It comes as no surprise to you that smartphones are taking over the world. Alexander Graham Bell’s invention is swiftly achieving total domination, 138 years after its invention. Of course, today’s smartphones are a far cry from “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” But I digress.
I offer you a data point demonstrating how firmly smartphones are in charge: Specifically, I offer the premise that smartphones will be a primary factor that drives adoption of 4K televisions. That’s right - your phone will persuade you to buy a new TV.
Beats Music is a new subscription music service that is an offshoot of the wildly popular hardware company (mainly headphones) founded by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Beats Music is a logical extension: if people love the headphones so much, maybe they’ll extend the affection upstream and into content selection. Recently launched (January 21), the early numbers for Beats Music are in....
Perhaps you remember the story from two weeks ago. A woman (pictured) wearing headphones on a plane was burned when the headphones exploded and caught fire. The woman was relatively okay, but it's never good when a piece of gear catches fire, especially when it's on a plane and especially if it's near your face. With the rise of battery-powered headphones, are in-ear explosions yet another thing to worry about?
I remember it like it was only yesterday, but in reality it was probably more like 30 years ago. I walked into my favorite hi-fi store—the one on Dixie Highway. The owner greeted me by name. He was very active as a recording engineer for classical-music groups, and a trusted name in audio. His inventory was pretty high-end and a little spendy for a lowly college professor like me, but we had done some critical listening together and I greatly respected his opinions.
Michael Jackson is back in the news, and as usual, not in a good way. This time, at least, it’s no fault of his own. Rather, it’s his employer, Sony, who assumes the blame. It was imprudently careless with the keys to Jackson’s bank vault.
Well, it's official. I am throwing in the towel. My worldview has been shaken, stirred, crumbled, kneaded, blown apart, and reduced to its elemental atoms. Actually, at this point I'm down to the subatomic level. I think I just saw a quark go by.
I have bad news for you. Really bad news. The TeslaMic is sold out. I know – it is soul crushing. Your dreams of karaoke world domination have been shattered.
What is the Great American Pastime? Baseball? Football? Soccer? Actually, it’s none of those. Our great pastime is sitting passively and yelling as other people actively run around. And while shouting from the bleachers is fun, it’s even more fun to sit and shout at the TV.
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. . . . But at any rate, they could plug into your wire whenever they wanted to.”
Wow! Congratulations! You sure got a good deal on that jumbo-sized TV! Black Friday deals rule! But you know what? It's a new TV, you might not be familiar with its operation, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation would like to have a word with you.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that one in five American teenagers has some irreversible hearing loss. That’s bad. Even worse, the number of teens with slight hearing loss has increased 30% in the last 15 years, and the number with mild or worse loss is up 77%.
I’m sure your first thought upon hearing that was the same as mine: Bring me the snack foods!
You call them. They put you on hold. That's bad enough. Then they play the cheesy on-hold music. That makes it worse. But even that's not as bad as the actual sound quality of the music. Oh. My. Lord.