One Kickstarter project that is really intriguing and definitely answers a real need is the CordCruncher Headphones. If you have a digital media player or an iPod you’d know the big headache that tangled headphones or earphones cause. I’ve been meticulous about my earbuds and would try my best to roll and store them properly in my bag. But there are times when you have no choice but to just jam the thing inside your pocket or a compartment in your bag. This results in the buds’ wires getting all tangled up, which is a pain to untangle.

The proposed CordCruncher Headphones is unique and fixes the problem of tangled wires by enclosing the cords within a flexible and elastic cable. The flexibility of the new cord is amazing. It can be bended or folded so that it can fit and cling on to anything. You can turn it into a necklaces or a bracelet. The cord’s length can also be shortened depending on the requirements of the user – from 16 inches to 3.5 feet.

The CordCruncher Headphones has already met its project financing goal – actually getting 200 percent of the financial goal it set. The CordCruncher will become available by next month.

Turntables are a Thing of The Past

Believe it or not, you really can find a viable alternative to traditional beat making equipment. Today, downloadable software that allows you to make beats on your home computer is a global business. These programs are used by everyone from the homemaker with a passion for music to the professional artist. The flexibility and low cost of such programs makes it an attractive alternative to any traditionally understood way of making music.

A bit of History

The interest in electronic beat making has been around for many years, making it inevitable that someone would eventually come up with a way to put everything you need on one downloadable program. In 1983 Yamaha invented the first digital synthesizer and the race was on that led to today’s beat making software. In the early part of the new millennium virtual studios were created, and making music without traditional studio equipment became a reality. Today, the number of inexpensive beat maker options available, has given music making capabilities to anyone that wants it.

The fact is; that much of the professionally recorded music that you hear today is at least partially produced by beat maker software. Even for recording studios the cost savings are simply too good to pass up, when you can achieve the same quality sound as you can with traditional equipment to make beats. For artists and studios to use such equipment not only cuts costs, but also the time needed to complete a musical project. When a quality beat maker is used there is no way for you or anyone else to tell that that the music is not totally done with instruments in a studio.

What You Should Look For

The upshot is; there are many alternatives available to choose from. The majority of them offer free demos and you should take advantage of this when shopping for a beat maker. You want to find a professional quality product for a reasonable price and there are many out there to choose from. Make sure you are getting a product that gives you all of the features that you need to take your music from an idea to a professionally finished recording.

There are a few things in particular that are especially important when comparing beat making products. Do not let anyone tell you that a beat maker that gives you a finished product in an MP3 format is as good as any other. This is simply not true. You need your recording to be in the WAV format that is universally used by the music industry. This is the only one that is exportable to all other music applications, and it’s the one you will have to have to send your recording to radio, CD, DJs or record companies. You want a product that provides its professional samples in the same format. This is the only way you can produce a professional sounding recording.

Research all of the available choices thoroughly and pick the one that is best for you and the genre of music that you desire to make.

Amy Craig is a young DJ and music producer from Colorado. She is now earning her pay from making music at home from her computer.

HTC has been producing a very well reviewed smartphones. In fact, HTC is considered one of the top smartphone manufacturers in the world. The company wants to further solidify its good reputation among smartphone fans with the release of the HTC One X.

The HTC One X was shown at the recently held World Mobile Congress and it’s been getting a lot of positive comments. We think that the HTC One X does have a lot of promise as a smartphone. First of all it is a powerful device. HTC is one of the companies that will release a quad core processor-equipped smartphone and the HTC One X is one of those. To further beef up its power under the hood, this Android smartphone will actually have a dedicated imaging chip. Considering that it already has a quad core processor, the addition of an imaging chip is highly unusual because the processor is already very powerful. The imaging chip may have been included to enable the ability to take snapshots of scenes while simultaneously making a video.

In the audio front the HTC One X is also carrying the latest technology, Beats Audio. A technology that is owned by Monster, Beats Audio is a software/hardware complement that will provide exceptional audio output when a compatible Beats Audio headset is plugged into the phone (it will use a 3.5mm audio plug). The phone will detect the presence of the headset and will switch automatically to a special audio profile that will take advantage of the pairing.

On the display front, the smartphone will have a pixel density of 312 pixels an inch, which is packed enough to provide more than enough details at normal viewing distance.

One of the new snags in the design of the HTC One X is the lack of memory expansion. The company has decided not to include a microSD slot to make sure that it will remain small and light. This may become an issue when the phone goes on sale because there are some consumers who will surely want a way to expand memory to store more media and files.

The HTC One X is definitely going to be one of the big smartphone hits this year.

The cases you buy for your gadgets, for example, your iPhone, may look ho-hum. After all, it’s just a case that protects your gadget from scratches and the occasional bumps. But you may not realize that case manufacturers can be quite the ingenious bunch. We’ve seen some really cool case designs before and some of them are so cleverly designed we just have to have it.

One case that is upping the ante in terms of practical usage is the SmartGuard for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. The case is durable and will adequately protect your iPhone. Some of you may say these are generic and expected qualities for any iPhone case. But what sets the SmartGuard apart is that it comes with a built in pepper spray. Yes, they really put the GUARD in SmartGuard.

The pepper spray dispenser is attached to the case but can be easily detached for easy use. The pepper spray already comes pre-packed with a ten percent concentration of oleoresin capsicum, which are extracted from cayenne pepper plants. This concentration will provide that painful sting to the eyes that we all expect from pepper spray. The dispenser can spray up to a distance of five feet, which is big enough distance to really act as a deterrent once you use the spray. The slot for the dispenser securely locks the pepper spray canister so you’re assured that the dispenser will not accidentally discharge while your phone is inside your bag.

I consider myself a neat freak of sorts when it comes to my workspace. I want everything organized because it makes me think more clearly. That’s why I love the PlugHub. Anyone who has to work with multiple devices know that organizing the different chargers and adopters can be a huge pain. At some point, your desk (or at least the area where you plug those chargers and adaptors) will look like a pile of jumbled pasta. This is where the PlugHub comes in. The PlugHub is an ingeniously simple solution that will help you keep your adaptors, cords and chargers organized and neatly put away.

The PlugHub is a small device that looks like a miniature cabinet. At the bottom is a small tray that can hold your power strip. It also has a door that is attached with hinges. This door’s purpose to cover up the part where the cords are wound up. The cords are all fed through three top ports and the excess lengths is wound around cord anchors that will further make things look neat. The PlugHub will most commonly find room underneath the desk but the whole contraption can also be mounted to a wall or the baseboard.

If there’s one feature inside a car that can be considered a “legacy device” it will have to be the cigarette lighter socket. It’s a holdover from a time when cigarette smoking was still considered cool and not the cancer developing addiction that it truly is. But despite the fact that cigarette smoking is not as popular anymore, the cigarette lighter socket still remains as a standard feature in all cars.

If you’re one of the many car owners who wish that the cigarette lighter socket has other uses should consider getting the Highway Pro from Just Mobile. This handy device is an adapter that plugs into your car’s cigarette lighter socket and transforms it into a USB charging station. The Highway Pro has two USB ports that will allow you to charge up to two devices simultaneously. We all know how important a USB port is in this day and age so a device like the Highway Pro is truly welcome.

The Highway Pro has one regular charging port and another port carrying 2.1 compatibility that will allow for fast charging. To protect your devices from sudden power surges it has a built in fuse. It also has a green LED light that serves as a power indicator. For those who appreciate spare or extra cords, they’ll be happy to know that Just Mobile also provides spare charging cables for Apple products.

The $40 price tag may be considered steep by some, but if you’re the type of person who commutes daily using your car then a device like the Highway Pro is practically indispensable.

Touch screens have revolutionized how we control gadgets. It is a more intuitive way of manipulating something and it has practically no learning curve. Place a touchscreen tablet in front of a toddler and in no time they’ll be swiping and pinching away.

Despite the versatility of touch screens, it still does have certain limitations, especially when applied to certain tasks because touch screen displays are still quite fragile, escpecially for uses that require vigorous touching and pressing.

A team led by Bruno Zamborlin is currently in the midst of testing a new technology that specifically addresses the issues of interface alternatives. The team’s project is called the Mogees mini mic.

The new Mogees mini mic, as Zamborlins describes it is an “interactive gesture-based device for realtime audio mosaicing.” The whole device employs gesture recognition technigues and microphones to identify different types of interactions. It also incorporate different sounds to the interface. How does this work? The Mogees Mini Mic can identify the difference between tapping your finger or using a coin to tap a surface. Since doing different things emit different sounds, the Mogees has learned to differentiate them.

According to Zamborlin, “concatenative synthesis” could become the next big thing in the development of touch interface solutions. The technology is still at such an early stage that even applications for its are still being thought up. But it does hold promise.

Logitech designers have come up with a new product that makes it easier for people who make presentations using their laptops to transition from using their computers and making presentations.

The new product, which Logitech is now displaying at the Consumer Electronics Show, is called the Cube. The device, which is actually a rectangular piece of electronics (makes you wonder why they used Cube as a brand name, maybe because Rectangular Box was already taken), is a multi-function device that is a brilliant idea come to life. When the Cube is placed on a desk or any hard surface, it essentially functions as a 1000dpi laser mouse. The sensor is located at the bottom of the device. But lift the Cube and sensors within the device will detect the change in environment and orientation and it will automatically launch its presenter mode. With the presenter mode activated, every time you click on the mouse buttons you will advance slides that are being shown in presentation software like Microsoft Powerpoint. The Cube’s top part also has a function. It can be used to scroll up and down a web page. The Flow Scroll software developed by Logitech is used for this particular function. There’s no scroll wheel involved. The user only needs to slide his finger up and down the mouse to activate the scroll function.

The Logitech Cube is powered by a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery that can be charged through USB. The mouse module communicates with the laptop though a 2.4Ghz wireless receiver that is attached to the laptop. The Logitech Cube will be available in stores later this month and will sell for $69.99.

The digitalization of music may have democratized music in large parts but in terms of quality, compressed music file formats like MP3s are far inferior to uncompressed files or even to analog media sources like LPs.

One of the ways to compensate for this inferiority is by encoding music files at a level that presents more aural quality. This is a great solution and once you’ve heard a file that has been encoded at a great bitrate you’ll never go back to low bitrate file. A great file is a good start but you’ll also need a really good audio hardware to take advantage of your MP3s.

The guys at Samsung are answering the demand for good audio hardware for digital music files with the Samsung Audio Dock with Vacuum Tube Amplifier (DA-E750). This new dock sounds impressive and it probably performs wonderfully as well. The new Samsung Dock is the first docking system in the world that will use Samsung’s hybrid vacuum tube amplifier technology. The dock will be an equal opportunity hardware – it is compatible with the Galaxy S smartphones and also iOS devices.

The Samsung Dock has been specifically designed to bring out the best sound from digital files. It has a characteristic rich and warm sound which is produced by the use of both digital amplifiers and vacuum tubes. Aside from the great audio quality it promises, the Samsung Audio Dock also has a dual docking feature that allow you to dock both a Galaxy S and any iOS device at the same time.

Various mobile devices are the perfect vehicle for social media apps. You can put your social media app of choice on your mobile phone or tablet and coupled with a mobile broadband plan you can already make updates wherever you are. It may be an easy way to use social media sites like Twitter but there are still many users who prefer to access Twitter using their mobile browsers. If you are one of those people who prefer the latter then you should consider using InstaBG.

InstaBG is a unique service that provides your personal Twitter page with a different background. It’s like a skin that you can use to jazz up your Twitter page. We all know that the default Twitter page is really quite basic, to say the least. It just doesn’t give you the kind of visual pop that will make it stand out. With InstaBG, you can make eye-catching Twitter page backgrounds in a snap and without any fuss. InstaBG will get photos from Instagram, either your own uploaded Instagram images or from the general Intagram library, and use that as a background.

Using IntaBG is quite easy. All you need to do is to go to Instabg.com. You will be prompted to access your Twitter account through the InstaBG web site. Once you have logged in using your Twitter account, you will be prompted to give authorization to the InstaBG service. Once you’ve approved it, you are now officially using InstaBG on your account. You can even personalize it further by specifying what kind of images you want for your background.