Maybe it’s my unnatural fascination with Google Maps, but I really like these Soft-Maps quilts which are made just like regular quilts but feature stitching that recreates street maps of major U.S. cities and neighborhoods including Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Washington D.C. Whether you buy one as a reminder of a place you’re particularly fond of, or as a way to teach your child about the city they live in, they’re all visually unique and will keep you warm too! The only downside is that a 50×70-inch Soft-Map runs $500, while the larger 88×96-inch version is $800.
Why wait till you’re back in the studio or post-production facility to create a 5.1 surround sound mix for your video when the Holophone lets you capture surround sound right on set! Now if you’re shooting in a studio environment such a contraption is kind of pointless given all the action and sound happens right in front of the camera, but at something like a concert this would be a pretty great way to capture the crowd’s reaction as well as what’s happening on stage.
The PortaMic 5.1 is powered by a single 9V battery which is good for about 3 hours use, and thanks to onboard hardware the audio is encoded on the fly to Dolby Pro Logic II, though it can be decoded back to 5.1 later in post-production for proper re-mixing. But with a price tag of around $600 it seems like an accessory for professional videographers or amateurs with deep pockets.
If you’ve ever tuned a guitar, you’re probably familiar with all of the similar tuners out on the market. Regardless of how different they appear, they still work on the same principal. Strum one string, it tells you if it’s out of tune, you adjust and repeat. It’s not an overly complicated process, but wouldn’t it be great if you could just strum all six strings and have the tuner tell you which was out of tune? With the new TC Electronics PolyTune, you can do just that.
The PolyTune is the first polyphonic tuner, which means it can detect the tuning of each individual string when all are played together. Another nice feature is that it works just like an effects pedal. Just tap it with your foot when you’re ready to tune, and it’ll cut off the signal to your amp so you can do your thing. When you’re done, tap it again and you’re ready to rock. You can also choose from a variety of tunings for your guitar. No word on pricing or availability.
Continuing in their thrilling line of everyday item simulators like the Beer Can and FedEx Envelope, Bandai will soon be releasing their new Mugen Chokoreeto or ‘Endless Chocolate Bar’ keychain thingy. Like its predecessors it simulates the oddly satisfying act of breaking off a piece of chocolate again and again, without any of the weight gain or pimples. Available in Japan starting January 30 for about $7 a bar.
You can stop checking the iTunes App Store for new and interesting applications every day because the last program you’ll ever need for your iPhone or iPod Touch has been released. iSamJackson includes over 150 original and authentic quotes recorded by the man himself. Now yes, it is really nothing more than a Sam Jackson sound board, but these clips aren’t crappy captures taken from his films, but original studio material created just for this app. And you can even customize the sound board so your favorite quotes are all organized onto one page for easy access. $2.99 available from the iTunes App Store in a Clean and +17 Explicit version.
It would be great to use your iPhone as a universal remote, wouldn’t it? Sure it would! The only problem is, it doesn’t really work without a clunky IR transmitter attached to it. On the other hand, your iPhone can talk to other stuff through Bluetooth… It’s just too bad that your AV equipment can’t deal with that. You see where this is going, right?
The folks at Audiovox have come up with a system called Zentral, which is just a box plus a universal remote iPhone app. All the box itself really is, is a Bluetooth receiver with a big IR blaster. It doesn’t actually plug into any parts of your TV or stereo, it just sits there, receives Bluetooth signals from your phone, and translates them into IR commands and resends them. You might wonder how it can talk to the front of your equipment if it’s sitting above your equipment, but the IR transmitter it uses is powerful enough to bounce signals off walls and ceilings. There are a bunch of equipment codes that you can enter to get the system talking to your stuff, and you can set up all kinds of custom macros to turn up to 16 different things on and off with a single command.
There are a couple other home automation gadgets that work from the same Bluetooth phone command system, including an iPod dock and a garage door opener, which is a pretty cool idea. They’re working on expanding the system to include things like the thermostat and lighting, and the sky’s the limit, really… If they can pull it off and keep going, it would be great to be able to control virtually your entire house from one app on your phone. And so far, of this stuff is affordable, too: the AV controller is $80, while the garage door opener (which is an easy DIY setup) is $50 (although it’s currently BlackBerry only). Look for it to hit retail this spring.
Instead of re-modeling your living room or other parts of your home to hide a set of unsightly speakers, the Klipsch LightSpeaker system lets you stash them in pre-existing 5 or 6-inch recessed lighting fixtures. Each unit is composed of a 20-watt full range speaker with a 2.5-inch wide dispersion drive, but they also feature a 10-watt fully dimmable LED bulb rated for 40,000 hours so you don’t have to sacrifice lighting for sound.
Of course having to run speaker wire to each unit would completely negate the convenience of its design, so the whole system is wireless, relying on a 2.4GHz transmitter with a (somewhat limited) range of 50 feet that can support up to 8 different LightSpeakers at one time. And using an included remote you can setup two separate listening zones in your home with different music sources for each. “Coming soon” for around $600.
It’s impossible for any single news organization to cover everything shown at CES, but thankfully The Onion has distilled the show down to a brief highlight list covering some of the more important reveals and announcements made this year.
I like the idea of a luggage scale, particularly when airlines are charging ridiculous fees for overweight baggage. But I usually only have an issue with heavy luggage when I’m returning home from a trip, and carrying along an electronic scale just adds to the problem. Not so with the Gravity Ruler. It’s made from bungee cord running through a clear plastic tube (so it’s lightweight) that’s labeled with weight increments, and the heavier your bag is, the farther the bungee stretches, giving you a rough idea if you’ll squeak below your airline’s weight limits.
What’s even cooler about the Gravity Ruler is that it was created by Politecnico di Milano design students Marcella Maltese and Lin Wei. And while you might think it’s just a concept, apparently they created an initial batch of 35 units which sold out at the Travel Trading fair in Milan in less than an hour. So it seems like there’s a very good chance you might find these in stores one day, if and when they can find a manufacturer.
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