CES 2018 Day 2: a big day for laptop news – The Verge

This wireless MIDI ring allows you to perform musical effects with hand gestures

2018-01-16T10:43:12-05:00

French company Enhancia has been working on the concept for its MIDI ring for over a year, and it's finally coming to Kickstarter in March. The tiny accessory, worn on the index finger of your right hand, allows a user to trigger musical effects like pitch bends or vibrato by making specific movements while playing a keyboard.

The ring, which is lightweight and made out of a soft plastic with a metal accent, communicates with a hub that is connected to your computer. The hub both charges the ring and also tells the ring which effects are mapped to which movements. There's also a standalone piece of software and a plugin, which can be used w …

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Tech for the elderly is a growing area, but founders should think more about whether their gadget will be used

2018-01-10T12:14:40-05:00

$800 Hip’Air airbag belt for fall prevention | Photo: Hip’Air

Health gadgets aren't just for the young. The elderly population is a growing business opportunity, and the category of "aging tech" now includes everything from smart hearing aids to connected toolkits for relatives with dementia. It's an important area with plenty of problems to solve, but some of the biggest problems with caretaking are social, and the highest-tech gadget won't do a thing if your grandmother refuses to use it.

Everyone grows old, but Americans are growing older more quickly. The number of Americans over 65 will double by 2060, according to a 2016 report by the Population Research Bureau, and the elderly are living longer …

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Huawei releases a mesh Wi-Fi system it claims has ultrafast connection speeds

2018-01-10T10:14:06-05:00

Huawei’s three-pack.

Huawei doesn't just make smartphones and laptops; it's also getting into mesh Wi-Fi. Yesterday at CES, the China-based company announced a hybrid whole-home Wi-Fi system.

Like other mesh Wi-Fi systems, Huawei's Wi-Fi Q2 system aims to send a stable signal through a large home or an estate. There are two options: a base and two satellites, which would rely on G.hn PLC technology to deliver gigabit data over electrical, telephone, and coaxial wiring, or a hybrid three-pack, which relies on both wired and wireless connections.

Huawei claims that installation can be completed within five steps, and that the Wi-Fi Q2 system can provide connecti …

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SteelSeries’ new Rival 600 gaming mouse tracks your movements in mid-air

2018-01-10T07:31:34-05:00

SteelSeries' new mouse, the Rival 600, is designed to eliminate an obvious problem for gamers: keeping track of the cursor in mid-air. Sometimes, when a player lifts their mouse off the mat and places it back down, the cursor can jump and skitter across the screen. The Rival 600 compensates for this with a dual-sensor system and 1-to-1 tracking that keeps tabs on how high the mouse is lifted, making sure the cursor stays in the same place when it's put back down.

This isn't a new feature for gaming mice, but it is a nice addition for the Rival range. As well as this tracking system (which SteelSeries has branded "TrueMove 3+"), the Rival 60 …

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Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S9 next month

2018-01-10T06:30:21-05:00

Samsung will unveil its next flagship handset, the Galaxy S9, next month at Mobile World Congress (MWC). The company's smartphone chief, DJ Koh, confirmed the launch to ZDNet at CES yesterday. Koh didn't offer a specific date, but MWC will run from February 26th to March 1st this year, so expect the unveiling to fall somewhere in that time frame.

The S9 (and, presumably, an S9 Plus) will be the successors to the S8 and S8 Plus, which launched at a Samsung event in New York last March before going on sale in April. The S8 and its bigger brother were a hit with critics, who praised the phones' gorgeous design and brilliant cameras. The phones …

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This Wi-Fi speaker uses Amiibo-like figures to play music

2018-01-09T23:19:54-05:00

I don't think of kids when I think of RFID tags, but congrats to MuuseLabs for making the connection for me. Jooki is a Wi-Fi speaker for kids. It ships with five figurines, each of which has an RFID tag embedded inside. Kids can place their toy on the speaker to cue it to play different playlists that their parents have set up. The idea is to offer kids a way to interact with physical media, since they don't buy CDs anymore, and help parents keep them away from screens.

I checked Jooki out today at CES and found it charming. The figurines are adorable, and I love the idea of delaying kids' screen time while still enabling them make their o …

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Matias is building the wired Mac keyboards that Apple won’t

2018-01-09T21:39:10-05:00

Apple discontinued its wired Mac keyboard back in June when it introduced a new version of its wireless Magic Keyboard with a number pad, but a company called Matias is trying to keep the wired version alive with its own replica versions. And this year at CES 2018, the company is looking to one-up Apple's now discontinued version with a new model that features RGB backlighting.

Matias' keyboards look and feel almost exactly like Apple's versions - the keys, design, and materials are all near-replicas of the original models. The only real addition is a slider on the back that allows users to rotate through a variety of colors, and a function …

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Realmax’s prototype AR goggles fix one of the HoloLens’ biggest issues

2018-01-09T21:31:17-05:00

Hong Kong-based Realmax is an augmented reality startup, one of many trying to crack the highly sought-after smart glasses market that's taken CES by storm this year. The company's prototype product, which it's brought to the show floor in Las Vegas this week, is very much a work in progress, but it does have one promising step up over the competition: the product has the widest field of view (FOV) of any AR device I've ever personally tried, including the HoloLens.

I didn't get to spend an extensive amount of time with the Realmax headset, but I did try two different demos, the first of which filled my field of vision with a mermaid and a …

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This phone case is a drone

2018-01-09T21:07:53-05:00

AEE Aviation Technology's Selfly is a phone case that turns into a drone. Your first question is probably "does it fly with the phone in the case?" The answer is no. Which is undoubtedly for the best, since I don't think it would do a very good job of protecting your phone when its battery runs out after four minutes. Even though it is a case.

Anyway, by no means is this a practical product, but it is a great example of how drone technology - 1080p video cameras and all - is trickling down to entirely unrelated, inexpensive gadgets. Maybe one day everything will have retractable propellers. The Selfly will be available sometime this quarter …

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This weight-loss headset is more likely to give you a headache than budge the scale

2018-01-09T20:27:07-05:00

Modius Health wants you to believe that weight loss is more in the brain than in the body - and that wearing its headset can help you lose weight without extra effort. Most likely, it's too good to be true. Plus, the headset gives you a headache.

The headset is made of white plastic and has two bits that hang behind your ears. You attach little sticky electrode pads on the back of your ears and use them to hook in the little bits. Then, you turn the gadget on and it starts sending electrical signals to your brain. There are 10 settings. At settings one and two, I didn't feel anything. At setting three, I immediately felt a tingling in the e …

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