It’s never too early in the year to think about amusement parks. This year Six Flags Entertainment Corporation will partner with Capcom to theme their Magic Mountain park with elements from the Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate video game, exclusively available on Nintendo 3DS.
Picture a pocket-sized projector that can go with you anywhere, and imagine being able to give a presentation or watch a movie projected from it on any wall. If you have the new Lenovo Pocket Projector, you can fit all of these capabilities into the palm of your hand.
Happy Pi Day Everybody! Today is the one day out of the year that you can wake up at 9:26:53AM and eat a whole bunch of pie. If you aren’t a math wiz kid; look up the definition of Pi, it’s described as “the symbol ? denoting the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter”.
Robert Downey Jr. (a.k.a. ‘Iron Man’) has become even more of a fan favorite with his recent announcement about a special event for the premiere of upcoming Marvel superhero sequel Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron with all entries benefiting a children’s hospice charity through the Omaze platform. A fan fantasy will come true for one lucky participant as Robert Downey Jr. hosts the winner who will be flown with lucky a friend to Los Angeles, California to experience a day in the life of Tony Stark. Participants can enter at www.omaze.com/RDJ by donating $10 to benefit Julia’s House, a children’s hospice center dedicated to helping improve the lives…
Last year we celebrated 20 years of ordering food online (pizza – surprised?), and by now most of us have ordered some sort of food online – and many have used smartphone apps to place and track orders. Now Domino’s (is leading the way by allowing customers to place and track their order via Pebble and Android Wear smartwatches.
The NVIDIA Shield tablet is a solid gaming-centric device that has racked up some solid PC-port games since release. Now NVIDIA has returned at GDC with the announcement of a ‘set top gaming box’ that will be the world’s first 4K Android TV consumer product when it’s released, and also be loaded with great gaming features.
This is a busy couple of weeks for technology folks between MWC, GDC, PAX East and SPIE (ok, the last one isn’t consumer focused but will drive the technology for the next decade). Today at GDC (Game Developer Conference) Frozenbyte announced Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power, the second sequel to the popular 2009 side-scrolling medieval fantasy platformer.
As someone who was impressed by a 32MB Compact Flash card for my HP PDA 15 years ago, the growth of high-speed, high-capacity, ultra-compact storage continues to astound me, and at MWC 2015 that trend continues. Sandisk has introduced a number of products, the most visible of which is the 200GB SanDisk Ultra® microSDXC™, expanding on last year’s 128GB platform.
While wearables and high-fashion smartwatches are dominating the news lately, we all need smartphones to power these devices, and many people can’t afford the price of the top-end Apple or Samsung or LG devices. So at MWC this year LG has announced three mid-range smartphones, each of which has great features and a solid design!
You can’t say HTC doesn’t listen to their critics. Every year their HTC One series has shown improvement and polish, and the new One M9 addresses many of the issues from the M8 and expands on what it does best: namely, there’s an improved camera and even better speakers!
Last week Judie reviewed the Dell XPS 13, touting the reduced size and enhanced performance. Now HP is introducing the Spectre x360, which has a 13.3″ screen in an ultra-compact housing that features a fully rotating hinge so you can use the x360 as a tablet, tablet-on-stand and as as high performance ultrabook at a great price!
2015 promises to be a great year for wearable technology, with the Apple watch and Android wear coming out with great looking functional connected technology. One of the cool looking upcoming devices is the LG Watch Urbane, with a sapphire crystal, elements of Android and WebOS integrated and a feature set to make it something to get excited about!
The recent #TheDress sensation has created a common thread (and a viral one) among worldwide citizens by posing an intriguing question – How can so many people view the same object in different ways? Color theorists everywhere debate is it black and blue?…or gold and white? …or brown and blue?!? First, the subject of this whole phenomenon is based on a photo, not a video, so there are immediate questions of lighting, overexposure, the device it’s being viewed on, etc. It was originally posted by 21-year-old singer Caitlin McNeill from the tiny Scottish island of Colonsay with the comment “guys please…
One thing I love about using IK Multimedia gear is how it enhances my ability to make music anywhere by drawing power from the 30-pin or Lightning port of my iPhone or iPad. The obvious problem is the power used by an accessory such as iRig Keys Pro comes from your phone, lowering already precious battery life. Enter iRig PowerBridge.
2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Peavey, a company known for high quality amplifiers at affordable prices. They also make much-loved basses and guitars (the T40 and T60 were popular when I was in high school, and I still a T20 fretless bass), as well as sound reinforcement equipment and other products, but amplifiers have always been their focus.
Late in 2013 Zivix announced PUC, wireless MIDI interface that allowed use of traditional music gear with iOS devices. The original PUC created a local WiFi network to handle the MIDI interface, now they’re back with PUC+ using Bluetooth Low Energy to more efficiently communicate while allowing simultaneous WiFi connections. They also announced jamstik+, bringing BTLE to their smart guitar!
After not subscribing for a while, my family has been thoroughly enjoying a renewed Spotify subscription these last few months. The constant stream of improvements since they first launched has made the service more valuable than ever. Now they have introduced a new feature – Touch Preview – that lets you quickly check out new songs without leaving your playlist.
Dan and Judie wrote about how the iRig Mic Field from IK Multimedia helped them cover NAIAS in Detroit as well as CES, and it illustrated another step in how far IK has evolved in their microphone offerings. Now IK Multimedia is announcing their next step with the iRig Mic Studio, an ultra-portable large-diaphragm mic for every platform.
Brian Fargo and inXile Entertainment had a great 2014 with the release of Wasteland 2. Now they are returning to the property that inspired their first game a decade ago, as they have announced officially that they are working on The Bard’s Tale IV. The last official entry in the series was all the way back in 1988!
I have already noted that IK Multimedia hinted at their full-on onslaught of Android music-making at NAMM, and they are delivering. They announced one of the key items this week – iRig UA, allowing users of nearly any Android device to plug in their guitar and make awesome music using a compatible app. Time for Android users to rock out!
While it seems like vintage gear, trendy tablet interfaces and more fringe stuff are dominating the news out of NAMM this year, a number of traditional music makers are also introducing the ‘boring’ stuff – great sounding gear with awesome features. One of those is Orange, who has announced the Orange OB1 series of rack-mountable bass amplifiers.