Camera Strap BuddyWe do like a nice piece of tech. Shiny is good. More zips please, vicar. And check out the manual on this baby. But sometimes it's the totally lo-fi gizmo that really hits the spot. The Camera Strap Buddy from Photojojo is one such widget.
It’s a simple little screw and metal plate that lets you attach one side of your camera strap to the tripod point of your camera on its bottom. So, instead of having your camera swinging about in front from around your neck, with its lens sticking out to smack off something hard, now it hangs down to the side. The weight is off your neck and the lens is pointing downwards.
You’ll have gathered the Strap Buddy is really for the DSLR (digital single lens reflex) user, where the substantial heft of a camera around your neck can be a pain.
- Cost $15 (€12).See photojojo.com.
Freerider SkatecycleThis may be the next big thing or the newest way to break your ankle. Or both. Either way, it meets a number of criteria for inclusion here. A new portmanteau name: skate + cycle has to be in.
Brooklyn Workshop, who make the Skatecycle, call it a cross between a skateboard, a snowboard and a casterboard if that helps. It’s made from solid aluminium, with a pair of hubless wheels at each end, joined by a double-jointed axel. To move, you stick a foot in either wheel and pivot yourself from side to side. On a slope or ramps, gravity gets you rolling and like a skateboard, you can do tricks and flips. When I say “you”, I obviously mean a baggy-bottomed yoof, with a freeridin’ attitude: the Skatecycle demands nerve, balance and not a little technique. Boarding’s big here, from surfers on every lively patch of shoreline to skateboarders anywhere there’s a park bench with a “no boarding” sign. Get ahead of the curve (and perhaps be the first into an Irish A&E) by going direct to Brooklyn.
- Cost $150 (€116)from brooklynworkshop.com
Loc8 Digital Address Code This isn’t a tangible gadget, but it could make a big difference to the navigationally challenged. Or indeed to anyone who depends on getting from A to B as efficiently as possible.
Loc8 is an all-Ireland digital address code, a sequence of eight alphanumeric characters, like a long postcode, that can accurately pinpoint anywhere on the island to within six metres.
Developed by an Enterprise Ireland-supported company, GPS Ireland, in association with major sat nav players, Garmin, Loc8 codes won’t just precisely mark a particular address, they can be used to navigate to a specific gate in an industrial complex, for example. Or mark a caravan site out in a field somewhere. If you can find it on a map, Loc8 will get you to it.
The Loc8 codes work on many Garmins, however other sat nav and GPS suppliers will soon come on board too no doubt. Just launched – there’s a not entirely convincing radio ad running – Loc8 hopes that its coding system might become the de facto postal codes for the country.
In the meantime, one suspects couriers and delivery guys will be quietly murmuring their appreciation. And it could even save a relationship or two.
Cost Free.
betweenideas@gmail.com or betweenideas.blogspot.com