DZR Urban Bike Shoes, Panasonic Lumix TZ30 and OffMaps 2
DZR Urban Bike Shoes
If you’re a harde core cyclist who’s a casual dresser and you don’t need to shoe up formally for work, DZR might have just the foot candy for you. It has a range of apparently casual street shoes, but which have clipless SPD-compatible cleats recessed within the sole for quick clicking on to your pedals.
The soles have a good balance of stiffness, enough to keep you pushing efficiently as you’re pedalling, but flexible enough not to give you a pain in the sole when you’re walking. Other touches of bike-chic include an elastic tie to keep laces from tangling in the chain, reflective heel badges and a link traction pattern sole to give grip on the pedals. Although most of its collection is for guys – we’re just mad about shoes, don’t you know – they have some women’s styles too.
DZR Urban Bike Shoes from about $100 (€80); see dzrshoes.com
Panasonic Lumix TZ30
This is an extraordinary bit of engineering by Panasonic’s boffins. It’s a high-spec compact camera, with all manner of bells and whistles (that’s the technical term), as you might expect, but Panasonic somehow has also managed to squeeze a 20x optical zoom lens into the compact body too. That’s a lot of camera to be able to stick in your pocket or handbag on your travels.
Leica 20x lens apart, the TZ30 has everything you might want from something far heftier: full 1080p HD video with stereo audio, intelligent auto mode, 3D stills, GPS to geotag your snaps and a whole raft of settings you might never get to, but your inner geek can be happy they’re there. It even has a touchscreen viewer for easy navigation around its rich menu base. It’s the Tardis of compacts. Panasonic Lumix TZ30 About €400 from good camera stores
OffMaps 2
Here’s a useful little app if you’re taking a city break this summer. It’s an offline map which you download before you go and which will save you on data roaming while you’re away. OffMaps has over 1,000 maps in its library and when you install the app, two free maps are included. Subsequent ones are 79c for sets of three. The maps download with 200 Wikipedia points of interest linked in and stored offline on your device too. OffMaps 2 from the App store, 79c; but unfortunately, not on Android yet.