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Poet Audio Pandoretta 360° Wireless Sound System

When I stumbled upon Poet Audio’s Pandoretta, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. I knew it was a speaker and not some sort of fancy air-filtration system, but what kind of speaker? Was it a new take on Yamaha’s Digital Sound Projector with an array of tiny drivers behind all those holes? It didn’t occur to me that the stainless steel “grille” might be an elaborate design element. Yet that’s exactly what it is.

In what may be the most creative (and craziest) stunt for a music video, UK director Joe Connor hitched a pair of vintage Sony TVs to a weather balloon with GoPro cameras in tow and sent them to orbit. All to promote the song “Call You Home” by Kelvin Jones. A YouTube post of Jones singing the song went viral last year, eventually leading to a deal with Sony Music.

As you may have noticed, things are becoming more complex. Blame Moore’s Law, or whatever. But things are complicated. To help us manage that complexity, companies are devising even more complicated things that give us, the human users, the illusion of simplicity. However, a recent Google patent application, aimed at simplifying the operation of things like home entertainment systems, is just downright creepy.

For most of the country, summer coming to a close signals that it’s time to put away your outdoor gear and head to the gym. In Florida, it signals the best weather to get outside and play. The temps are cooling off, humidity is dropping, and it’s the best time of year for cycling. When two Bluetooth speakers that are water-resistant and shaped to fit in a bicycle waterbottle cage showed up at my house, I decided a speaker shootout was called for. The JBL Charge 2+ and the Scosche boomBottle+ are both next generation products. Let’s see which one is going to become a permanent feature on my bike ride.