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Home / Tech  / The Wrap: 25 June

The Wrap: 25 June

At the speed of sound

At the risk of sounding like a clickbait headline, you won’t believe the sight of the Bloodhound SSC (supersonic car). As well as looking particularly snazzy, it’s jet and rocket powered and with a top speed of 1600 km/hr, the team behind it will have a crack at the world land speed record next year. The British collaboration is using 3D printing tech to make several components for the car, along with a carbon fibre front half like those used in race cars and a metal frame and panels of aircraft ilk. The car measures 14 metres ad weighs more than seven tonnes, producing over 135,000 horsepower (that’s six times the total produced by a formula one starting grid.)

Gif-tastic

If you like to share some gif lovin’, check out the Nutmeg app, which touts its collection as only those worth sharing. You start by choosing the mood you’re in, whether it’s excited, laughing, rude, awesome etc, then Nutmeg serves up a set of animations to fit the bill. Click once to play, twice to select, then fire it off to your recipient. If you want to appear really up with the play, pick from the gifs associated with current events. Content is mobile optimised and updated semi-regularly.

A whole new (3D) world

Replica Labs’ video for Rendor app, now in beta, looks like it’s about a statuette that’s been partially melted into string cheese.

But it actually demonstrates what could be good news for makers who want to scan objects using just their smartphone. Apps like Floaty’s Shapematic, and Trimensional pursue the same goal, but use still imagery as the model’s basis. Rendor’s concept is a printed grid that allows the app to render a model using video taken from different angles.

For your eyes only

Here’s another app from the ‘simple ideas are best’ file. This one, Focus solves a pet hate many of us have and that’s nosy photo browsers. We’ve all reeled off a great opportunistic shot on our phone and resolved to share it with colleagues/friends/family the next day. But there’s always one who wants to poke their nose into your entire image collection. Focus lets you send one picture to the app for a user to see. Then if they try to swipe through to others, there won’t be access, and if they try to go back a step or to the home screen, they’ll need the pin you’ve set and you’ll be warned with a ringtone.

Amanda Sachtleben is an Auckland writer and social media type, who's also Idealog's former tech editor and business journalist.

Review overview