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The Philips Hue Tap Proves An Elegant Accessory For Connected Smart Lights
The Philips Hue system provides lighting that you can control with your smartphone, and automate with location gating and time-based alarms. But for all its fancy magic, I still find myself using physical lightswitches to turn my Hue system on and off, in larger part because often it takes more steps to unlock my iPhone, find the Hue app, open it and select the “All off” or… Read More
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Pronto.ly’s Contactless Ultrasound Transfer Tech Aims To Best NFC
Microphone: check. Speaker: check… Israeli startup Pronto.ly is working on a universal alternative to NFC that relies on high pitched soundwaves to perform a contactless handshake. Read More
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The Modbook Pro X Turns Your Retina MacBook Pro Into A Graphics Tablet
Modbook has been making tablets out of Mac portables for years, combining the Apple computers with Wacom digitizers to let digital artists have all-in-one graphics-creating powerhouses that run full OS X software and come with ample pressure sensitivity. Now, the company’s latest effort incorporates the Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s turning to Kickstarter to fund this effort that… Read More
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Xiaomi’s One More Thing
The young electronics company Xiaomi is exploding in China and seems posed to take over the world. In the four short years since its founding, Xiaomi has become the electronics brand to watch in the most populous nation on earth. Xiaomi is the now the real deal — thanks in part to its unabashed appropriation of design cues from companies like Apple. Read More
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The Vocca Light Switch Is A Modern-Day Clapper
Smart bulbs, like the ones that come with the Philips Hue lighting system, are pretty cool… until you realize that physically flipping the switch is sometimes faster than unlocking your phone, opening the right app, and controlling the light through your mobile device. But what if you could achieve the same connectivity-based cool factor with the speed and ease of simply flipping a switch? Read More
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The SBrick Expands Your Lego Universe
Lego (or, if you’re pedantic, LEGO) is lots of fun. Lego Mindstorms is more fun. But what if you want to go to maximum fun? That’s where the Brick comes in. This $70 brick works with regular Lego and allows you to add unique features to your models including motor controls and light handling. The device is very similar to the actual Mindstorms brain but won’t take up most of… Read More
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Sony RX-100 Mark III Review: The Best Compact Camera Gets A Lot Better
Sony built the best compact camera in the world with the original RX-100 – now it’s on the third-generation, and it isn’t resting on its laurels. The latest edition has a pop-up electronic viewfinder, a vastly improved lens, sensor improvements and more, and the result is a camera that, even at $800, delivers amazing value for the price. Basics 20.1 megapixel 1-inch… Read More -
Square Reveals A Reader For Chip Payment Cards Ahead Of Coming U.S. Launch
Square is set to bring its payment card reader for mobile devices in line with modern tech used most places in the world outside of the U.S. – today it revealed its upcoming EMV and chip-compatible dongle, which will be available soon for pre-order with an estimated ship date of sometime in 2015. The new reader looks very similar to the existing one, but it’s designed to read… Read More
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Nintendo Posts A Loss Despite Wii U Sales Tripling During The Quarter
Nintendo’s quarterly results are out (via WSJ), and the company saw disappointing sales of both its hardware platforms, with the Wii U managing to triple sales but still only achieving 510,000 units shipped overall, and the Nintendo 3DS dropping below a million units moved with a 41 percent decline in sales year-over-year. The release of Mario Kart 8 still managed to buoy the… Read More
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Microsoft Announces Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, Which Will Greatly Expand Cortana’s Footprint
Fresh on the heels of the announcement and partial release of Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has a new dose of code for users of its smartphone platform: Update 1. Akin to Update 1 for Windows 8.1, Update 1 for Windows Phone 8.1 contains a welcome mix of quality of life and feature upgrades. I haven’t had any hands-on time with the code, so consider this post a preliminary look at what… Read More
Gadget Writers
TCTV
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Atheer Labs Releases A First Enterprise Developer Kit For Its 3D, Wearable Glasses
There is a pretty wide spectrum between wearables like Google Glass, which you take around with you in your everyday life, and fully immersive virtual reality experiences like the Oculus Rift, which take you out of the real world and are experienced in a stationary environment. Atheer Labs, a Mountain View-based startup, is building a set of wearable glasses that’s somewhere in… Read More
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EA Launches A $30 Per Year Netflix For Games On Xbox One
I’d play a lot more games if they weren’t $70 a pop, and it looks like EA suspects that might be true of a lot of gamers. The game publisher just announced a new subscription service called ‘EA Access‘ for Xbox One users that will give subscribers all the games they can play (from a limited catalog) for $4.99 per month. What games, you say? Well, there’s Madden 25… Read More
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Apple TV Gets CNBC And FOX NOW Channels
Apple continues to fill out its Apple TV content library, with two new additions to the device today including a CNBC channel with live broadcasts and FOX NOW, the on-demand app for the network that includes episodes of Glee, Family Guy and more. Both channels need a cable subscription to unlock completely, but offer some content free, according to 9to5mac which spotted the update. On FOX NOW… Read More
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New Drobo Mini Networked Hard Drive Now Comes With SSDs, Ruggedized Flash Array
Connected Data announced the latest addition to its extensive family of external storage devices: the portable, rugged and expandable Drobo Mini with Solid-State Drives (SSD). Read More
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Mota $99 3D Printer: Too Good To Be True
An affordable yet high quality consumer 3D printer has turned out too good to be true, surprising no one. The 3D printer market is generally sitting in a quasi-limbo state that’s progressed beyond proving itself on early adopters willing to shell out serious dollar to live the dream, yet still has a very long way to go — and specifically a lot of squeezing of price-tags… Read More
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Apple Updates Retina MacBook Pros With Better Specs
Apple has updated its Retina MacBook Pro line, with new Haswell processors that edge their predecessors (also Haswell) by small amounts (200MHz), and with new base RAM for the low-end 15-inch model that doubles the amount of memory it carries within from 8GB to 16GB. The Retina MacBook Pro update is similar to the MacBook Air update Apple issued earlier this year, in that it improves… Read More
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The TouchPico Projector Turns Any Surface Into A Giant Android Touchscreen
The TouchPico projector is launching today on IndieGogo. Announced at this year’s CES, it’s about as powerful as a mid-range Android phone, and has a camera that sees when you draw on the surface it’s projecting on — it basically turns any surface into a giant tablet-like display. Read More
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Case Remote Lets You Wirelessly Control Your DSLR Camera From A Phone
Here’s a neat idea aiming to bridge the gap between older generation technology and today’s ubiquitous touchscreen smartphones. Case Remote is a wireless remote controller for DSLR cameras which links to an Android or iOS smartphone, allowing the camera kit to be controlled via a mobile app. Read More
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Microsoft Is Back To Bashing Apple In Latest Advertisment
In Microsoft’s latest TV spot, the company stacks its voice assistant against Apple’s. Spoiler: Microsoft’s wins. Read More
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Amazon Launches A 3D Printing Store With Customizable Goods
Amazon has launched a new store for 3D-printed goods, which include items that can be customized to change their size, color, material and even aspects of their design. The store covers a range of types of products, including jewelry, electronics, toys and games, home decor and kitchen supplies, and items are supplied by a number of partners including Mixee, Sculpteo and 3DLT. Amazon is… Read More
