You love your freedom. Now you have the freedom to take your music anywhere and still enjoy the professional sound long associated with JBL speakers. The JBL OnBeat Xtreme™ docking station frees you from wires – and its RF remote puts you in full control from anywhere nearby. The JBL OnBeat Xtreme dock is compatible with your computer and iPad, iPod and iPhone devices, guaranteeing spectacular wireless playback of your music library. And with an optional composite cable, it can send video to your TV for all your friends to enjoy.

Docks with iPod, iPhone and iPad devices

What to purchase: an iPod, iPhone or iPad device? It’s a difficult decision, and you may own all three. We’ve designed the JBL OnBeat Xtreme™ high-performance docking station to accommodate all three devices so you can wirelessly play back your music library with professional sound no matter which device you own.

High-quality Bluetooth wireless music streaming

With the JBL OnBeat Xtreme™ loudspeaker dock, you can stream wirelessly through your Bluetooth device, allowing your audio sources to deliver high-performance studio sound.

Hands-free calling with Bluetooth phones

The JBL OnBeat Xtreme™ loudspeaker dock has a built-in microphone so you can make or receive calls on any Bluetooth® phone. Your music will pause for the call and resume when you hang up.

Dynamic JBL Weave design

With its exclusive JBL Weave design, the JBL OnBeat Xtreme™ loudspeaker dock looks as good as it sounds. The dynamic, one-of-a-kind design makes the JBL OnBeat Xtreme dock a stylish addition to your listening space.

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Equipped with an active noise cancelling system, it insulates you from surrounding noise in order to guarantee the purest sound experience, whether listening to music or making phone calls. And because music must be heard in all its harmony, intensity and depth, ZIK has powerful DSP (Digital Signal Processing) algorithms that recreate the contours of the music in full. This is the “Parrot Concert Hall” effect: the music is in front of you, like at a concert! Access to basic functions is hyper-intuitive, thanks to a touch panel located on the entire surface of the ZIK’s right earpiece. Swipe the panel vertically to set the volume, or swipe it horizontally to skip music forward/rewind.

ZIK also has a unique presence-sensor system. Removing the headset puts it into standby mode automatically. As with all Parrot products, ZIK is compatible with all mobile phone brands and accepts a large number of music sources: connecting via a cable jack; transferring audio files using Bluetooth A2DP stereo or using contactless NFC* technology, which has never been achieved before on a headset.

Availability: Coming in 2012
Price: To Be Announced

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At Serene Audio, they are passionate about music. Attention is paid to all the minute details of both aesthetic and acoustic qualities of our speakers. Each design goes though myriad cycles of scientific measurement, fine tuning by ear, and aesthetic refinement to achieve perfection. The results are pieces of art to be admired by both eyes and ears.These unique speakers will do wonders for your TV or home theater experience. They are designed to be paired with any amplifier or home theater receiver for unforgettable performance. For home theater use, we recommend pairing them with a subwoofer to handle the lowest notes.

Its organic yet modern shape is inspired from the trunk of an old oak tree. Besides, we thought it just looks cool!

With respect for the environment, they have diligently sourced non-toxic and environmentally friendly materials for use in the products, without compromising build quality. They then paired it with a superb full-range driver – a rare gem in speakers of this category. Bottom line is they are beautiful and sound amazing! Not a bad price point either! ($350 a pair).

Order them from sereneaudio.com

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At Stockholm furniture and light fair 2012 Icelandic lighting company lighthouse presented their Lux W1 wall-mounted lighting system. The modular design is made up of colored aluminium cubes (100x100x100mm), which when lit, project an outward triangular light. The units can each make full 360 degree rotations, and in combination with one another, create multi-colored geometric patterns on the wall.

via@designboom

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Chadwick Parker & Joe Huang’s work spans international ground and has won numerous awards for various aspects of design. Together for the past three years Chadwick & Joe have taken hundreds of projects from concept to production for companies around the world both big & small. They have guest lectured at colleges and universities in the USA and in China about design, marketing, and manufacturing of their products. They both live and work in Beijing.

We love making useful things that save us time and headache. We feel that hand-winding and untangling cords is a waste of everyone’s time. We wanted to start off the new year by taking control of the time we spend everyday trying to keep our cords untangled and organized. It may seem like a small thing to be passionate about, but we often find the most joy and fulfillment in the little things in life that improve our daily lives.

As great as wireless stuff is, the majority of us still plug in our iphones, ipads, and ipods everyday. After we’re finished, most of us loosely store the cord on a desk, drawer, bag, or backpack unprotected and messy. Current cord management solutions today seem to provide us all with one solution and message, “Hand-wrap your nice cords around a cheap plastic stick, rod, hooks, wheel, or some other gizmo. Then, toss it in your bag and let it get tangled up again.”  One day it hit us that we were not happy with the old solution of managing our cords and we wanted to change it.

You can back this project on KickStarter until March 13 2012. http://kck.st/z7CVY2

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Well Rounded Sound Inc. is a premier manufacturer of Ultra Fidelity Loudspeakers and Ultra Fidelity Accessories. Products are designed and manufactured in the United States and offer State of the Art manufacturing technology. Speaker transducers provide ultra fidelity performance that will astonish with transparency, detail retrieval and immense musicality. Well Rounded Sound Loudspeakers offer unparalleled attention to detail, craftsmanship and the best available technology at compelling price points.

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Do you remember one of the toys which we used to play with when we were young – a magnet. Particularly, a U magnet, which has been remember as a toy with strong attraction in an unusual shape. By the time we got to know magnetic forces, we might have realized careful concerns and attention. The ‘Your Magnet’ connects you and me with strong attraction, not as the magnetic attraction between the N pole and the S pole, but as the links between human beings or between humans/non-humans.

Memory products such as iPhone or iPod should usually be kept out of magnets because all MP3 files you have could be deleted by the magnetic property. Except these, however, there is no problem even if any device is contacted by ‘Your Magnet’. It is because they are attached by the influence of not magnetism but the suction plate.

Your Magnet is a new type of clamp that can be attached to mobile devices such as iPhone, iPod and any mobile device. Its angle can freely be adjusted by being erected or laid on the back. It is fun and comfortable for watching movies or video clips at home or at work, browsing the Internet, or using apps. In addition, its grab is more stable if your fingers are placed along the magnet space. While lying down, you can easily send text messages to your lover or friends.

These two features of the various angle adjustments and the stable grip are not all. ‘Your Magnet’ can be attached to make a shaver or small props hung on the bathroom mirror or small pegs hung in the kitchen. As it is portable, you can take it anywhere/anytime, or place it anywhere. It not only creates an interesting idea, but also serves as a useful stuff.

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This 2.1 speaker system has a Left and Right speaker, along with a sub-woofer. The Left and Right speakers of the XS Satellite system remind me of the little hopping desk lamp that you see at the beginning of Pixar movies. They are constructed with a shiny Black plastic base and a brushed aluminum bracket that elevates the speaker 8 inches above the table top.

Focal is a French company that manufactures high-end speaker systems that have had prices ranging from between $1,000 and $180,000 per pair. The XS Satellite 2.1 speaker system is their latest creation and has been designed specifically for the iMac.

The Left speaker has no special buttons or connectors. It has a cable that connects it to the back of the sub-woofer and makes a good place to store the magnetic remote control. The Right speaker has a thick plastic mesh covered cable that plugs into the back of the sub-woofer. This speaker also has the built-in iPod dock, a power button, volume adjustment buttons and an IR receiver.

The back of the Right speaker has an Aux In jack, mini USB connector and a Sync / Audio toggle. The XS Satellite system can be connected to your Mac to function as external speakers and an iPod charge / sync dock. The one caveat is using the iPod dock to sync with your computer is that it will also disable audio. You can’t use it for both functions. That said, no matter which mode you have the speaker set to, your iPod will charge while in the dock. It will even charge while the speakers are powered off.

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Danish audio manufacturer Libratone says they “make sound systems for modern lifestyles” and with the latest Libratone Lounge Soundbar with AirPlay technology they have made a stylish design high-end audio system that will look great in most settings.  Part of a duo of AirPlay speakers that also includes the Libratone Live, the Lounge soundbar is designed to complement your television set and to provide you with high quality wireless room-filling audio from a single unit. It is not a surround sound system, but their FullRoom technology is said to deliver a 360-degree sound that reflects off the walls in your room, avoiding the issue of the ‘sweetspot’ only being direct in front of the speaker unit. If you have your flatscreen tv wall mounted you can do the same with the Libratone Lounge, or you can just have it on a shelf underneath your television set as the system is versatile when it comes to placement. Design wise i find it to be very simplistic, clean, and above all stylish.

Draped in cashmere wool the system is available in amongst other slate grey, blueberry black, vanilla beige, lime green, and blood orange.

Whilst design is important, for any system this price it all comes down to the sound it produces. The Libratone Lounge soundbar comes with high quality components and up to 150W power output from five dedicated amplifiers and a Digital Signal Processing unit to deliver clear and precise sound. Inside the unit there are 1 x 8-inch inverted woofer, 2 x 4-inch ceramic midrange drivers, and 2 x 1-inch ribbon based tweeters. The patent pending FullRoom acoustic technology helps to bring the sound throughout the room for a placement independent listening experience.

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Little Printer lives in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely, beautiful mini-newspaper.

It’s like having your own printing press, newspaper and a dog to fetch it for you, all in your front room

Connected to the Web, Little Printer has wide range of sources available to check on your behalf. We call them “publications”. Subscribe to your favourites and choose when you’d like them delivered. Right on time Little Printer gathers everything it needs to prepare a neat little personalised package, printed as soon as you press the button. You can get deliveries multiple times a day, but we find once or twice works best–like your very own morning or evening newspaper.

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How do we use them?

First we need to set the viewport to device-width:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

Then we can either link to external stylesheets:

<!--[if !IE]>-->
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" href="iphone.css" />
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="only screen and (min-device-width: 768px) and (max-device-width: 1024px)" href="ipad.css" />
<!--<![endif]-->

Or we can add them to an existing stylesheet:

/* target the minimum width of the browser window */
@media screen and (min-width: 900px) { .class { background: #FFE11A; }}

/* target the maximum width of the browser window */
@media screen and (max-width: 600px) { }

/* target minimum and maximum width of the browser window */
@media screen and (min-width: 600px) and (max-width: 900px) { }

/* target the maximum width of the device */
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) { }

/* target the maximum width of the device and it's orientation */
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) and (orientation:portrait) { }
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) and (orientation:landscape) { }

/* target the iPhone4 retina display */
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) { }

Is it supported?

The browser support for media queries is actually pretty good. The latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera are all using it. Internet Explorer 9 will be, but IE8 and below do not. However there is a jQuery media queries plugin – for those not-so-capable browsers.

Final Thoughts

One thing to keep in mind – Although we can now tailor our designs to suit different devices we’ll still be dealing with the exact same content. (CSS3 flexbox can help rearrange some content if necessary) So even if we decide to use CSS to hide images on the iPhone, they’ll still be downloaded by the user.

Isotope is more than just a hardware accelerated pretty face, though. Imagine the last time you used eBay or any other site that allows you to apply (sometimes complex) filters and sort criteria to your search results. Sorting and filtering are inherently boring operations. You click a button and the server spits out the same page with some different items, or the same items in a different order. Not very exciting, and it puts the user a page load away from the data that they want to look at. What we loved about Isotope was the way it overcame this problem by dynamically sorting and ordering on the fly – and so easily too! Your filters can be regular jQuery selectors – so if you were searching an online clothes shop, simple class selectors like .jacket and .hoodie are totally acceptable filter criteria. Let’s have a look at a simple example:

Example

To get Isotope up and running, all you need is the CSS and Javascript library to be included onto your page and as little as one line of Javascript:

$('#your-element').isotope();

That’s all you need for the elements inside the container to be given full Isotope treatment. Of course, for sorting, filtering and the plethora of other features that Isotope has to offer, you’ll have to write just a little bit more code.

As mentioned earlier, just two of the features that we found ourselves using most was filtering and sorting…

Sorting

For Isotope to extract the sort data from the elements you’re trying to sort, you need to pass in an object of functions which return the data out of the element. So, if your elements have a data-name attribute, you’d write a function returning that attribute. Like so…

function getName(el) {
return el.attr('data-name');
}

Wrap this up in the getSortData object and your Isotope initialize function looks like this:

('#your-element').isotope({
getSortData: {
name: function(el) { // a single argument gets passed in
return el.attr('data-name'); // you could also use el.data('name')
}
}
});

This demonstrates to the plugin that the name of your element can be extracted by return the “data-name” attribute. In more recent versions of jQuery you can use el.data(‘yourDataAttribute’); instead of el.attr(‘data-yourDataAttribute’); as a slightly more elegant way of extracting data attributes.

That’s it – simple! You’re not restricted to just returning a single value – an example below demonstrates how you’d sort a list of people by their Last Name:

 $('#your-element').isotope({
 getSortData: {
 firstName: function(el) {
 return el.data('name'); // using el.data here instead of el.attr
 },
 lastName: function(el) {
 var name = el.data('name');
 if(name.lastIndexOf(' ') >= 0) // if there is a space in the name to begin with
 return name.substr(name.lastIndexOf(' ') + 1);
 else
 return name;
 }
 }
 });

Now, to sort your elements, just use the Isotope API:

 $('#your-element').isotope({
 sortBy: 'firstName', // or lastName if using example above
 sortAsc: true
 });

Filtering

Filtering is even easier than sorting! Similarly to sorting, you can have filtering happen once the page has loaded, to re-order, show or hide elements as necessary. Unlike sorting, though, you don’t have to provide any filter data up front. Filtering is done completely on-the-fly.

To filter elements, all you need to provide is a valid jQuery selector. With that, Isotope will loop through all the elements on the page. If they match the selector, they will be shown. If not, they get hidden. The selector can be anything from a class name to all sorts of weird and wonderful combinations to drill down to exactly what you need. Here are a few examples:

// to filter down to all elements matching class my-filter
$('#your-element').isotope({filter: '.my-filter'});

// to filter all elements where the data-name attribute equals "Sweet"
$('#your-element').isotope({filter: '[data-name=Sweet]'});

// filter all elements that contain the word "awesome"
$('#your-element').isotope({filter: ':contains(awesome)'});

That’s not the limit, either – you can read the full jQuery selector specification to find exactly what you need. Upon providing the jQuery selector, Isotope does all the hard work in matching elements and animating them in and out.

Conclusion

The inner workings of Isotope aren’t simple by any means, but David DeSandro has done a great job of abstracting the API to a point where it’s incredibly easy for developers to get their hands on some sweet functionality. Filtering and sorting are two useful features but are nowhere near the limits of what Isotope can do. The plugin was originally an improved version of Masonry, another great plugin used for creating dynamic layouts where CSS floats don’t quite cut the mustard. Isotope takes this idea and runs with it, allowing many layout modes, hardware accellerated CSS3 animations with jQuery fallback and awesome extensibility

If you intend to use Isotope for commercial use there is a $25 one-off license fee per developer, but we feel that this is totally worth it for the features that are on offer.