Hasta La Gadget!

BlueAnt has introduced its latest audio offering, the Pump HD Sportsbuds aimed at athletes and fitness enthusiasts. With the earbuds comes Bluetooth connectivity and the promise of audiophile-grade audio quality, … Continue reading

The Zipi is a Kickstarter project that appears humble and almost silly on the surface, but that actually solves one of the biggest problems I have with day-to-day use of earbud headphones. I use earbuds whenever I leave the house, because exposing yourself to the noise of streets and other human beings going about their business is unconscionable, but getting them out of the way when you want to interact with people is a pain.

To solve this, the Zipi adds an around-the-neck strap to any existing pair of earbuds, with a simple magnetic clip-on design. It connects via magnets at the back of your neck, separates easily enough when you want to remove them entirely, and prevents your earbuds from just falling to the ground when you take them out of your ears.

Ordinarily when I remove earbuds on the go, I awkwardly throw them over one shoulder or roll them up and stuff them in a pocket. In scenario one, they almost always sneak off my shoulders and find their way to the floor where I step on them. In scenario two, getting them off and then putting them back on again amounts to a full-scale production, which is extremely annoying if you also happen to be carrying any bags or coffee or whatever.

I can still foresee potential issues with coat collars and other jazz with the Zipi, but it looks favorable when compared with the terrible, unending nightmare that is my current state of earbud cord management. Plus they’re only $6 per unit at the introductory early backer price, and they don’t seem to require any kind of advanced engineering that could cause innumerable shipping delays.

Project creator Frank Cho has a Master’s degree from MIT in AI, as well as a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in computer graphics, so he’s clearly got a good head on his shoulders. He makes no secret about the fact that the Zipi is his first foray into product design, but he has a realistic timeframe for delivery of early September and a fully functional prototype already built, so here’s hoping the Zipi meets its modest $6,000 funding goal.

Razer has launched four new headphones and earbuds, all of them falling in the Adaro series of products. With this roll out comes the Adaro In-Ear Analog earphones, the Stereo … Continue reading

Even wireless earbuds have wires, let’s be honest – they have to, in order to link one earbud to the other. It’s been an impossible barrier to cross in headphone design, with some exceptions that generally cost a whole lot of cash. Enter the Split, a new Kickstarter project that wants to untether one earbud from the other forever.

The Split isn’t bulky like previous designs, and it doesn’t require any fancy transmitters. Each unit is a contained piece of gadgetry, with its own battery built-in, and they’re only just slightly larger than standard earbuds, with bits that stick out slightly from either ear. They each have their own memory chip and processor, too, and they sync playback between one ear and the other (something founder Marco Scandurra says isn’t likely to fall out of sync, barring physical damage to the devices).

The biggest problem with these earphones is that they work independent of any devices, however. That means they only play locally stored music, uploaded to the Split buds themselves –which currently tops out at a max of 256MB – and can’t connect to your iPhone or Android device via Bluetooth or any other protocol.

While there’s not currently any workaround in sight to bring Bluetooth connectivity to the Split, there is a plan to make it usable with mobile devices in the early stages of development.

“There are plans for next year to make an app that is compatible with iOS and Android phones,” Scandurra explained. “With that app you will be able to manage and upload songs onto Split, and we are also planning on developing an adapter that can support Lighting connectors on iPhone and iPad devices, while the regular USB port will just need to be converted to mini USB to work with Android devices.”

Memory on the device is limited, and a means of loading it with songs which requires frequent shuttling of content back and forth isn’t going to work for most people. Scandurra says they’re working with their supplier to double space on the device to half a gig by next year, so that’s something at least. And if you’re an athlete looking for a completely tangle-free solution, you’re probably going to be decently happy with enough content to run a simple playlist or two.

Now of course, if you’re like me you’re terrified at this point about what the Split is doing in terms of radiating your brain. But the headset uses around 1,000 times less radiation than a Bluetooth headset, according to Split. And how do you control a music player that’s only an inch deep and resides inside your ears? With bites, of course. Each one has an accelerometer within to detect jaw motion for play/pause, volume control and track skipping.

Honestly, this is an extremely niche product that’s at least a little crazy looking. But Scandurra has a PhD in high-energy physics from the University of Leipzig in Germany, and held a post-doc position at MIT in the Physic Department so if he’s crazy, he’s also at least got the creds to make these real. The team behind Split is looking at December as a ship date, and backers can pre-order for only $29, which means you don’t have to be soft in the head to get on board. This is definitely an early version of experimental tech, but it could also be the ground floor for something big.

The constant curse of Apple’s earbuds—along with the lackluster sound they produce—is that you can rarely go more than 10 seconds before one side or the other pops out. Sprng—clips for Apple’s updated-in-2012 EarPods—wants to remedy that. And you know what? They do.

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