You’re not the only one worried about your brand new AirPods falling out of your ears during the morning jog – Apple has been thinking a lot about it too, as a patent recently published at Patently Apple shows.
The patent, which was filed back in the first half of the year, shows a strap that fits around the back of your ear to keep the AirPods in place. The two ends are also magnetically attracted to each other, making it even less likely that the earbuds will jump out of place.
While the patent does show an AirPod-style device in one of the diagrams, there’s also mention of a wired set of headphones, so this is a mechanism that Apple is thinking about for its whole audio line (which now includes Beats of course).
Whether this was an early plan for the AirPods that eventually got shelved, or whether Apple wants to add this magnetic strap to future editions of the earbuds, isn’t clear. As with all patents, there’s no guarantee Apple will actually implement any of this.
Still, it’s reassuring to see some options being explored. Based on the testing we’ve done , AirPods falling out isn’t really a problem, although they don’t exactly feel secure either.
The new wireless earphones do seem to be a hit with users, though Apple hasn’t released official sales figures: reports over the weekend from China hint that the firm manufacturing the AirPods is expanding capacity in order to keep up with demand.

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A powerful Dremel , the best action camera , and TurboTax discounts lead off Saturday’s best deals.
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ION Audio’s Tailgater Express Bluetooth speaker is loud enough to provide music for an entire outdoor barbecue (or, you know, a tailgate), and at $50, it’s never been cheaper. It even includes a microphone input for speeches or impromptu karaoke.
The new GoPro is about two months old now, which means it’s high time for the deals to roll out.
The full-sized GoPro HERO5 Black will still set you back its usual $400, but you’ll get a 64GB microSD card and a $60 Best Buy gift card to use on anything you want thrown in for free. You can read Gizmodo’s full review here , but you’ll be getting the Cadillac of action cameras, including optical digital stabilization, 4K recording, and even voice control.
A pair (or two) of well-reviewed Bose headphones won’t break the bank today. In fact, $90 is an all-time low. Just note that the remote on the discounted set will only work properly on iOS devices, but the audio will obviously work on anything with a headphone jack (which ironically doesn’t include the newest iPhone).
Bose’s Solo 5 sound bar promises to dramatically improve your home theater’s audio with the simplest setup possible, and you can get the sound bar plus a wall mounting kit for $220 right now on Amazon.
The sound bar by itself is rarely discounted below its $249 MSRP, let alone with the wall mounting kit, so this is far and away the best deal we’ve ever seen on this particular speaker setup , if it’s been on your wish list.
If you need a fresh set of wiper blades to survive the winter, you can grab a pair of Bosch Insight wiper blades for $23 from Amazon today .
Just pick the two you need, add them to your cart , and the discount should appear automatically, assuming both were shipped and sold by Amazon.com. The deal even allows you to mix and match sizes, so you can almost certainly find a combination that will work for your car.
We see $10 deals on the DYMO LabelManager 160 from time to time, but today, the more advanced DYMO LetraTag LT-100H is down to the same price.
If you remember the old label makers that literally pressed the letters into a piece of tape, this is a bit more advanced than what you’re picturing. The LetraTag LT-100H can print across two lines in multiple lines and sizes, and is compatible with all LetraTag LT labels, including metallic, iron-on, and more. If you don’t already own a label maker, there’s no reason not to pick this one up.
It turns out that Amazon makes their own bath mats, and you can pick one up in the color of your choice for just $10 today .
While I would never recommend breaking your warranty, this $9 screwdriver kit includes all the bits you need to open iPhones, MacBooks, and pretty much any other small gadget. Just be sure you know what you’re doing.
You might not need to use a Dremel all that often, but it’s one of those things everyone should keep in their tool box, if only for sanding wood and carving jack-o-lanterns. Today only as part of a Gold Box deal, Amazon’s discounting the Dremel 4000-6/50 to an all-time low $89 (from about $125).
The Dremel 4000 features a variable speed motor that can spin anywhere from 5,000 to 35,000 RPM, and includes 50 accessories and six attachments to get you started with projects all around the house. We’ve seen lower prices on other Dremel 4000 kits before, but they all had fewer accessories included in the box.
I know the year isn’t over, and nobody wants to think about dealing with taxes yet, but Amazon’s currently offering big discounts on TurboTax 2016 software packages .
This page has a handy comparison chart to help you choose the right version for you. And once you’ve decided, you’ll get your choice of a download or a disc.
Amazon’s back at it again with another Kindle ebook sale , and this time, you get to choose from almost three dozen fiction books for just a few bucks each. A few of the most popular titles are below, but head over to Amazon to see the full list.
I don’t know how else to say it, but we’re all pooping incorrectly. Originally popularized by Squatty Potty, a toilet stool can lift your legs into ideal bowel movement positioning, and you can get one from easyGopro for $19 today, or a few bucks less than the Squatty Potty.
If you’ve been itching to get yourself a mechanical keyboard, this 104 key model from Aukey includes RGB backlighting, and ultra-clicky blue switches .
Breville’s reader-favorite Smart Ovens almost never go on sale, but Amazon’s offering rare discounts today on two different models today, including an all-time low price on the Mini .
Update : The Mini deal is over, but the larger model is still available.
Unless you happen to own some other beautiful Breville products we recommend, it’ll almost certainly be the best-looking appliance in your kitchen. I got one of these as a wedding gift several months ago, and it’s every bit as good as advertised.
The Mini is just $100 , down from its usual $150, and the 800XL is also $50 off , down to $200. If you got some Amazon gift cards for the holidays, I can’t think of many more worthwhile things to spend them on.
If you unwrapped a new Quick Charge-compatible phone this holiday season, you won’t find better deals than these on compatible chargers.
2016 was a dumpster fire of a year, so maybe some retail therapy will help you be cautiously optimistic about 2017. Nordstrom Rack is ending their year with an extra 25% off all clearance items during their Clear the Rack sale. Get designer clothing for up to 90% off, or just stock up on some staples to help you get through the next year without strangling someone with a pair of jeans.
Just know the discount is taken off at checkout.
Whether or not you’ve seen The Hateful Eight , owning it for $5 is just something you should do. The bloody and ruthless Quinten Tarantino Western is a great addition to any movie library.
Anker makes the best gadgets for keeping all of your new toys charged , and several of their most popular battery packs, chargers, and accessories are on sale today. There are too many deals to list here, but head over to this post for all of the products and promo codes.
iTunes gift card discounts are noticeably less common than they used to be, and while we do see 20% discounts from time to time, a $50 iTunes gift card for $43, is still a solid deal if you pay for apps, movies, Apple Music, iCloud storage, or Mario Run unlocks. Of course, it would also make a great gift for the iPhone user in your life.
If you need a way to fill your holiday downtime, Amazon will rent you any movie in their digital catalog for a buck today with promo code MOVIE99. That applies to holiday films, new releases (I’m renting Sully ), classics; if you can rent it on Amazon, you can rent it for $1.
Remember that after you place your order, you’ll have 30 days to start watching, and then 24 hours to finish it.
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Expressive Sophia by Hanson Robotics is one of the most impressive bots of 2016.
There’s nothing better at CES than discovering a robot on the show floor.
Seriously, robots are cool. They are fun. And thanks to the newly released „Rogue One: A Star Wars Story“ , public sentiment towards droids is off the charts.
It’s unlikely the CNET team will stumble across anything as endearing new Star Wars droid K-2SO as it scours the halls in Las Vegas. Still, there’s a ton of robo-excitement in the run-up to CES 2017.
Robots have primarily been used as marketing gimmicks or demonstration props at previous shows. That, says IHS analyst Dinesh Kithany, is set to change.
„What we will see is more from the application point of view,“ Kithany said. Companies will be looking to explore what consumers can do with a robot, although the robots themselves, he added, will likely be „in the concept stages. “
Robots for consumers typically come in one of three categories. One group is service robots, like the Roomba vacuum and pool-cleaning bots, that perform specific tasks. Then there are social robots, like Pepper or Sanbot that have humanoid features play games and nag you to do everyday chores, like brush your teeth. Fully humanoid robots sit at the top of the heap and are being readied to perform care and nursing functions, such as the picking people up to help them maintain autonomy and stay in their own homes if they are elderly or injured.
The tech might still be at a nascent stage, but it’s expected to take off. Shipments of home robots are set to grow from around 5 million units in 2015 to 13 million units in 2020, according to IHS’s Service Robots & Drones report 2016.
Behind any good robot is good AI. And we seen some impressive leaps forward over the past year, including Go-playing algorithms and Jarvis, Mark Zuckerberg’s smart home AI butler. It’s going to make robots a whole lot more appealing.
Smart assistants have come along way too and, thanks to the likes of Amazon Echo and Google Home , are now more than just voices on our phones. They are precursors to what we can expect to see in consumer robotics.
In one CES panel , a number of robotics experts are set to discuss how improvements in artificial intelligence will help robots become more useful in everyday life. And, of course, evidence of some such improvements will be on show.
„We’re showcasing some advanced AI technology to demonstrate that AI is a reality and available to consumers for everyday communication and entertainment,“ said John Rhee, general manager of UBTECH Robotics, which is set to show make several announcements regarding its future robotics range.
We can’t wait to see this robot demonstrate dexterity and intelligent vision by playing chess.
Similarly, Austrian company Robart will use CES to show the off its autonomous navigation software for household robots.
The system, designed for service robots, will allow bots to „recognize their surroundings and communicate intuitively with the user,“ CEO Michael Schahpar says. „They will learn ever better and adapt to changing surroundings. “
Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute is also set demonstrate some essential robotic skills involving computer vision at the show. Researchers will show how a robot is able to distinguish between various chess pieces and their locations on the board, as well as between various coffee cups, their locations and fill levels.
Hanson Robotics, the maker of realistic humanoid robots that feature a flexible, responsive skin called „frubber,“ is a company we’ll keep a close eye on at CES. A company spokesman says customers are keen to get hold of humanoid robots like Hanson’s, which have lifelike facial movements.
Earlier this year Hanson showed off its Sophia robot , which is capable of performing a full range of human facial expressions. At CES, Hanson is due to give its very first public demonstration of its Professor Einstein robot.
Others are similarly optimistic about this robot form factor.
„2017 is the year in which we will begin to see humanoid robots become home companions,“ said UBTECH’s Rhee. His company is responsible for creating Alpha 2, a short humanoid social robot designed to make household life easier by setting reminders and controlling smarthome devices like lights and locks.
If you’re hoping you’ll find the ultimate robot butler or a reprogrammed KX-Series security drone — it’s a „Star Wars“ thing and we’re really into „Star Wars“ — at CES, 2017 probably won’t be your year.
TankBot is the first Jimu Robot to run on tank treads.
Still, you can expect to see a host of new consumer robots focused on entertainment and education, especially for teaching kids to code. New designs of UBTECH’s Jimu robots that offer the familiar snap-together programmable creatures but with increased mobility, being one example.
We’ll also likely see a number of companies showcasing hardware and software brought together by AI. These projects will give us a glimpse of the skills future robots might have and that could persuade people to think about bringing one home.
At the very least, we’ll find some cute bots to dream about.

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Polarizing filters can be an essential part of a photography tool set, as they suppress glare, make blue skies pop, and offer an additional way to control the light in your scene. And if you have some old electronics that you can mine for spare parts, you might already have a filter.
It turns out the glass screens on old liquid crystal displays that you can find on something like a calculator or an old Nokia phone have a transparent layer that acts as a polarizing filter. If you disassemble the device (and are careful not to break the screen, of course), you can use it as a rough but ready polarizing filter. Obviously such a small screen won’t work with your DSLR, but you can experiment with your smartphone camera to see how the filter works. (You can also try shooting photos through your sunglasses if you have polarized lenses.)
This tip comes from the Koldunov Brothers , who often find unique ways to use household items in photography. It’s certainly not a professional solution to making a filter but it’s a fun way to repurpose any broken electronics you might have lying around.
Free polarizing filter. Capturing a new camera phone using filter, taken from the old one | Kuldunov Brothers

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We spend a third of our lives asleep, so we all know how important sleep is, but are we doing it right? With the new year approaching, and ‚get more sleep‘ an oft-heard resolution, you need to know the best way technology can help you do that.
There are currently three ways of learning about – and improving – your sleep patterns, in ascending order of cost.
One is to download a free ‚movement tracker‘ app on your phone and record yourself sleeping; a second is to use an activity tracker, and the third is to go for a full-on dedicated sleep-monitoring device.
To compare these options we pitted the SleepBot app (which promises to track your sleep through external monitoring) against the Jawbone UP3 activity tracker (which claims to measure sleep duration and quality, and adds a heart rate sensor and an Automatic Sleep Detection feature) against a third (and particularly intriguing) device: a sensor attached to the bed itself.
Called Beddit, it claims to track your sleep, of course, but also includes heart rate and breathing stats.
We put all three products on test for a fortnight to make a fair comparison. Ready, steady, sleep!
First comes the hardware set-up. Jawbone was charged up and slapped on my wrist. A slightly confusing process of pairing then ensues; I gave the accompanying UP app a lot of personal details (weight, height, age, etc) and even permission to use data from the Health app on my iPhone, but at the end I’m not convinced the wearable is funnelling data to it.
Ditto the Beddit; after peeling off an adhesive strip and sticking the 60cm-long tape to my mattress (along with a cable that plugs into a nearby socket), the Bluetooth pairing is so fast that I’m not sure if it’s successfully paired with my phone.
However, a quick lie down gives me a handy ‚live‘ readout of my movement on the Beddit app. With SleepBot downloaded to my phone and having logged in and signed up, I’m all set for sleep.
After all that prep, it’s merely a case of firing up all three apps and physically telling them I’m about to go to sleep. That’s fair enough for the SleepBot app and the Jawbone UP3, but surely the Beddit knows I’m in bed?
After being woken up by my cat in early morning, and having a restless last 30 minutes of sleep, I reach for my phone the next morning and tell all three apps that I’m awake. My phone immediately shuts down, empty of battery. Well, that was close.
Once recharged, the results from all three devices are surprisingly different. The Jawbone UP3 tells me I took 10 minutes to fall asleep, slept for 7 hours and 18 minutes, had a resting heart rate of 51bpm, had deep sleep for one hour and 19 minutes, and a mere 18 minutes of less deep REM (rapid eye movement sleep).
The Beddit app agreed on the heart rate, but registered just six hours and 48 minutes of sleep. However, the results are more in-depth, as you would expect from a one-trick wearable.
As well as a ’sleep score‘ of 68/100 and a 90% efficiency rating (I understand neither, but didn’t have the best night’s sleep, so it seems fair), Beddit detected the same average heart rate, but produced a graph that tracks it slowing from 56bpm when I fell asleep to 46bpm just before waking.
It also detected four times I’d woken up, and ’significant amounts of snoring‘ at 55 minutes total, but offers few other details.
The Sleepbot app records seven hours and 36 minutes of sleep, which was the total time I was in bed. That’s it. If that seems far too simplistic, it’s mostly my fault; as well as forgetting to hit the ‚track motion‘ and ‚record sound‘ buttons, I left my phone on the bedside table, when I should have left it on the bed itself.
Worse, I did it again the next night; bedtime is not the best time for in-depth gadget admin.
On my third night of testing, Sleepbot was armed correctly, but everything else went wrong. I just couldn’t tell if the Beddit strap was talking to the app; it needs to send some kind of reassuring message.
However, the real problem was the Jawbone UP3; try as I might, I just could not get the app to put the band into sleep mode. Bear in mind I’m lying in bed here, and with every failed attempt, the band buzzes loudly.
After seven attempts I’m ready to take it off and fling it out of an open window, but it pairs just in time to avoid my wrath.
The next morning the Beddit app tells me that I ‚took a long time to go to sleep‘. Err, yup. The Jawbone then fails to recognise that I’ve woken and am moving about. You’d think an activity tracker might be able to figure that one out for itself.
It’s the same problem with Beddit, which sounds a bizarre alarm (bamboo pipes and synthesisers?) a clear hour after I’ve risen. Is it a motion sensor, or isn’t it? Beddit even stopped recording my sleep somewhere around 2:30am one night.
Was I so still that it thought I’d left the bedroom? I put both into manual mode; the auto-detect features are plain unreliable.
In contrast, Sleepbot excelled itself. Okay, so I told it exactly when I was about to go to sleep and exactly when I woke up, but I knew where I was with it.
It also produced a detailed graph showing my light and deep sleep, and a harrowing audio log of the sound of me snoring.
And that’s not mentioning the buzzing gadgets at bedtime. My poor wife.
Teething problems over, the second week was all about collecting sleep data and seeing how the apps work.
Beddit continues to be patchy; it records heart rate in excruciating detail, but what can I do with that information? Ditto the breaths per minute.
The app offers advice on snoring (put a tennis ball down your pyjamas, apparently), but really, there are no trends identified, or any kind of personalised advice.
There’s also one massive drawback to Beddit; you can’t take it with you. During the two weeks I stayed in a hotel and at a friend’s house, so lost two days data right there.
The Jawbone tries to get involved with tips and hints on sleep (and a lot more besides), but it doesn’t understand me. I’m a night owl, I’m always awake at midnight. So receiving a message at 00:01 advising me what time I should go to bed the following night is just weird.
The app also proved buggy; it was taking correct sleep data from the device, but telling me I had slept for 19 hours and 37 minutes. I even managed over 25 hours one night! I deleted and reinstalled the app, and the problem was fixed.
I also got to like the ’smart coach‘ messages after a while, which did give advice on focusing first on sleep duration, and then working on keeping consistent sleep patterns. There is a decent stab at improving sleep patterns, though there’s also a lot of unnecessary extra info; the social media-style user interface is all a bit childlike, too.
There are other drawbacks. The UP3 lasts only five days between charges, which doesn’t compare well to the fit-and-forget Beddit, and it has to be removed every time you take a shower or go swimming, two things I do pretty frequently.
However, you can take it anywhere, and it also auto-detected an unplanned 90-minute snooze on the sofa, which the others devices can’t match.
It may be the least ambitious of the lot, but the SleepBot app proved both the most reliable and useful sleep tracker.
This app may not have any way to measure my heart rate, but it does have something that both physical devices lack; access to my phone’s microphone. Apparently I’m a bad snorer, and that was really useful to know.
Since it was the only tracker that was consistent, I trusted it. SleepBot taught me that I tend to sleep for quite different lengths over a week, thanks to its simple graph, ’sleep debt‘ figure and nightly goal. By the end of the week, I’m two hours down on what I should have had. I also get to listen to myself snore…
In short, no. Heart rate is a relatively new metric to come to life-logging, and both the Jawbone UP3 and Beddit have sensors to measure your heart’s beats-per-minute. What do they do with that information? Not much.
The automatic sleep-sensors for both failed to impress, and while the Jawbone needs regular charges, the Beddit is not good if you travel a lot.
It’s the coaching side that needs to be improved on all devices – if a device is going to collate all this data, the user wants to know what can be done with it.
After all, these trackers are bought to know if we’re having bad nights of sleep – and if so, we want to know what to do about it.
So while SleepBot may lack heart rate monitoring, and perhaps not be as super-accurate, it’s was the app that I trusted most; it proved the best trade-off between data collected and annoyance caused.
It was also free – so it’s great as long as you don’t mind having your phone on the bed with you.
Do expensive sleep trackers have a future in the bedroom? I’m not convinced. Let me sleep on it.

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