Tag Archives | speakers

Tunebug Turns Tabletops Into Boom Boxes

Posted by Yardena Arar on March 28, 2011 at 11:15 am

A little smaller than a hockey puck and triangular in shape, a Tunebug turns pretty much any hard surface into a decent speaker for digital music from any device it can connect to via a standard audio jack or, depending on the model, Bluetooth.

While David Pogue at the Times recently took a look at Bluetooth speakers, they were (as I understood it) conventional speakers. Tunebug’s SurfaceSound technology makes the surface part of the speaker.

The company offers a wired version, the $70 Tunebug Vibe, that connects to a digital audio source (e.g. iPod, laptop, MP3 player) with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Tunebug says the Vibe’s internal rechargeable battery can power the device for up to 5 hours.

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Parrot’s new Wi-Fi Picture Frame and Wireless Speakers

Posted by David Spark on December 9, 2009 at 9:14 am

(This post is part of the Traveling Geeks tech tour of Paris. David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions and a tech journalist that blogs at Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio and on John C. Dvorak’s “Cranky Geeks.”)

At a visit at phone-accessory and gadget maker Parrot in Paris, I interviewed Parrot’s CEO, Henri Seydoux, about a couple of new products: Grande Specchio, a wi-fi picture frame that just came out a few weeks ago, and some giant wireless speakers.

Grande Specchio has a few fun features such as retrieving geo-tagged photos from Picasa and the ability to send photos to the frame. In the video demo Seydoux tries to send a picture of me to the frame. He didn’t succeed at the moment. For a pricey 500 Euros ($750 US) you would hope it would be a little easier. But to give him a break, it wasn’t a prepared demo, and he wasn’t already connected to a network at the time.

As for the wireless speakers they’re only wireless in the transmission of music, not power. I haven’t seen a good solution to wireless power without lots of batteries. My feeling is if you have to drag a power cable, then the “wireless” aspect really isn’t that attractive because you’re still physically tethered. At 1200 Euros ($1800 US) it’s definitely only for audiophiles.

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