Do you have an old box of 35mm negatives in the closet? With a $59 SmartPhone Scanner from lomography.com, you can digitize those memories! You simply feed the negatives into the compact smartphone scanner and a companion app (Lomoscanner) transforms them into picture – perfect digital images. The scanner is portable and very easy to use.
Apps
Readdle’s Scanner Pro- cost:$6.99 – This app, for iOS, gives you the ability to scan and save a digital version of a paper document. The interface gives you a preview while the app automatically detects the edge of the paper you are scanning. It then rotates and straightens the image. You also have the ability to change the brightness. After clicking the Done button, you can share the image file by email or store it. It allows you to scan receipts, whiteboards, paper notes, or any multipage document.
TripLingo– cost:Free – Great for travel. The language-pack add-ons, which teach thousands of useful phrases and sentences in 12 different languages, cost extra.
Word Lens – cost:$4.99 – If you are travelling to a country whose primary language is Spanish, French, Italian, German or Portuguese (those are available at this time) and you can’t read the menu in a restaurant, snap a picture with your phone and the app will supply a translation. Also available for Android.
Tip of the month
iCloud’s Photo Backup Limitations – Reasons to back up your photos with a second method!
Photo Stream only backs up the latest 1000 photos. If you have 1000 photos backed up to iCloud and you take 1 more, the oldest photo will be removed from your iCloud Photo Stream.
Apple gives you 5 GB of storage space for free. If your iCloud storage is full and you haven’t purchased additional space, your photos aren’t being backed up.
Videos aren’t included in the backup!
If you have a Windows PC, you can install the iCloud Control Panel, which will create a Photo Stream folder on your PC. Your photos will be automatically downloaded to this folder and stored in it. You’ll want to back up your photos so you don’t lose them if your PC’s hard drive ever fails.
If you have a Mac, you can launch iPhoto and enable the Automatic Import option under Photo Stream in its preferences pane. Assuming your Mac is on and connected to the Internet, iPhoto will automatically download photos from your photo stream and make local backups of them on your hard drive. You’ll then have to back up your photos manually so you don’t lose them if your Mac’s hard drive ever fails.
