Life is fraught: social interaction, inflation and fashion all conspire to ruin your day. Even the simple act of firing up your PMP can send you to the floor in tears if you discover your earbuds are in the wrong way, forever ruining the beautiful stereo trickery of The White Album. Fortunately, Japan's Science and Technology Agency has beavered away at this most first-world of problems with its Universal Earphones Project. One earpiece holds a proximity sensor, which if it's pointing at your ear, pumps out the left-channel, if it's facing away from you, it pumps out the right channel (pictured). It's also capable of working out if you've shared your sounds with a friend and will push out a mono mix to both headphones -- so neither of you miss out on the other half. Amazing to think all of the money and manpower that went into a solution to save you having to read the letters "L" and "R" and making a decision for yourself. After the break we've got a video explaining it, just be warned that the narrator is synthesized, it's not a serial killer.Continue reading Self-aware headphones switch channels depending on which ear they're in (video)
Self-aware headphones switch channels depending on which ear they're in (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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See that? That's the backside of a new portable media player from a company know best for its legendary sound quality. Unfortunately, there's no extra information to be gleaned from Cowon's Plenue Z2 FCC filing, but it certainly appears as if this will be one of the company's larger players. We're still waiting on pins and needles to hear if Android or its own OS will be running the show, but now that it's hopped this hurdle, we doubt it'll be too many more weeks before the whole thing is revealed all proper like. Head on past the break for a close-up of the label.
It's been a few weeks since Apple's issued a worldwide recall on a number of its first-gen iPod nanos at risk for becoming uncomfortably hot under the collar. Evidently, many folks who've sent their devices into AppleCare to get swapped are finding that they've being treated with an upgrade to the current sixth-gen variant. Lovers of click wheels may view its square, touchscreen shell as folly, but hey, its hard to fuss over owning latest there is, right? The replacement program is still ongoing, so if you haven't checked to see if your nano qualifies, hit up the "more coverage" link below to find out. Already got yours back? Let us know your mileage in comments!
Apple users have the iPod touch, but what about Android fans? Where do they turn when looking for an app-running, connected media player -- basically a smartphone without the phone? Well, believe it or not, there are a few options out there (like the Philips GoGear and Cowon's D3) And one of the premier lines is certainly Samsung's Galaxy Player offerings which, as the name implies, borrow a few things from their beloved cellphone siblings. There's both a 4.0 ($230) and a 5.0 ($270) model which have four- and five-inch screens, respectively, but, besides the size, the two are practically identical in the specs department. We toyed with the smaller Galaxy Player 4.0 for a couple of weeks and our thoughts on Sammy's (somewhat pricier) answer to the iPod touch are right after the break.
Cowon makes some pretty slick looking Android PMPs, as well as some more underwhelming devices running Windows CE. The latest in the latter category is the R7 -- a 7-inch media player that's being billed as "full HD" (a claim that makes Cowon full of something else). Despite being the size of a small tablet the R7 display is only 800 x 480, though, it will output 1080p over HDMI. While the low-res screen and aging CE 6.0 OS are nothing to get excited about, there are some positives: epic battery life and support for an absurd number of formats and codecs. And, since the R7 comes packing up to 64GB of internal storage and sports a microSD slot, you'll have plenty room to keep you swimming in both audio and video. Sure, Android probably would have made more sense and a WiFi connection for browsing the web would be greatly appreciated but, you've got to admire Cowon's stubborn insistence on doing things its own way... right?
