Hasta La Gadget!

To mark its 10-year anniversary, premium audio company Tivoli created the elegant Model 10 radio. Then it sponsored an international design competition to help spread the word. Now the company has announced the winner: Huan Miao Khoo, a 24-year-old Malaysian man currently getting his Master of Architecture degree in Australia. Khoo’s design (shown here) depicts the Tivoli Audio Model 10 opening like a gift box, revealing an elegant tangle of wires and a violinist inside. Khoo will get a $3,000 top prize and will have his creation displayed in Times Square from now until January 1st.

Tivoli is also getting into the branded store space, as it just opened the Tivoli Design Center, its first store, in the Natick Collection Mall in the Boston area. The idea behind the Design Center was to show off Tivoli’s entire collection, including its many fine wood finishes, in one location.

We’ve never been on the volunteer cheerleading squad for FM transmitters; in our experience, they’re downright useless in cities or other areas that actually have a large amount of radio stations nearby. But we’ll hand it to New Potato Technologies — this may be the slickest implementation yet. The newly announced TuneLink Auto looks like a typical cigarette adapter charger at first glance, but within, there’s technology that accepts audio over Bluetooth and then sends it out over FM. This prevents users from having to connect a dongle of any kind to their iPad, iPod touch or iPhone, but the built-in USB port is actually capable of charging all three should you choose. There’s even a 3.5mm output jack for channeling the tunes to a 3.5mm input on your head unit, and the (necessary) accompanying iDevice app should hit the App Store soon for absolutely nothing. The hardware itself is available now from New Potato for $99.99, and it’ll hit “select retail locations” in a fortnight or so for the same amount.

Continue reading New Potato reveals TuneLink Auto Bluetooth-to-FM transmitter for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad

New Potato reveals TuneLink Auto Bluetooth-to-FM transmitter for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It may not exactly be one of the biggest “firsts” around, but Grace Digital Audio’s new GDI-IR2550p WiFi radio is apparently the first such radio to pack built-in Pandora controls on the radio itself — the company’s earlier Digital Allegro only had controls on the remote and accompanying iPhone app. Unfortunately, Grace has paired that somewhat unique feature with a radio that seems to have confused retro good looks with bland and dated — that same four-line LCD used on every other Grace radio doesn’t help things either. If that’s not your primary concern, however, you will get a decent range of features from the radio, including support for a slew of other internet content besides Pandora, streaming music from your Mac or PC, the aforementioned iPhone app, and all the usual alarm clock functionality you’d expect from a desktop radio. Look for this one to set you back $169.99.

Update: Looks like this is just Grace’s first of the sort — this here Livio device did the same thing last year. For shame. Thanks, Brandon!

Update 2: Livio CEO Jake Sigal has now weighed in on the matter on his blog. For its part, a rep for Grace Digital Audio tells us that while the Livio radio was indeed the first with thumbs up and thumbs down buttons for Pandora, the Grace radio is the first “that has thumbs up/down plus the play/pause function on the front panel, iPhone app, and remote control.”

Continue reading Grace debuts GDI-IR2550p WiFi radio with built-in Pandora controls

Grace debuts GDI-IR2550p WiFi radio with built-in Pandora controls originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What was merely an indistinct outline in August is today a bona fide retail product. Cowon has made its X7 PMP official over in South Korea, letting us take a gander at the spec sheet if not necessarily buy one just yet. A 4.3-inch touchscreen takes center stage, backed by up to 160GB of hard drive storage and a battery rated to last for 103 hours of music or 10 hours of video playback. An FM radio tuner, built-in speaker, and Bluetooth chip fill out the “retro modern” body, while the software front reveals DivX-encoded video compatibility and a smattering of your usual note-taking and utility apps. The standard 160GB model is going on sale for 339,000 KRW ($304), or if you’re a globetrotter and need a set of preinstalled dictionaries, it’ll set you back 379,000 KRW ($340). There’s no word on US availability just yet, but this thing didn’t go through the chore of getting certified with the FCC for nothing.

Continue reading Cowon X7 debuts in home market of Korea with 4.3-inch screen, American ambitions

Cowon X7 debuts in home market of Korea with 4.3-inch screen, American ambitions originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 04:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks an awful lot like the XM SkyDock that launched right around this time last year, but a SkyDock it’s not. Sirius XM has just unleashed its first new piece of hardware in a few decades, and the XM Snap! might just end up being the must-have gizmo this holiday season. Uneducated guesses aside, the Snap is actually a fairly simplistic device; so long as you have a Sirius XM subscription, you simply plug this into your vehicle’s cigarette adapter, tune into an open FM station (we’re assuming, anyway), and enjoy the muddled, static-filled mess that always ends up coming out when an FM transmitter is involved. The company has done a fairly astounding job keeping the details to a minimum here, but we are told that it’ll be Ridin’ Solo in October for a reasonable $59.99.

Continue reading Sirius XM unveils $60 XM Snap, brings sat radio to any FM-capable car stereo

Sirius XM unveils $60 XM Snap, brings sat radio to any FM-capable car stereo originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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