Tag: duncan geere
Sennheiser shows off five pairs of sports headphones
Sennheiser, a company with a long heritage in headphone design, has just unveiled five new pairs of headphones that come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and prices. Only one pair – the high-end CX 380 Sport II’s – are noise-isolating, presumably because you often need to hear the outside world, too, when you’re indulging in exercise.
Starting with the low-end, let’s begin at the MX 80s. These are fairly standard earbuds, with a little bit of extra bass and a waterproof and ‘sweatproof’ (eww) design. They’re also pretty tough, and should be able to take a bit of knocking about. £25.
Then there’s the MX 85s which are very similar to the MX 80s but have a ‘twist-to-fit’ system that should keep the buds in your ear a little more effectively if you’re waving your head about wildly, as one is wont to do while ‘sporting’. They cost £35. A tenner for a fit mechanism?
Moving up the range further, there’s the OMX 80s, which are again pretty much the same phones, but with earhooks on them, providing a slightly different way of keeping them on your head. They come with a ‘reflective rear stripe’ too, so you don’t get run over in the dark. Also £35.
Refusing to quit with the different ways of keeping headphones attached to your head, Sennheiser’s also got the PMX 80s, which have an ergonomic neckband to hold things in place, and ensure that just as that power chorus comes in, you won’t get your buds rudely yanked out. They also have the aforementioned reflective strip, and cost £35.
Then lastly, at the top of the range, are the CX 380s. These are more like it – silicon sleeves provide a tight fit for the in-ear design, they’re washable, and have a rather more high-performance driver than the cheaper models. They cost more, though – £50.
My thoughts are that the extra price on these compared to standard models might not really be worth the outlay. It’s only a bit of plastic, after all. That said, I don’t do an awful lot of sport, so if you do, then put me right on Twitter at @techdigest.
OPINION: Why I'm not going back to using Twitter with SMS
I’m quite proud to say that I’m old-skool when it comes to Twitter – I’ve been signed up since April 2007. My first tweet? “Watching TV, waiting for my roommate to finish dinner, and then going out drinking.”
Back then I used the SMS system with Twitter. I’d SMS my updates to a central number, and the service would send them back to me by text. When you’re only following a few people, that’s fine. You don’t end up abusing your free text allowance.
But then Twitter, citing financial reasons, withdrew the SMS service in August 2008. Overnight, the gentle buzz from my phone getting Tweets two or three times a day just stopped. I stopped having a reminder to Tweet. As a result, I got a bit lazy and there’d be weeks between my Tweets.
But then something changed. I managed to slip over the tipping point of following enough people saying enough things that it was worth checking it daily, so it found its way onto my bookmarks bar of my browser and that got me back off the edge and tweeting again.
Nowadays I’m following 350-odd people, and I get about three or four updates a minute. That’s fine at my PC – running Twhirl means I can just let those conversations quietly purr away in the background. I’ve also got a client for my S60 phone – Twibble – which sorts me out on the go.
A company called Twe2 launched this week that lets European users get alerts on their phone, in exchange for an ad at the end of the Tweet. Yay! I can get my SMS Tweets back! But I don’t want it.
The idea of having three to four texts coming in to my phone every minute seems ludicrous. The way I use Twitter now – it’s there when I need it, and I can ignore it when I want – is perfect. I get any @replies and DMs emailed to me, and I check my email a billion times a day so I don’t miss them. I just don’t need SMS.
Do you agree? Or are you gagging to get SMS tweets back? Share your opinion in the comments.
Microsoft's SeniorPC Project
As birth rates and death rates both fall off in Western countries, something that we’re going to have to face up to in the future is a rapidly aging population. Microsoft doesn’t see that as a problem – more of an opportunity to flog some PCs, and it’s teamed up with HP to design computers for the elderly.
Three SeniorPC offerings are currently being tested. They’re targeted at an audience who’s never used email, browsed the internet or used a word processor. As a result, the software included on the PCs are special versions that are greatly simplified, produced by a company called QualiLife.
Windows Vista Home Basic is preloaded onto the machines with a ‘shell’ built over it that makes things easier to locate. A very simplistic browser is included too, as well as a simplified email client and the word processor from Microsoft Works, which is simpler than Office’s Word. It’s possibly to disable the simplistic versions of the software once someone gets more comfortable using it, enabling more advanced features.
Some specialist programs are also pre-loaded. A piece of medication management software called OnTimeRX will let users manage their medication, telling them what to take and when. Family members and physicians can access this to check if medication is being taken. There’s also two memory games – Slide Puzzle and Super Word Slide – that help fight against memory problems.
Hardware-wise, the machines come in both laptop and desktop form factors, with one package including a “BigKeys” keyboard, and a “BigTrack” trackball. They’re good for arthritis sufferers apparently. At the time of delivery, Microsoft will also offer training on any included software and hardware, as well as a year of customer support and internet connectivity.
At the moment, these packages aren’t available in the UK yet, just in the States. I’ve got an email in to Microsoft asking how it’s going and whether we’re likely to see the project in the UK in the near future. I’ll let you know if I hear back.
SleepMinder – home recording of your sleep patterns
How much did you sleep last night? You’ve probably got some idea – six hours? Seven? 10? But you don’t know *exactly*, do you? The only way of measuring that was to go visit a sleep clinic and have electrodes hooked up to your head while you try and pretend you’re at home with your teddy. Pretty soon, though, you’ll be able to monitor your sleep scientifically in the comfort of your own bed.
SleepMinder is a product from a company called BiancaMed. They describe it as a “Non-contact biosensor”, which means that it can monitor your sleep, respiration and other bio-paramaters without relying on sensors attached to your body.
What that means is a little beige box sitting on your bedside table gathering data constantly. From that data, it can do more than just tell you that you’ve been eating too much cheese before bed. Chronic conditions like diabetes, Alzheimers, heart failure and COPD affect sleep, heart-rate and breathing, so monitoring sleep patterns can be a valuable early warning system.
The first application that BiancaMed is considering putting the technology into is a baby montior. You’d be able to configure it to alert you if your kid stops breathing for more than 20 seconds, for instance. Then there’s the idea of putting it in a mobile phone so that you don’t need a bulky device sat on your bedside table all the time.
And in a worst case scenario, you’ll at least have some evidence for your boss when he’s complaining that you look like a zombie in the mornings. You didn’t just go to bed late, you suffer from sleep apnea – and you’ve got the graphs to prove it!
Biancamed
MyMedia – a very deep recommendations engine
The internet is too big. There’s simply too much stuff on it. In 2006, an estimate of how much put the figure at 40 Petabytes, which is about 38000000000 short novels. There’s a lot more than that today, and Microsoft’s innovation labs are trying to work out the best way of sifting through it.
Recommendations engines can run in lots of different ways. You can look at people’s interests and try and match those up with content, which is a bit of a hassle. You can use the wisdom of the crowd to predict based on what other people have consumed next to each other, which is a bit better.
But what Microsoft is doing takes things a step further – they try and work out your mood, see what other stuff you listen to when you’re in that mood, and predict things that way. They also tap into your network of friends – who you presumably have common ground with – to try to work out what stuff you like.
As with any recommendations engine, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. Microsoft doesn’t claim, therefore, that this is going to work perfectly out of the box. Instead, it’ll get better the more you use it, and ties in with Microsoft’s massive social network around Windows Live Mail (Hotmail) and Messenger (MSN).
The project’s still at an early stage, so it’s difficult to judge whether the company will be able to pull off something as effective as Last.fm’s music recommendation engine. Let’s hope, though, that something comes off it, and the stranglehold that the media holds over mainstream taste can be eroded.
MyMedia
SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: Logitech G13 Gameboard
Gaming peripherals usually fall into one of two categories – useless or ridiculous. Sometimes both, but there isn’t often something that’s both sensible and useful. That’s why I was mildly startled by the G13, which does what it does very well, and doesn’t look like it was designed by a moron on acid.
Unfortunately, you pay through the nose for that kind of quality. £75’s worth of nose, to be prescise. Competing products, despite not being quite as good, are less than half that price. Perhaps in a few months it’ll cheapen down a bit. I’ll be waiting patiently until then before I make a purchase.
Samsung Lucido, smartphone specs in a midrange phone
This is a sign of progress. Lucido is unashamedly not a high-end phone, but it’s got the kind of features and specs that we’re normally fairly impressed with. Are we in the future or something? I don’t feel different…
There’s HSDPA, aGPS, a 5-megapixel camera with various software goodies like face recognition and smile capture, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and microSD slot. Best of all, though, is the AMOLED display, which stretches out across 2.2″ of the front of the phone.
The phone measures 114 x 56 x 12mm, and there’s a nice metallic finish to it that you can see in the pictures above. It’ll be available April, but there’s been no price announced yet. Looks rather swish, don’t you think?
(via Trusted Reviews)
"Never Gonna Give You Up" earns author £11 in rickroyalties
It’s funny. Following the YouTube vs PRS spat last week, where the former blocked UK users from watching most music videos, many commenters erupted into anti-major-label vitriol, completely ignoring the fact that the labels aren’t involved in this argument at all.
Instead the debate centres around PRS for Music, which pays something called songwriter royalties, based on ‘public performances’ – YouTube, music in shops, nightclubs, radio, etc. These royalties exist completely seperately from the major label ecosystem, so blaming the ‘big four’ is a little unfair here.
Google’s short-term PR win might be placed in jeopardy, however, after Pete Waterman – who co-write “Never Gonna Give You Up” – revealed that he’s earnt just £11 from the 40 million+ views on the song on YouTube. YouTube wants to halve the fees that it’s paying to the PRS.
UK Music, an umbrella body of umbrella bodies in the British music industry, has labelled YouTube and Google ‘cyncial and exploitative’. It certainly seems to fly in the face of the corportations ‘Do No Evil’ mantra.
What’s your feeling on the matter? Is this a music industry failing to adapt to new technology and consumer behaviour? Or is Google taking advantage of consumer distrust of the music industry to desperately try to make YouTube profitable? Drop us an email, or a tweet, with your opinion and we’ll publish the best.
(via ITProPortal)
The Wacom Nextbeat wireless controller for DJs
Wacom, best known for its graphics tablets has suddenly and unexpectedly announced that it’s bringing out a completely different bit of hardware – a DJ controller.
The Wacom Nextbeat contains a pair of digital audio players, a mixer, a sampler and some fx units. All you need to add is a phat pair of speakers, and you’ll be cranking out the tunes faster than you can say: “Have you got anything by the Shaman?”
The interesting bit is that the main circular unit and the dials above can actually be removed from the unit while it’s still operating. If you want to go see what it sounds like for your audience then you can do exactly that, while still retaining tight control of your mix.
It’ll be out sometime this summer in Europe and Japan, but there’s no word on how much it’ll cost. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on one – as a bit of an amatueur DJ, I’d love to give this a whirl in front of an audence and see how it compares to other DJ controllers.
Wacom Nextbeat (via Technabob)
SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: Nintendo DSi
Since its release in 2004, Nintendo has managed to shift nearly 100 million of the diminutive Nintendo DS handhelds. That places the device fourth in the best-selling-consoles-of-all-time list, behind the Playstation, (102m), Game Boy (118m) and the Playstation 2 (140m).
But Nintendo isn’t ready to give up just yet. The company will be launching the DSi on April 4th, which features bigger screens, a faster processor, two cameras and an MP3 player, among other things. I got my hands on it a few days ago, and above you can see what I thought.
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