My 'Gadget Guru' list for TRE Talk Radio Europe December 2016

Here's the technology we discussed in my TRE Talk Radio Europe 'gadget guru' conversation today:

Leica Sofort instant camera

I’m old enough to remember when instant cameras were cool the first time round and Polaroid ruled the roost. These days, we can print our own photos at home, so there’s less novelty in having an instant camera, but they haven’t gone away completely. Fuji is one of the big names these days – and now Leica is after a share of the market.

The camera itself is quite a square, retro-looking design. There’s a choice of three colours: orange, white and what they call mint (pale green). It’s just under five inches wide and four inches high. It’s got the trademark Leica red dot on the front, has a built-in flash and there’s a viewfinder window rather than an electronic viewfinder. It’s also got a little mirror on the front for selfies.

However, don’t think this is entirely mechanical. There’s a little LED display on the back telling you how many photos remain in your film and letting you see the camera settings. It’s all powered by a rechargeable battery.

You can choose a special sports setting for movement, or another for portraits, there’s a timer you can use and you have three choices for setting the focus: Macro, Standard and Landscape. You can also override the automatic settings if you want to change the brightness of the picture, for example, or turn the flash off. You can buy Leica’s own film or use Fuji film instead. Developing each picture takes around 1-2 minutes.

The Leica Sofort has the equivalent of a 34mm lens (towards the wide-angle end of things but actually made by Leica themselves, so I understand), it has an f/12.7 aperture, which will help keep stuff in focus, and it offers of between 1/8th of a second to 1/400th of a second.

Pricing is £229 (around €265), which is a lot more than a similar Fuji camera, but this is as much an emotional purchase as a practical one.

Hypnolight LED lights

Twinkly lights aren’t just for Christmas but it’s very much the time of year when these things are especially popular. Hypnolight is effectively a 12 foot long string of lights (that’s over 3½ metres) with 50 separate LEDs.

What colours are they, you may ask? Pretty much any colour you want. That’s the clever thing. Each of the LEDs can shine red, green and blue – and you can mix these together. It means you get 16 million colours with 33 different patterns of making them light up.

You can also slow down the speed of the pattern or can have all the LEDs the same colour for mood lighting. They’re mains powered but are waterproof, so as long as you’re careful you can use them outside.

And as though all that wasn’t enough, you can synchronise up to four sets together for an even bigger display.

The price is £49.99, which includes the controller and the power unit.

Paulig Muki coffee-powered smart mug

This is a reusable coffee cup for takeaway coffee and, as the name suggests, it’s come from a coffee company in Finland. Paulig is the coffee supplier and 'Muki' means 'mug'.

What’s so smart? It’s got an electronic ink screen. That’s a bit like a Kindle or other eBook readers. It’s a monochrome display that only really needs power when it changes.

You buy your mug then download a free application to your phone. When you’ve done that, you can send pictures and messages to your mug. In fact, here’s the lovely thing, you can send messages to someone else’s mug if they’ve given you its unique code. So friends, family, couples, you can communicate over a distance.

The mug links to the user’s own phone via a wireless Bluetooth connection – and the power comes from the heat of the drink. As long as you’re drinking coffee (or tea), the thermal energy provides enough electricity to update the screen. That picture then stays on, even if the cup runs out of energy, until it gets updated with the next one. Each hot drink gives you enough power for around five updates, which is pretty impressive.

Paulig Muki is €59 plus postage and is available in three different colours.

Oneadaptr Flip power bank

At Christmas, you’re probably using your phone quite a bit; for photos, for Twitter, for Facebook, for messages, maybe even for talking to people.

What you need is a spare battery. So, if you’re like me, you may well carry a little power pack with you to recharge your phone. That’s all very well until the power pack needs recharging as well.

That’s where the Oneadaptr FLIP Power steps in. It combines a UK three-pin plug with a power bank. You can plug it into the mains to charge up, check the LED display to make sure it’s full, then it’s got two USB sockets for charging phones and tablets.

Fair enough – but what about carrying it around? Here’s the neat bit. The plug folds away, so the pins won’t damage anything. So you get a mains charger and a powerbank in a slim package that’ll fit in your bag. Now, the power bank is just 2000 milliamp hours, which won’t completely recharge every phone, but combined with the mains part I reckon that’s pretty neat. Price is £34.99.

And if you think just having a folding charger sounds cool, take a look at a rival product called Mu. They make a folding UK charger that’s much smaller and also a folding international charger that can be used in the UK, Europe, the USA, China and Australia. It’s the kind of design that’s so clever, it makes you smile.

The Kodak Ektra smartphone

The first piece of technology in my November 2016 'gadget guru' conversation with Dave Hodgson on TRE Talk Radio Europe was the Kodak Ektra smartphone:

This was announced at the end of last month and is due to go on sale next month. It’s been described as a 'hybrid' because some of the controls give the same type of functionality as if you were using a Digital SLR camera. Also suggesting a 'proper' camera is the Ektra name: this was first used by Kodak back in 1941, so there’s a lot of history there... and a fair weight of expectation, too.

If you just look at the basic spec, it’s pretty impressive: on the back is a 21 megapixel camera with an f2 lens, on the front is a 13 megapixel camera for high-quality selfies, there's optical image stabilisation (which helps if you’re not very good at holding the camera rock steady), 4K video capture (which is pretty much professional standard) and Phase Detection Auto Focus. That last one, also known as PDAF, is starting to turn up on high-spec smartphones. It’s been standard on Digital SLRs for a while; it doesn’t need to use the contrast between your subject and the background to focus – and because it doesn’t need to work this out, it’s faster and is also better in low-light or on moving subjects.

The new Ektra has its own built-in camera app with a Scene Selection Dial that lets you quickly choose settings, rather like a regular camera – so instead of leaving it in automatic mode you can choose preset settings for sports, close-ups, panoramas, low light... that kind of thing. And there’s a manual mode that lets you adjust exposure, the ISO rating, focus, white balance and shutter speed. Plus, almost inevitably, there’s a dedicated shutter button. And as well as all this built-in camera stuff, there’s also built in photo editing. It’ll even produce videos in the style of an old Super 8 movie camera.

Everything runs on the Android operating system via a 2.3GHz processor with 32GB of expandable memory. SIM-free pricing in the UK is expected to be £449.

Talking Culture: 31st October 2016

The guests on my Monday 31st October Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' radio show were all writers: Emily Elgar, Beth Miller, Umi Sinha and Catherine Smith.

Music playlist:

The Beatles: Paperback Writer
The Puppini Sisters: Wuthering Heights
Pam Tillis: Mi Vida Loca
Cliff Richard: Please Don't Fall In Love
Brian Wilson: South American
Dean Friedman: Ariel
Talitha Rise: Invisible Fishing
Clifford T Ward: Wherewithal
Katrina Leskanich: They Don't Know
Agnetha Faltskog: When You Really Loved Somebody
Herb Alpert: Casino Royale

Talking Culture: 24th October 2016

The guests on my Monday 24th October Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' radio show included Tim Rowland from Lewes Theatre Youth Group as well as Jo Beth Young and Martyn Barker from locally-based band Talitha Rise.

Music playlist: 

Paul Simon: Kodachrome
Paula Cole: I Don't Want To Wait
Ashley Tisdale & Lucas Grabeel: What I've Been Looking For
Neil Sedaka: Next Door To An Angel
Britannia High Cast: Start of Something
Eurythmics: Who's That Girl?
Frank Stallone: Beyond The Sea
Talitha Rise: Deadwood
Nellie McKay: David
Talitha Rise: Magpies

Rocket FM Lewes: Talking Culture

Here are a few edited highlights from my Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' radio show on Monday 17th October 2016, with artists Susie Monnington and Keith Pettit.

Talking Culture: 17th October 2016

My Rocket FM Lewes 'Talking Culture' radio show on Monday 17th October 2016 included Chris Stones from Glyndebourne's Education Department and pianist/vocal coach Carol Kelly in the first hour, followed by artists Susie Monnington and Keith Pettit in the second part of the programme.

Music playlist: 

Anthony Newley: Strawberry Fair 
Lenka: We Will Not Grow Old 
P J Proby: Somewhere 
Nanci Griffith: You Made This Love A Teardrop 
Eels: Losing Streak 
Cheryl Bentyne: Tea For Two 
Neil Diamond: Delirious Love 
Ellie Greenwich: River Deep, Mountain High 
Tony Christie: Louise 
Fun: Why Am I The One 
Gilbert O'Sullivan: Get Down

TRE Talk Radio Europe gadgets for October 2016

Here's the technology I talked about in my TRE Talk Radio Europe 'gadget guru' conversation today:

Blue Raspberry USB microphone

Blue has previously produced other microphones called the Snowball and the Yeti, so don’t try to read anything too much into the 'Raspberry' name. The difference between this and them is that this is designed to be portable.

For example; you want to record something using your laptop or your phone. Maybe a podcast, maybe yourself playing a musical instrument, maybe your mates in a band. Either you use the built-in microphone, which is generally okay but not outstanding, or you plug one in.

This is the plug-in solution. I’ve been sent one of these to play with and I’ve grown very fond of it. To start with, it looks like a serious piece of kit: it’s got a built-in desktop stand, something of a retro appearance and it actually feels good because a lot of it is constructed from metal.

The Raspberry plugs into the USB connection on a laptop, with a cable that's supplied. If you’re using an iPhone or an iPad, it also comes with an Apple Lightning cable that lets you plug straight in. If, like me, you have an Android phone, you’ll probably need a little USB OTG adaptor – mine cost me 99p off eBay.

What’s really clever is that the microphone also has a headphone socket, so – just like the professionals – you can plug headphones in and hear what you sound like when you’re recording. There’s a control on one side for headphone volume and one on the other side for microphone level. A little LED shines green when everything’s okay but goes yellow or red if the recording is too loud.

One of the other neat features is hidden inside: the Blue Raspberry has what the makers are calling an Internal Acoustic Diffuser. They reckon this resembles the way that recording studios and concert halls are treated, so your recording is all about the voice or the music and not about echoing rooms. There’s insulation built into the stand as well, to reduce the risk of vibrations messing up your recording.

If you like figures, it’s up to 24-bit 48KHz audio, which means it’s decent quality, and has a frequency response of between 20Hz and 20kHz. Depending on how you adjust it, the mic is about 130mm high when it's on a desk and weighs 272 grams. It’s all powered from your phone, tablet or computer – so no need for extra batteries – and works with a whole range of audio and video recording apps.

Expect UK pricing to be around £170 when it goes on sale next month, both on the Maplin website and on Amazon.co.uk.

Google Pixel

Google has announced a new phone. In fact, as seems to be the way these days, they’ve announced two phones – both pretty much the same except for the screen size.

So we’ve got the Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL. These are especially notable because they’re Google’s own phones. Although we’ve had Google-branded phones before, those were made in partnership with other big brands like Samsung and LG.

The standard Pixel has a five-inch screen and the XL has a 5½-inch screen: both very high quality. And both have a 12 megapixel camera, which will produce decent photos and can also record high-definition 4K video. They also come with fast charging – this is becoming pretty standard for high-spec phones – which means you don’t need to wait for hours if you need to top up your battery, and there’s a fingerprint sensor for added security.

A big deal here is a built-in feature called Google Assistant. If you’ve been using an Android phone, you’ll be familiar with Google Now, which lets you ask spoken or typed questions. This takes things a step further; it’s more like a conversation. If you ask it what’s on at the cinema, it will give you an answer – but if you then say something like “what’s suitable for children?”, it doesn’t start all over again but instead tells you which local films are good for families. It can also read what’s on your display, so if you get a text message, you can say something like ‘remind me about this tomorrow’, and it will.

The Pixel phones should be in the shops from the end of next week. Pricing is from £599, although I imagine most people will be choosing some kind of subsidised contract deal.

Amazon Echo

Something else Google announced was a little loudspeaker called Google Home, which is voice-controlled and connected to the same intelligence as those phones – so you can ask questions, check your diary, play music, that sort of thing – and also control your house thermostat or your lighting if you’ve got the right kind of switches.

But that’s not yet got a UK release date. What does have a UK release is Amazon’s equivalent, called Echo.

This is something I first talked about a couple of years ago, when it was just available in the United States. It’s a voice-controlled loudspeaker that can answer questions, control other internet-connected devices, play music and help you with your Amazon shopping.

The Echo speaker will cost £149.99, there’s also a baby version called Echo Dot for £49.99. The main difference is that the full-size version has loudspeakers for playing music and better microphones for hearing you. The Dot is really designed to be connected to your stereo or a separate loudspeaker.

Both of them connect to a voice-controlled service called Alexa. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like Siri on an iPhone or Cortana on a Microsoft phone, you’re not far wrong.

So you’ll say something like “Alexa, play me some Bruce Springsteen” – and if there’s some Bruce Springsteen in your online music collection, it’ll do just that. Or you can ask it what the weather is, or to set an alarm, or what’s happening in the news, or how to cook comething, or to buy something from Amazon. And it’ll link to your smart phone – your online thermostat and light switches – if you’ve got that kind of thing.

The regular Echo is already on sale via Amazon UK, the Echo Dot goes on sale next week.

GoPro Karma

I’ve talked about drones before – remote-controlled aircraft with built-in cameras – but the technology has recently taken another step forward.

GoPro, a company best known for its tiny action cameras, has announced its own drone. It’s called the GoPro Karma – and it folds up for travel. This means it can fit in a backpack when you’re not using it; in fact, it comes with its own backpack just to prove the point. The drone itself weighs a fraction over a kilogram. So if you’re hiking or mountain biking, for example, you don’t need to hold on to the drone while you’re trekking cross-country.

When it’s time to fly, you get the drone out of your backpack, extend its folding arms and feet, then switch it on.

Folded, it’s 36cm long and 22cm wide – but unfolded it’s 41cm wide. Propeller length is 10 inches. The Karma drone has a maximum speed of 35mph and can be controlled up to 1000 metres away from you. Flight time is about 20 minutes until the batteries need recharging, which will take around an hour.

It comes with a controller that has a 5-inch touchscreen and an automatic routine for takeoff and landing if you need it. You can also set pre-programmed courses, so it’ll fly between two points or fly around the subject.

It can use a number of different cameras from the GoPro range; they fit into a special mount that keeps the pictures stable when you’re flying around. You can even take the self-adjusting mount [gimbal] off and use it in a hand-held grip for other stuff – say, shooting video when you’re running around. The basic price is $799 (UK pricing seems to be around £720), which doesn’t include a GoPro camera. If you want to buy one with a GoPro camera, the package will cost in the region of £1000 – that’s the drone, the controller, the stabilising mount, the grip, the camera and the backpack. Karma should be available by the end of the month.