Throw the mic in the air like you just don’t care.
Catchbox is a new throwable microphone designed to liven up audience participation, and in turn reduce the faffing around that seems to occur whenever a conference turns to questions from the audience.
The brightly coloured padded cube houses a wireless microphone that doesn’t mind being tossed across a room or passed from person-to-person crowd surfing-style. In fact, it’s actively encouraged. That’s because, along with being able to sustain being dropped, the device has been engineered to automatically mute the sound when flying through the air or if it falls. The tech is patent-pending, apparently.
Although various smartphone apps and cloud-based tools have attempted to lower the barriers of audience participation at live events by enabling the audience to follow along on their own devices or take part in realtime polls, Catchbox’s makers reckon the humble microphone has been neglected.
“There are a number of products that are aimed towards increasing crowd engagement,” notes Mikelis Studers, CTO of Catchbox, citing event apps, voting systems and, of course, conventional wireless microphones. But these, he argues, can be pricey and complex to set up and deploy, or often require the audience to be educated first and/or download an app.
In contrast, Catchbox’s proposition couldn’t be any simpler. “Audiences understand the product immediately: it’s a throwable microphone,” he says.
The Finland-based hardware startup isn’t just targeting events with large audiences, such as tech conferences. Other markets include education, company meetings, and consultants (here I’m envisaging those team-building experts with their endless supply of counterintuitively awkward ice-breakers, or motivational speaker types).
“There is a high expected value from every group session in those fields so we want to provide a tool that would make each session more efficient,” says Studers. “[The] internet has created new ways for sharing. We want to enhance sharing of ideas when people physically come together”.
The Catchbox is available for pre-order today, priced at $549/€395, which includes a separate receiver that can be plugged into various sound systems including stereos, computers and professional sound equipment. It’s not the only product planned by Catchbox, either. Studers tells me that in future the company will expand in the area of “crowd engagement devices” and explore other revenue models.
Sony has been rather successful in selling the PlayStation 4, to the point where the PlayStation Network has strained under the load. To avoid making things worse, the company will be delaying some PSN features in Australia, Europe and New Zealand. For the first few days after the PS4 launch in these areas, friend activity will be disabled in both the What’s New and content info sections. Activity will come back once the initial frenzy is over, Sony says. The decision won’t make a big impact on gameplay when multiplayer and other core features will be available on day one, but it may catch a few players off-guard.
In a bid to get a slice of the lucrative karaoke market, musiXmatch, the song lyrics database and maker of accompanying mobile apps that let you view lyrics of songs you’re listening to, is getting into the hardware game.
Partnering with IK Multimedia, the UK/Italian company is releasing a “custom-designed” microphone accessory and updated app targeting karaoke enthusiasts, a use-case that musiXmatch’s apps for iOS, Android, WP8, desktop Mac, W8, Spotify, and most recently Apple TV via AirPlay, were already seeing.
The musiXmatch Mic, which costs $79.95 (or £79.95 in the UK, and €79.95 elsewhere in Europe), plugs in to a user’s smartphone or tablet – initially iOS devices, but with Android to follow – while the updated musiXmatch app enables users to sing along to tracks in their existing music library, powered by the startup’s 7 million-strong song lyrics database. Key to the update and integration with the company’s first hardware offering is that the app’s “Live Pass” feature removes the song’s vocal in real-time so that you can sing over the top. That should provide a far greater karaoke experience than apps and systems powered by cheesy MIDI files.
It’s also how musiXmatch plans to make money, by charging a daily, weekly or monthly subscription to the feature ($1.99, $3.99 and $14.99 respectively), thus providing a new revenue stream for the company in addition to charging for use of its API, and for premium app features, such as removing ads. Those who purchase the musiXmatch Mic get two month’s free access to Live Pass, as well as a one-year ad-free Premium subscription to the main app.
Max Ciociola, CEO and co-founder of musiXmatch, says the company’s new hardware/software offering is designed to compete with “expensive and poor quality hardware that only offers access to limited song catalogues”.
Specifically, he tells me that, although the primary use for musiXmatch’s app is to sing along rather than karaoke per se – “that’s singing not karaoke, quite different,” he says – the startup discovered that the experience offered by existing karaoke app makers and systems was “pretty crappy”.
“So we think the combination of our service plus Mic is a winning one,” says Ciociola.
Ciociola also cites games console offerings like SingStar, which he notes sold millions of units but then “disappeared” with the rise of smartphones and tablets. “MusiXmatch has surpassed 20 million downloads. That’s a great way for us to distribute this hardware too. We don’t want to be simply an app,” he says.
Those 20 million downloads translate to 4 million active users on mobile, with over 150 million users per-month accessing musiXmatch’s catalogue through its API.
(Of course, there are a ton of karaoke apps in the various app stores. Just yesterday, well-known UK karaoke brand Lucky Voice, co-owned by internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, threw it’s own iOS offering into the ring.)
Meanwhile, in January this year, musiXmatch announced a further $3.7 million in funding, bringing the total raised by the UK/Italian company to $8.1 million since it was founded in 2010. In what was effectively a follow-on round, the new capital came from existing investors Micheli Associati, and Paolo Barberis.
Dan Shapiro’s Robot Turtles board game Kickstarter showed there is serious appetite for kids’ games that aren’t just fun to play with but also sneakily teach core coding principles. Instead of the $25,000 he was aiming for, Shapiro raised more than $630,000. Geeky moms and dads clearly have money, and will spend it on the right bit of educational kit.
With that kind of Kickstarter community response, it’s pretty likely we’re set to see a wave of educational toys doing cool fun stuff with programming principles. To wit, meet Primo: a physical programming interface that teaches children programming logic while they control the movements of an Arduino-powered robot.
All of Primo’s electronics are concealed inside wooden boxes, so from the child’s point of view they’re playing with blocks, a board and a cute little robot. But as they snap the coloured pieces (instruction blocks) into the board (the physical programming interface) they are building up a set of instructions that the wheeled bot will execute when they push the big red button. So they get to see their program come to life as the bot moves around the room and navigates around household objects.
The instruction blocks comprise four different coloured pieces: forward, to move the bot forward; left; right; and the green circular function block. The function block adds a little more complexity to the basic instruction set as it calls the last line of blocks on the board every time it’s called. Aka it’s a sub-routine.
The function element, used in conjunction with the setting of longer physical paths for the robot to complete, then requires kids to use logical thinking to build up longer sequences of instructions to complete the challenge. And that’s the subtle learning it’s hoping to achieve.
It’s certainly a lot more basic than the Kano DIY computer Kickstarter – but the idea is to offer coding ‘baby steps’, for four-to-seven-year-olds, not throw kids in at the deep end.
“Skills are mastered gradually. Mountains are climbed one step at a time. Think of Primo as the very first step in a child’s programming education. Primo provides the very basic ABC of programming logic,” Primo’s U.K.-based (Italian) creators note on their Kickstarter page.
They’re aiming to raise £35,000 to get the kit to market. The full, assembled kit costs £160 to early Kickstarter backers – or £135 for a DIY version that you can self-assemble at home. They’ve already managed to raise more than £5,500 since the campaign kicked off on Friday, with 27 days left to run. If it hits its funding target, they’re aiming to ship to backers next August.
In the late 1980s a select group of British teens were given (or saved up their pocket money to buy) a small, rubber-keyed home PC called the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. My brother was one of them. And that little box, with its blank canvas start screen that prompted you to try out a few lines of code (Spectrum Basic), set him on the road to becoming a fully fledged programmer.
Fast forward to today, and the machines kids get to play with – the iPads and iPod Touches – don’t actively encouraging that sort of computing. They’re slick, sealed boxes, with UIs that deliberately conceal complexity so they can wow with effortless capability. They’re designed to please (to ‘delight’ in Applespeak), not to make you curious. And that’s an important difference.
The disconnect between the creative platforms of the past, and the slick, hermetically sealed boxes of today was the trigger for the U.K.-made Raspberry Pi microcomputer to be created by a group of Cambridge engineers. And just yesterday the Pi Foundation announced it has shipped its two millionth board.
It’s also the impetus behind a new platform, part-inspired by and built on top of the Pi, called Kano (pictured above, and in kit form below). What exactly is Kano? It’s a build-it-yourself computer launching today on Kickstarter with the aim of pulling in $100,000 in crowdbacking to get 1,000 of its Kano kits to market by summer 2014.
The kits are the whole computing kit & kaboodle: an “end-to-end computer”, costing $99, which deliberately arrives in pieces so the curious can put it together, helped along by Kano’s easy to understand guidebooks, and then use the machine they’ve assembled to start sticking bits of code together and building virtual stuff.
“The initial idea was let’s create a simple, fun, step-by-step computer kit that anyone can use to bring a computer to life and start hacking up games, and start really feeling that sense of possibility… rather than intimidation,” co-founder Alex Klein tells TechCrunch.
“The original inspiration was my seven-year-old cousin, Micah, trying to set up a computer and trying to make the Raspberry Pi – and finding that the For Dummies guide was 400 pages long in this little tiny font, and saying ‘what do we do now?’.”
Kano’s founders decided there had to be a more user-friendly way to get kids cutting their coding teeth and so they came up with the idea of combining a DIY computer kit with easy to read guidebooks and plug-and-play coding software. The basic idea is to add an accessibility layer on top of the Raspberry Pi to lower the barrier to entry for hacking around with an open computing platform (even as it ups the cost a little).
The hardware heart of Kano is the Raspberry Pi microcomputer but unlike when you order a Pi, Kano comes with all the bits and bobs needed to turn the board into a programmable computer, namely: “Keyboard, SD card, makeable casing, case mods, an operating system, tons of games and levels, a DIY speaker, and Level books with dozens of hours of projects”.
Kano is not just repackaging Pi hardware; it’s also building its own software to go with it, including an operating system, Kano OS – built on top of Debian Linux (using the Debian Wheezy distro) – and a Scratch-esque visual coding environment called Kano Blocks that will let the user plug and play with graphical blocks to pull together lines of code.
This plug-and-play, trial-and-error software learning environment will also allow them to see lines of code being generated as they stick various components together, and view the resulting program in action.
Here’s a couple of videos of Kano Blocks in (sped up) action – showing how you can hack together a game of Pong, and generate massive Minecraft constructions:
“Kano OS is still a work in progress. We’re pre-alpha, and we’re hoping that our Kickstarter backers will get the alpha release, and they’ll get to test it. But we’re really excited about Kano OS because it’s based on Debian Linux… but it provides not only a front end experience that is more intuitive, more familiar to a generation raised on mobile and console games,” says Alex.
“At the same time we’ve done amazing stuff on the back end as well. So we’ve fixed dozens of known issues with Linux and the Raspberry Pi. We’ve done a seamless wireless auto configuration. We’ve made sure that the image is lean – less than 1GB. The image auto-expands to the partition so that you don’t have to worry about plugging it into your computer, burning an image.”
The original idea for the Raspberry Pi was to get more U.K. kids coding, but it’s fair to say that adoption has been strongest among the already tech savvy maker/hacker community. Likely because Pi is deliberately difficult – so if you’re an absolute beginner there’s a big hurdle to overcome to start being able to use it.
The Pi Foundation wanted a certain degree of difficulty so that users would have to stretch themselves to explore and figure stuff out. But they set the bar pretty high – which means there’s room for more accessible platforms, such as Kano, to sit on top of Pi and make it even easier to play with.
“In terms of Raspberry Pi, we love working with the board, and we share the same social goals as the Foundation,” says Alex. “And we really want to get as many of these kits out there as possible – the more Raspberry Pis and the more Kano kits out there in the wild, we think, the more kids are going to get excited about technology, instead of just consuming, consuming, consuming. Flipping through Instagram, downloading Angry Birds… I don’t mean to disparage any of these companies or products, because they’re brilliant, and it’s not as if our cell phones are broken; they’re magical. We need them.
“But at the same time if we have in our right hand the iPhone – a powerful device for consuming media, for communicating, and for any of the things these wonderful, closed, hermetically sealed screens can do – and then in our left hand we have something that is our own; that takes nothing for granted, that builds you up and makes you feel confident in altering technology – rather than just using it.”
“The example of Raspberry Pi shows, pretty unambiguously, there is a hunger for a kind of control and accessibility to computing that people didn’t really expect,” he adds.
Asked about Kano, Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton told TechCrunch: “I think there’s value to platforms like Kano (Fuze would be another great example) which add some combination of hardware, software, peripherals and documentation to the Pi to make it more appealing to particular groups of users who are underserved by the standard offering.
“I’ve seen early versions of the Kano software environment, and I think Alex and the team are doing great work making the Pi more accessible to a younger audience.”
Upton also suggested the Pi Foundation has plans to move in this direction itself, in future. “Over time, Raspberry Pi will likely move in the direction of a more consumer-friendly offering, but there will always be a space for this sort of value-added offering,” he added.
Another difference of emphasis between Kano and Raspberry Pi is that Kano is starting with the idea of serving a global and emerging market need, rather than fixing a local developed world problem. Of course, although Pi started as a U.K. project, it quickly branched out beyond that – as hacker/maker community adoption generated broader momentum.
But Kano is hoping to target a broader geographical base right from the start, with English, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin versions of its kit’s guidebooks planned in time for launch. It’s also working on adding more languages, including Hindi, says Alex.
“The computing platforms of the future are going to be shaped by the computing populous of the future and those people are predominantly going to live in places like Johannesburg and Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Delhi and Pune, and those people, we think – and if you look at the data it seems to bear out – that they’re looking for things that are affordable, hackable and open source. Free software that they can modify,” he adds.
“So there’s a huge untapped need. All you really need to do is add a layer of simplicity, fun and experience and you can hopefully get tonnes of people interested in open source.”
As well as taking to Kickstarter to raise funding, Kano has taken in seed funding from friends & family to develop the kit over the past year, including some funding from Index Ventures via one of its three co-founders, Saul Klein, who is a partner at the firm.
The other day we reported that the EASA, Europe’s version of the FAA, finally allowed the use of personal electronic devices at all stages of the flight, including take off and landing, following in the footsteps of the FAA who recently approved something similar as well. Well it looks like the EASA will be taking things one step further and will now allow the deployment of 3G and LTE networks on their planes, essentially allowing passengers to take advantage of these networks to access the internet. Prior to this, the use of 2G was as good as it gets and was primarily used for calls and texts, but now we guess internet will be part of the mix as well.
However as the press release points out, this does not necessarily mean that you will be able to use your phone during flights, especially since it will be up to the individual airlines to determine if these are services they intend to offer or not. Either way this is a good start and soon accessing internet during your flight will become commonplace. As it stands only the FAA and EASA have announced these new rules, so for those flying in other regions, you guys will just have to wait for your own regulatory approval first.
It wasn’t too long ago that the FAA decided to go ahead and approve the use of personal electronic devices during the entire flight, meaning that passengers will no longer have turn off their devices during take-off and landing. However considering that the FAA is part of the US Department of Transportation, what this means is that for those of us living in Asia or Europe or other parts of the world, these new rules and guidelines might not necessarily apply. Well the good news is that the European version of the FAA, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), has decided to get on board with the program themselves, according to a press release.
According to the EASA, they will be publishing new guidelines by the end of November 2013 in which it will allow passengers to use personal electronic devices during all phases of the flight, as long as the devices have been set to Airplane Mode, essentially disabling the radios on said devices. Laptops are the exception and due to their relative bulkiness (we know some could argue that Ultrabooks aren’t considered bulky), they will need to be stowed away during take-off and landing. Patrick Ky, EASA Executive Director states, “This is a major step in the process of expanding the freedom to use personal electronic devices on-board aircraft without compromise in safety” In the long run the EASA is looking for a way to certify mobile devices to be used on board to make or receive phone calls.
Once in a while a game comes along that blends gameplay and aesthetic design to such a degree that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other starts. It was true of Limbo, and it also describes exactly the experience of Monument Valley, a forthcoming iPad title from London design studio, ustwo, which uses the perception-bending drawings of Dutch graphic artist MC Escher as its conceptual jumping off point.
Monument Valley’s tricks of the eye don’t just toy with you aesthetically but serve as subtle keys to unlocking the puzzles that make up each scene and segment the game into chapters. These chapters are named for the isometric landscapes they depict, such as The Garden (pictured below) or The Water Palace. Or else they hint at the gestures required to slip the puzzle’s knots and progress to the next level (e.g. GripRotate, Draggers).
These architectural landscapes – they are the title’s eponymous monuments – consist of a jumble of passageways, towers, stairs and so on. These passageways don’t immediately appear to connect up, and the character you control, a small lost-looking girl called Ida, has to make the links between what’s real and unreal to journey from one end of the scene to the other – rotating portions of passageway to bridge gaps, for instance, or flipping a set of stairs to climb.
Portions of the landscape that can be rotated or moved are signposted by handles, colour changes or bumps resembling the connectors on Lego bricks.
Normal rules absolutely don’t apply, with Ida able to press buttons allowing her to defy gravity and walk on a wall, or pass through one apparently disconnected tower door and appear out of another at the opposite side of the screen. Except when they do – Ida can’t just clamber anywhere she fancies; if there’s a wall, she needs a ladder to go up it. Or a gravity switch to flip her perspective.
The weird physics of the world is based on playing with spacial perception, allowing your eye to bridge gaps that could never be so traversed in reality. It’s a surreal and otherworldly experience, with a lonely protagonist who remains silent and leaves little trace as she progresses. The adversaries she encounters, called the Crow People, crop up as sporadic guardians of certain routes – marching up and down like automatons, allowing Ida to time her passage so she can slip by.
Monument Valley is due to arrive in Q1 next year but ustwo gave TechCrunch access to a preview of its latest build. I was testing the game on an iPhone 5 but it will be iPad-only at launch – and with the scenes often extending off the iPhone’s screen it’s easy to see why ustwo wants to make the most of the more generous screen real-estate offering by Apple’s tablets. That said, the studio confirmed to me that an iPhone version of the game is planned – although it will be iPad only at launch. Other mobile platforms are also factored into the roadmap, coming later.
“We’ve decided to go with the iPad as our leading platform as the screen real estate enables us to bring the fullest experience to the player. Every running river, every small crack in the architecture and Ida’s small movements feel enhanced on the bigger screen,” said ustwo’s Ken Wong, artist and designer of Monument Valley.
He describes the iPad mini as a “really optimal gaming platform” – with enough room for game designers to showcase their work and for the player to interact properly with it, but small and portable enough for a mainstream audience to buy in.
“Every detail in the game is given the absolute perfect framing which was one of our goals from the outset,” he added. “We wanted every level in the game to be a piece of art that you could literally print out and frame and it seems that we’re on our way to achieving that because we’ve already done a couple of print runs internally for people.”
How challenging is it to translate visual perception tricks into viable game mechanics? Conceptually easy but technically challenging, according to Wong. “As soon as you start arranging cubes in an isometric perspective, your mind is filled with possibilities. Doing the technology that allows characters to walk across constantly shifting impossible structures is a bit trickier,” he said.
“It’s been really fascinating setting up the rules of this universe based on peoples’ perceptions of what they’re seeing from a singled viewpoint of a scene. Escher’s work wouldn’t be popular if it wasn’t also beautiful with great attention to detail, so we’ve also been working hard at making the game look really special.”
ustwo has a portfolio of thoughtful and creative apps to its name already – including the psychedelic game Whale Trail, antisocial photo-sharing app Rando and minimalist puzzle game Blip Blub, to name three. Monument Valley looks like it will take up the baton as ustwo’s flagship property when it launches next year.
As well as Escher, Wong said the inspiration for Monument Valley came from art, architecture, and also the film Labyrinth.
“The work of M.C. Escher is great and popular because he found a way to describe geometric and spatial concepts through everyday elements like water, buildings and animals. I think what Monument Valley brings to the table is an exploration of how to bring an interactive, emotionally engaging experience to a wide audience through a set of simple mechanics and a world that feels at once familiar and fantastical,” Wong added.
Monument Valley will be a paid app, with a “premium” price-tag, owing to its focus on blending creative gameplay with high quality aesthetics. ustwo isn’t revealing how much it will charge as yet but says it has six people committed full time to the project, with a 12-month development span. ”We’re investing heavily into it’s production and will continue to do so post release,” he added.
Wong argues there is a “new wave” of premium apps hitting mobile devices, as developers seek ways to make their wares stand out from the freemium herd. ”In a sea of freemium powerhouses a few high quality premium experiences have popped up to disrupt the system and prove that there really is a market for players with absolute quality in mind. We’re aiming for Monument Valley to become the ‘coffee table book’ of iOS games – one you just have to show your friends,” he said.
To stay up-to-date about Monument Valley ahead of its Q1 2014 release you can sign up for updates here.
The current crop of sensor-driven wearables are mostly aimed at quantified selfers who want to geek out over activity or fitness data. Not (generally) because they have a pressing need to, more because they like playing with data. But of course wearable sensors have bags of potential to be very practical. And here’s one utilitarian use of wearable sensor tech that’s aiming to fix a real-world problem.
Barcelona-based startup SiempreSecos (aka AlwaysDry in English) has created a range of silicone urine sensors for use in babies’ nappies, or for older people suffering incontinence disorders. The basic problem is that it’s inconvenient and/or invasive to have to keep checking whether a diaper needs changing.
The reusable silicone moisture sensor, which sits against the skin inside the diaper, is paired with a wearable bracelet or other type of warning device/system such as an alarm clock to alert the carer that a diaper needs changing, or that a child is about to wet the bed.
How does the tech work? “We are using radio frequency (868 MHz) with our own communication protocol which allows bidirectional operation with very low energy,” says the startup. ”We use a non-replaceable battery in the sensor that lasts a year and a li-pol battery rechargeable through microUSB on the bracelet. The alarm-clock plugs into a socket.”
Care homes are one big target market for SiempreSecos, with the system providing professional caregivers with a more discreet way of ascertaining when a dementia patient, for instance, who is also incontinent needs their adult diaper changing. This version of the system sends alerts to a PC allowing for multiple patients to be monitored from one terminal.
The startup has also devised versions for parents wanting to use the device to monitor when a baby needs changing, or for bed wetting children, or for a carer of an elderly relative – that version uses a wearable bracelet that includes a moisture level indicator and vibrates when the diaper requires changing.
Prices start at €35 for a basic model designed to be worn by kids at risk of bed wetting, rising to €520 for 10 of SiempreSecos’ Ignis Professional models, designed for use in care homes.
The startup has taken to crowdfunding site Indiegogo to raise funds to get its wearables to market, having invested some €40,000 developing their idea over the past year, as well as raising a €25,000 loan. They’re looking for another €20,000 in crowdfunding for manufacturing and distribution, although it’s a flexible funding campaign so they’ll get any funding they’re able to raise, even if they don’t hit the target.
Smartphone maker HTC is going through a tough time – and having something of an identity crisis that’s playing out as a rebranding exercise. That’s why it’s spent millions hiring Robert Downey Jr to spice things up with its Here’s To Change campaign. It’s also, apparently, got a few other attention-grabbing tricks up its sleeve. Such as the gizmo pictured above.
Part vapourware, part steampunk fantasy, pure marketing madness.
No it’s not a leftover prop from the latest Tim Burton flick. The Gramohorn II – for that is its ludicrous name – is HTC UK’s contribution to the struggling mobile maker’s internal cultural revolution.
What actually is it? It’s audio kit for the outré HTC One user: a passive speaker smartphone dock designed to grab the tiny timbres issuing from the phone’s front-facing speakers and flick them through its twin horns like a Pamplona bull dispatching a pair of overweight tourists.
Or actually that’s its secondary function, after the primary one of grabbing consumers’ eyeballs and rattling them in their sockets.
If it’s eyes on its logo HTC needs – actually it’s dollars in its coffers but the former tends to lead to the latter – then this mystical hardware unicorn is surely going to deliver. Not so much HTC as WTF?! But in the smartphone popularity contest where Samsung is the ruling Gladiator then anything is better than being invisible. So it’s out with ‘quietly brilliant’ and in with ‘WTF’ blared through a pair of oversized ear trumpets. Bravo HTC, bravo.
Say what you like about the Gramohorn II but one thing is for sure: it’s not quietly brilliant.
It’s not quiet, period.
HTC hasn’t come up with this chunk of craziness on its own. It engaged a young UK designer called Justin Wolter to do that for it – maker of the Gramohorn II’s uni-trumpeted predecessor (which was, er, for iPhones). Wolter came up with the dual-trumpet remix of his earlier design, sketched it out and then with a little judicious use of 3D printing, the Gramohorn II was born.
These days crazy is that easy.
Print on demand means there’s never going to be a warehouse full of unloved Gramohorn IIs. These bad boys are individually made to order. And at £999/$1,600 each (for a plaster-based resin Gramohorn II) – or a frankly insane £4,999/$8,000 for the milled steel version – buyers are being deliberately discouraged from actually getting their hands on the Gramohorn. In all likelihood because it’s going to murder your music by trampling tinnily all over it. Audiophiles avert your ears.
Even hipsters would balk at a price tag with that many bells on it.
Here’s what HTC has to say about its curious lovechild:
To kick-start our Here’s To Creativity campaign Justin has taken the concept of the HTC One’s front facing BoomSound™ stereo speakers and pushed it to the extreme. His design is the physical embodiment of BoomSound incorporated within a unique, dramatic and stylish sculpture.
And here’s what Wolter had to say, when asked whether anyone is actually going to use this as a speaker as, well, a speaker:
The design aims to function as both a functional consumer product as well contemporary art. As such, it hopes to capture and element of curiosity as well as prompt further thought / discussion. Based on key acoustic principles, the design does what it says, in successfully amplifying sound waves using resonance. The Bauhaus-ian mantra of ‘form follows function’ was always in mind during design development.
It also sounds as if the Gramohorn II will be the first in a series of designer eyeball-grabbers coming out of HTC’s UK office.
“HTC UK’s ‘Here’s To Creativity’ campaign is supporting young designers, writers and artists helping them to bring their ideas to life. More exciting creative projects to change the smartphone experience are happening soon,” noted Peter Frolund, General Manager UK, in a sadly understated statement. He should really have said: ‘YEAH! WOOT! LET’S DO THIS!’
This sort of grassroots craziness may not turn HTC’s tanker around but in a mainstream smartphone space that’s become slabbish and staid it sure is fun to see something a little nuts going on.
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Max Ciociola, CEO and co-founder of musiXmatch, says the company’s new hardware/software offering is designed to compete with “expensive and poor quality hardware that only offers access to limited song catalogues”.
The other day we reported that the EASA, Europe’s version of the FAA, 
It wasn’t too long ago that the FAA decided to go ahead and 
