Is this your year to become the next Robert Rodriguez? Finally going to shoot that guerilla mockumentary? No need for any expensive machinery with the ever-improving quality of smartphone video. Rapidly being called on for in-the-field video reportage and guerilla interviews, these portable workhorses can pretty much do anything. But until now, any kind of moving shots have resembled something filmed during an epileptic seizure or an earthquake.

Thanks to Tiffen, the company that brought the Steadicam to Hollywood, you can now use your phone to follow, track or pan your subject without a bouncing, jiggling frame. Based on the same technology as the professional $60,000 rigs used in LA, the Steadicam Smoothee enables smooth shooting with your Apple iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPod Touch, and Flipcam. The contraption is basically a pistol grip with a three-point gimbal on top, attached to which is a counterweight and mount for your device. Just snap your phone in the holder and clip onto the mount.

The counterweight keeps the camera level and steady, while the gimbal allows for free movement of your phone-grasping hand (the same way a compass is kept horizontal in a moving vessel). Wherever you need to move—up or downstairs, through a jostling crowd—you can still get sweeping shots with that floating effect. You might want to use the auto-exposure/focus lock, which is toggled on the iPhone by tapping and holding the video screen.

The Smoothee takes some getting used to, and you need to spend some time balancing the counterweight against your phone by turning two adjustment screws on the side for right and left tilt as well as one in the back for forward and back tilt— but the results are astounding. No matter how much you move around, the Smoothee keeps your shot tracking with nary a shake or jump. You’ll need to get used to using your thumb or index finger to stabilize or turn the phone mount, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be running through Shinjuku station filming chase scenes in no time.

The Smoothee is not a cheap toy, but at ¥19,950 it’s within the realm of the amateur filmmaker’s budget. It comes with a carry bag and strap, is fairly lightweight, and will fit in most packs or gear bags. The quick-release camera mount can also fit on standard tripods allowing you to swap out of the Smoothie and right into the tripod for your next scene.

Look for plenty more budding filmmakers out on the street with these mini-rigs in 2012. And to complement your ultra-mobile equipment, look into the newly released Scosche wireless mic for your smartphone, too (www.scosche.com).

¥19,950, available at Gin-Ichi stores (www.ginichi.com) and Amazon.co.jp. Check out our Que Sera Sera restaurant review, made with the Steadicam Smoothee, at http://meturl.com/queserasera

There are a few oldies hanging around here at Metropolis. You know, people who actually used to listen to the radio back in the day. It’s only been a few short years since mp3 players and digital audio have become ubiquitous and music seems to be played out of devices with screens. We were intrigued when we received a Revo Heritage Deluxe Table Radio at the office—and quickly went about putting it through its paces.

The Heritage is a throwback to the tabletop radios standard throughout homes in Europe and North America in the ’70s. Ours was a walnut finish with an aluminum grill and tactile rubber on top. With its digital alarm clock and white-on-black OLED display, it would not have been out of place on a typical breakfast table with morning drive show hosts blaring their sound bites and special effects between traffic reports on the new FM band. Except, nestled under the understated walnut hood are the digital goodies: Wi-Fi and wired LAN connectivity, wireless audio streaming from PC or Mac, iPod docking station, and plug-and-play USB audio. It also sports the usual AUX IN connectors with stereo RCA and optical out, as well as iPod video out.

Enough of the geeky stuff. This is basically an internet radio (it actually comes with an FM antenna) that connects to your network to access any of the 20,000+ stations streaming audio—and that doesn’t just mean your favorite indie FM station. That means things like BBC World Service, NPR, old time radio dramas, podcasts, scary, scream-laden horror shows, talk radio—and even subscribed and already personalized services like Last FM, so you can program your own station with your favorite music.

While the navigation menu is pretty straightforward—you can select stations by genre or country via a system of drop-down menus shown on the OLED screen (think older iPod) that allow you to drill down deep into an astonishing number of choices—the small plastic joystick was hard to work with. We often “selected” when trying to navigate and vice versa. The included remote control works far better, and once we started fighting over it, we never touched the front buttons again.

What the Revo Heritage does, it does well. It’s impossible to count the number of stations the player will stream for you, and it liberates you from sitting in front of your PC. It is also surprisingly loud. The lightweight package has a 3-inch speaker driver and 7W amplifier that meant we never had to turn it to 11—in fact, we never turned it past 6 without annoying most of the miserable music-haters in the office.

Two models: Heritage (¥49,350) & Domino (¥36,750).
Available at Bals Tokyo, Conran and other select stores. www.modernity.jp/en/products/revo

Seeing the “augmented reality” quadrocopter hovering in front of you, sussing you out on its front-end camera, gives you one of those “my god the future is here” tingles down your spine. It’s reminiscent of the buzzing seeker robots in Terminator’s vision of the future, and its not hard to imagine these things put to military use.

You might think of it as a remote-control flying vehicle—we do—but Parrot bills their AR. Drone as “The Flying Video Game,” which speaks to the potential they see for its exploitation by all manner of independently created games and applications. Right now, we’re content to use it for its crazy flying and filming capabilities.

On the touchpad of your Android, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch—and in the future, anything with Wi-Fi capabilities will be made compatible—the feed from the drone’s front-facing and down-facing cameras appears (you can switch between them or view split screen). There are two touch screen buttons for control on the iPhone app. One swivels, elevates and descends. The other accelerates—quite terrifyingly for newbies. The device comes with an aerodynamic hull for outdoor swooping and a four-ring lightweight protector for indoor operations (caveat: don’t use anywhere where a mini windstorm could pose a problem).

Other tremendous uses, seen on thousands of vids already up on YouTube, are multiplayer shooting games and maneuvering competitions where your drone flies around sensor-equipped obstacles. Expect way more in the future, though what disappointed us for now was the impossibility of recording or streaming the video taken by the drone’s cameras. Apparently this is just a limitation of the iPhone 4, and it’s currently possible with the iPad 2—one presumes the iPhone 5 might have something to say about this.

Don’t worry about evolving technology making your drone obsolete, firmware updates are available and can be effected neatly through your smart device.

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[+Pros]

• You’ve never seen anything so exciting
• Potential is huge—open development of apps and updateable firmware
• Multiplayer games are sophisticated and will only get better
• Parts are replaceable and a one-year guarantee allays fears of breakage
• Fairly easy to control—after a fashion

[-Cons]

• Price rather proscriptive
• The excitement might fade after a couple of weeks
• You need really big spaces to truly zoom
• Some will not get the hang of the controls
• No streaming or recording of video possibilities on iPhone 4

Parrot AR. Drone, from ¥28,000 from Amazon or Toys R Us and other retail outlets.
Call center. Tel: 03-3585-6609. Email: ardronecenter@parrot.com. Open Mon-Fri 9:30-noon & 1-6:30pm. http://ardrone.parrot.com

The Eye-Fi card was a sharp idea when it first came on the market a couple of years ago. An SD card with wireless capability to deliver your snaps directly from camera to computer was not to be squinted at. We were leery, though, of the performance. Now, the Eye-Fi Pro X2 levels up to an 8GB class-6 SD card that can instantly upload jpegs, RAW files and video directly to your computer and most photo-sharing sites, including Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, SmugMug, Picasa and more. It features a Direct Mode that lets you transfer files over 3G to your iPhone/iPad/Android from wherever you are. Softbank users can even purchase a branded non-Pro version to take all the guesswork out of tweaking the settings. One new feature of the Pro X2 we really like is Endless Mode, which frees up card-space by automatically delivering the oldest pics to your specified network/device. You still need to use their software to get the photos on to your computer, which should be no problem for most users, but there are workarounds for Lightroom or Aperture users. The Eye-Fi Pro X2 uses a speedy and secure 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi network to deliver the goods, adds instant geo-tagging ability to any camera without it, and allows the storage of up to 32 different networks on the card (like you’re really going to need them).

Eye Fi Pro X2 8GB. Available at Yodobashi Camera, Bic Camera, Amazon.jp, Rakuten and more. ¥9,980. www.eye.fi

The platform-independent, cloud-based note-taking application Evernote has also been around for a few years, but rather than ingratiating itself only with tech-savvy, GTD anal-retentive types, it has now broken through to mainstream software users. That’s largely due to its go-anywhere mobile attitude: the Evernote service works on both Windows and Mac, the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, Android Tablet, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry and Palm devices. While the market is stuffed with audio- and video-recording note apps, Evernote adds optical character recognition to the list, meaning you can snap a photo of someone’s meishi, sync it, and retrieve the information from the card later from any other device by opening the app and searching for keywords. While you were away, the Evernote service noted all the words and names on the photo and made them searchable. Now that’s clever. Our writers have been known to use it for writing review notes in bars and restaurants and to take mind-jogging pics of the ambience. Needless to say it’s all geo-tagged so that drunken stumbles away from the bar can be retraced on the map. Notes are then copied straight from the desktop into Word and finished up. Talk about techno literacy. If you’re not keen on phone-cam photos, hook up the above Eye-Fi card to share your pro pics directly to Evernote and keep everything in one place. And the bottom line is it’s completely free—a great example of how apps can use ad-supported revenue to supply a great product. Though if you must, there is a no-ad, bigger-upload-size, MS Office document-capable, video-taking premium version for $45 per year.

Evernote. www.evernote.com

You’ll need to have a pachinko ball on hand (or a pocket of coins) for this, but it’s a handy trick if you’re stuck in a blackout scrambling for flashlight batteries. After a rummage, you finally find some AAs. Great—except the flashlight takes those fat C batteries. Fret not, for this “Tech Know” tip can help you light the way. Wrap the battery in paper to increase girth, seize a pachinko ball from your bucket to add some length and presto—an improvised C. Non-gamblers can use eight ¥1 coins. Failing that, even a ball of tinfoil will do. Clever, eh? If you fancy giving this a whirl, let us know how you get on, by writing to letters@metropolis.co.jp.

Source: http://meturl.com/batterysize (Japanese, but with good diagrams).