Our pick of last months best gadgets includes the latest updates from Pinterest, a security camera that can quite literally tell your burglars to leave, an app to teach you to code as well as an exciting tool for the Surface Studio. Read on to find out more!

The Nest Cam

The Nest Cam is an indoor security camera which has been designed to look after your family, your home and yourself. Nest Cam streams live 24/7, meaning you can catch any crimes in your house, see what your dog is doing whilst you’re at work or check if you have left the oven on. A magnetic stand enables the camera to be very versatile. With the camera having power supplied by the mains power supply you will never get a dead battery. Nest Cam can save up to 30 days footage in the cloud too. With the free smartphone app, you will get alerted when there are loud sounds, you will receive an image and can save these for up to 3 hours. You can also choose which zones in your house are monitored for movement, such as your safe. With a built in mic, you can tell intruders to get out of your house or tell your dog to get off of the sofa. You have the option of an indoor or outdoor cam. The Indoor Nest Cam is priced at £159 and the Outdoor Nest Cam is priced at £179. They are both available to pre-order.

SoloLearn

If you have ever wanted to learn how to code and program then SoloLearn is probably the app for you. Learn JavaScript, PHP, C++, Python 3, jQuery, HTML and much more throughout a variety of courses. Quizzes and guides enable you to be put to the test and really immerse yourselves into the coding world. There is also a large community that users of the app can turn to for assistance, and people can share their own code and programs that they have built using the app. You can learn on the go with this free programming language educational app by downloading the app to your Apple or Android device. Download it now and don’t miss out!

Dish Recognition for Pinterest

 

Recently Pinterest rolled out a new feature called ‘Lens.’ Simply point your camera within the app at anything you like and Pinterest will find and display related ideas. Well they have now added an addition to this feature. It is called Dish Recognition. Now when you open the app, click on the magnifying glass and then the camera icon and point your camera at a food item and snap a picture. You will then see words appear relating to this i.e. an image of an orange could be orange, healthy eating, food etc. But then if you scroll further down the page once you have clicked on one of the relating words, you will be provided with recipes using similar ingredients to the food item you captured. This is a fun and exciting addition to Pinterest. It does however sound a lot like “SeeFood” which was the fake ‘Shazam for food’ app from the comedy Silicon Valley. But Pinterest officials confirmed to The Verge that it was “separate and completely coincidental.”

To enable this add on all you need to do is update your app and you are ready to go. If you don’t actually have Pinterest yet, where have you been?! You can download it here from Google Play and here from the App Store.

Microsoft Surface Dial

A new tool that was released alongside the Microsoft Surface Studio was the Surface Dial. This new tool enables you to “transition  seamlessly through tasks” as stated by Microsoft. You can simplify tasks with the Surface Dial. Scroll through articles, adjust the volume, fly through your city maps and more all without touching your keyboard or mouse. You can use the dial directly on the screen of your Surface Studio. It quite literally will reinvent the way you design. A colour picker will emerge form the dial enabling you to seamlessly edit your pieces. There are many apps that work very well with the Surface Dial such as Sketchable, Mental Canvas and Bluebean Revu. This new tool is very impressive however it may be one more for the designers out there. You can purchase it for £79 however it will only work on the Surface Studio and if you do not have one of these yet they could set you back about £2330.