Integral Compact Camera Case Review

1 Reply Christopher Roberts

It’s been about two weeks since I last posted an article, and to get back into the swing of things, I am going to do a review.

Camera Case Review

The beauty of today’s review, is that it is a case that is suitable for the majority of compact digital cameras. In my most recent case review, I looked at a case for the BlackBerry Curve 8900, which was a great case that I am still using, however it wasn’t a general case for use with all phones, which meant it was more of a niche market product. The camera case I am going to review today, can protect most modern, small and medium sized compact cameras.

Integral Compact Camera Case

Integral camera case and memory cardThe case in question is an Integral Compact Camera Case, which (at the time of purchase) costs £16.99 GBP. You might be wincing at the price already, as you can pick up a reasonably good camera case for just a few pounds these days. So what makes this case special?

As you would expect, the case is secure. The case has a strong zip, with two metal pull tab sliders, so you can open and close the case with ease.

Inside the case, there is an additional storage pocked. I use it to store the batteries, although you can use it for anything really, a spare memory card, credit cards, whatever you like really.

The case feels very firm, yet the inside is softer to ensure that your camera doesn’t get damaged. I think the case would be better were it to have slightly more padding on the inside, as it is a multi-camera case, small cameras could potentially break easier, as the case is fairly roomy.

The case has a belt loop and a strap, so you can either wear it over your arm, attach it to your belt, or carry it in your pocket.

Compact camera case and strap

Additional Features

A fantastic additional add-in that comes with the case is a 16Gb SDHC memory card. Most compact digital cameras now support SDHC , and 16GB is a lot of photos! On one of its best settings, my camera can take around 4,000 photos, which is a lot! The memory card has a transfer speed of up to 20Mb per second, which is pretty fast, meaning that when taking photos, and downloading them to your PC, the memory card shouldn’t ever slow you down.

Overall I really like the case, it is simple and does the job of protecting my camera well. It is easy to carry around, and is reasonably sturdy, so that were I to drop it (not that I plan to) I think it should protect my device. 🙂

The camera case used in this review was provided by Love Cases, who have asked us to point you in the direction of their camera cases, so if you liked this review, you know where to get a case!

eventseeker iPhone App Review

Leave a reply Steve August

As a recent transplant to Oklahoma, it was very difficult to find events and gage whether we wanted to take part and attend them or not. With eventseeker, I tried to find events near my new home. The categories are very well-organized and include a lot of variety in events.

I would like to see a category for annual events as well. While this may not be helpful to some people, I think it would be beneficial to people in my situation (people who move often), military families, or even travelers. Another addition could be a traveling feature.  This feature should outline your travel plans and identify events along the route. That would be simply fantastic and extremely useful!

eventseeker also utilizes the content on your device (with your permission, of course) and suggests events and artists to follow. On top of that, in the list of artists (based on your device’s content), it shows which artists are also touring. That is very helpful to me in selecting which artists to follow on eventseeker – if I am not a huge, die hard fan. Obviously, there will be some artists you will want to follow even if they aren’t on tour.

eventseeker "following" screen

After selecting an artist, you can view a vast amount of information. News on the artist or band, information on the band (such as when and how they got started, popular songs, etc.), content posted by the artist, and upcoming events can be viewed. As a user, you can follow the artist via eventseeker or like the artist on Facebook.

Should you find an event you want to attend, you can select the ‘ticket’ option and see what is available online. The usual, Ticketmaster, is listed, but other avenues to obtain tickets are also listed, when applicable. If available, the pricing is shown for each option.  You can also purchase the tickets through eventseeker on your desired website.

Being able to link my eventseeker account to my Facebook account is amazing. It helps us keep our families involved in what we are doing.  This feature is one of my favorites for that reason. It is super easy to use and shows a great bit of information on the post that is available to our friends and family even if they don’t have this app.

When I selected the name of the area (whether it was the city, area, county, or what have you), a detailed representation of the event location was great. I enjoyed being able to read about the area in a concise yet detailed avenue while deciding on attending an event. Although using the event searching feature is fantastic, being able to search via artist’s name or venue is equally remarkable. Like many people, we have our favorite venues and artists that we follow. Although the artists or venues may not be nearby, we can easily find events for them.

eventseeker can help people who want to find local events in an easy fashion. This free app is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. It requires iOS 6.0 or later.

Governments using Spyare, but for What?

2 Replies Jonny Hankins

Last week the New York Times ran an article about some investigative work conducted by a researcher and student in the Toronto and Berkley universities. The two were investigating government use of surveillance software, and seem to have discovered evidence that many governments are using off the shelf software to spy on their own citizens.

And we are not talking about despot regimes here, the list of 25 countries includes Australia, Britain, Canada and the US. The chosen mode of dissemination is typical of virus or spyware spreading techniques, an email is sent to whoever is to be monitored, once opened the software is downloaded into the computer.

In Vietnam the system has been found running on Android phones, so I would say if they can do it in Vietnam they can do it elsewhere.

You are under survelliance poster

You are Under Surveillance

The alarm bells ring if you look at who is being targeted. In some cases political dissidents (as is the case in Ethiopia) receive the emails. Another worrying factor is where the spyware is sent from (IP addresses registered to Turkmenistan’s Ministry for Communication in one case).

The company manufacturing the program is British, and they state that they sell their product to governments to help them crack down on terrorism and organized crime, but the possibilities for abuse are obvious and also demonstrated.

One problem is that the sale of surveillance is largely unregulated. Commercially available software can remotely turn your webcam on and watch what you are doing, record Skype conversations, email exchanges, log keystrokes and look at images inside the machine, practically anything you would like to see you can. Useful maybe in a crime investigation, but a powerful tool in the wrong hands.

If you would like to ponder the matter of ethics in technological development and marketing more, I recently interviewed Chris Howard, CEO of online publisher LIBBOO. They have devised and patented a system of measuring how much influence an individual has upon a group, and which stimuli create and use that influence. In the interview I asked him about the responsibility he holds when his invention gets into the wrong hands, and you can read his response here on the Bassetti Foundation website.

I also have another post about other spyware and monitoring systems that are freely available on the Internet here, although they are toys in comparison to the system described above.

I have deliberately omitted all names above, but the New York Times article contains them all.