Hasta La Ideas

Designed by STUDIO NARI (founded by award-winning graphic designer Caterina Bianchini) for renowned cycling brand Rapha, this cotton cap celebrates the 10th annual Rapha Women’s 100—a 100km ride that the brand hopes will draw 100k competitors this year. The design incorporates bold graphics and bright colors, but it’s also a practical accessory. The cross-back design includes a hole for a ponytail or bun, and the elastic trim ensures a snug fit. Made from 100% cotton, this cap is made for use in all conditions.

Is that the new iPod Nano?? Nope… it’s a pair of JBL TWS earbuds with a screen on the case.

Announced just before IFA 2022 kicks off in Berlin, the Tour PRO 2 are JBL’s upcoming flagship TWS earphones. Their latest gimmick feature? A touchscreen display that shows you music-related information so you don’t need to pop your phone out to navigate Spotify or Apple Music while listening to tunes and podcasts. It has the potential to be an incredibly clever idea (I’ll explain myself shortly), but it isn’t the kind of idea JBL is capable of pulling off, so we’re probably stuck with one more screen on our person… although it does offer a more music-centric experience. After all, nobody wants to scroll through their music playlist while also seeing angry messages from their boss about why they haven’t sent that mail yet.

Designer: JBL

To just get the facts out of the way, the Tour PRO 2 are JBL’s latest flagship pair of TWS earbuds priced at $249.44 USD. They come with 10mm audio drivers and are Bluetooth 5.3 compatible, have active noise-canceling, and last 10 hours alone, and 40 hours with the charging case. However, their most impressive little upgrade lies in plain view in the form of a 1.45-inch touchscreen LED display on the front that lets you toggle features like ANC, make adjustments to your music-listening experience, or answer/reject calls without taking your phone out. JBL’s idea with this seems to hark back to the original days of the iPod – to provide a clean, uncluttered music experience.

Honestly, I find myself a little conflicted with the idea of a display on my TWS earbud charging case because there are as many cons as there are pros. There are also as many unexplored potentials, which I promise I’ll get to in a bit. For starters, the Tour PRO 2 does, to a degree, give you the benefit of a phone-free experience. You can control playback, seek through songs, see what’s playing, and even toggle earbud features without needing an app or even needing to unlock your phone. However, this doesn’t quite work as well for other earbud-aided experiences, like watching videos or attending video calls/conferences. JBL also somewhat shoots itself in the foot by using that screen to show you phone notifications. So there’s still that likelihood of stumbling across angry texts from your boss/client. Effectively, this makes you end up taking your phone out, which completely destroys the premise of a phone-free music experience in the first place. Not to mention that yet another screen on a device means more battery woes. It also results in a thicker product.

Here’s what gets me excited about this idea, though. The TWS earbuds are essentially wearables, and a screen on the case now has the unique ability to offer a wearable-grade fitness device experience that matches, if not overtakes a smartwatch. Here’s the data you can capture through your earbud – your body temperature, and your pulse (two data points that your smartwatch already tracks). Pair this with music hardware and you’ve got yourself the ultimate fitness device. Imagine if these earbuds could track your heart levels alongside the music you listen to. It knows when you’re exercising and how effectively you’re exercising, it also knows whether you enjoy a song because of changes in your body temperature and heart rate. Moreover, the earbuds can also help with routines like meditation, just because they’re audio devices with bio-tracking abilities. I’ve long believed that if Spotify wanted to absolutely obliterate Apple at the music game, they’d launch smart earbuds that could do the aforementioned things. Sadly though, it seems like JBL isn’t quite the company that’s up for the task… and now I’ve given up my idea for free.

The JBL Tour PRO 2 will only be available in Europe for now, starting January 2023 (that gives JBL enough time to really fine-tune their product). This isn’t the first time we’ve seen screens on TWS earbud cases, though. Just last month, a Teenage Engineering TWS earbud concept showcased something quite similar!

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While simply color-coordinating or backlighting parts of an instrument may work for regular novices, it doesn’t translate to visually impaired users. Vitar hopes to solve that by covering its entire fretboard with Braille keys that can help blind and vision-impaired people navigate their way around a guitar. Vitar, however, isn’t a traditional electric guitar either – it’s a MIDI instrument styled like a guitar, which also unlocks an entire world of potential with electronic music.

If the Vitar looks a little odd at first, it’s because it isn’t your average Spanish guitar. Designed to electronically send signals to a software (technically known as a Digital Audio Workstation), the Vitar comes with keys that you press with your left hand, indicating the notes you want the guitar to play. However, Vitar doesn’t quite stop right there. Each key located in the guitar’s fretboard comes with a Braille letter embossed on it, allowing even the visually impaired to work their way around the instrument. It’s a classic example of a tiny design detail that radically improves the product’s experience for all its users.

Designers: Eojin Roh, Seonjin Baek, Yujeong Shin

The fascinating part about the Vitar is its unconventional design. The way it was made has nothing to do with acoustics, but rather has everything to do with being intuitive and minimizing the learning curve. The Vitar’s body has an odd asymmetric shape that helps users instantly understand which way it’s supposed to be held (one could argue that it isn’t ambidextrous, although that might come across as pedantic). Strings sit in a recessed chamber on the main body, so the hand or guitar pick knows when to stop (while also giving you a place to conveniently rest your fingers). Guidelines across the main body help the hand navigate around the guitar in an instant, so you spend more time jamming and less time figuring out if you’re holding the instrument right.

Buttons on the base of the electric guitar let you control its built-in speaker/amplifier.

Vitar’s most impressive feat, however, remains its Braille keys. One of the most difficult parts of the guitar learning experience is figuring out which fret triggers which note. Sure, a talented guitar can easily pick this up by ear and with repeated practice, but for a novice, it requires a lot of counting down the frets, examining the corresponding string, etc. Just by simply molding Braille letters onto the individual keys, the Vitar makes the process as easy as pressing a button… quite literally.

While the Vitar is targeted towards visually impaired students, even most regular users can benefit from the sheer muscle memory of their fingertips knowing which key is located where, and what button triggers what note. If it helps us regular folk pick up a bit of braille in the process too, that’s an overall win in my book!

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen uniquely designed and shaped electric guitars. Earlier this year, Ezra Feldman unveiled an unconventional ‘curved’ electric guitar that was designed to offer a much more ergonomic and strain-free experince.

The post Electric Guitar with Braille fretboard helps the visually impaired master a new instrument first appeared on Yanko Design.

And now I’m wondering, why didn’t someone think of this before?

Brands have gone crazy innovating and designing projectors: 4k projectors, laser projectors, pocket projectors, short throw projectors, the list is endless. While being through all these variants, I’m not sure why someone didn’t choose the option to embed a projector into a lighting unit in the ceiling so it could project without hindrance? XGIMI for some reason was struck by the idea and the company has churned out the innovative projector, which I’m not sure how convincing it is in performance, but it certainly has me floored by its ceiling-worthy functionality.

Born out of thought above the rest; the XGIMI Magic Lamp is designed to function as a projector, a ceiling light, and a Bluetooth speaker all-in-one. The ceiling-mounted full HD (1,920 x 1,080) DLP projection system has its own 8W Harman Kardon speaker built-in. The smart speaker is compatible with voice assistant, supports Dolby Audio and DTS Virtual X, and helps in creating immersive theatre-esque experiences. Onboard is also a LED room lamp; this dimmable lamp features 176 LED mood lights.

Designer: XGIMI

Click Here To Buy Now!

The XGIMI Magic Lamp is currently on sale in China for 7,999 yuan (roughly $1,100). For the ones in Europe willing to shell out their dosh for this interesting ceiling projector; XGIMI is expected to showcase it at the IFA 2022 in Berlin next month. Before you make up your mind, here is a little about the projector’s ability. Capable of a 0.71 transmittance ratio, the Magic Lamp can project a 100-inch picture in 1080p resolution from 1.5 meters away. The projector delivers a very modest 900ANSI lumens of brightness, which should be fine if you have a closed room with little natural light.

XGIMI Magic Lamp for its projection prowess is powered by a MediaTek quad-core processor, and an AI engine supported by 4GB of RAM and 32 gigs of onboard storage. The internal storage ensures you can install a few streaming apps to play content when you want. Even if the XGIMI Magic Lamp is not the best projector, it is a capable multifunction device, which will by virtue of this placement in the ceiling ensure there are no shadows on the screen as people move about in the room!

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Handheld gaming devices have exploded in popularity after the success of the Nintendo Switch. None of the other console makers, namely Microsoft and Sony, seem to be eager to jump on that train yet, but PC makers have started to show interest, particularly with the launch of Valve’s Steam Deck. Of course, when it comes to being a portable gaming device, nothing really beats a smartphone, especially when you’re talking about games that are designed from the start to be enjoyed in bite-sized parts while on the go. It is arguable, however, whether a smartphone is a proper gaming handheld, considering its multi-functional nature, so Logitech is attempting to solve that by creating an Android device designed and dedicated solely to gaming.

Designer: Logitech (via Evan Blass)

Mobile games have been around ever since Snake first appeared on Nokia handsets, but truly immersive and addictive ones didn’t appear until smartphones did. There are hundreds of games today that you can play on smartphones, plus a thousand more copycats and malware-bearing Trojan horses. What all these games have in common is that they were developed with a touch screen in mind as the primary input method. In fact, many titles don’t even work with a controller, even a Bluetooth gamepad connected to the phone.

That’s what makes the idea of a dedicated Android gaming handheld in the style of the Nintendo Switch a bit less exciting than it is for Steam Deck PC. What would be the point of having physical gaming controls flanking a big screen if the game being played only responds to touch input? That doesn’t seem to worry Logitech, who partnered with Chinese gaming giant Tencent to create a “cloud gaming handheld” device. A leak of the device shows a rather uninspiring design that houses a curious gaming experience.

The white Logitech G Gaming Handheld, as it is being called, easily resembles a Nintendo Switch Lite, which doesn’t have the removable Joy-Cons. While it looks more like a tablet than a phone, it’s what’s running on the screen that makes it really interesting. It shows not just Google Play, which would be a no-brainer for an Android device, but also Xbox, NVIDIA, and even Steam, suggesting it can handle those brand’s cloud streaming services. It seems that Logitech and Tencent are aiming for an all-around handheld gaming device, which would make those buttons and joysticks more useful indeed.

Designer: AYN Technologies

Of course, Logitech is hardly the first to try making an Android-based gaming handheld, and it definitely won’t be the last. The past two years alone have seen a sudden rise in gaming handhelds running Android inside. To some extent, that’s unsurprising because Android is the easiest and cheapest operating system to put on any device. It’s arguable, however, if it has the best selection of mobile games.

The bigger question, however, is whether it actually makes sense for an Android device to have permanent controllers flanking the screen, even if one of them can be removed. Android can be used for more than just gaming, of course, but the fixed controller almost limits how the device can be used for a single purpose only. That’s why Bluetooth controllers that can be attached to smartphones and then removed as needed have somewhat become more popular, offering that same gaming experience without imposing arbitrary limitations.

Designer: GPD

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