The goggles use Bluetooth to pair to your smartphone. On the outside of the goggles are large buttons that appear to be usable while wearing gloves. Those controls are for answering phone calls and ending them along with controls for your music. A special microphone is integrated into the goggles that picks up vibrations when you speak through the facial bones and eliminates noise.

That is supposed to mean that you don’t have to shout to make a decent phone call while you’re skiing down slopes. The coolest part is that you don’t have to have smartphone to communicate with a group of skiers. The goggles can interface with six other pairs directly for group conferencing. Check out the video below to see the goggles in action.

[via Ubergizmo]

I would love to have this little gadget called the Cryoscope. It would be the perfect thing for letting a little kid figure out exactly what they need to wear on any given day. The Cryoscope is a cool little DIY gadget that was created by a guy named Robb Godshaw, who is an industrial design student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The device is impressively simple in its construction with only a few parts that anybody familiar with computers will recognize.

The Cryoscope uses a solid little cube, a peltier element, heat sink, cooling fan, and RGB LED. An Arduino controller operates all of those parts. The controller receives the weather temperature data from an app that operates on the web. The way it works is incredibly simple, the controller either allows the aluminum cube to heat up or cool down. The hot or cold temperature created is passed to a simple metal cube that sits over the top of all the parts. All you need to do to know what the temperature is going to be like is simply walk up and place your hand on the outer aluminum cube, and you can feel what the weather will be like. Check out the video to get a better idea about how the thing works.

Cryoscope from Robb Godshaw on Vimeo.

[via CNET]

Case Western Reserve University has recently published some research papers outlining how these electronic sensor packing bugs might soon become a reality. One major issue has always been the power source for something of this caliber being so small. New research has been lightly detailed outlining a new process where researchers can harness power from insects movement, and even from the chemical reaction as they eat.

Chemistry professor Daniel Scherson and his team has found a way to create power from the bugs food intake. Converting food into electrons and then using this for electricity and power the little sensors and everything else. Creepy crawly gross indeed, but cool nevertheless. Previous advances in this unique research has needed movement to create power but being able to use those techniques along with what we are seeing with this report would give our Cyborg bugs and beetles plenty of power.

Obviously these are still from a reality but are definitely a work in progress. All we need now is to figure this technique out, get a few cockroaches and a trail of crumbs and they are good to go.

[via Huffington Post, via Engadget]

Either way, the Aria set tracks weight, percentage body fat and calculates BMI, meshing those results with the feedback from the Fitbit dongle. That way, the company reckons, you can see which elements of your exercise regime are really working. It can also feed into a food planner, with users logging their diet and getting suggestions on calorie consumption.

An iPhone app allows you to track your progress while on the move, and all eight users of the scales have private accounts so that you can’t see how much everyone else weighs. User identification is based on weight, so it might not work if you’ve suddenly lost or gained a huge amount, or live with people who all weigh the same.

The Fitbit Aria scales will go on sale in late April 2011, priced at $129.95. They’re available to pre-order now.

Whereas the first-gen AR.Drone – which we reviewed back in 2010 - required you to keep track of where the front of the quadricopter was, the new Absolute Flight mode relies on a 3D magnetometer built to let the the second-gen model know what orientation it’s at in relation to the smartphone controlling it. That way, “the pilot no longer needs to care about the orientation of the AR.Drone 2.0′s front camera, which will accurately track the smartphone’s motion and tilt.”

The traditional steering method will still be available as an option, and you’ll now be able to pre-program preset flight paths. Meanwhile there are some tweaks to the sensor array, with a pressure sensor used to boost vertical stability, new blade designs for smoother flight, and a slightly altered hull. As before, two shells are supplied – one for indoor flight, one for outdoor – and there are flashing LEDs to keep it looking impressive.

Apps for both Android and iOS are available, and there’s an open development platform for third-party game and other app developers to tie into the new AR.Drone 2.0. According to the leaked release, the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 will go on sale in Q2 2012, priced at $299. We’ll be keeping an eye on the skies at CES to see if we can spot it there.

[via Engadget and via AR.Drone Flyers]

On Sunday, I’m going to fly from Dallas to Las Vegas. I’m not going to have time to check into my hotel, because I have to go directly to my first meeting. I’ll be sitting in meetings for at least 8 hours. The next four days, I’ll wake up at 8AM and start working. I won’t stop until late into the evening. On many nights, I won’t get back to my hotel room until after midnight.

I’ll be at the Consumer Electronics Show, of course. The Super Bowl of gadgets. Except it lasts for days and days, and there is no football, just commercials. It’s so huge that it takes place not only at the Las Vegas Convention Center, but also the Hilton next door, and the Sands convention center connected to the Venetian hotel. A friend wore a pedometer at the show one year and discovered that she walked 4-6 miles a day, every day.

Sounds grueling, right? Hardly. Let me fill in the blanks.

My first meeting is with a good friend and drinking buddy. Every subsequent meeting I have will be with technology journalists, analysts, and other industry professionals. These are people who are interested in the exact same thing I’m interested in. We’ll have plenty to talk about, on professional and personal levels. It’s not like going to the office, it’s more like hanging out in a college dorm, arguing politics over pizza until late in the night. But instead of pizza, it’s all about gadgets.

My day job, and the sponsor of my trip, is with Samsung. My meetings will involve talking about Samsung products and showing off the coolest stuff we have. I’ll be carrying around a bag full of awesome gadgets throughout the show. During the meetings, we’ll play. There will be questions, photographs, hands-on videos. But mostly, we’ll play.

At night, we’ll head to corporate and PR sponsored events. These are usually nice meals, parties at night clubs, or mini trade shows with free alcohol and plenty of fried food. Since CES always happens after New Year’s, usually we’ll hear anecdotes from the club workers about how Britney Spears or Paris Hilton passed out in this VIP room, or threw up in that elevated bathtub. I’ll go to the most exclusive clubs in Vegas, the places that wouldn’t let me in wearing the same outfit a week later. There will be music, dancing, free pens and baseball caps, and more time hanging out with some of my favorite people in the world.

I love my job. I loved my job when I was a journalist. I love it now that I’m on the corporate side. If you’re working at your cubicle, or from the cab of your truck, or from anywhere that does not send you on an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas once a year, I hope you see I’m not trying to brag. I appreciate my job and the opportunities it gives me. I work hard at it, and I worked hard to get here. I put in the hours. I will never complain about it. I know exactly how lucky I am.

I wish everyone in my business were so self aware. I’ve seen column after column on other technology Web sites complaining about having to make the trek to CES. Some folks even revel in the fact that they have never attended the show, all the while dismissing what’s there, as if they have any idea.

Is CES a dying animal? No way. Microsoft is scaling back. Other companies have stopped exhibiting at trade shows, preferring their own, invariably more exclusive corporate events. There is certainly a time and a place for that strategy, but CES serves a definite purpose.

First, it’s a mile marker for our industry. It’s a way to stop after the holidays, look around, and try to figure out where this giant ship is sailing. It’s a way to spot icebergs and jet streams.

The Consumer Electronics Association, the group that runs CES, exists to promote consumer electronics. No trade show in existence does a better job promoting its category than CES. Sure, you may have read about the adult entertainment show that used to run concurrently with CES. But have you heard of the pizza maker’s trade show in Las Vegas? Have you seen coverage of the Construction Expo that happens once every 3 years? In fact, can you name any other major trade show convention that is covered by all major TV networks, all forms of print and online publications, and supports an entire category of bloggers and Web sites? Of course not. This isn’t just a testimony to the popularity of technology. It’s a testament to the hard work and sheer spectacle of CEA at CES.

Second, CES lets in the little guy. At some point during the show, all journalists run out of steam and decide to walk the floor. Everybody wants to find the little guy, the cool products hidden in the back of the convention center. I’ve played video games with my mind. I’ve watched movies that smell. I’ve watched body painting and drag racing and all sorts of fascinating pageantry.

The weirdest thing about technology journalists is that many of them think they have hard jobs. They think that CES is difficult. They complain about the walking, the long nights, the bad food (okay, too much fried, not enough fresh). If you follow tech journalists on Twitter, be prepared for a full week of complaining about flight delays, poorly designed airports, hotel errors, shuttle delays, blistered feet, missed meetings, and more.

Feel free to tell any and all of them where they can stick it.

I’ve never had a true manual labor job, but I have had jobs that were actually difficult. Tedious jobs that were repetitive and dull. Retail jobs over the holiday time. I worked 12 hour days as a teacher in inner-city schools. My students were awesome, and they were the reason I woke up every day. But there was endless paperwork, long hours, a complete lack of appreciation on every level, and heartbreak. Try grading 200 papers in a weekend and tell me how difficult CES can be. Try calling a single working parent to tell them their child would be expelled for a stupid rule infraction, then tell me how much you hate going to parties every single night.

Or don’t. Enjoy it. Love it. Have a great time. If you’re so jaded that you really hate the Consumer Electronics Show, you probably need a new career. But I warn you, you’re going to be very disappointed with what you find. There are very few openings for people with expertise in playing with gadgets, drinking heavily, and hanging with friends.

Hawking has a motor neurone disease that has progressively left him almost entirely paralyzed, with the computer integrated into his wheelchair also providing his well-known synthesized voice since a tracheotomy took his own. Part of the challenge for the new “technical assistant” will be maintaining a hodgepodge of systems that have been accrued over the years: for instance, Hawking’s original DECtalk DTC01 voice synthesizer has since been replaced with a NeoSpeech app running on one of the regularly-upgraded laptops.

Elsewhere there’s a mass of cables, batteries and motors, together with the infrared remote system that Hawking uses to control his home and lab automation. They’ll need to be kept online too, as well as helping keep press attention under control and answering questions to avoid the laborious text-to-speech system the professor must use.

The initial job post listing – pasted below – has since been taken down, with the advice that interested parties should keep an eye on this page at the DAMTP. The role is expected to become available in late February.

Graduate Assistant to Stephen Hawking

The above post is expected to become available shortly, with a starting date around 20th-27th February 2012. The salary is expected to be in the region of £25k; the exact value will be confirmed in the near future.

Disclaimer: This is not an official job applications page, however similar it may look! The official applications process will be started when the post has been properly advertised, probably in mid-January. We will not be able to offer the post to anyone on the strength of this unofficial submission alone; we can only direct people to apply through the official channel. However, if you fit our requirements, we would like to hear from you.

The post is more accurately described by the title “Technical Assistant to Stephen Hawking.” It is not a PhD or Post-Doc position for academics looking to study physics, but a purely technical post to allow Prof. Hawking to function within the physics community and as a public speaker.

The original purpose of this position was “to aid Professor Hawking in those areas which he has difficulty due to his disability.” The job has since expanded and now includes:

Managing national and international travel for Prof. Hawking and his care team. Expect to spend around 3 months per year abroad!
Development and maintenance of Professor Hawking’s communication and speech systems
Procurement and maintenance of his wheelchairs and accessible van
Preparation of lecture graphics and public speaking
Dealing with the media and press
Answering inquiries from the public and maintaining the website

The post requires a wide range of skills, most importantly:
Ability to work under pressure
Maintenance of “black box” systems with no instruction manual or technical support
Computer literacy
Electronics knowledge
Ability to speak to a large audience
Ability to show others how to use complex systems

The role of ‘Graduate Assistant to Professor Hawking’ is funded as a research post at the University of Cambridge. Normally it has been under a 12 month contract, although recent graduate assistants have stayed on for several years.

[via The Register; Image credit: NASA]

[Image credit: Julian B]

I’m away from my family this holiday, and it seemed an excellent time to take advantage of Skype for a video call or two on Christmas day. The tech world may have raced ahead, but carriers and roaming phone calls still lag behind, and using my cellphone to ring could easily rack up a bill greater than I was spending on gifts. Trying to install Skype onto a regular Windows laptop, though, proved to be an irritant greater than forgetting to defrost the turkey.

My parents aren’t stupid, or even particularly tech-naive. They’ve managed to install routers and printers – something, along with scanners, almost guaranteed to get my blood boiling – by themselves before now, and they know how to run regular anti-virus and malware scans and keep their PCs in shapely condition.

Installing Skype, then, ought to have been an easy matter: we should’ve been video chatting within minutes. In actual fact, though, the convoluted online registration process – page after page of setting up a new account, uncertainty over what personal information was mandatory and what wasn’t (and being thrown back to the beginning when something was inadvertently left out, with no obvious indicator of why), then installing the app and being forced to put in that account information again, peppered with Skype’s attempts to encourage them to buy SkypeOut credit – stretched out what should’ve been a quick “make a connection” moment into a homework-like chore for my family and a remote frustration for me on the other end of the phone.

We take for granted that some elements of the technology world come more easily to us than others. We overlook elements of bad UI or confusing installer decisions, perhaps don’t even “see” them, because we generally understand what the designers “meant” to say. Those who aren’t immersed within this world suffer for that blasé attitude, are made to feel stupid or inept.

Technology can be wonderful: when all the pieces had finally slotted together, I quietly marveled at how my Galaxy Nexus could give me a clear view into my family’s living room several thousand miles away. I used Skype over WiFi on my phone to make several voice calls, too, at rates a fraction of what O2 would’ve charged me to roam onto T-Mobile USA’s network. But to have that video call with my family on Christmas Day, I had to create a new Skype account for them on my phone and read the login details out: the new account Skype had made for them simply wouldn’t let them log in.

Skype could have won some devoted customers over the holidays. Imagine an undemanding webpage – holiday themed, perhaps – promoting the simplicity and convenience of video calling, created in HTML5 maybe or using the same quick plugin as Skype made for Facebook’s video chat integration. A couple of clicks, a temporary username, and you’re talking with and waving to loved ones many miles away. At the end of the call, you’d have the option to convert that temporary account into a permanent one, perhaps receive a little tester SkypeOut credit with the prompt to “call a landline this Christmas.” Nothing overwhelming when people are stuffed full of festive food and simply want to connect. Show them how it works, demonstrate why they should want it, rather than making them jump through dozens of hoops first.

(In actual fact, the company ran a “free airport WiFi” promotion across the US. I used it myself in Detroit; there was no promotional material in the airport or when you connected to the network pointing out you could have an hour of free access, you had to guess to log in via Skype WiFi in the app itself rather than putting your Skype username into the Boingo roaming page, and, even when you’d done all that, it was still unclear whether you were going to be charged. Every ten minutes a warning dialog popped up asking if I wanted to extend my session, cautioning it would probably cost me each time (it didn’t). Even as a frequent hotspot user I was confused, and it would hardly have made a good impression with a novice.)

The barrier to geek nirvana is still too high. Previously it was a matter of price: a computer, or a smartphone, was expensive. Those who could afford them inevitably spent the time understanding their intricacies, to “make the most” of the functionality on offer. As prices have diminished, though, the headaches and confusions have persisted. The barrier is a more pervasive now, too, and the wonderful promises phones, tablets, computers and other tech make are all too often locked behind poor communication, unnecessary gimmicks and an over-emphasis on something looking good rather than being straightforward to use. I find myself wondering how many people will end their holidays satisfied and enthused about the gadgets they received, and how many will be disillusioned.

Companies and analysts haven’t tired of telling us how 2011 has been a difficult year for those trying to sell hardware, software and services to an increasingly cost-conscious public. Turning every user into an evangelist is worth a hundred expensive advertising campaigns; 2012 could be the year when simplicity and usability catch up with feature promises and geek hyperbole.

The relative size of the team Apple has working on the iPod-bangle project is probably an indicator that it’s not high on the company’s agenda for release. Still, the iPod nano has at least in part jumped the gap to become a legitimate “wearable” itself: with the latest model, Apple added a variety of user-selectable watch faces, meaning the iPod can be used with one of various third-party wrist straps as a timepiece replacement. It’s not clear what wireless technology Apple might use, though the company did add Bluetooth 4.0 support (aka “Bluetooth Smart Ready“) in its recent iPhone 4S.

There are also systems like ANT+ and Nike+ which use low-power wireless connections to join sensors such as pedometers to smartphones and PMPs. Garmin released an ANT+ compatible watch earlier this year, the FR70, which uses the wireless tech to track heart rate during exercise with a bundled sensor.

Apple has competition, however, with Google also working on its own wearables tech. The search giant’s so-called X Labs employs programmers, engineers and others formerly of Microsoft, MIT and Nokia Labs and is working on the “internet of things” or an interconnected mesh of network-enabled gadgets, sensors, devices and more. They, sources claim, would be able to whisper back details to your Android smartphone.

[Image credit: Gopinath Prasana]

Author’s Lament

This year I had a tougher time than usual, not because vendors weren’t willing to send over gadgets for me to test – oh, they were. It just seemed like this year I got a much worse percentage of products that just weren’t good enough to recommend. To make this list, I had to suffer through bad streaming media boxes, terrible QWERTY remote controls, remote control helicopters that were not terribly controllable, clothing made with moisture-wicking technology that didn’t work, useless car-finder gizmos, “revolutionary” earbuds that aren’t, unique speaker systems that sound awful, and an extended battery system for portable game consoles whose installation can break the console itself. I nearly put the helicopter – Griffin’s HeloTC – on the list anyway because sort-of-controlling a little helicopter via an iPhone is cool, and making family members scatter from a perpetually out-of-control helicopter can be great fun. I also received a slew of fitness-tracker gadgets, but haven’t had the time to test them fully. Maybe I’ll do a New Year’s Resolution Gift Guide follow up.

Tablet and Smartphone Accessories

Last year I recommended Belkin’s Woogie case, which apparently has been updated somehow (the upgrade did not arrive in time for this guide). Along the same thought lines, Speck figured out a safe way to give your small child an iPad – by encasing it in foam, making it adorable, and giving it handle arms. The iGuy ($40) works with either the original iPad or the iPad2 and leaves the 40 pin connector, headphone jack, and camera unblocked, but it can be a bit hard to get on and off the tablet.

For mounting an iPad in the car, I was impressed with Vogel’s RingO modular docking station system ($100), which is pricey but fits securely around the headrest. The iPad snaps on or off easily and can tilt for optimal viewing angle. Vogel also sells an overpriced wall mount ($70) but that unit provides no tilt or extension – unlike many of Vogel’s TV mounting systems. An under-counter mount would be ideal for people who use their iPad in the kitchen. Maybe next year?

I like to think of Dream Cheeky’s iLaunch Thunder as a product that is just ludicrous enough to be brilliant: it is a wireless foam missile launcher controlled over Bluetooth by your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The company has made similar products in the past that tether to your PC via USB and can be controlled by an iOS device over WiFi, but who wants to be tethered to a PC? The iLaunch has its own rechargeable battery, offers 270 degree rotation, 40 degrees of vertical tilt, and darts fly straight for about 20 – 25 feet. You can aim via accelerometer (great fun, impossible to get any degree of accuracy) or touchscreen (better, but still not perfect). The iLaunch will not make a dent in any serious cubicle war – firing time is too slow, and you’re going to lose the four darts it comes with (Dream Cheeky really ought to include a few spares in the box). But it looks good, and when placed out of the way and carefully aimed ahead of time, can be a great way to ambush your boss. Just be prepared with a regular Nerf gun for the aftermath.

I’m a big fan of many of Speck’s cases, mostly from familiarity – Speck is more proactive at distributing products to the media at trade shows than nearly any other accessories vendor – but my absolute favorite product of theirs right now are the soft-touch SeeThru SATIN MacBook Air covers ($50). It adds almost no depth or weight – critical for such a design-centric notebook – and protects the Air from scratches and dents (let’s just say that it is possible to dent the Air’s aluminum case and that you do not want to do this). As a bonus, Speck’s cases can make your silver Air jet black or crazy happy orange. The product is mistakenly named “satin” which sounds… frilly. In reality, it’s a rather awesome electric orangey hue.

I tested a lot of keyboards this year. A lot. Keyboards for Macs and PCs, keyboards for Android and iOS tablets, keyboards for Motorola smartphones. The good news is that I can recommend several of them, especially since many people buying tablets are trying to use them as notebook replacements. The productivity software I personally need for my workflow isn’t “there” yet, but if your needs are different from mine, adding a physical keyboard can make a big difference in typing usability. My favorite overall is ZAGG’s brand new FLEX Bluetooth tablet keyboard ($80). The keyboard case acts as a stand for your tablet, and a switch on the back changes the function keys from iOS to Android. Key travel and spacing on the not-quite-full size unit is good, and the internal battery is rechargeable. However, the real reason this is my favorite is because it is incredibly light and compact. Since I don’t always use the keyboard, the minimal size and weight mean I am more willing to carry this one with me, just in case.

However, if you know you’re going to be using a keyboard all the time, the slight additional bulk and weight of Logitech’s Tablet Keyboard (in either iOS or Android versions, $70) is easily offset by superior key size, layout, and travel. Here, too, the cover serves as a tablet stand.

Honorable mention goes to two of Logitech’s other iPad keyboards. The Keyboard Case ($99) sacrifices typing comfort with compressed keys and side ridges that dig into your wrists, but doubles as a handsome hard metal case for the iPad itself. Logitech also deserves credit for creating the Fold-Up Keyboard ($129), which is an expensive, bulky plastic contraption that transforms – literally – the iPad into a netbook. Lift the iPad, and a full-size butterfly keyboard slides open. It is endless fun to open and close, but not so fun to carry around. It also forces you to use the iPad in landscape mode, and the sliding mechanism makes the whole unit feel flimsy. Still the butterfly keyboard makes a great conversation piece, and I have a soft spot for objects that feel like Transformers toys.

Books

Barnes & Noble’s Simple Touch ($99) is my favorite eReader for the technophobe. It has no ads, plenty of content, a dead-simple user interface, and a great price. However, if you’re going to buy someone a vending machine, give them some quarters, will you? Buy them a Barnes & Noble gift card to get them started with their first book or two.

It’s hard to believe, but there are still actual physical books on the market. If you know an adult LEGO fan, one way to delight them by validating their hobby is by giving them the coffee table-sized “The Cult of LEGO” ($39.95, no starch press). The book aims to provide a broad overview of the LEGO phenomenon rather than exhaustively cover any single aspect (such as professional model makers or conferences), but it could be perfect for the adult who has recently re-discovered LEGO – or one who hasn’t yet.

Music

I travel a lot, and I’m always looking for a speaker to take with me on the road. This year’s winner was Logitech’s Tablet Speaker ($29.95), a tube that clips onto your tablet (or not – it works equally well sitting next to a notebook or plugged into an iPod or a phone). It isn’t as compact as I’d like it to be, but is perfectly shaped to fit in that recess between the handles of a rollaboard, is incredibly light, and is fully rechargeable. This is a travel speaker and, while you shouldn’t expect it to be heard over guests at a party, it plays louder and cleaner than internal speakers on tablets or notebooks. It perfectly fills a hotel room with music or can be used by salespeople who give presentations using an iPad.

Does it seem like I recommend a Sonos product each year? Yes. Does Sonos introduce a new recommendation-worthy product each year? Yes. This year Sonos simplified its naming scheme across all its products, launched a free Android control app for phones and tablets, and introduced the $299 PLAY:3, a smaller, lower priced entry into the Sonos line. For the uninitiated, Sonos is a dead simple way to add music to every room in your house – each room can be grouped together with other rooms, or can play its own soundtrack; music can come from your PC or the Internet. The $399 PLAY:5 is still the better sounding unit, but the smaller PLAY:3 can fit in tighter spaces. If you assign two PLAY:3’s to act as a stereo pair, their combined output is preferable to a single PLAY:5. You can also BYOS (Bring Your Own Speakers) with the $499 CONNECT:AMP or jack into your home theater system with the $349 CONNECT. You can buy a dedicated Sonos CONTROL-er ($349), or use any iOS or Android device you happen to have lying around; either way, even the biggest technophobe will have no trouble using – or even setting up – the system. Warning: Sonos has been shown to be addictive. Buying a starter system for a couple of rooms may seem relatively inexpensive, but you will soon find that you “need” to add rooms to the system.

However, if you only want music in one room and you have an iDevice, there are dozens of sound docks vying for your attention. But what if you have an Android phone? Google doesn’t mandate that Android phones adhere to any standard size or port layout, and there isn’t a big enough market for any one Android phone for it to be profitable to build speaker docks for them. Philips saw this chaos as an opportunity, and came up with a unique sliding/rotating connector on the ($162) Fidelio Docking Speaker for Android. It works – I tried about a dozen devices, from the Galaxy Nexus to Motorola’s XOOM tablet – and they all fit, though some fiddling was required in some cases, so this is one where you may want to test it with your phone/tablet in the store. The good news is that sound quality equals, or perhaps slightly exceeds what you should expect at this price level. The bad news is that Philips is cheating – the docking connector is just to keep your phone or tablet charged. To actually play music, you’ll need to connect to the speaker over Bluetooth, a process I always find annoying and sometimes error-prone. Philips includes a remote control and has a music management app for good measure, but I wish it would take the extra step and build a music playback app that outputs digital signals through the microUSB connector, then does D/A conversion in the unit itself.

I often recommend headphones as a great accessory for music players and phones – most work with any device brand/OS, they dramatically improve the audio experience over the cheap earbuds that came in the box. The investment in a good pair of headphones can be enjoyed even as you upgrade to the latest iWhatever. There are terrific headphones at the $100 price point, but if you really want to invest and you were somehow unaffected by the economy, may I suggest ($1350) Ultimate Ears 18 Pro Custom In-Ear Monitors? It will be a truly unique gift, as each pair is custom made for the recipients’ ears (you should also budget for a $75 to an audiologist for the mold making). The UE18’s have six, yes, six individual drivers in each monitor, and the sound quality is astonishing. Sure, there are diminishing returns beyond excellent non-custom headphones such as Ultimate Ears TripleFi 10 ($399) or Shure’s SE535 ($549) – both of which I highly recommend, and those can be found on sale, while the UE18’s… not so much. Still, the difference is easily audible, particularly in the bass region; the UE18’s reveal octaves of bass that lesser monitors cannot reproduce. (Note: I was not able to compare them to comparably priced Westone or JH Audio monitors, even though SlashGear has reviewed the JH16 Pro’s. Those have been customized for Vince’s ears, while these will only fit mine). My sole complaint with the UE18’s is minor: they come in a great little hard aluminum case suitable for roadies, which is bulkier and heavier than the ballistic nylon travel cases Shure uses, which are better for traveling light and using the headphones inflight. That’s a quibble. At this price, you should expect to be amazed, and these things are amazing.

Honorable Mention:

If you find yourself with an Xbox and Kinect system this holiday season, go to the Zune Marketplace (on your Xbox or on the web) and buy Fruit Ninja Kinect. For the life of me I can’t figure out the Microsoft Points-to-real-money exchange rate, but the game costs about $6. Your soon-to-be-sore arms may never forgive me, but I am firmly convinced that one of the best Kinect experiences – along with Dance Central 2 (which somehow makes aerobics fun) – is a fruit slicing iPhone game.

Those external lights add bulk and they don’t look very nice either. The Qualcomm mirasol eReader uses an internal light that is similar to the light in the cool demo that Flex Lighting is showing off on video. The demo shows off a new LED-based light that is used inside an eReader eliminating the need for that external light.

The Flex Lighting light layer can be turned on or off and promises to slurp little power when on. It also claims to not interfere with normal operation of the eReader when the light isn’t on. The special light layer is designed to offer a more uniform distribution of light making it operate more like a traditional backlight. Check out the video below to see the demo for yourself.

[via Electronista]

Jawbone made its refund offer, giving eager customers their 100 bucks back and not even insisting that they return the band itself. It scores itself a point for that. Unfortunately it waited more than a month to react properly, rather than freezing sales within days of the first problems emerging, and more to the point it pushed out a gadget that you’d think even the briefest of quality control would have shown flawed. It loses a hundred points for that.

Software arguably has an easier go of things. There’s a case to be made that it’s better to get your product out there, in the wild, and then tweak out any bugs with timely software updates. The end result is a reluctance to bring anything out of beta, with that “it’s still in tests” excuse in hand to roll out should Bad Things Happen. Hardware, though, is a very different story. “Beta” is far harder to stomach when you’ve paid for the latest gadget and had it come up short.

Mac developer Matt Gemmell wrote recently about the low expectations of the PC industry: the manufacturers cobbling together mediocre hardware, the reviewers granting that hardware a pass, and consumers forgiving a multitude of sins because the price is so darn low. His reference point is, among others, Apple, though the Cupertino company has demonstrated how even a track record of polish can be flawed by a “beta” experiment.

Feedback on Siri has soured in several quarters, with the virtual personal assistant – or its limitations – seeing criticism for falling short of what users expect. Perhaps Apple set itself up for failure there, with particularly high standards meaning any beta has a lot to live up to, but either way you dress it there’s a sense that the product didn’t quite match up to the promise of the glossy adverts.

We have a right to expect products that have been tested, reviewed, re-tested and re-reviewed until they deliver what’s promised. However, we also have a responsibility for consistency: if we didn’t prioritize, with our purchases, the product that is rushed to market quickest, maybe we could expect manufacturers to be more considered and thorough with their quality control.

That’s a difficult thing to argue for among a group of eager geeks. I know that I certainly don’t enjoy waiting. The Verizon Galaxy Nexus “delay” – inasmuch as an undated product can be considered delayed, Verizon would no doubt like us to point out – is arguably a good example of the tense dynamic.

If the issue is to do with the 4G variant’s LTE implementation, isn’t it better to hold off from launching until that flaw has been polished out? Alternatively, you run the risk of encountering bugs like the volume issue on the HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus, only with 4G being such a headline feature Verizon, Google and Samsung would likely drown in a sea of negative wailing. Should your gizmo turn out to have a hardware flaw, not something that can be finessed with a software update, woe betide if you rushed it to market.

As reviewers – whether that means on a site like SlashGear, in customer feedback at stores like Amazon, or as the “nominated geek” among friends and family – we have a responsibility to not apologize for tech that falls short. Manufacturers and vendors, meanwhile, have to recognize that early-adopters are a hungry, impatient sort, and that sating our immediate desires with products can lead to headaches all round if they turn out to be underbaked. The high-speed tech treadmill has become an addiction, and it’s one that’s crying out for some common sense.

Since that official launch, there have been some issues with the UP wristband that have some owners complaining. Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman has posted up a letter to all users of the UP bracelet to apologize for the performance issues that are keeping many people from using the device as it was intended. According to Rahman, the issue with the UP devices has been pinpointed to a pair of capacitors inside the band for the power system that are failing.

The issue with the band generally surfaces in the first 7-10 days of use according to the maker. Jawbone is taking it on the chin and is offering any UP buyer a full refund with no questions asked. They will even allow you to keep the UP bracelet and still get your money back. I would wager that a new version would be made and offered for sale. The question is will buyers still be interested after the issues that have plagued the current system.

Let me take you on a brief recent history.

[Image credit: purplemattfish]

Earlier this year when Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, it took less than an hour for me to head to the e-retail giant’s site, find the tablet, and pre-order it. I didn’t consider the fact that I have an iPad that I hardly use or that I was spending $200 on a whim. No, all I could think about was getting my hands on the latest and greatest product of the day.

I’ve been here before. I bought a second e-reader after I reasoned that the first one I had just wasn’t cutting the mustard (it was), and even though it would have been smarter for me to buy the iPad’s keyboard accessory, I instead decided to buy a MacBook Air because, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

As I look further back at my product purchases over the years, a similar scenario plays out more often than I’d like to admit. I see something I think I’d like, I determine that whatever it would replace is falling short, and plunk down the cash to get it.

Some people call that an issue. I have always called it a part of my life.

But I’m here today to admit my problem and make a stand. No longer will I look at the latest technology launch and jump at buying it before I think it through. As tempting as it might be, I have to consider the closet in my office that went from housing a few spare computer parts to a graveyard for old and retired products that were put to sleep before their time.

I’m under no false pretense. I know that the next time Apple unveils an iPad, I’ll want to be first in line to buy it. And even though I have no plans to pull my Wii out of the closet for one last gaming hurrah, I’m fully aware that pulling my hand from my wallet to preorder the Wii U will be difficult.

But enough is enough. It’s about time that I appreciate the spectacular products that engineers, product designers, and countless other professionals create for us. It’s time that I realize that the grass really isn’t always greener on the other side, and sometimes, an itchy trigger finger is more a liability than, as I’ve believed in the past, a virtue in tech-buying situations.

So, consider this my personal intervention; a moment for me to reflect on the past and determine how I can move forward — rationally and without buyer’s remorse.

A clever airfoil-shaped ramp around which the air is channelled, and an oscillating base – that can be tilted – add up to quieter, more effective heating. There’s also no unpleasant burning smell, which you can get from traditional bar heaters. Meanwhile, the Dyson Hot can also work as a regular fan for cool air, too.

A remote control, for adjusting temperature, airflow and turning on and off the oscillation, is included. It’s also slightly bowed and magnetic, so that it can be safely stored on top of the Hot itself rather than getting lost down the back of your sofa.

Unfortunately, all this heating goodness doesn’t come cheap. The Dyson Hot AM04 is available now, priced at £269.99 in the UK and $399.99 in the US. It comes in both silver and black/blue finishes.

The device is designed to eliminate the tangle of cables that often goes with working on the road. The device will send a HD signal out to a TV, projector, or computer screen and allows the TV or projector remote to control a MHL-enabled smartphone or tablet for hands free operation. The TV or projector connected to the device has to support HDMI CEC for the remote control function to work.

The DVDO Mobile has an integrated 20-inch USB-A connector and an 8-inch micro USB connector as well. The HDMI cable is 36-inches long and the adapter can connect to computers as well to allow data transfer between the connected devices and a computer. That means you can charge, sync, and shoot video out to other devices with one gadget. Pricing is unknown at this time.

The DJ controller was specifically designed for use with the Traktor Pro 2 software that is used on other DJ systems as well. The S2 is intended to be a more portable alternative to the control S4 with four decks. The S2 uses the same jog wheels that the S4 uses and the S2 has ergonomic controls for cueing, looping, and effects.

The integrated sound card is a 24-bit/96kHz unit with dual stereo outputs. Using the two playback decks and the sample decks the DJ can add up to eight simultaneous one-shot samples or beat-synced loops to the mix. The S2 also has a third channel for more creative techniques. Pricing and availability is unknown. You can see the deck in use in the video below.

[via Musicindustrynewswire]

Sony has been working on a solution that would allow the hard of hearing to be able to watch a movie in the cinema along with the general audiences with no need to have the films subtitled. The glasses are simply called subtitle glasses at this point, they appear to be very bulky and odd looking, but they are able to shoot the subtitles onto the little screens in a green font. BBC News tested the glasses with a man that is hard of hearing.

He said that the glasses work very well and you get the feeling that the subtitles and the film are one, not that the subtitles are close and the film is far away. If these glasses make it into production, there is a long list of things that the tech could be used for. It could for instance give the deaf a real-time transcription of a conversation or be used to show other text for translations as well.

[via BBC]

A little black metal flap on the back flips down to show you a tall counter that will count down the next 1000 years! I guess you can pass this thing down for the next ten generations of your family if you want. There is also a dial on the back for 100 years and a dial for oil change. That last one is very strange. The oil change shows when the watch needs serviced and all the counters reset to zero when they are complete.

The coolest part to me is the rotating spires for the month that spin to show three months at a time. The price and availability for this watch is unknown. I am sure with the complexity it boasts this will not be a cheap watch. I wonder if the case is strong enough to resist scratches in the pocket.

There are no details on those processors right now. The Smarbo for Japan also has a camera and 38 different sensors. The sensors include a gyro, accelerometer, and range detection. The bot is able to clean floors in a 100 square meter section in about 90 minutes. All the sensors allow the Smarbo to avoid all the obstacles in its path and find the charge station when it’s done.

The vacuum also has a spot mode that when activated has the bot cleaning in a 1.5m square circle. The vacuum includes a remote control for operating it for across the room. Smarbo measures 355x355x93mm and weighs 3.7kg. When in use it produces 52dB of sound. The bot will hit Japan on October 1 for $1,175. That is not a cheap robot vacuum at all.

[via TechCrunch]

Qmadix has a new product for cleaning your gadgets and screens that is a foam spray that will not run into the cracks of your gadget. You apply the foam and then use a microfiber towel include with the kit to rub the foam in and remove the smears and smudges on the screen. The microfiber cloth is treated with DuraBan to prevent bacteria from growing.

The foam is static free and dust resistant to help your screen stay clean longer. The can the foam sprays out of uses no CFCs and the foam has a fresh scent to it. The can is 1.9 ounces and sized to allow you to carry it onto an airplane. The cleaning kit with the microfiber cloth is $19.99 but the foam cleaner can be purchased alone for $9.99.

The new TH8 RS is the gated shifter that is designed to go with that T500 RS racing wheel. It connects to the computer via USB and has two modes. It can be used as a gated shifter with seven forwards gears and one reverse gear. The shifter can also be converted for use as a sequential shifter with a plus and minus position for sequential shifting.

The stick is 5.12″ tall and the knob on top can be replaced with any universal shift knob for a real vehicle. The angle and position of the shift plate can be adjusted and the shifter has a clamp mechanism for holding it tightly onto the desk or table. The clamp works with surfaces 1 to 5mm thick. The TH8 RS isn’t cheap; it will sell for $179.99 when it ships in October.

The research gang spent two man-years developing the SenseCam. After coming up with the .NET Gadgeteer they were able to develop a similar product in a matter of hours. The .NET Gadgeteer platform is a combination of flexible hardware and .NET-based software that allows users to create small gadgets in a few hours or less. The gang behind the project thinks it has great potential for fast device prototyping and it will be offered as a retail product.

The .NET Gadgeteer software is available as a download now and the retail hardware needed is up for pre-order at GHI Electronics. The system comes with a bunch of different modules that can be connected to give different functionalities. The modules allow the system to take photos, play sound, sense the environment, communicate with other devices, and interact wit the user. The kit also has USB ports for attaching to a computer. The pre-order kit sells for $249.95 and is called the FEZ Spider Starter Kit. Shipments are set to start on September 30.

The Power Up is a toy made by Tailor Toys and it has a little electric motor on the back, a long stick, and a propeller on the back. The capacitor is actually on the front of the paper plane and the propeller is on the back in a pusher layout. The capacitor gets power from three AA batteries in a little charge box.

A 20-second charge is enough power for 90 seconds of flight. It seems that I would have the same issue of balance with any paper plane I made for this motor. You can buy the Power Up for $17.49 on Amazon and it looks really cool. See the thing in action on the video below.

[via GizMag]

The device is the Micro BR digital recorder BR-80. The little gadget is impressively small at 5-7/16-inches W x 3-7/16-inches D x 7/8-inch H and weighs in at about five ounces. That makes it very portable and easy to take with you on the road. The machine runs on a pair of AA batteries with a rechargeable option. The music is recorded to SD cards and it works with SONAR X1 LE software on your computer and the recorder connects to your PC via USB.

The recorder can record eight tracks at once and supports up to 32GB SDHC cards. It has a MTR mode with 16-bit depth and can record eBand and play them back. It can also playback 16-bit WAV and 64 kbps to 320 kbps MP3′s. The live recording mode supports 16-bit WAV and 64-320 kbps MP3s. The device also has a library of built-in backing and rhythm patterns. You can buy the recorder right now for $290.

[via TechCrunch]

Heather Clark and a team of scientists in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Northeastern University are working on the project to make the tech work. The process includes the injection of selected nanoparticles under the skin. The particles leave no mark on the skin that is visible, but they fluoresce when the particles are exposed to a target molecule like sodium or glucose.

The modified iPhone can then determine the level of florescence and can then determine the amount of sodium or glucose present in the blood. This method of reading glucose is particularly appealing to those that have diabetes because it doesn’t involve having to stick fingers with needles to draw blood. The process might be able to track the amount of oxygen in the blood as well.

[Modded iPhone may be able to track oxygen, sodium and glucose in the blood is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved. ]]> http://www.slashgear.com/modded-iphone-may-be-able-to-track-oxygen-sodium-and-glucose-in-the-blood-22166854/feed/ 1 http://www.slashgear.com/gerbers-new-steady-multitool-has-a-tabletop-tripod-inside-22166845/ http://www.slashgear.com/gerbers-new-steady-multitool-has-a-tabletop-tripod-inside-22166845/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:51:06 +0000 Shane McGlaun http://www.slashgear.com/?p=166845 I have seen a bunch of Gerber multitools over the years and I have even owned a few of them. I tend to lose them though. Everyone has a digital camera today and a bunch of people carry those little digital cams with them everywhere and a tripod would come in handy in many instances. The Gerber multitool has a new feature in some of the latest versions.

The new version is called the Steady and it has a pop-up tripod screw that will hold a small digital camera onto the top of the tool. Each side of the tool has little gray legs that flip down and flare out to prop the front of the tool up making the multitool into a little tripod. The Steady will make it much easier to shoot group photos and self-pics wherever you roam.

The tool has a bunch of other implements in it too with a knife and 12 other tools. The Steady will ship in 2012 sometime and will cost $65. This would be a great thing for the hiker or camper that wants to photo themselves roughing it.

[via GearJunkie]

As we’ve seen from other such tracking systems, the bracelet itself is a basic collection of sensors – Jawbone isn’t specifying exactly what, but we’re guessing an accelerometer figures prominently – along with a battery inside a waterproof housing. Both pink and blue designs are shown, along with an iOS app for your iPhone.

That app will gobble down all your movement, sleep and nutrition information, and then work with “an open platform” (yet to be specified) to “motivate you with personal and social recommendations and challenges tailored to your goals.” We’ve seen similar systems from Nike with the similarly iOS-dependent Nike+, that aggregates your exercise data into an ongoing log, as well as more complex systems that can measure stress and other factors.

Jawbone says that the UP will launch later in 2011, though hasn’t said exactly when or for how much.

LG has a new robot vacuum that sounds interesting called the VR6172LVM. This little robot vacuum is a round bot that looks pretty much like all of the other robot vacuums out there. The big difference in this LG offering is that the bot has a special feature for testing itself and telling the owner what is wrong and needs to be fixed.

The bot has a Self Voice Over Diagnostic that will run a series of tests on 14 different components and then uses a robot voice to tell you what isn’t working. The bot is also thin and will do your daily cleanups without you having to mess with it. The VR6172LVM will launch soon for 779,000 won.

[via Akihabara News]

The orange-flavored soft drink – sold in the UK – will be released as Turbo Tango and used as a promotional tie-in with upcoming film The Inbetweeners. A limited edition, it will package the drink in an aerosol can and spray it out as a foam, perfect for those moments where you’re thirsty but can’t be bothered marshaling your lazy, rubbery lips into clinging to the rim of a glass or can.

Britvic aren’t saying much about the environmental impact of the new packaging, which is obviously more wasteful than your average soda can. Still, your average soda can doesn’t allow you to stage Bugsy Malone-style impromptu splurge gun fights. Turbo Tango will go on sale in the UK this summer, priced at £1.60 ($2.57) for 375ml.

[via Twitter]

Hardware

Most domestic robot vacuums – such as from iRobot, Samsung and LG – have opted for a discrete, almost delicate design; something that won’t upset the children when it trundles into their rooms and nudges through their toys. Neato, though, have gone an entirely different direction. The XV-15 (like its XV-11 US cousin) is battleship grey and resolutely masculine, while its squared-off front bumper is broad and blunt-nosed.

What makes the XV-15 special, Neato claims, is its intelligent room mapping. Whereas the Roomba basically operates on a bump-and-rotate system, relying on repetition to cover the room, the XV-15′s conning tower houses a laser array which is used to map out what’s around it, and then continuously update that map as objects move or people walk past. The chunky bumper is an impact sensor, but the XV-15 aims to spot obstacles before it hits them.

In the box is the vacuum itself, a docking station for recharging and a reel of magnetic tape, the latter used to mark off areas where you don’t want the XV-15 to go. Usually with a robo-vac that would include the top of staircases, though Neato has given its model enough smarts to avoid tumbling down several flights. The docking station is basically a couple of metal strips – against which contacts on the rounded edge of the vacuum butt up – and a laptop-style AC adapter inside.

Unfortunately the mains cable on our review unit was unplugged and, with no reference to what’s inside the dock in the Getting Started guide, it was trial & error to figure out why the XV-15 wouldn’t charge. Still, the design does at least mean you can unwrap more cable and move the dock further away from the mains socket, or indeed unplug the AC adapter altogether and plug it directly into the DC input on the vacuum.

Dust is collected in a plastic box set into the top of the XV-15, easily tugged out and, aside from the grey upper panel, transparent so you can see whether it needs to be emptied. A paper filter is held in place by the easily-removed door. Rather than simply using sweeping brushes, Neato has installed a proper vacuum system that, the company proudly claims, is based on jet-engine technology.

Controls consist of a small monochrome backlit display, scroll buttons, a back button, select key and large orange power/start button. Usage can be as straightforward as hitting the orange button twice and letting the XV-15 do its thing, or you can set up cleaning schedules. You can have the robo-vac run daily, every other day or three days a week.

Performance

If Neato hadn’t made the jet-engine reference, we would’ve. The XV-15 is plain loud in comparison to robo-vac rivals, the first few seconds of powering on filled by the increasing whine of the “centrifugal compression-impeller” as it gets up to speed. It’s quieter than a manual cleaner – and of course you can leave the room that the robot one is working in – but it’s definitely noticeable. You probably wouldn’t want to schedule an overnight clean, for instance.

As soon as you hit the start button, the XV-15 moves a pace forward and slowly turns around, playing its (invisible) laser around the room to map it out. Then it gets going, initially running around the edges of the room before criss-crossing the middle, all the time maintaining an evolving map of the surrounding area. That map doesn’t require line-of-sight to the charging station, either; once it’s done one room, the robo-vac can trundle through any doors it has spotted and carry on its hard work in any further rooms.

Neato XV-15 in action:

Object avoidance uses a mixture of old-fashioned bump sensors and new-fangled lasers, and often depends on whereabouts obstacles are. A low sofa confused the XV-15, its lasers seemingly low enough to tell it there was space underneath, but the body of the cleaner not small enough to fit. Instead, it made its way along the edge, bumping and turning, bumping and turning. The bump sensors themselves are reasonably sensitive, though the XV-15 would push laptop power supplies across the floor until their wires stopped them. It’s a brave little cleaner, too: it will try to scoot its way under chairs and around blockages we assumed it would merely bypass.

If the battery runs low mid-clean – not something we experienced in our “compact” London apartment, but something those who don’t live in shoeboxes might encounter – then the XV-15 can track straight back to the charging dock, rejuice and then retrace its steps to continue cleaning where it left off. Similarly, when it reckons all the rooms are done, it will go back to the dock and fall asleep again. Unfortunately, if you manually cancel the cleaning routine, there’s no “return to base” option: you have to carry it back instead.

Cleaning performance is surprisingly good. We were suitably disgusted by the hair and dust the XV-15 picked up, though performance was better on hard floors like wood or tile than carpets. Despite Neato’s claims about the square prow being good for getting into corners, however, we found there was a narrow strip around the edge of the room which still inevitably needed some manual attention. Still, that’s the sort of thing you could do with a compact, handheld vacuum, rather than dragging out your full cleaner.

That’s not the only annoyance. Although “set and forget” is the promise, there’s a little homework to be done if you want the robo-vac experience to go smoothly. Despite the object avoidance systems, we did find situations where the XV-15 would get stuck. Shoelaces are a particular hazard, getting caught up inside and eventually prompting the robot to shut down, and trailing cables, papers or envelopes, socks and other small detritus can prove similarly perilous.

On a couple of occasions, even though we’d done a sweep – pardon the pun – of the rooms to tuck away anything we thought might trip the XV-15 up, we still returned home a few hours later to find the robo-vac had got stuck and gone to sleep in protest. Unfortunately, there’s no way of telling exactly how far through its cleaning routine this occurred, unless you go round on your hands & knees examining the state of dust on the floor.

In a world where bathroom scales can talk to your iPhone via WiFi, is it too much to ask that your vacuum cleaner does the same? Perhaps it is, but we wish there was some sort of alert/update system that could take the mystery out of the whole process.

Wrap-Up

At $399 in the US (for the functionally-identical XV-11) or £379.99 in the UK (when it goes on sale in late July), the Neato XV-15 is around the same as a mid-range Dyson. That’s expensive for a vacuum cleaner, especially since you’ll also need some sort of manual option to tidy up around the edges, too. Performance is also a little less thorough than a Dyson can manage, but a daily tidy-up is less of a chore with the XV-15 thanks to its automation.

A robot vacuum cleaner is obviously a luxury item, but if you’re going to treat yourself then you may as well get a reasonably intelligent one. Neato’s object-avoidance systems aren’t foolproof but they’re a lot better than other, cheaper robo-vacs, and the dirt-grabbing performance is solid too. The industrial looks may put off some, but the XV-15 is a robot pet we’d like to keep around.

And that’s not all, these prints react to backlights! Welcome back to psychedelia! What Kobundo have done is to print images to look rather unassumingly monotone in normal light, while with a backlight shining at them, they appear perfectly bright and colored correctly as they’d normally appear with no special light at all using traditional printing techniques. But how is this single pass accomplished?

In a rather simple way, as it turns out.

By taking out CMYK cartridges not needed for certain prints and replacing them with the special luminous alternate RGB inks, the first step is accomplished. Once this is set up correctly, the folks at Kobundo start up their specially formulated software created specifically for this technique, running the printer all at once for one single dual-image print.

As Keizo Ohashi of Kobundo notes:

“The effect changes according to the material we choose. So in the beginning we have to go by trial and error. Here the yellow Lamborghini turns red. But the colors might be stronger or weaker, and conversely it is difficult to turn a red Lamborghini yellow. This is something people won’t understand until they try it. People who have some experience can understand it, but in the beginning they don’t.”

“We want people to see the accuracy of these colors and once the see it they understand, because “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Rather than people just saying “It glows”, we want people to be more surprised and say “It’s beautiful!”.”

This technique can be seen in the video below, as presented by Diginfo:

Sound like a technique you’d like to try out? Finally, a gift for your weird uncle who lives in a backlight world, only emerging from his den of darkness for more pizza and video games. A delight!

[via Akihabara News]

Sadly, there are several other reasons why good companies make bad products.

Our Customers Love It, So We’re Giving Them More of the Same

If you haven’t read Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harper Collins, 2003), your business education is missing a core component. The book lays out a premise for what seems to be a good idea: successful companies listening to their customers and serving them more of what they want. Sounds great, right? But if the market is evolving away from that type of product, listening to your existing customers can be fatal.

For example, take Symbian. For years, Nokia sold tens of millions of Symbian phones, and as recently as nine months ago, the company pointed to research showing that its customers loved their phones. And they did. So while Nokia did see fit to adapt Symbian to the new touchscreen paradigm, it saw no reason to radically change its platform strategy and upset their huge Symbian customer base.

The problem was that when these same happy customers went to buy new phones, they discovered that iOS and Android phones were better in new metrics of apps, media and user experience; Symbian may have been familiar, but it didn’t measure up. Sales and profits dropped, and Nokia had to radically change course.

The Distribution Channel Wanted It (Actual Customers? Not So Much)

Another instance of when listening a bit too closely to your customers can be a problem is when that customer is a middleman, not the actual consumer. There are plenty of examples, but one that jumps out at me is LG’s Style-i pen-like Bluetooth message alert dialer thingie from back in 2006. There was almost no practical use for this gizmo, and as soon as this was announced I demanded one for my collection to use as a prop during presentations of what not to do.

When I asked LG why they built it, they said that Verizon Wireless was looking for a unique Bluetooth accessory and they developed it at the carrier’s request. Just looking at the product and trying to describe it to a regular consumer should have been enough to kill the product, but, at the time, Verizon Wireless was LG’s largest customer in the U.S. – and LG didn’t want to say no. (Ironically, while this may have been a terrible product, making it and staying in the carrier’s good graces for its main product line was probably the right business decision overall.)

A Product Of One

Sometimes the product itself is great, but it is competing in a category where the product itself is simply not enough – it really needs to fit into a larger ecosystem. If you cannot get content owners to sign on to your new optical disc format, you can have the world’s best player and it won’t sell. If your product requires integration, you’d better ensure there are integrators with both the capabilities and incentives to do that work, or the best product will be left hanging.

For a contemporary example, take Apple’s iPad: Apple has an army of software developers supporting it, scores of accessories manufacturers developing complementary products for it, and a fully stocked store selling digital media content. Building a nice piece of hardware that does basically the same web browsing / email trick as the iPad without the rest of the ecosystem is not going to be competitive.

It May Eventually Be a Great Product (We Just Shipped it Before It Was Finished)

This is so common that in many cases, the company knows the product needs more work – and ships it anyway. Sometimes the company even announces that the rest of the features (or bug fixes) are coming down the road. So why would a company ship before the product is fully baked? It turns out that there are at least four distinct reasons why a company might ship a product when it clearly needs more work, and one of them is a direct result of Steve Jobs’ success.

1. To please Wall Street. Public companies have to report earnings quarterly, and the pressure to hit those numbers – especially once guidance has been given – can be intense. Shipping a product early often creates problems down the road, but you can always deal with problems down the road… down the road. Or so it seems at the time.

2. To make internal numbers. Sometimes Wall Street isn’t the driving factor, but internal projections and politics. Getting a product out the door and getting revenue in for your division can be the difference between being fired and being promoted. Perversely, in large companies where the success or failure of individual products does not impact the bottom line directly, this tactic can actually work. It goes something like this: ship buggy product, get promoted, blame failure of buggy product on unlucky sap who got your old job; if the buggy product is ever fixed, take credit for launching that product.

3. To hit a sales window. The most obvious of these is the end of year holiday sales season – if you don’t have your product on the shelves by Black Friday, you will miss a rush of sales that will not materialize again for another year. Similarly, if you’re selling a product to college students, missing the back to school sales season means missing out on sales you’ll never get back. A sales window is not necessarily a fixed date on a calendar, it can also be driven by competitors’ release schedules. If you want to make a big sales splash before a competitor launches their much anticipated device or service, but your product is not actually ready yet, there is pressure to release it now anyway.

4. Thinking You Are Steve Jobs Syndrome. There are times when an iterative product development process – getting something out the door and getting customer feedback before making further changes – is the best approach. This works especially well with software and online services. But even with consumer electronics, there are fears that if you spend too long working on a product, you get diminishing returns from those added features or polish. In other words, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” You also don’t want to be in development forever, after all, Steve Jobs is known for saying, “real artists ship.”

But that’s where Steve Jobs really trips people up – by setting an unusually high bar for launching products with just the minimum features needed to create or reinvent a category. Jobs gets credit for being a perfectionist, for setting trends, and for taking technology and creating stylish, friendly, and profitable packages. But Jobs’ true genius is his gift for understanding what can be left out of these products. Unfortunately, many products do not go through product development with Steve Jobs, and instead of being “good enough” they are actually “missing critical features.”

Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments.

This piece of equipment is what amounts to a coffin for your device, though the only way your device would be dead inside is if you don’t charge it up every couple o’ days as you normally would. One of the desirable aspects we’d like to see with a piece of gear such as this is the ability to use the battery power we’re working with here to also charge the device inside as it outputs audio, but as it turns out, the fact that this device uses all of its battery power on the amplifier is a positive element as it provides a much longer day of listening to tunes that sucking all that energy up into a device that doesn’t need it (because it’s just playing music, after all.) The device I’m speaking of is the HTC Sensation, a brand new device currently being carried by T-Mobile here in the states, outputting audio via the stock Music app working with Google’s Music Beta.

For a full guide on Music Beta, head over to Android Community and get you some education!

Audio

Now what we demonstrate the device as doing here in the video first is playing some music. This the case does very well. In fact this case has such a nice amplifier I was surprised at the sound of it, and that’s saying something. Have a look at how well it handles Outkast’s B.O.B., right out of the box. You’ll notice some less-than-amazing sounds until the case is closed, at which point it acts just like a speakerbox should, bass and all.

Protection in Practice

Next there’s some less than awesome news. Sort of. Depends on how you look at it. The following has a couple of clips that show off how the device fares in water and tossed down a flight of cement stairs. I’m sure you’ll be thrilled to know that the case is, indeed, waterproof, as waterproof as you’re going to want it to be, and that’s 100%. Not that we’ve taken this case down extremely deep into the ocean or anything, but a pot of water certainly didn’t harm it. Whether or not the water seeps in was a test we had to do, but because of the obvious cues seen in the rubber around the case, the plastic which pushes it in, and the fact that there’s no cracks anywhere in the construction, its obvious that this case is safe.

Next video you’ll find the slightly bad news. While the device we place inside the case is pretty hardcore – an LG text and voice phone from around a year ago or so on Verizon, you’ll see that it’s not protection that you’ll be having to worry about. On the contrary, all the items in the case are kept relatively safe. Instead what you’re going to see is a rather concerning re-arrangement of the items inside due to the fact that there’s nothing stopping the batteries from popping out of their sockets other than an ill-prepared battery cover. Would this sort of situation bum you out? Worst thing that’s going to happen to a device I’m carrying is the music will stop – and that’s something I cannot abide.

Wrap-Up

What you’ve got here, again, is a rather odd device. I’d never before considered such a thing, instead relying on plastic bags and complete forgoing of carrying my devices whilst anywhere near water. Now all that’s changed, or it would be if this case wasn’t so gol-darn bulky. I imaging a mountain climber might have the need for such a thing, but until I start climbing mountains, this little winner’s just going to have to stay in the closet. On the other hand, I may go fishing this summer at some point, during which I may have to bust out the tunes for a little bit of fishy dance action.

*Yes I know music scares away the fish, and will therefor do no such thing. Delicious, delicious sunfish will have to wait until they’re in my belly to hear the Bad Brains.

ALSO note that you can purchase this case at Grace Digital Audio’s site for $49.99 today.

These LED gloves are likely the successors of glow sticks. The gloves can be purchased in pre-made sets like Skittles, Bunny, and Flintstoned; or you can make your own. EmazingLights also sells Rave Masks to compliment their individual LED components and accessories. The Youtube video below highlights some experienced Glovers showing off their skill.

Gloves from EmazingLights range in price from $44.99 to $54.99. The batteries last about 10 hours, which is supposed to be a good two events for most users. The failure rate for LEDs is very low (about .01%), so consumers can buy these LED devices with relative confidence.

Going to the club this weekend? Grab a pair of LED implanted gloves and try your hand at “Gloving.” Are you an experinced Glover looking to showcase your talent? Post a link to your Youtube video in the comments section so we can check it out.

[via Youtube]

Each outlet on the Pivot Power can bend or flex to help find a more convenient angle to plug something in. There is a hinge between every outlet on the strip. This allows more flexibility when choosing how to plug something in, literally. They only swivel in the side to side direction; it would have been nice to see one or two of the outlets bend in the vertical direction also. But as it is, the Pivot Power could probably help simplify the process many of us have to deal with when trying to find a free outlet.

It comes in white with six feet of cord and six flexible outlets. Six outlets is not enough for most of us, so we will have to buy a few. Just don’t give in to the temptation to daisy-chain the power strips together in a long line with one plugged in to another. It offers 672 Joules of surge protection, and is available for $29.99. Not the only power strip solution of its kind, but we like the overall design. It looks like it will match Ikea style décor. (That may or may not be a positive for you.)

One of the biggest complaints consumers have had in the past with any GPS was the costly expense of updating the maps. In some cases the new map download was more than half the price of simply buying another GPS. Owners of the RoadMate 5175T-LM will no longer have to worry, as free lifetime map updates are included with purchase. This will help the GPS stay more competitive, since Google Maps users never need to purchase upgrades.

The web browser is also a nice touch. Not everyone has a smartphone yet, and browsing the web is very cumbersome on most traditional cell phones. Giving users the ability to use the GPS for quick browsing may cause some consumers to delay the purchase of a smartphone and simply rely on their GPS. Not having a monthly data plan or other monthly charges is also another benefit over a smartphone.

The Magellan RoadMate 5175T-LM has a 5 inch hi-resolution screen that can be viewed in portrait or landscape. The suggested retail price is $299.99 and is likely to hit stores soon. With that kind of price tag, will consumers opt for the GPS, or decide to go for something with more features like a tablet? The RoadMate 5175T-LM definitely solves some of the main issues that have frustrated GPS users for years, but will it be enough to compete against new feature rich smartphones and tablets?

[via Magellan GPS]

In the past, attempts at producing a working jetpack were unsuccessful, or working models yielded such brief flights as to be impractical. But last month, Martin’s jetpack prototype successfully carried a dummy pilot on a flight that reached 5,000 feet above the South Island’s Canterbury Plains in New Zealand. The jetpack is made of twin V4 engines, and runs on gasoline (petrol). Its 4.5 gallon tank has an estimated range of 30 minutes flight time or 31 miles.

We won’t be able to take one to work just yet. The Jetpack is classified as an ultralight, and ultralights are not allowed to be flown over most populated areas. Martin hopes to begin selling to commercial customers or emergency response personnel by the end of this year, with public availability in early 2012. The cost is estimated at $100,000. Yes, that was $100k, another reason these are not going to be in every driveway in the suburbs.

[via Discovery]

The Docco Car app is part of a three app suite that will be available with the AVN-F01i. The other two apps are called “TwitDrive,” and “Car News Reader.” TwitDrive allows the driver to read tweets that were broadcast by their friends, and respond while at the wheel. That is right, while driving. Fujitsu Ten Ltd said when responding to tweets, the user will only have a pane of fixed tweets to choose from like “there is a traffic jam,” to keep the driver from being distracted. The Car News Reader sounds much safer; it reads out news headlines to the user. Right now the apps are available for iOS only, no word on Android compatibility.

The AVN-F01i is expected to release in July in Japan; no details about release over-seas. The retail price has not been officially set, but estimates are currently at 90,000 yen, or about $1,121. The apps are free. Users will download the apps to their iPhone by connecting directly to the AVN-F01i with a dedicated cable, not over-the-air. It sounds like a much better solution that putting an orange ball on the end of your antenna, but also significantly more expensive. What do you think? Is the price tag worth it, or will you just deal with the embarrassment of wandering around in search of your vehicle?

[via Tech On]

The bike flies via two ducted propellers, one in the front and back. There is no need for a tail rotor, because the propellers spin in opposite directions. The engine is a 1,170 cc 4-stroke that is capable of taking the hoverbike to altitudes of up to 10,000 feet and speeds of up to 173 miles per hour. The bike hasn’t undergone flight and safety testing, so we won’t be surprised if that pushes back the product launch by at least another year.

It looks impressive with its sleek Kevlar coated body, but we are not likely to see any flying around the forest any time soon. Thrill seekers will have to wait a while before they can actually experience the hoverbike for themselves. One concern we have about the bike’s design is the open duct area above the front and rear propellers. It seems like important body parts might accidentally get chopped off if they happen to fall in. The price is estimated to be $40,000, but that is likely to change as we get closer to the actual release.

[via Oh Gizmo]