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The Safer Way to Charge Your Phone at Night

Behold! The old-school cupholder.

Behold! The old-school cupholder.

For you whippersnappers that are too young to remember, there was a time in which there were zero cars that came with cup holders. Seriously. Even a Rolls Royce didn’t have cupholders. Not kidding. You had to make a special trip to a convenience store (back then, the only one I knew of was 7-11) to buy a plastic cup holder that would hook between your car door window and the interior paneling. These are still made for use in older, vintage cars, albeit you just don’t see them much nowadays.

The folks at ArmsReach Industries have created an adaptation of the old school cupholder with their NightHolster campaign on Kickstarter.

The NightHolster hitches to your bed frame and holds not only your drink, but also reading glasses, your Kindle and your smartphone. There’s a notch to allow the charging cables to pass through without kinking – and also keeps your phone from flying across the room if you grope for it in a stupor as you awake. No more items sliding off the bedside table with this low-tech gizmo that’s currently prototyped in high tech 3D printing.

You can follow ArmsReach on Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and their website.

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Geeks Can Use this SAAS to Prototype Their Mobile Apps

logo2This Software As A Service (SAAS), Fluid, helps groups and individuals – designers and programers – to mock up their app ideas before executing development. This is a time saver and steps beyond simple flowcharts. Don’t get me wrong – flowcharts are awesome. I personally use flowcharts all the time before starting a huge project. These are not simply mock-ups, however. Fluid lets you actually do some low-level prototyping.

Unlike a lot of other prototyping SAAS sites, they actually have a free plan. It lets you really stretch your legs and work on small projects – and the plans they have let you step up as necessary in very affordable fashion. Prototype models for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Windows Phone, Android, Windows OS and Mac OS are there, with lots of other little gizmos (yeah, that’s a technical term) you can utilize for basic interactivity. It’s like a flowchart that is made of movies instead of flat images.

You can learn more about Fluid on their website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. They also have an extension for Google Chrome.

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