Gear

Phones might have killed the point-and-shoot camera, but you know what? There are perks you only get with a dedicated photography device. Even a low-end Canon or Nikon gives shooters a nice clicky shutter button, easily accessible exposure controls, and a lever or buttons to zoom. Miggö’s $100 Kickstarter-backed Pictar One is a lightweight, spring-loaded, …

So you’ve done the Ikea run. You have a trash can, and a laptop, and a whole bunch of hangers that will hang lonely in your closet while your clothes pile up on your floor. You want to get your place set up with all the coolest stuff, but let’s face it—you’re broke. Don’t worry. …

Allow me to introduce you to “the bothie.” It’s not a selfie, nor a normal photo (which all the cool kids call a “youie”), but a hybrid of the two. It’s a composite shot from both cameras on your phone, showing both you and whatever else is out there. It’s a bothie. Crazy idea? Maybe. …

You probably don’t have a landline phone, because it’s not 1995. But you miss it sometimes, don’t you? Knowing where the phone was all the time, having something anyone could pick up and use, avoiding the rock-paper-scissors over who has to waste their cell phone battery calling Dominos. Earlier this year at its developer conference, …

Owning a fish is an exercise in mental fortitude. You might think your little underwater friend will bring tranquility to your life, that you will experience the joy of pet ownership without the commitment or mess. Wrong. To own a fish is to experience a near-constant anxiety crisis. You will find yourself checking approximately 100 …

The uncanny valley teems with creepy humanoids—machines not quite perfect enough to be mistaken for people, but not quite comically robotic enough to be endearing. Lately, they’ve been joined by robo-animals, like the mechanical dog from Boston Dynamics that not-at-all-unsettlingly regains its balance if you kick it. Now, a new robot is scuttling into the …

If you’ve written in one notebook, you’ve written in them all, right? Only if you’re grabbing a basic spiral bound from the student union. But why would you settle for wafer thin pages and weak spines when there’s a world of top notch notebooks to scribble in? Here are nine options that will up your …

The “smart home” has not yet distinguished itself. Sure, you might dim your lights with an app; you might even talk to your large appliances. But despite years of promised ubiquity, the connected home has yet to cleave with mainstream reality. It’s too expensive, too futzy, too filled with interoperability landmines. You know who can …

A universally acknowledged truth about living in New York City is that there’s very little space to go around. What passes for an entire apartment in Manhattan is considered a walk-in closet in Des Moines. This dearth of square footage has resulted in a couple notable phenomenons: Namely, pocket-emptying rents and some—let’s just call it—creative …

The other weekend, I found myself at a beach on the outskirts of New York City during sunset. The sky was spectacular, filled with the neon pinks, oranges, and purples that come after a day of rain. As if on cue, the two friends I was with fished their smartphones from their pockets and snapped …