With little happening in the way of actual news this week, we focus on the practical, leading off with Adam’s examination of Lumin, a simple iOS app that turns your iPhone into an illuminated magnifier. Then Michael Cohen looks at Snapseed, a photo-enhancement app that displays some innovative interface techniques. Moving into the Mac and networking worlds, guest contributor Marshall Clow explains how to set up a simple blog with the Markdown- and Dropbox-driven service Calepin, and Matt Neuburg shares how he used iTunes Match to gain access to a subset of his music on all his devices.
If your eyes aren’t what they used to be, a $1.99 app can turn your iOS device into an illuminated magnifying glass that can also take pictures. Lumin is simple, effective, and oh-so-useful for dealing with anything that’s too small to see easily.
An impulse purchase of Snapseed, an iOS photo-enhancement app, shows Michael Cohen some new twists on the touch interface.
Want to blog occasionally, without the fuss of learning new software or setting up a complex account with a blog posting service like WordPress? Calepin, a free blogging service that leverages Dropbox and relies on text files written with Markdown formatting, may be just the ticket.
Read all about one man’s bold steps to enjoying his music on the go. It doesn’t have much to do with matching anything, though.
We have lots of great additional reading for you this week, with an in-depth article from James Fallows about what it was like to have his wife’s Gmail account hijacked, Amazon’s “Best of 2011” lists, a Web site that relives the startup sequences of vintage computers, and the EFF’s guide to defending your privacy at the U.S. border, plus Adam’s podcast appearance on the Tech Night Owl Live.