Hasta La Gadget!

Later this month and early next month, Google is planning two hackathons in San Francisco (1/28-1/29) and New York (2/1-2/2) that they’re calling “Glass Foundry” for any developer who preordered a set of Glass from last year’s I/O conference. More »

With CES 2013 wrapped up, it’s safe to say that audio wasn’t exactly a hallmark of the show in the gadgety sense. As a whole, manufacturers brought their latest creations, but even calling most of them evolutionary would be a stretch. That point was confirmed when Sennheiser, an audio maven, focused its attention on its rare Orpheus headphone system — something manufactured decades ago. This year, the show felt like a minefield of updates and lineup extensions, with companies — and Carly Rae Jepsen — exclaiming, “me too!” When Parrot unveiled Zik last year it was crazy to see all that tech jammed into a pair of headphones, but that quickly became the norm. Now, it’s totally common to see the likes of NFC, inductive charging and wireless connectivity in audio gear.

It wasn’t a total snooze fest, though. Sure, nothing really stood out the way an 8K UHD TV could, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a solid year for audio. However, it may just be a bit boring now that good sound and the latest tech are being brought together at every corner. Join us after the break for this years sonic standouts.

Continue reading CES 2013: Audio roundup

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video, Wearables

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The humble personal music player has seen many iterations over the last few decades. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t still giving the area some love, and HiFiMAN is definitely flying the flag with its HM-901 Reference Music Player. The unit incorporates dual Saber ES9018 32-bit DAC chips, with upsampling 20 24-bit / 96kHz. It claims to be able to play most lossless audio formats, including Apple lossless. Of course, it’ll still play your regular MP3s too, should you so desire. One neat trick is a removable amplifier card which means — at a future date — you could be able to swap them out for other amp cards that bestow a different sound, much like different guitar amps etc. Other forthcoming features include gapless playback, and the ability to use it as a WiFi music server. If you want some hard numbers, then HiFiMAN states that the distortion is less than 0.003 percent, with a signal to noise ratio of 107dB. Want to know the stereo cross talk? That’d be 86 db (line) and 76 db (headphone). Head past the break for our impressions.

Continue reading HiFiMAN launches HM-901 ‘high resolution’ audio player, we go ears and hands on

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Wearables

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The world of Bluetooth watches is getting immensely crowded. After years of trying, it seems as if Bluetooth watch makers finally have a captive audience. The Pebble smartwatch seems to be leading the charge in the here and now, but for those looking for something a bit less Jetsons and a bit more Dick Tracy, there’s the Martian Passport. At a glance, the unit itself looks very much like a classic wristwatch, replete with analog hand dials, a knob to change the time, and a metallic casing. Look a little closer, however, and you’ll spot a 96 x 16 pixel OLED display, capable of displaying contact names for incoming calls and scrolling new text messages. It’s a bit thick (0.52 inches), but it houses a battery that can survive a full two hours of yapping, or seven days in standby. Those needing to juice it back up can do so in a couple of hours via the side-mounted micro-USB port.

Internally, there’s a Bluetooth 4.0 chip (which supports classic Bluetooth and Bluetooth low energy), a vibrating motor for notifications, a three-axis accelerometer, magnetometer, noise-cancellation microphone, and a couple of menu / select buttons on the left. The whole thing is shockingly well built, oozing quality from every possible pore. It’ll play nice with iOS and Android devices, and there’s an incoming iOS app that’ll add even more functionality in the near future. In our testing here at CES 2013, we found the watch to pick up calls and notifications from an iPhone 4S immediately, and the OLED panel was remarkably easy to see even from a few feet away. Chatting into the watch was predictably awkward, but undercover agents should feel right at home. In all seriousness, audio quality was crisp, and folks on the other end had no issues hearing us.

Is it worth the $299 asking price? That’s hard to say. The famed Pebble will begin shipping in just over a week for a measly $149, so you’d have to really prefer the look of this guy to pay double. If that’s you, you can get your order in through the source link below.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile

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Source: Martian Watches

Concussions have always been a concern for those who play contact sports. However, there’s been a renewed focus in recent years by the sports community — the NFL in particular — to learn more about concussions in the interests of promoting player safety. Pro leagues aren’t the only folks tackling the problem, though. Verizon, Intel and Ridell are all building systems to help identify concussed players. Reebok and mc10 have collaborated to create CheckLight, a head impact indicator meant to make it easy to see when an athlete has taken a dangerous blow to the head. The CheckLight itself is composed of two parts: a sensor device built by mc10 and skull-cap made by Reebok.

The sensor itself is a strip of plastic filled with flexible sensors connected to a small microcontroller module with three indicator LEDs and a micro-USB port. One LED serves as a battery level indicator, one flashes yellow after moderate impacts and a third flashes red for severe blows. mc10 wasn’t willing to share the exact hardware inside, but we know that it’s got a rechargeable battery and has rotational acceleration, multi-directional acceleration, impact location and impact duration. Data from those sensors is then run through the company’s proprietary algorithm to determine when to fire the LEDs. We got to chat with Isaiah Kacyvenski — mc10’s Director of Licensing and Business development and ex-NFL player — about the CheckLight and the role it has to play in keeping athletes safe, so join us after the break for more.

Continue reading Reebok and mc10 team up to build CheckLight, a head impact indicator (hands-on)

Filed under: Wearables

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