Indice dei contenuti per August 1, 2015 in Stuff UK

‘Your first 10,000 photos are your worst’, according to Henri Cartier-Bresson – who, if you’re not familiar with him, was arguably the greatest photographer of all time. I used to find this comforting, because 10,000 photos sounds like a few decades’ worth. And then I spent an evening totting up the contents of my Google Drive pictures folder, where I’ve dumped most of my snaps over the past few years. It soon became clear that I wouldn’t have time to count them all, but somehow I’ve managed to amass 84GB of photos, which puts me somewhere around the 17,000 mark. Ten thousand might have seemed like a lot to Henri, shooting on film, but now that everyone carries a camera everywhere, it’s about 18 months’ worth. With that in mind,…

The Korg M1 was a big synthesizer with asurprisingly minimalist design. But what musicans did with it was complex and enormous, and now Korg’s engineers have poured their knowhow into an even more minimalist form: the iPad version. They’ve put the iM1 together in such a way that it makes software decisions that mimic the circuitry of the hardware original. If you’re already familiar with the M1 then you’ll recognise the sounds the app creates, but it’s upscaled: new effects, new tones and the addition of Kaoss pads for fingertip tweakery – plus you can plug Korg’s MIDI controllers into your iPad for additional musical ability. The £15 price tag might seem a lot of money for an app, but there’s months and months of creativity here.…

#4 THE SNOOPER’S CHARTER You might have heard that the government wants to set up a ‘Snooper’s Charter’ to more easily observe your digital doings. If so, you’ve probably also heard that a lot of people are really, really angry about it, even though it’s not yet a real law. The Draft Data Communications Bill , as the draft version is called, requires the companies that provide your broadband and mobile data to monitor what you do online. It then makes the results available to the police and security services, without a warrant. Among other things, this data will include records of every website you visit, details of your use of webmail services, and your phone, text and Skype records. A warrant would still be needed to see the actual…

1 The darkness is your friend So turn that bloomin’ flash off! Not only does a flash flatten your images and reflect off shiny surfaces, it also changes the way the people in your picture act. If they know they’re being photographed, they’ll pose unnaturally, and if they don’t, you’ll just have a picture of somebody being annoyed by a big white searchlight. Try to exploit interesting light sources instead – use the setting sun to make dramatic silhouettes, catch the pools of light created by street lamps, or exploit softer sources like candles. If you have to use the flash, try deflecting or diffusing the light with a piece of paper or a napkin to create a more natural feel. 2 Slow and steady wins the race With the…

1 Be original Food snaps are the third most popular thing to share on social media. There are already several billion top-down shots of food on white plates on Instagram and Pinterest, so pick interesting angles and subjects and you’ll stand out. If you’re cooking at home, a shot of the meal being made or even a single ingredient can tell a story more effectively than a plated-up dish. If you’re in a restaurant, try getting right up close so the plate more than fills your picture, or set your phone at table level for a profile shot of the dish. Concentrate on making a good picture rather than clearly showing what you’re eating (you could try shooting through your water glass, for example) and people might forgive you for…

TOPAZ LABS Don’t want to be faffing around with layers and brush opacities? These plugins for Photoshop will level up your snaps with minimum fuss. Options range from ‘Black and white effects’ to ‘DeNoise’ for cleaning up photos taken at high ISOs. from US$30 / topazlabs.com NIK COLLECTION This bargain set of photo-pimping plugins contains a varied mix of seven effects, from an HDR editor to ‘Analog Efex Pro’ for mimicking classic cameras that can now only be found in museums or fetching four figures on eBay. £95 / google.com/nikcollection IMAGENOMIC NOISEWARE Are your photos noisier than a hyena with a megaphone? This uses a speedy but effective noise-suppressing algorithm to sharpen previously cloudy images without losing detail or creating an unnatural look. US$80 / imagenomic.com…

You’d better have access to a good popcorn supplier, because this month has been officially* declared Blockbuster July. Woo-hoo! It all kicks off on 2 July with the cinema release of Terminator Genisys (cert 12A tbc), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, in which a fractured timeline brings us to an unfamiliar version of 1984 with dangerous new enemies… and it ends on 30 July with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (cert 12A tbc), which sees Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg battling with a fiendish international organisation known as the Syndicate. So that’s two evenings sorted… and the rest of the summer? Well, win this lot and you won’t have to worry about that: we’re giving away a Samsung 40in UE40H6400 LED smart TV (RRP £600), a Samsung BD-H5500 Blu-ray player (£90) and…

A Safer Place Gene Burnett An inoffensive but largely forgettable acoustic strummer, A Safer Place comes from one of Burnett’s 27 albums available on Spotify, which doesn’t bode well for the whole ‘throw enough sh*t and eventually something sticks’ approach. Verdict Bin it Actually The Names Belgian post-punk is the kind of thing you’d expect only the most ardent ’tachetwiddling hipster to be into, but The Names worked closely with Martin Hannett (of Joy Division and Factory Records fame)… although clearly this is no Love Will Tear Us Apart. Verdict Spin it Farewell Words Jiang Dawei Jiang Dawei is a Chinese folk singer (we Googled him). Considering Spotify isn’t available in China, it’s not hugely surprising that Farewell Words has never been listened to (until now!) – and now it’s…

KitchenAid Artisan£315 / johnlewis.com Juice me up Juicing with the Artisan is a relatively sedate experience, as it’s quiet and slow enough to leave switched on while you drop fruit and veg down its throat. The rotating blade slices, the internal screw mechanism squeezes and separates, and juice pours from one spout while pulp squeezes from another in a fashion that’s a genuine treat for anyone who enjoys toilet humour. Fruit ninja or pulp fiction? The juice is excellent – it’s smooth and free from chunks or froth, but it also has lots of flavour. This is the sort of juice you’d pay £2.50 a glass for in a nice café. It’s particularly good for carrot and tomato juice – throw in some good tomatoes, chilli and celery and you…

GETTING STICKY WITH IT The Amazon Fire TV Stick (£35) is similar to the box, only its smaller pricetag makes it a lot more palatable. You don’t get the remote with the voice search option, but when you’re paying less than half the price that’s a small concession. If you want Amazon’s way of doing TV, this is the neater path to get you there. Amazon Fire TV £80 / amazon.co.uk What’s on? Amazon has a finger in every pie from cat food to leg-warmers, so of course it wants a piece of your streaming habit. And not just video – Amazon Music and Cloud Photos are part of this bundle. What you get is a big, square coaster with HDMI, Ethernet, optical digital and USB. Inside is a quad-core…

THE BOOK HOG £25 / octopusbooks.co.uk An encyclopaedic guide to all things pig, this book from Richard H Turner contains over 150 pork recipes, including many aimed at those with a shiny new barbecue to test-drive. It covers every cut from the snout to the squeak, and it even reveals how to make Candied Bacon Pecan Popcorn. Which is surely the best movie snack imaginable. THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL DJ BBQ youtube.com/raduk8 Not to be confused with Ray ‘Dr BBQ’ Lampe, a recent inductee into the Barbecue Hall of Fame (yes, that exists), DJ BBQ is a man with scarcely believable enthusiasm for barbecuing. He shares his wisdom on Jamie Oliver’s FoodTube and here via a mouthwatering new recipe every Friday. THE FESTIVAL MEATOPIA 19-20 September / meatopia.co.uk ‘Meat, drink, fire,…

1 Control it with your wrist Kronos Connect It’s not the slickest app, but you’ll forgive it when you’re browsing playlists on your Pebble or Apple Watch. It lets you control zones, the song queue and the volume, and the Apple Watch app will even display album art. Enough to impress guests before Sonos creates an official (and hopefully Siri-compatible) Apple Watch app. £2.29 / tiggit.com 2 Prep it for a Tidal wave Arcam SonLink Already using a Sonos Connect (£280, sonos.com) to stream to your old hi-fi? An external DAC will take your music to places even Sonos’s built-in DAC can’t reach. Arcam’s considerable audio prowess is crammed into a case that sits neatly underneath the Connect. You’re now ready for the best kind of party: an audiophile party.…

ERME PLAINS, DARTMOOR Head high up on the rugged moorland above Okehampton to bed down beneath wind-scoured tors, among a smattering of remains of Bronze Age stone huts and circles. CARNEDDAU, NORTH WALES Leave Snowdon to the masses and head for the northerly hills of the Carneddau, where wild ponies graze and several rivers cleave their way among the mountains. GALLOWAY FOREST PARK, SOUTHERN UPLANDS Officially designated as a Dark Sky Reserve, this Scottish national park is the perfect place to pitch up and watch the stars come out to play. SANDWOOD BAY, SUTHERLAND For a wild camp by the sea this secluded sandy cove can’t be beat. Head in from Blairmore and take the path north: the rewards of a sunset over crashing waves are well worth it.…

Tonium Pacemaker £480 Stuff said Promising all the features of a DJ booth in one pocketable gadget, the Pacemaker is truly unique. It won’t mix the tunes for you, but for those who can beat-mix or are prepared to learn, the Pacemaker is a dream come true. Olympus Mju 1030 SW £320 Stuff said More than a just a camera with watertight seals, the 1030 is built to withstand tortures that would make Bond grass up Q and the Queen. It’s crush-proof, freeze-proof and, of course, waterproof to 10m. It takes lovely photos both in and out of the wet stuff. Canon FS11 £390 Stuff said An old-school camcorder, miniaturised but not modernised. The internal memory isn’t to be sneezed at, though – it gives you over 3.5 hours of…

Making Stuff up Editor Will Dunn Deputy Editor Tom Wiggins Consulting Editor Fraser Macdonald Features Editor Mark Wilson Reviews Editor Tom Parsons Editor, Stuff.tv Marc McLaren Staff Writer Esat Dedezade Editorial Assistant Max Langridge Apprentice Web Producer Kyle Pittman Googling Stuff Production Editor Richard Purvis Sub-Editor Emily May Colouring Stuff in Brand Art Editor Chee-Chiu Lee Deputy Art Editor Ross Presly Senior Designer Will Clarke Senior Video Editor Peter Brown Apprentice Designer Natalia Sliwinska Keeping Stuff in order Editor-in-Chief Will Findlater International Director Alastair Lewis Syndication Enquiries Isla Friend 020 8267 5058 Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Marketing Executive Natalya Paul Office Manager Sarah Weetch Contributors Sam Kieldsen, Jools Whitehorn, Craig Grannell, Andrew Hayward, Becky Roberts, Ced Yuen, Joe Cox, Richard Turner, Alan Martin, Phoebe Smith Thanks to Matt Beedle, Alex…

● Continuum! Ah, the prospect of sauntering into the BA lounge, plugging a smartphone into a monitor and nailing some spreadsheets using proper desktop Excel. (Mainly, the BA lounge bit.) ● HoloLens! Windows’ motto used to be “Where do you want to go today?” Now it’s “Wanna stay at home and explore dinosaur anatomy in VR using HoloLens?” And the answer is “Yes”. ● Actualness! Not a trademarked feature, but a revolutionary aspect of Windows 10 is how real it is. Preview builds of the OS have been a vailable to pretty muchany Tom, Rickor Jane for months. Nosmoke. Nomirrors. We know how it’s going tobe.…

NOW YOU USB-C IT Happy times if you’re a ports and cables standards fan (there’s a lot out there). USB-C has hit the big time since Apple introduced it on its new MacBook, and now Intel has said that Thunderbolt 3’s 40Gbps will work via a USB-C interface. INFINITE MEMORIES Google’s new Photos service has no storage limit, despite being free. Photos larger than 16MP are compressed, which might trouble SLR users, but the online, Android and iOS apps should be a boon for us norms, with our chaotic multi-platform photo albums. KEY CHANGE We’ve seen Audi cars that can park themselves using a smartphone app, but the new BMW 7 Series gives you remote parking (and unparking) using a colour display and controls on the key itself. It also…

1 Tandem £free / iOS By connecting via Facebook profiles, Tandem matches you up with like-minded people across the globe who are ready to help you practise a new language and develop their own skills. 2 Skiing Yeti Mountain £free / iOS, Android An isometric, one-touch skiing simulator… with a twist. Skiing Yeti Mountain offers all the fun of the sport, undercut with the dark mystery of an alpine beast that keeps carrying off locals… 3 Glass Planner £free (+ IAP) / iOS Want your reminders and your calendar in the same place? Glass does just that. A sleek design means it’s easy to combine daily tasks; all it needs now is matching iPad and Android versions. 4 Lumy £1.99 / iOS This app helps photographers catch the ‘magic hour’…

1 Funslinger Casually flick the foam wot sit back and forth while sippinga Pimm’s. Or, fire the whistling torpedo at each other like Thor and Loki until someone gets hurt. Your choice. £28 / sciencemuseumshop.co.uk 2 Burton Double Beeracuda Bag A coolbox: nice idea but a drag to carry. Better thist win-chambered insulated backpack, securely strapped to your sozzled self. £25/gb.burton.com 3 Molkky Skittles Numbered 1 to 12 –you’re aiming for an exact score or you face penalties. To add confusion, the skittles are re-erected where they fell. Add booze and repeat. £30/prezzybox.com 4 Indo Pro /Sup Training Pack This balance board helps your core strength, and nobody can watch someone struggling on it without thinking they could do better. from £270 / indoboard.eu 5 BoomCo Rapid Madness Unlike other…

1 Ditch the cheese Young children don’t understand posing – at the first hint of the word ‘cheese’ they’ll stand there gurning like Bez with tetanus – and unless you’ve trained them for a starring role on Britain’s Got Talent, neither do pets. Instead, capture them in natural poses: playing with toys; concentrating intently on putting the lid on a felt tip; daydreaming about what it would be like to be a grape. Whatever they’re doing, your photos will look better if they’re concentrating on that rather than you. 2 Blend into the background If your kids or pets know you’re taking photos of them, they’re likely to stop doing whatever it was that you wanted to take a photo of them doing, and instead grin like a tiny maniac…

1 Light and speed Light, and lots of it, is vital in sports photography. If you don’t get enough light through the lens and onto the sensor, you’ll have to drop the shutter speed so low that any moving object becomes a blur. Zooming in with a telephoto lens reduces the amount of light even further. Higher ISO settings help, but there’s a limit to how far you can push the ISO before image quality becomes an issue. Bigger lenses gather more light and bigger sensors capture more of that, so a DSLR with a full-frame sensor is the way to go. MY BEST SHOT TOM WIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR Force panorama mode out of its sunset comfort zone to capture super-long shots from above or below. 2 Test shots Before…

IMMORTALISE YOUR INSTAS CHEERZ A printing service for social media snaps, Cheerz has most formats covered, including magnets and books. There’s also the ‘polabox’, a pack of your finest photos in Polaroid form. from £6.45 / cheerz.com GIVE YOUR PICTURES WOOD WOODPIC Choose your preferred size of plywood canvas (up to 40in x 30in for £300) and this Kent-based company will print your photo directly onto it. We like its ‘multi-panel’ option for splitting a single photo between several canvases. from £10 / woodpic.co.uk CASH IN YOUR SNAPS EYEEM It’s not the only photo marketplace (check out 500px and Foap), but EyeEm is the most versatile. Its best feature is ‘Missions’ – competitions set by magazines, companies and galleries. eyeem.com…

FOR FANTASY FANS Rival Kingdoms This is fort-smashing wrapped up in a sumptuous fantasy package. If Clash Of Clans didn’t look like your cup of tea, then give Rival Kingdoms a go. Build intricate defences, assault your opponents, and group together for en-masse wars of attrition. Multiplayer warfare on this scale has never been easier from your mobile – and it features dragons, which means you can pretend to be Daenerys Targaryen assaulting King’s Landing while at the bus stop. Stuff says £free / iOS, Android FOR PAPER NUTS Foldify Dinosaurs Scientific understanding of dinosaurs continues to evolve rapidly, with depictions of these beasts shifting from huge lizards to monstrous feathered creatures. With Foldify Dinosaurs you can take the logical next step: paint an origami Triceratops in eyesearing hues and…

■ It’s got mono Most digital cameras have a monochrome mode, but the X-A2’s is more than just a greyscale version of a colour shot: Fujifilm has tweaked the levels nicely to deliver that punchy contrast B&W pics need. ■ Leather jacket With its textured leatherlook grip and silver top and bottom, the design is heavily indebted to the 35mm film cameras of the 1960s. Thankfully, it’s a tad more user-friendly (no need to wind it on). ■ Auto ’shop The bevy of ‘film simulation’ modes are essentially filters that instantly change the look of your stills and videos. They cut down on the need for post-processing – and look great. ■ Chrome cast The ‘Classic Chrome’ mode recreates the look of (now unavailable) Kodachrome film. It’s hard to explain…

Music Glue Music Glue allows any band – from banjo-bothering festival headliners Mumford & Sons to your one-man Wu-Tang Clan trumpet covers band – to sell songs, CDs (remember them?), gig tickets and merch easily. Bands can even customise their page so it looks like their own. musicglue.com PledgeMusic PledgeMusic’s Kickstarter-esque campaigns give fans a place to help fund a band’s next record. They can offer added extras such as T-shirts, posters and gig tickets in return for varying sums of cash – it’s even been used by Megadeth and The Darkness. pledgemusic.com Tradiio Tradiio is a stock market where you trade in bands. The artists with the greatest investment rise to the top, and if you’re an early investor the value of your investment grows as the profile of…

Vsauce Vsauce tackles both serious and irreverent scientific and philosophical questions in cheerful and engaging ways. ‘What if everyone jumped at once?’, ‘Will we ever run out of music?’ and ‘Why don’t we taxidermise humans?’ are answered with the kind of detail usually reserved for more pressing issues. Ashens British vlogger Ashens’ channel is a mix of unboxings, tech and comedy, but the real gems are where he tries out fake games consoles, knock-off phones or out-of-date and possibly lethal foodstuffs. Ashens tries the worst things in life so you don’t have to, somehow keeping his sense of humour as he goes. CinemaSins You may think you’re a cinematic pedant… but you’re not as bad as these guys, who tear apart films one inconsistency or cliché at a time, with…

ALWAYS ON CALL facebook.com/joinstuff ● @stuffTV google.com/+stufftv●stuff@haymarket.com MAIL OF THE MONTH Q LOOK, NO HANDS! Hi, I’m a beginner cyclist and I plan to commute regularly. I want a helmet cam to record the journeys in case anything were to happen. Can you recommend one? Tom Fletcher A While GoPro is probably the first name that springs to mind, its range of cameras can look a little boxy on a helmet. The Drift Stealth 2 (£150, driftinnovation.com) is tiny and more streamlined. At 97g it’s light too, and its battery is good for three hours of 1080p video. If you fancy covering your rear, then the Fly 6 (£100, cycliq.com) is a back light and 720p cam with a six-hour battery life. Speak your brains and you could win a…

Fitbit Surge £200 / fitbit.com The Surge’s unusual wedge shape, while good for getting the display to a readable angle, makes the whole watch stick out a long way from the wrist, and it gets caught on clothing. The optical heart-rate monitor is lightning-quick to pick up a pulse, though. Basis Peak £170 / mybasis.com The most watch-looking of the bunch, the Peak may not have GPS, but its party trick is that it automatically identifies your activity. Most impressive is its four-day battery life, but the heart monitor requires a tight fit that makes it a real relief to take it off regularly. Garmin Vivoactive £200 / garmin.com Tracking running, cycling and swimming, the Vivoactive is always on hand for an impromtu fitness session and has the slim form…

Lap dancer OVAL Oval looks a bit like Jony Ive was tasked with building a flying saucer that doubles up as a musical instrument. This digital hand pan, about the size of a dustbin lid, will excite fans of percussion, given that it enables a tactile and organic means to play music, backed up by an electronic brain. The case is hardy, and the seven pads are velocity-sensitive. The device is MIDI-compliant and so can work with apps and DAWs to trigger anything from percussive sounds to complex loops. And as each pad has an illuminated section, Oval can be transformed into a giant-sized Simon game — albeit a rather pricey one. from €500 / ovalsound.com A shameless plug-in VOLTUS Inventors are figuring out ways to turn the MacBook’s sole…

Constructing headphones tends to be a long and complicated process, because they’re usually made up of no less than 50 parts. However, a new manufacturing process called ‘roll to roll’ is now creating headphones that are much easier to produce. The whole process takes place on a single roll of plastic, which is printed and embedded with conductive materials and other technology along the assembly line, much like making circuit boards (though these are much nicer-looking). These streamlined cans were showcased at New York Design Week in May. The headphones are only made up of eight parts, says designer Maxime Loiseau. They don’t require wires, nor injection moulding, because the parts are already embedded exactly where they need to be. All that’s left to do is cut out the final…

£tba / vaikai.com Nice skittle. Now, listen. If you were to line these up and throw things at them, it would probably constitute a crime. Certainly a crime against your child. It would be as unthinkable as if you had fed your child’s pet rabbit to a fox right in front of its eyes. You have to feed a fox in front of its eyes. That’s where its mouth is. Don’t be glib. Hidden within that wooden exterior are touch sensors, a gyroscope, a compass and a thermometer. Bluetooth Low Energy lets them communicate with each other: games of hide and seek can be initiated, whereby one Avakai triggers sound, haptic and light feedback from another. They may even let your child play. Play! So it’s a toy – not…

Ooh, I could crush a grape! I could pummel a peach! I could fall off a doll’s house! You know we’re quoting Stu Francis from children’s TV series Crackerjack, right? Not Russ Abbot, whose C U Jimmy character, also from the ’80s, had a bright ginger wig? Uh, yeah, of course. So what’s the BikeMic? It’s a study in compound gadgeteering is what it is. Cyclists, bless their merino cockles, keep getting in collisions. Now, a certain proportion of urban riders choose to wear headphones while cycling, which just might be a contributing factor in their becoming entangled with pedestrians and traffic. It’s circumstantial, naturally – if a dozy driver is going to flatten you, or a texting ped walk out in front of you, no amount of internal dubstep…

1 Contrast is key Because black and white photos are colourless, the viewer’s attention is focused on other things. Sharpness, depth of field and composition are important, but contrast is arguably the key factor in how much impact a black and white photograph has – so look for big differences between the darkest and lightest areas of the image. That’s where the drama lies. 2 Shoot in RAW if you can... If your phone or camera has a RAW mode (DSLRs, system cameras and quality compacts do, and there are apps that allow phones to shoot RAW), it’s advisable to use it if you’re taking pictures to convert into black and white. Yes, RAW images take up a lot more storage space, but that’s because they retain all the picture…

1 It’s your street Disregard any ‘rules’ of street photography you might have heard about. It’s you calling (and taking) the shots, so it’s all about finding something that’s interesting to you. Shoot old, new, ordinary or extraordinary. Include people or exclude them. Make a historical document, make a statement, make a joke, tell a story or just snap what you see. 2 Make friends Be discreet but not covert. A phone will attract less attention than a DSLR, but taking pictures in public places can still arouse suspicion. Make it as clear as possible to passers-by that you’re not snooping on them. Engage with people when you can. Talk to them, put them at ease and respect them. You don’t have to ask permission to take pictures of people,…

1 Get a vintage look LITELY A subtle alternative to hyper-processed filters, this app (made by an ex-Instagram travel photographer) has a range of presets inspired by cinematic tones. You get 11 themes for free, with themed ‘boxes’ of extras available from 79p each. If it’s desktop editing you’re after, Litely also offers presets for Lightroom and Photoshop. £free / iOS 2 Fix your distortion SKWRT Wide-angle smartphone lenses can be forgiving in some situations, but they can also introduce a strange warping effect known as perspective distortion. Here to iron out your wonky lines is this app, which lets you tweak your image on its vertical and horizontal planes and fix the horizon, all via a simple dial control. It won’t save a badly framed shot, but it can…

WHAT WE TESTED 1 COLOUR ME GOOD More important than megapixels is whether the colours are right, or if photos have an unnatural colour cast. Apple’s iPhones absolutely nail this one. Colour and white balance are dead-on, every time. The Samsung Galaxy S6 is almost as good, with natural-looking shots 24/7. The LG G4 is excellent as well, but despite a dedicated colour sensor on its back, its shots can be a little unnatural – not unrealistic, just slightly too warm. In fact this can make for nicer pictures, depending on the subject. The HTC One M9 is the only phone that gave us any trouble with white balance and colour. Its shots generally look very warm, and this can really work for some scenes, but when you take a…

Back in 2014, a website appeared called Forgotify. It existed for one reason only: to get the four million songs on Spotify that nobody on earth had ever listened to a keen set of ears. Forgotify works by scouring Spotify’s catalogue for songs with a popularity rating of zero (about 20% of them) and picking one at random for the user to listen to. As soon as it’s been heard once it is taken off Forgotify’s database; but with new music being added to Spotify all the time, Forgotify’s makers say the list of neglected tunes is very gradually growing longer. This is not a problem unique to Spotify. The streaming Swedes claim that only 20% of the music on a certain download store (one that rhymes with ‘Pie Tunes’)…

If audiophile-in-chief Neil Young is to be believed, there’s a lot of music within the music you’re listening to that you’ve never heard. But will highres audio ever be more than a niche concern? Jay-Z and his band of Tidal-supporting audio avengers are certainly on Neil’s side, although you get the feeling they’re more bothered about the cash than the sound quality. “Just because there’s an opportunity to have better-sounding music doesn’t mean people will grab it,” says Blur’s Dave Rowntree, “especially if they’re going to have to spend more money. If there’s some must-have hardware, that might do it, but just the increase in quality probably isn’t enough.” High-res audio on the next iPhone, anyone?…

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SMS BioSport £130 / smsaudiouk.com What are they? Compared to Dre’s Beats, 50 Cent’s SMS Audio has gone a little less ‘in your face bass’ and a little more ‘in your ear tech’ with the BioSport earphones. These wired earbuds are equipped with an optical heart-rate monitor that works with RunKeeper (only) to track your stats. Performance Sonically, the BioSports are impressive; vocals are expressive and detailed, with no booming bass nor screechy top end. There’s a choice of three sizes of buds and fins to help you get the right fit. They’re uncomfortable at first but pretty secure once in place. Sliding the remote to ‘heart rate mode’ sends your rate to the Runkeeper app. Being wired, it’s straightforward, though monitoring can be pretty temperamental – you’ll need them…

THE BASICS ■ Play the long flame. It’s surprising how much heat charcoal can deliver, and a flimsy barbecue won’t last long. The best barbecues are made by Grillco (grillcoinc.com) and Big Green Egg (biggreenegg.co.uk). ■ Or build your own. If you don’t want to splash out, make a BBQ yourself. You’ll need some bricks, cement, a barbecue grill set and a trowel. For full instructions go to bit.ly/brickbbq ■ Use homegrown charcoal. Sustainable UK sources look after the environment and their charcoal also rarely contains ‘accelerators’, which make your food taste like petrol. I use the London Log Company (thelondonlogcompany. blogspot.co.uk). ■ Stay in control. Keep a water spray on hand to help quell any flare-ups. ‘Flame-grilled’ might sound good, but flames are actually the enemy of good ‘live…

PETITTUBE Everyone knows viral videos that got millions of hits, but spare a thought for the little guy. PetitTube shows you a random video that’s never been watched. Will it be great? No – but it’s fascinating all the same. petittube.com UTAB Want to know the chords for something playing on YouTube? Utab will try to help. Its clever algorithm will listen to the music for 20 seconds and then pull in playalong tabs and even lyrics if it finds them. utab.com YTTM Feeling nostalgic? YTTM pulls video from the year of your choice, going all the way back to 1860 with one claiming to be the ‘first sound ever recorded’. You can even filter by type for sports, games or even adverts. yttm.tv…

1 OSPREY ATMOS AG 50 The new Atmos rucksack features the first fully ventilated hip belt. Made from a seamless mesh, the back is suspended over a cavity so that it sits away from your body to allow the air to flow freely, preventing you from getting too sweaty on your walk-in. The shoulder straps and hip belt itself curve around your body like a big hug and spread the pack weight well. As you’d expect, there’s also plenty of pockets, bungee cords and a removable lid to further cut down weight. £160 / ospreyeurope.com 2 HILLEBERG ANJAN 2 When camping wild, you need a tent that’s lightweight but can stand up to any weather. Made from a ripstop, robust fabric, once secured with guy lines the Anjan holds up…

NAPOLEON GRILLS TQ285 £250.00 For grillers at home or away: the durable TQ285 has a lockable lid, foldaway legs, twin burners and over 1800cm2 of cooking space. www.napoleongrills.co.uk BIOLITE BASECAMP £359.95 Recharge your phone while enjoying a wood-fired meal with the BaseCamp – the complete off-grid cooking and energy solution for groups. www.biolitestove.com BIG GREEN EGG – LARGE EGG £850.00 Industry leader for 40 years, Big Green Egg cooks in the rain, lights in 15 mins, is made from NASA ceramics and comes with a lifetime warranty. www.BigGreenEgg.co.uk WEBER S-320 SPIRIT PREMIUM £674.99 With a quality build and exceptional functionality, this stainless steel beauty from Weber ticks all the boxes when it comes to gas grilling. www.riversidegardencentre.co.uk BIG GREEN EGG – MINIMAX £550.00 (INCLUDING CARRY STAND) Cook like a pro,…