Hasta La Gadget!

Short Version:

The Z2 wireless Airplay speaker from Bowers & Wilkins is a perfectly suitable option for those of us looking for a sightly, powerful, and compact speaker system. Anyone who’s already invested in Bowers & Wilkins systems before, like the Zeppelin Air or the A line should be especially considerate of the sexy little Z2, as it will fit in seamlessly with your current set-up in a relatively quieter room or space like a bedroom or bathroom.

Features:

• Airplay
• Flexible Lightning Dock
• Black and White options
• 2x 3.5-inch full range drivers
• 20 watt-per-channel stereo amplifier
• Price: $399
• Availability: April for black, June for white

Pros:

• Flexible dock keeps iPhone safe
• Sleek, minimalist design
• Powerful, crisp audio
• Easy peasy setup

Cons:

• Same remote as older generation B&W models
• Doesn’t have the same recognizable design as the Zeppelin, if that’s what you’re into

Long Version:

The B&W Z2 is as easy on the eyes as it is on the ears. The dock sinks below the upper ridge of the round, compact speaker making it somewhat invisible from most angles. The rounded shape turns both drivers out to fill up the room, and it surprisingly fits a lot of power into a very smal package.

The whole thing is no more than about 7-inches tall, a foot wide, and four inches deep, and the only thing you might notice is a small LED light on the bottom right of the device to signify pairing, on and off, etc.

The Lightning dock is built onto a hinge so it bends as you insert and remove your iPhone 5. Of course, this excludes anyone without an iPhone 5 or new generation iPods from docking, since the 30-pin isn’t compatible and iPads are too wide.

Setup is a breeze. Just download the Bowers & Wilkins Airplay Setup app and follow the handful of easy steps. Just be ready to have your wifi network info at the ready.

When you’re done, you’ll be able to throw music from your phone to the Z2 (or from Z2 bedroom to Z2 kitchen or Zeppelin Air Living room or A5 bathroom or whatever combination you can afford) and achieve a much richer, fuller experience that follows you around your house and not the other way around.

Of course, not everything is perfect. If you’re putting extra strain on your Wifi network while streaming to the Z2, especially if that extra strain is coming from the same device that’s streaming, there are bound to be a few drops or off moments. However, I’ve found the Z2 to be more reliable than the A7 I tested a few months ago, so there’s progress being made.

On a brighter note, the Z2 offers a surprisingly excellent listening experience given its size. Whether it was to entertain at a loud party or have something pleasing on in the background, the Z2 always sounded great and had a deep but clear bass. It’s the cheapest offering to date from a company that’s been a pack leader in the wireless iOS audio world. And it lives up to its brand name.

The remote isn’t changed at all from the A7 or original Zeppelin systems, which is annoying if only because it seems stagnant for a company that always seems to be cognizant of the maxim: “Iterate, iterate, iterate.”

All in all, it’s a solid little speaker for a fair price, and worth some serious consideration from audiophile iPhone 5 owners and B&W loyalists.

To learn more about the Z2 and it’s companion the Zeppelin Air, check out the video below, or feel free to read up the all-wireless A7 from B&W in our review right here.

For those startups in newer areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality who complain that VCs are too focused on consumer internet companies, help is at hand: Genesis Angels is a new VC that has raised a fund of around $100 million, with a large chunk coming from co-founder and serial investor and Kazakh petrochemical mogul Kenges Rakishev, which it plans to use for early stage investments in emerging areas like these and others. Based in Israel, but looking for startups worldwide, Genesis launched just this week, naming ex-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert as its chairman.

Moshe Hogeg, the other co-founder behind Genesis Angels (and founder and CEO of mobile video/photo startup Mobli, pictured here with Rakishev, left, and Olmert, center), says that the idea for Genesis came out of his and Rakishev’s observation that while the market for consumer internet services is saturated with a lot of me-too companies, there is a flourishing world of R&D in areas like robots and artificial intelligence that is not getting enough attention. It’s mostly giant tech companies like Google and Microsoft and academic institutions that are putting money into the very cutting edge of technology.

(Indeed, it was just yesterday, during Google’s earnings call, that CEO Larry Page talked about the “big bets” that Google wants to make on new technology. Google is not afraid to make big investments, he said, because the fear is that if it doesn’t it may miss out on the next big thing.)

The problem with this is that it leaves little room for startups. And although more recent developments like Kickstarter and Indigogo are creating a new groundswell of interest and financial support for some of these projets, there are yet others that will not want that kind of public profile for what they’re working on.

Hogeg describes Genesis’ role as something between the concept stage and when a VC may typically become interested in a company working on cutting-edge technology. “You can send the most brilliant scientist to a VC, but often it might take that scientist and his startup five years to create their products,” he explained in an interview. “VCs will say, ‘No problem, come back in four years.’ Genesis will invest in those companies in the meantime.” Typical investments will be in the range of $200,000 and $2 million.

If you visit Genesis Angels’ site, you will see that it already lists a number of companies in its portfolio, including Hogeg’s. These are listed, he says, because they are some of the investments Rakishev himself has made. Genesis, he notes, is still raising money for its first fund, with the total in play currently close to $100 million. Among those contributing to the fund are merchant bank Forbes & Manhattan, as well as private individuals who are well-known in the space of angel investments specifically around areas like hardware and new technology. The first three investments that are being made out of the new fund, Hogeg says, will be coming out shortly.

Ehud Olmert’s appointment as chairman is about laying the groundwork for the kind of assistance that Genesis Angels will be able to offer its portfolio companies, Hogeg says.

“He is a big believer in technology. Irasel invested the most in this area when he was still prime minister,” he notes. The relatively small country currently has some 3,000 tech companies, according to this report from the AP on the launch of the new VC.

Olmert took office in 2006 but left in 2009 under a corruption scandal cloud that he is still fighting. But that, apparently, has not affected his wider influence. “Mr Olmert is a very powerful man and he can use his contacts to help us and our companies, for example in partnering and joint ventures. He can open any door in the world.”

There have been other VC funds focused on these emerging areas. Dmitry Grishin, for example, the CEO of Mail.ru and founder of Grishin Robotics, last year started a $25 million fund dedicated to investing in other robotics companies (examples of his investments here, here and here).

It may be that Genesis teams up with people like this to cooperate on investments. “He shares a vision with us about this space,” says Hogeg.

The HTC One, the Taiwanese company’s flagship smartphone device, goes on sale today across the U.S. at retail stores including AT&T, Sprint, Best Buy, Walmart Target and more, as well as online via those retailers, HTC itself, Amazon and beyond. The phone has already been highly praised by early reviews and anyone who seems to have gotten their lucky mitts on one, but will that be enough to sway consumers?

HTC has arguably not made a truly bad phone in at least the past two years, and last year the HTC One X truly excelled. But that hasn’t stopped HTC’s earnings from sliding for five consecutive quarters now. The One, which is as significant a break from tradition in terms of how Android smartphones are designed as any we’ve yet seen, is the company’s big bet to turn things around, and they appear to have spared no effort.

The One has a unibody full metal body design, a first for a smartphone, as well as speakers that don’t suck, itself an achievement for any kind of phone. Reviews of the UltraPixel camera have been good, too, with Mobile Syrup calling it “the best low-light camera you can buy.” And the HTC software features, including BlinkFeed and HTC Zoe, are also drawing praise from press and reviewers.

HTC has a big mountain to climb in terms of coming anywhere close to competing with Android juggernaut Samsung, or Apple and its iPhone in terms of market share. But the HTC One is the best chances anyone has had of doing so in a long time. If only they’d left Van Der Beek out of this.

For those looking to pick one up today, here’s a full list of its current U.S. availability direct from HTC:

The new HTC One in silver is available nationwide at:

• AT&T: Online and in retail with 32GB of memory for $199.99, or online with 64GB of memory for $299.99 with a two-year commitment.
• Sprint: Online and in retail with 32GB of memory for $199.99 with a two-year commitment.
• Best Buy, Radio Shack, Walmart, Target, Amazon.com, Costco, Car Toys, Sam’s Club, HSN.com andHTC.com.
• Coming soon to T-Mobile in silver with 32GB of memory, and available in the coming weeks in black at AT&T and Sprint with 32GB of memory.

Google’s CEO Larry Page revealed something during today’s earnings call that his company doesn’t seem to have actually spelled out before: Google Glass runs on Android. In response to a question about how much people can expect to see engagement increment with new products like Glass, he said that “obviously, Glass runs on Android, so [Android] has been pretty transportable across devices, and I think that will continue.”

Many have speculated that Google Glass would run on an Android-based OS, but to date, Google hasn’t come right out and said so. Recent reports suggested that it would be ore of a proprietary system separate from Android, but Page’s statement today seems to indicate that in fact it will at least be a version of Android.

And Android-based Glass, even if it’s a modified version of the original OS, is good news for developers, since it means they share at least a common language. That should make integration, at least between Glass and Android-powered smartphone apps easier. The comment about portability also strongly suggests that Android has the potential to power a range of devices in the future, including the smart watch it reportedly has in development.

We’ve contacted Google to find out more about the Glass OS and how closely related it is to Android for smartphones, and will update if we hear more.

A group of researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created microbatteries that charge 1,000 times faster than normal batteries and can, feasibly, “jump-start a car” while powering a cellphone. The group, led by William King, is working on shrinking the batteries down to fit inside a “credit-card thin” device.

The batteries use a design that offers a much larger surface area for the cathode and anode which improves discharge as well as charge rate. While cathode (or plus side) improvements have existed for a while, this is the first one that also improves the “minus side” or anode.

In practice, the batteries could help create devices last 30 times longer or transmit farther distances – albeit with a hit in battery life. Many batteries either have a high power – the ability to pump out a lot of juice quickly – or high energy – the ability to store that juice and mete it out. Capactitors, for example, charge quickly but express their power very quickly as well. Li-Ion batteries hold energy but take a long time to charge. Because these batteries can hold so much energy and charge so quickly, you get the best of both worlds.

“Now we can think outside of the box,” said James Pikul, a graduate student on the project. “It’s a new enabling technology. It’s not a progressive improvement over previous technologies; it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It’s allowing us to do different, new things.”

You can read the paper here but be warned it’s a bit nerdy and bit pricey to download.

via Extremetech