Fully Charged: Smartphone-powered eye exams, Durex’s dual-screen advert, and amazing drone footage of Chernobyl

Smartphone eye exams with Peek Retina

There’s famously “an app for that” when it comes to an array of needs, but in the case of Peek Retina, there’s an app and an adapter for something you probably never expected a smartphone to do: perform a proper eye examination.

The Peek – that is, Portable Eye Examination Kit – is a clip-on smartphone camera adapter that allows users to view the back of an eye, along with the retina. While not on par with the kind of high-end ophthalmological equipment seen at the doctor’s office, the low cost and portability of the Peek make it absolutely ideal for house calls, developing countries, and disaster recovery areas.

Right now, the Peek is aiming to raise £70,000 on Indiegogo to supplement award money from TED.com and Mazda and enter manufacturing. If you don’t want one personally, you can contribute £60 to get one in the hands of a doctor via Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, and potentially help a lot of people who really need it.

[Source: Indiegogo via SlashGear]

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Durex launches first dual-screen advert

Condom-maker Durex has launched a UK e-commerce site with direct-to-your-door shipments of its myriad products, and to mark the occasion, the company is also debuting what it calls the “world’s first synchronised dual screen film.”

In other words, it’s an advert that syncs up between the main version on your TV or computer and a secondary clip that runs on your smartphone or tablet using the free Durex Explore app for iOS and Android. The app recognizes the advert very quickly and launches its own clip in unison, as they show multiple sides of the same not-so-routine package delivery.

It’s already up on YouTube, but the advert will also run on ITV2 tonight at 21:10 – and if the evening showtime didn’t give it away, this advert is not safe for work. Remember the company and products in question, of course. So save it for home viewing if you want a titillating glimpse at this brave new future of multi-device advertising.

[Source: YouTube]

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See stunning drone footage of Chernobyl

One of the biggest perks of piloting a camera-equipped drone is being able to capture footage of areas where it may not be possible to safely tread. That’s the case in this recent footage of the Ukranian cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat, which were abandoned following the 1986 nuclear disaster in the former.

Filmmaker Danny Cooke shot the footage while on assignment for CBS News in the States earlier this year, and while there is some ground footage (shot with a Canon 7D), the aerial footage is truly superb, and it was captured with a DJI Phantom 2 bearing a GoPro Hero3+. Haunting stuff.

[Source: Vimeo]

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