Wednesday 31 December 2014
Squirt.org: Gay Sex Cruising Hook Up Site
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Tuesday 30 December 2014
reddit.com: gold - premium membership program
reddit.com: gold
reddit gold is our premium membership program. It comes with extra features to make your experience here better as well as special benefits from gold partners for exceptional products and services.
reddit takes no payment from gold partners for being in this program. We ask that they give all the benefits to you, our users. We hope in turn that this helps make gold a program worth subscribing to.
If you have questions about any of the benefits, please visit /r/goldbenefits. New benefits and features will also be announced there, and we hope you'll enjoy them.
Sortpad Launches Photo Organization App on iPhone
Sortpad Launches Photo Organization App on iPhone
Sortpad has announced the launch of its iPhone photo organization app, which allows users to manually (but quickly) sort their images using swipe controls. Instead of automatic photo sorting (like sorting photos based on location), users are given more control over the organization process, as they add photos into assigned folders, or send them to the trash if they’re no longer needed.
With Sortpad, users sign up with their Facebook account or email address, and are given two basic organization options: trash and favorites. A premium version of the app costs $2 a year, and unlocks access to sharing images with Dropbox, as well as support for up to eight zones/folders on screen at once.
A user’s images are presented in a vertical line, allowing users to scroll through them like a list, or tap and swipe them into the proper zone/folder, with folders lining the edge of the screen. If a picture is a duplicate or is no longer needed, users can swipe it into the trash folder. On the other hand, if a photo is particularly great, users can share it to the favorites folder for easier browsing later.
When tapping on a zone, users are shown all of the pictures currently in that folder for easy browsing. A settings menu allows users to create entirely new folders, or just swap the folders that are displayed on the sorting menu. For instance, if users come across a large group of holiday pictures, they can create an appropriate folder, fill it with the images, and then archive that folder within the app, bringing another to the organization screen.
It should be noted that no photos are duplicated when organized (unless the user wants them to be), so photo storage space isn’t wasted.
“With Sortpad we wanted to create something that really allowed people to connect emotionally with their photos. The only way to do this is to make people’s photos more accessible through organization. We estimate that Sortpad allows you to sort through about 1000 photos in 30 minutes. That’s a photo every 1.8 seconds,” said Tamas Laszlo, founder of Sortpad, in a statement. “The inbuilt photo sorting tools in iOS require a minimum of six steps to place a single photo into an album. It’s awkward, slow and so time consuming that people never get around to sorting their images. With Sortpad it is just one simple swipe.”
Sortpad is available to download for free on the iTunes App Store.
Deep Throbbing Creampie - xHamster.com
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PULSE | design studio press | Harald Belker
PULSE | design studio press
PULSE features Harald Belker's vision of the future of racing. There was a time when the fastest means of travel was a jet, but in 2035, private conglomerates have harnessed magnetic levitation (Mag-Lev) to create trains that get people from place to place in a fraction of the time.
To advertise the cutting-edge technology and sheer speed of Mag-Lev, events were held with a handful of machines and fearless racers. Within a few years, PULSE Racing Grand Prix were hosted in major metropolitan areas with the funding of the cities. The world of Pulse racing is introduced and illustrated via elaborate drawings and digitally rendered futuristic vehicles while telling the story of an adventurous young man thrown into the whirlpool of an all encompassing and physically grueling sport. Through captivatingly sleek and futuristic images, the audience follows the racers to the limits of speed and power while they are barely on the ground. The sleds force their drivers to the edge of human endurance while keeping the racing fans on their feet in excitement and enthusiam. Tactics and rules make the outcome of the race a nail bitter until the end as you never know who will emerge victorious in this incredible world of futuristic racing.
Harald Belker | Futurist Illustrator | Bio
Harald Belker | Futurist Illustrator | Bio
Harald Belker is a force of nature in the area of automotive design with a list of
design credits that include the Smart, the Batmobile for the Warner Bros. Batman
and Robin film, and the futuristic cars of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report
including the sporty red Lexus. Other movie credits include vehicle design for
Armageddon, Inspector Gadget, Cat in the Hat and recently Tron Legacy.
At 53, Belker has been involved in the design field for over 25 years. “I started
dreaming about car design pretty late. I was about 25 and finished a degree in
engineering before I even heard of the Art Center College of Design”, he admits.
“But once I saw what they did, I was pretty sure that this would be my future as
well.”
After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, Belker fell into the
dream design job of designing cars for Porsche. “Though my time at Porsche
was short”, he explains, “I made some long lasting friends”. From Porsche,
Belker then moved to another iconic automotive company at Mercedes Benz in
California where he worked on the Mercedes Smart Car as well as the ‘S’ and ‘M’
class models.
Though Belker’s early design work centered on the industrial design of cars, he
gained a taste for entertainment design when he was offered the opportunity
to design the Batmobile for the Batman and Robin movie. “Since then I have
worked on many fun projects”, admits Belker. “Some of the projects have been
hard to watch movies, but nevertheless they were a blast to work on. My work
on Minority Report was an absolute highlight of my career because aside from
the manpower behind it, it gave me a chance to show a future sense of vehicle
design that we had not seen before.”
A glance at Harald Belker’s body of work shows a great range of styles. He
describes his visual style as “graphically bold, with the sensitivity and vision
to push new forms”. He continues: “I like to design everything and I do. I am
working on furniture, sports equipment, bags, toys, cars etc. I don’t ever want to
do the same thing over and over.”
He is currently the Head of product design for Anki, Inc. a consumer robotics
start up company up in San Francisco.
PULSE-pounding visuals from Hollywood artist Harald Belker
Evernote for the Web: Distraction-free note-taking
Although its desktop and mobile apps lag behind, Evernote’s new web app shows how beautiful the company’s namesake note-taking service can be.
Monday 29 December 2014
Samsung’s 17-camera 3D video capture system is set to shake up the world of virtual reality
IF THERE’S GOING TO BE A PROBLEM WITH
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear VR headset it’s a lack of content.
While there are some pretty decent-looking custom made
games in the pipeline, they lack the clarity and definition
you’ll get on an Oculus Rift or PlayStation’s Project
Morpheus. And you may be able to view 3D photos
and movies with the headset, but these are still going
to be fairly limited by the way this content is created.
To combat this, and to create great-looking 3D visuals
for the Gear VR, Samsung has created Project Beyond.
This small disc-like gadget contains 16 cameras – plus one
on top – arranged to capture wherever it is in stereoscopic
3D. Once the videos are captured they’re stitched together
into a seamless whole, which can be explored via a Gear
headset. You could place the camera anywhere – on
stage during a U2 concert, for example – and whoever’s
wearing the headset will feel like they’re there. Which is
great, until Bono bounces his leathery crotch all over it.
Samsung hasn’t actually confirmed who the device is
aimed at, or whether it’ll even be available for purchase
by the general public. But if it plays its cards right Project
Beyond could become the Gear VR’s killer feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnBIvq8jzds
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear VR headset it’s a lack of content.
While there are some pretty decent-looking custom made
games in the pipeline, they lack the clarity and definition
you’ll get on an Oculus Rift or PlayStation’s Project
Morpheus. And you may be able to view 3D photos
and movies with the headset, but these are still going
to be fairly limited by the way this content is created.
To combat this, and to create great-looking 3D visuals
for the Gear VR, Samsung has created Project Beyond.
This small disc-like gadget contains 16 cameras – plus one
on top – arranged to capture wherever it is in stereoscopic
3D. Once the videos are captured they’re stitched together
into a seamless whole, which can be explored via a Gear
headset. You could place the camera anywhere – on
stage during a U2 concert, for example – and whoever’s
wearing the headset will feel like they’re there. Which is
great, until Bono bounces his leathery crotch all over it.
Samsung hasn’t actually confirmed who the device is
aimed at, or whether it’ll even be available for purchase
by the general public. But if it plays its cards right Project
Beyond could become the Gear VR’s killer feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnBIvq8jzds
Amateur Anal & Pussy 30-man Creampie Gangbang - XVIDEOS.COM
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Xbox News: The FBI is investigating Lizard Squad Over Xbox Live And Playstation Network Attacks
http://www.newsxbox.com/2014/12/the-fbi-is-investigating-lizard-squad.html?m=1
A Question of People Born As Walking Bombs - IGN - Dragon Age: Inquisition - Mages
A Question of People Born As Walking Bombs - IGN - Dragon Age: Inquisition - Mages
Sunday 28 December 2014
Wondershare MobileTrans 6.0.1.247 Multilingual-P2P – WarezStorm | WarezStorm.com
Wondershare MobileTrans 6.0.1.247 Multilingual-P2P – WarezStorm | WarezStorm.com
Description: 1-Click Content Transfer, 100% Safe and Risk-free. Whether you’re upgrading phones, switching to a different device or changing carriers, only some cell phone companies might help you transfer contacts – but what about everything else? Wondershare MobileTrans makes it extremely easy for you to take everything, including contacts, photos, text messages, music, calendarNew icon, video, apps and call logs, with you in 1 click. It’s safe and risk-free, and all content it transfers is 100% the same as the original one.
Description: 1-Click Content Transfer, 100% Safe and Risk-free. Whether you’re upgrading phones, switching to a different device or changing carriers, only some cell phone companies might help you transfer contacts – but what about everything else? Wondershare MobileTrans makes it extremely easy for you to take everything, including contacts, photos, text messages, music, calendarNew icon, video, apps and call logs, with you in 1 click. It’s safe and risk-free, and all content it transfers is 100% the same as the original one.
Turtlebeach XO Sevens help XB1 - BaconReader
Herukajon | Mixcloud
https://m.mixcloud.com/herukajon/?utm_campaign=notification_new_follower&utm_medium=email&utm_source=notification&utm_content=html
Saturday 27 December 2014
Xbox One How-To Guides - Xbox One Wiki Guide - IGN
Xbox One How-To Guides - Xbox One Wiki Guide - IGN
Here are some useful Xbox One How-To Guides on making the most out of your Xbox One console:
Local System features and Functions
Online Features and Functions
- How To Use Guides Help In-Game
- How to Add, Remove, and Favorite Friends
- How to Redeem an Xbox One Code
- How to Use Snap
- How to Use Skype
- How to Share Xbox One Videos on YouTube
Kinect
Hardware Troubleshooting
Streaming and Video
- How to Stream Video to Xbox One
- How to Set Up Your TV Provider on Xbox One
- How to Use the Xbox One Internet Browser
- How to Get Started with Streaming Apps
System Updates and Migration
/r/XBoxOne Reddit - Newcomer's Thread!
http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/2qgr7z/newcomers_thread/
Friday 26 December 2014
9 free iPhone apps you must download first - Pocket-lint
The 20 best apps and games for your new iPad Air 2 | Stuff
Tips and Tricks For Chromecast And Apple TV | Gizmodo Australia
My Parents Are Dead / Batman Slapping Robin: Image Gallery | Know Your Meme
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-parents-are-dead-batman-slapping-robin/photos
Wednesday 24 December 2014
Tuesday 23 December 2014
Erika Moen » GirlFuck
http://www.erikamoen.com/comics-portfolio/girlfuck/
More comics:
http://www.erikamoen.com/comics/
LGBTQ Web Comics - The Slash Pile - Tumblr
http://theslashpile.tumblr.com/lgbtqwebcomics
The following is a list of LGBT webcomics, including webcomics with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, and asexual characters.
Hover over banners/links for more information!
If there’s a webcomic you think should be added to this list, whether it be your own or just one you enjoy, use our submit box or the comments below to let us know.
We never expect anyone to link to us, but we always appreciate it! If you want to link to us, feel free to grab one of the banners from over here.
M/M | F/F | Transgender | Various
M/M
(see above link for sites list)
How To Pack A Backpack | Gizmodo Australia
How To Pack A Backpack | Gizmodo Australia
Follow
Don’t be this guy. Carrying a backpack so large that it extends over your head and outside the width of your back makes for a long, arduous day on the trail. Instead, choose what you need wisely, then pack the bag efficiently for a lighter, more comfortable load. Here’s how.
A typical checklist for backpacking:
- Tent
- Sleeping Pad
- Sleeping Bag
- Layers
- Flashlight
- Stove and fuel (we recommend a cat food can and denatured alcohol)
- Metal mug w/lid
- Lighter
- Knife
- First Aid Kit
- Spare Socks
- Sunscreen
- Food
- Map
- Compass
- Hand sanitizer
- Trash Bag
- Trowel
- Baby Wipes
- Toothbrush and paste
Doesn’t sound like an awful lot, does it? Each individual trip may necessitate some additions to that basic list, but we’re talking one or two items, not the kitchen sink. Paring your needs to the absolute minimum is the most effective way to keep weight down. Because you’re taking so few items, you’ll want each to be reliable, multi-use and light. Don’t carry a two D-cell MagLite, carry a 1xCR2 headlamp that doubles as your keychain light.
The standard recommendation is no more than 1/3 your bodyweight on your back. I’m 190lbs and 1/3 my bodyweight is an absurd 62lbs. Typically, I target 25 or 30lbs for an all-up weight. Doing so makes hiking not just easier, but actually fun.
You can spend an insane amount of money to get weight down. For instance, for next week’s trip I’ll be testing a new sleeping (tent, bag, pad) system that adds up to only 5lbs total while sleeping more luxuriously than I’m used to. Total price for that is $US1,200 though, which is outside my budget just like it’s likely outside yours. A more achievable goal should be to acquire quality, multi-use gear that can be easily carried. Build up a system over time and it won’t be a huge financial burden. Trying to buy all this stuff at once is going to be expensive any way you cut it, even if you’re buying cheap crap. And, an item of gear with which you have experience, which you know works and which you know how to use is going to be a lot better companion on the trail than a fancy new gadget that’s an unknown. I shudder at the thought of heading out for a trip with all-new gear; that’s just a lot that could go wrong.
Photo: Claudio Vaccaro
How big should your pack be? Unless you have a specific activity like mountaineering that requires you to lug huge amounts of equipment, you shouldn’t need a pack any larger than 55 litres. If you’re a small person, target 40 litres.
Endeavour to fit all you need for any trip of any duration into that size pack. Trust me, it’s possible. Do a test pack to see how everything fits (remembering stuff like food and a bear canister, if necessary) and then start asking yourself if you really need all that stuff and if its the right stuff for the job.
I just checked my phone and it’s not 1945 any more, so you want an internal frame pack. Kelty, Osprey and Boreas make quality, light, comfortable packs at relatively affordable prices. The $US150 Boreas Buttermilks 55L is as light, comfortable and rugged a pack as anyone could ever want.
The frame helps transfer the weight you’re carrying to the hip strap, which should be able to cinch tightly as it sits on top of your hips, taking most of the weight. Packs come in different sizes, it’s crucial to pick on that fits your waist.
Packing: This illustration from Osprey explains things nicely. Stuff light, bulky items like your sleeping system into the bottom of the pack. On top of that and as close to your back as possible, carry heavy items like your bear canister/food or laptop (this guide being equally applicable to Australians planning their gap year in Europe). If you’re carrying a hydration bladder, some packs will give you a dedicated sleeve for it located here while others will locate their water bottle pockets outside the pack, at this same height. On top, pack your layers and similar medium-weight items.
Stuff you’re going to need on the trail — map, compass, flashlight, first aid kit, sunscreen, rain jacket — should go either just inside the pack’s lid or preferably in an external pocket where it’s easy to reach. You want to know where this stuff is at all times.
If you’re backpacking through bear country, take efforts to prevent any odours from invading your clothing or sleep system. Even stuff like toothpaste or sunscreen can transfer smells which could interest a bear. And you do not want a bear to be interested in you. Anything that can leak should be in a plastic baggie.
With your bear canister, you’ll want to make sure it’s full. Pack the heavy stuff on the bottom and the light and fragile stuff in its top. If you have remaining space, fill it with other small items like sunscreen, bugspray or whatever to prevent its contents from moving or shaking as you hike. That will keep your foodstuff intact.
Fitting your pack: First loosen all the various straps and adjusters and whatnot. Then, pick it up and put it on, tightening the shoulder straps until the pack fits flush against your back. Next, slide the sternum strap (which connects the shoulder straps across your chest) so it rides comfortably, above your nipples if you’re a guy or clear of your boobs if you have those. Then, latch the hip strap onto the top of your hips (at the same height as your belly button) and pull it tight. You should feel the weight of the pack transfer to your hips. Now you can continue to tweak everything until you feel comfortable.
Your legs are the biggest muscle group on your body, capable of carrying the most weight and performing the most work. That’s why you carry the weight of your pack on your hips.
Some packs have the ability to adjust the height of the shoulder straps. If they do, follow the included instructions and do this first, before fitting the pack otherwise.
You’ll know your pack is adjusted properly if you’re able to stand up straight and easily observe the world around you as you hike. If you’re at all hunched over or uncomfortable, you need to revisit your adjustments.
Tips and Tricks:
- Use empty space; put your coffee packets and utensils inside your mug for instance.
- Pull your poles out of your tent bag and strap them upright, to the side of your pack. This will make fitting the tent’s bulky soft parts inside your bag way easier.
- Duct tape and safety pins are magic for trailside repairs.
- Have your dog carry its own food, water and other supplies.
- If you’re new to backpacking or have a challenging trip planned, then practice with the pack for a few weeks before you embark. Use water bottles to add a small amount of weight each day, progressively making the pack heavier and your muscles stronger.
- Force hydrate yourself before hitting the trail. Carry extra water in your car and chug it when you park until you force yourself to pee. That will get you off to a good start, but you should monitor your hydration by observing your urine; it should be crystal clear, copious and you should be making water once an hour, all day long. Hydration is the key to optimal performance.
- You don’t need to buy everything above for your first trip. Borrow it from friends, rent it from REI, find a local gear exchange or use The OX.
What are your tips for new or neophyte backpackers?
Top Photo: Carlos Torres
Monday 22 December 2014
Seek Thermal Review: Cheaper Predator Vision For Your Smartphone | Gizmodo Australia
Seek Thermal Review: Cheaper Predator Vision For Your Smartphone | Gizmodo Australia
CAMERAS
Seek Thermal Review: Cheaper Predator Vision For Your Smartphone
What’s better than having a thermal camera capable of finding the freshest cinnamon buns — among other prey? The FLIR ONE accessory gave iPhones Predator-like thermal vision which turned out to be as awesome as it sounds, and now a company called Seek Thermal is promising the same with an iOS and Android-friendly smartphone accessory that makes a few compromises for a cheaper price tag.
Gizmodo loves technology. Our product reviews are presented thanks to Dick Smith.What Is It?
Thermal cameras have been around for decades now, and over time they have gone from huge units strapped to the front of police helicopters to handheld devices that can be carried into dark buildings. But Seek’s Thermal is the first infrared camera that’s small enough to be attached to the bottom of your smartphone. It relys on your device’s processor, battery, generously-sized touchscreen, and a free accompanying app. It’s quite possibly the smallest thermal camera currently on the market, and that’s awesome.
With a price tag of $US200, the Seek Thermal is $US150 cheaper than the FLIR ONE iPhone accessory, so first and foremost it’s for anyone who’s ever wanted a thermal camera, but doesn’t want to spend a fortune. Most people interested in the Seek will probably never use it as anything other than a toy or a fun party trick, but it does have practical applications: You can use it to do anything from spotting intruders, to saving money on your heating bills by hunting down cracks in your home’s insulation.
And let’s not forget that the FLIR is only accessible with the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S at this point. The Seek can be used with iPads, the new iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, and many of the millions of Android smartphones in the world — as long as they support the USB on the Go (USB OTG) standard. (Sorry, Nexus 4 users.)
Design
Because the Seek relies on a smartphone for so much of its functionality, the rest of the hardware can be incredibly small. It’s barely an inch-and-a-half long, and I found I could easily slip it into a pocket when it wasn’t in use. Instead of cheap plastic, the Thermal’s housing is made from magnesium so it feels incredibly durable. And even though it’s tiny, it doesn’t feel delicate, so you’ll never have to baby it. You’d have to be pretty determined to damage it.
The Thermal’s camera lens is recessed about a quarter-inch into a sort of carved metal lens hood that helps to protect it from scratches. Seek claims the lens provides a 36-degree field-of-view which isn’t as wide as you’d get from something like a GoPro, or even most smartphone cameras. But it never feels particularly narrow or cramped while you’re using it, and the narrower field-of-view helps maximise the sensitivity of the camera’s limited resolution.
Inside the housing you’ll find the Thermal’s infrared sensor, with a resolution of 206 x 156, for a grand total of 32,136 thermal-sensing pixels. That’s considerably smaller than the sensor you’ll find in the camera of even the cheapest of smartphones, but it’s actually far more than the Lepton sensor used in the FLIR ONE with a resolution of just 80 x 60 pixels, or 4800 in total. So in terms of resolution, Seek claims a win.
The back of the Thermal is just as plain as the front (save for a silk-screened logo) and is devoid of any buttons, toggles, or blinking LEDs. Settings, modes, and calibration are all handled by the accompanying Seek Thermal app, which is what allows the actual hardware to be as plain and simple as possible.
In fact, the only physical feature that distinguishes the Android version of the Thermal from the iOS model is the connector you’ll find on top. For iPhone and iPad users it comes with a Lightning port, while Android users will find a microUSB port.
And for those who refuse to leave the house without their pristine devices protected in cases, sleeves, or durable housings, the Thermal comes with a surprisingly sturdy case of its own — complete with a thick rubber lining with a cut-out for the camera to cozy into, and a lid that snaps shut tight to keep dust and moisture out.
Using It
Given how simple Seek’s hardware is, all of the actual functionality is handled by an app. And surprisingly, despite a price tag that’s $US150 cheaper than the FLIR, the free Seek Thermal app manages to pack in a bit more functionality.
When the app is launched you immediately get the live Predator-like thermal vision you probably bought this for, with the ability to snap photos or shoot videos in that mode. Given the limited size of the Seek’s IR sensor, its quality is very limited compared to the images your smartphone’s camera can snap, resulting in photos with a resolution of just 832 × 468 pixels after interpolation. But unlike with the FLIR, your thermal images aren’t automatically and permanently watermarked with the company’s logo — which is nice.
If you’re not interested in taking pictures, the app includes other modes that provide additional useful functionality. You can activate a simple text overlay that shows the exact detected temperature of whatever’s in the center of the frame.
Or you can have the app automatically track and display the hottest and coldest areas of what’s in frame, updated in near real-time. Unfortunately the sensor doesn’t seem to update at a full 30 frames per second like full-motion video does, but the stuttered updates are frequent enough so that the app doesn’t feel sluggish to use.
There’s even a particularly useful mode that lets you set a specific threshold, highlighting only areas in the image that are above a given temperature. This makes it particularly useful for hunting down drafts in your home, letting you easily ignore everything but areas that are being registered as colder than the rest of a room.
One point of frustration with using the app, though, is that its camera functionality is disabled when using these other modes. Snapping thermal image photos with the actual temperature info overlaid could certainly be useful to some users, but unfortunately the only way to do so is to take a screenshot, assuming your device allows it.
Thanks to the larger sensor used in the Seek Thermal’s camera, it’s able to generate more detailed thermal images than the FLIR can. However, while using the Thermal it soon becomes clear why FLIR is the more expensive option.
When using the Thermal camera on subjects with a well-defined and distinct heat signature, it’s pretty easy to figure out exactly what you’re looking at.
It’s sensitive enough to distinguish areas of bare skin on a person versus areas where they’re wearing clothing, and looking at images like this it’s fairly easy to interpret this as a room full of people.
But when the differences in temperature aren’t as varied, distinguishing what you’re looking at when the using the Seek becomes a little more difficult. Here we see crowds of people in a warm shopping mall, and while they’re still mostly defined, it’s hard to pick out specific details.
At its worst, the Thermal produces images like this. Can you tell what was photographed here? The same photo taken with the FLIR (below) is a lot easier to decipher.
Believe it or not, those are both photos of the same display case full of sushi. The Seek’s image still shows variations in temperature, but figuring out exactly what you’re looking at is almost impossible. (In fact, there were a couple of photos I took for this review that I still can’t quite figure out.)
In the thermal images taken with the FLIR you can actually spot the different types of Maki in the various plastic food containers. But why the huge discrepancy? Because the FLIR is actually taking multiple images at once.
The compact Seek Thermal uses a standalone thermal sensor to produce its images, whereas the FLIR iPhone case uses a pair of side-by-side cameras and software tricks to produce hybrid shots. One generate outlines of objects in the frame, the other takes temperature data,and the app merges them together in real-time. It makes it easy for someone who’s never used a thermal camera before to tell what’s going on.
To its credit, the Seek Thermal app does try to mimic the FLIR ONE’s neat hybrid image functionality with an additional mode that puts the thermal image it generates alongside the image from your smartphone’s built-in camera, allowing you to swipe back and forth between the two. But because they have different field-of-views and are so far apart, the images don’t line up, particularly when shooting objects up close.
How well this mode will work will vary from smartphone to smartphone since the position of their camera lenses will vary, but for the most part it doesn’t quite match what the FLIR is capable of.
Like
Even if you have no practical use for a thermal camera, the Seek Thermal makes for a fun accessory that adds some truly unique functionality to your smartphone — there’s no denying that. Unlike the FLIR which requires you to put your iPhone in a case, the Seek can easily hang off most iOS and Android devices or be easily stashed in your pocket.
But it wasn’t just the hardware’s small and durable form factor I liked. While using the Seek Thermal you can hear it making frequent quiet clicking sounds, almost like the sound of the iris stepping down on a camera. It turns out that sound is actually the Seek Thermal’s camera automatically and continually recalibrating itself while you use it. On the FLIR you have to pull a manual lever every so often as you find the thermal images degrading, which is a bit of a pain.
The FLIR comes with its own built-in rechargeable battery so as not to completely drain your smartphone while you’re using it. But while the Seek Thermal camera leeches power from your smartphone, I actually preferred not having yet another device to remember to charge. The battery drain while using the Seek Thermal wasn’t significant enough to worry about, anyhow.
Overall, Seek’s app feels a little snappier than the FLIR, which felt like it could use a bit more TLC before it officially made its way to the consumer.
No Like
Even though the thermal sensor on the Seek Thermal is packed with more pixels than the sensor in the FLIR, it’s clear why FLIR designed its hardware with the additional side-by-side cameras. It adds to the size and cost of the FLIR, but it also increases the functionality and usability producing thermal images that are always easy for anyone to distinguish.
That’s unfortunately not always the case with the images produced by the Seek Thermal. When using it as a tool to provide real-time thermal images of what you happen to be looking at in the moment, it’s straightforward enough. “Is this coffee to hot to sip? Yes it is.” But after the fact, you might have a difficult time remembering what’s going on in a photo you snapped.
Should You Buy It?
Seek Thermal
Price: $TBA
Like
- Fun accessory to have.
- Small and durable.
- Bespoke rechargeable battery.
Don’t Like
- Lower quality images than competitors.
- Some images can be tough to distinguish.
- Cut price model sometimes means cut price results.
Yes, if you’re willing to make some compromises. On paper the Seek Thermal sounds like an improved version of the FLIR in every way. The hardware is smaller, its thermal sensor has more resolution, and it’s $US150 cheaper than the competition. But it turns out what makes the FLIR bulkier and more expensive also vastly increases its usability and user friendliness.
That’s not to say the Seek Thermal doesn’t work — far from it. It certainly generates accurate thermal images with enough extra functionality in the accompanying app to justify it as more than just a fun accessory for your smartphone. It’s just that the FLIR approach results in images that are more than just blobs of colour.
So if you’re happy to sacrifice a small bit of usability to save $US150, you won’t be disappointed by the Seek Thermal’s capabilities. Or if you happen to use a smartphone that’s not an iPhone 5 or iPhone 5S, this is currently your only option when it comes to a compact thermal camera. But if you’re hoping to be the hit of your next party, you might be better off spending the extra money for the FLIR ONE — so your guests aren’t left scratching their heads.
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