and you’re getting itchy for an iPhone 4. Of course, the thing costs $200. That’s nearly an entire unemployment check. But still, iPhone 4! You may not have any use for FaceTime, but that doesn’t change the fact that FaceTime exists.
Target wants to help. Until Saturday, February 12,
it’s willing to let you trade in your old iPhone for money toward a new one, as long as you re-up your contract with AT&T. (Target isn’t selling the Verizon iPhone yet.) They’ll give you between $100 and $200, depending on the type of iPhone and its condition. (Or you could just wait a few months until the new iPhone comes out sometime this summer.)
PRICE: Free! Unless you count the contract that ropes you into paying thousands of dollars for the next two years.
For the musicians among you, this is an app that makes it easy to teach yourself how to play your music library.
Download the app to your iDevice, select a song to play, and then use Capo to set the parts of the song you want to drill over and over until you get them right. The app lets you put down markers, play at reduced speeds, and repeat at will. The idea is to play along with the song, getting all your muscle memory in order so eventually you can play it without backup from the pros. Capo will also tell you if you’re in tune, not that that’s ever a problem for any of you.
PRICE: $20.