Hasta La Gadget!

Many companies are betting that people want some kind of Android-based gaming solution in their living room, from Ouya to GameStick to Nvidia. One new initiative along those lines debuted at CES 2014 called the Snakebyte Vyper. The Vyper is from a German startup, and the company is bringing the product the U.S. in the coming months.

It’s one device that has a number of different faces, including a standalone 7-inch tablet that’s powered by Android, packing a quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, along with 8GB of storage (and expandable Micro SD-based storage). There are two USB ports, a front-facing 2 megapixel and rear-facing 5 megapixel camera and HDMI out for plugging into your TV.

There’s a docking base that you plug it into when you want to play games from your home theatre setup, or any television anywhere. It provides power and transmits video to your screen, and automatically puts the tablet into television mode. There’s a controller that acts as an air mouse and has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back for input, as well as a Bluetooth game controller with a fairly standard layout compatible with many Android games.

The advantage of its platform over others, according to the company, is that it doesn’t focus on either gaming or media to the exclusion of the other. Instead it’s designed to do both equally well, as well as to be a standard, full-featured Android tablet in its own right, too. It’ll retail for $199 when it goes on sale later this month, which is a surprisingly good deal, provided it works well and offers at least a decent user experience.

Bluetooth and sport headset company JayBird is venturing a little outside of its comfort zone with the new JayBird Reign fitness tracking wristband, a device unveiled earlier this week at CES 2014. The JayBird Reign goes beyond most existing devices like those from Fitbit, Withings, and Jawbone, tracking different types of fitness differently instead of just lumping them all in together.

There’s also a little bit of intuitive prognostication built into the Reign; JayBird says that it can actually recognize when your body is ready to get active, even if you can’t. It can then prompt you to get up and get moving even when you might not feel like it, to help you make the most of those times your body is ready to go for the most possible return on your workout investment.

Conversely, it also tells you when you need more rest thanks to built-in sleep tracking. The sleep tracking not only tells you when you’re sleeping heavily and when you’re sleeping light, like many other trackers, but also provides advice about how much sleep you should get the next night in order to feel as rested as is possible.

The Reign uses Bluetooth to communicate data with a companion app for iOS and Android, and should be available sometime this spring for $199. That’s pricier than many entry-level fitness trackers on the market, but Jaybird is hoping people are willing to pay more for a device that automatically recognizes what kind of sport or activity you’re doing and switches its tracking rhythm accordingly. It’s also light and comfortable with a highly flexible band, an a simple LED notification light for communicating basic info.

Few device categories are growing faster than the health and fitness tracking gizmo market, and an increasingly crowded space means more companies competing for the same pool of potential buyers. At least JayBird hasn’t just thrown its brand on something that simply matches what’s already out there, but we’ll still have to wait and see what kind of tolerance consumer demand has for a growing number of suppliers.

Google today started rolling out the latest version of its Google Play services for Android. Just like earlier updates, version 4.1 brings a number of incremental changes to the company’s service for integrating Google services into mobile apps. The rollout is currently in process and should land on all Android devices worldwide within the next few days.

Today’s update brings support for turn-based multiplayer games to Play services, for example. With this, developers can easily build asynchronous games with up to eight participants. Every time a player takes a turn, the data is uploaded to Google’s servers and shared with the other players. Google has integrated this service with its tools for matching players with others, too.

Also new in this update is improved support for Google+ sharing. This, the company says, will make it “even easier for users to share with the right people from your app.” As part of this update, users will be able to get auto-complete support and suggested recipients for all Gmail contacts, device contacts and people on Google+.

Developers can now also use Play services to access Google Drive through a new API that’s now in preview. With this, they can read and write files in Drive. Users will be able to work on these files offline, and changes will be synced automatically.

For developers who use Google’s ad products, this new version introduces full support for DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Search Ads for Mobile Apps. What’s most interesting for advertisers, though, is that publishers can now also use a new location API to give Google access to a user’s location when requesting ads. Location-based ads are likely to perform better than generic ads, after all, though users have generally been a bit nervous about sharing this data with advertisers given the potential privacy ramifications.

One other feature most users will likely appreciate is improved battery life. While Google isn’t sharing any details about this, the company said that anybody who has Google Location Reporting turned on should see longer battery life after this update, though whether that means less than 1 percent more (likely) or 10 percent more (very unlikely) remains to be seen.

Interested in 3D printing and smartphone-controlled aerial drones? So is Martha Stewart.

She and I had the pleasure of touring CES 2014′s South Hall, where we checked out Parrot, Form Labs, and MakerBot, among a few other companies.

Martha Stewart, who is a judge in our brand new CES Hardware Battlefield, explained that she’s always curious about innovation and loves learning about how new technology can apply to the lives of everyday people. But more importantly, she’s interested in finding a 3D printer to help prototype new products.

Before visiting the 3D printing section, she and I had a blast checking out Parrot’s latest toys, the Mini Drone wheel-equipped aerial drone and the Sumo camera-equipped Rover.

Stewart already owns an AR.Drone 2.0, using them to aerially film her various properties as well as monitor her grandchildren when they are swimming in the ocean. The smaller, newer products are more toys than utility products, but they’re fun nonetheless.

But what really caught Martha’s eye was 3D printers, as she’s currently on the market to buy a 3D printer for prototyping her own products.

We visited Formlabs and Makerbot, which recently released three new 3D printers, and it seems that Stewart is most interested in the mamma jamma Z18 industrial printer from MakerBot.

But that’s not the only thing she had to talk about. Apparently she and Bre Pettis are forging deals left and right, working to make a Martha Stewart collection of 3D printable products, as well as a magazine spread of 3D printed Easter gear.

To close out the interview, Martha and I checked out the most entry level 3D printing product I’ve ever come across, the 3Doodler. It’s a glue gun-like pen that let’s you draw out super hot plastic onto paper that forms a 3D doodle. It’s only $99, but Martha wasn’t all that impressed with its accuracy.

Like most people, I depend on fast-paced music to stay motivated during my workouts, which usually consist of running around a park or flailing along to cardio fitness videos. But even adding new tracks to my playlist isn’t enough to keep me from getting bored sometimes. That’s where the Jalapeño Beat Maker comes in. It’s a portable device that you can attach to your workout gear or wear, and it remixes music in real-time based on your movements. You can hear the fruits of your labor through an Android or iOS app. The waterproof Jalapeño Beat Maker was created for snowboarding and other action sports, but its settings can be customized for a wide range of activities.

The Jalapeño Beat Maker was developed by Beat Farm, a startup that creates music-driven products, and its Kickstarter page just launched today. The project has already raised $3,700 in the past few hours, so it has a decent chance of reaching its $53,000 goal by Feb. 7. The device starts at $199 for an early bird package, with an estimated delivery date of October 2014.

Beat Farm was founded by John Hunchar, Ben Harmer and Kenneth Liew, who met while studying at the University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated Product Design graduate program. The Jalapeño Beat Maker combines the team’s love of action sports and music.

Harmer has been playing the drums and skiing since he was 10 years old. Liew studied the piano when he was growing up, then started DJing in college. Hunchar is an avid hockey player and snowboarder who enjoys music despite being afflicted with what he describes as “questionable” musical skills and tastes.

While developing the Jalapeño Beat Maker, the three “went out and conducted research and ethnographic interviews to see what was out there and what people really wanted and needed,” they told me in an email. ”Nowadays, you see a lot of people on the mountain [snowboarding] with headphones in, rocking out to their MP3 players or smartphones. Six or seven years ago, that really wasn’t the case. Snowboarding is naturally rhythmic, so it clicked that maybe there’s a way we can use music to accent the awesome moments in your ride and ultimately create a better experience.”

The Beat Farm team came up with the Jalapeño Beat Maker’s concept a year and a half ago. Since then, they have refined its design, engineering and user experience. The name Jalapeño was chosen because it describes the experience they want users to have: an extra layer of fun on an experience that’s already exciting. The pepper’s size and shape also helped guide the design of the prototype.

“We wanted to create something that somewhat resembled a jalapeño, but wasn’t literal–something visually exciting but also functional. It needed to be durable, waterproof, and compact (like the size of a jalapeño),” Liew explains.

The Jalapeño Beat Maker has two modes. The multi-track model lets you select and mix up to four track layers (including drums, guitar, bass or vocals) created by Beat Farm’s “farm-ily” of artists. Tracks are synced so they stay in tune and in rhythm to your movements. The one-track mode, on the other hand, works with the music already on your smartphone, and is currently in early beta stage.

The team describes multiple uses for the Jalapeño Beat Maker besides adding an extra piquancy to snowboarding and skiing sessions. For example, bikers and break dancers can use it, as seen in the gif above. Musicians can perform with the device or use it to modify their tracks. I haven’t gone skiing in a long time, but I think Jalapeño Beat Maker might make following along to fitness videos or jogging a lot more fun and keep me motivated. Tracks made using the Jalapeño Beat Maker can be exported into video editing software. It can even be used to keep hyperactive children entertained.

“Some people have suggested putting it on their kids or their dogs (not that the two are the same) and have them run around,” says Liew. “We want to try it on a lawnmower.”

Ultimately, the team says the want the Jalapeño Beat Maker “to change the way people create and experience music,” regardless of whether or not they are experienced musicians or athletes.

“At the end of the day, it isn’t really about taking things too seriously but about having fun,” says Liew. ”If we can motivate people to get out there, to move and create, that’s just the kind of extra spice we like.”