Things We Loved in January, From Smart Glasses to Self-Lacing Shoes
YubicoA YubiKey for iOS Will Soon Free Your iPhone From Passwords
Yubico has become close to ubiquitous in the field of hardware authentication. Its YubiKey token can act as a second layer of security for your online accounts and can even let you skip out on using passwords altogether. The only problem? It’s been largely unusable on the iPhone—until now. The company will soon make a YubiKey that fits into the iPhone and iPad’s proprietary Lightning port, giving those devices the seamless security that already works so well on PCs. On the opposite side, it will offer a USB-C connector for MacBooks. Read the full story.
Photograph by Ian Allen; Animation by Phuc PhamNike's New Self-Lacing Basketball Shoe Is Actually Smart
You may remember Nike's HyperAdapt 1.0, released in late 2016, as the first truly self-lacing shoe. It was also $720, necessitated a kludgy manufacturing process, and was more of a proof of concept than a true performance sneaker. But as with any good 1.0 version, iteration has arrived: The Nike Adapt BB, a basketball sneaker the company announced this month, is the first mass-scale deployment of the Fit Adapt system. It's an engineering challenge wrapped in a swoosh, seeking to improve stability and prolong careers at the same time. It's also the first peek at an integrated ecosystem of smart footwear that will charge wirelessly, remember your preferences, and even analyze your athletic performance. Read the full story.
Alyssa FooteThe HabitLab Browser Extension Curbs Your Time Wasted on the Web
When you open a new tab, do you instinctively navigate to Facebook? Or do you find yourself wasting precious hours of the workday scrolling through Twitter? This browser extension tries to cleanse your bad browsing habits. Install the extension, confess to your bad behavior, and try over 20 different habit-breaking interventions. Some are platform-specific, like a tool that blocks the recommended video sidebar on YouTube or an algorithm-powered tool that hides clickbait on Facebook. Others can be enabled for any website, like a clock that measures the total time you've spent on that website each day. Read the full story.
Beth HolzerMold Your Next Work of Art With a Vacuum and a little Heat
Just smaller than a microwave, the Mayku FormBox uses heat and suction to create precise molds out of plastic. Connect a vacuum cleaner hose to the FormBox, then lay your template—say, a seashell—on the forming bed, beneath a frame that holds a half-millimeter-thick sheet of thermoplastic. The plastic heads up, the vacuum sucks the plastic around the mold, and you're left with an exact replica. Neat! Read the full story here.
Mark Keraly - FMICFender's New Acoustic Guitar Has a Million Different Voices
If the Fender American Acoustasonic Telecaster had been around when Bob Dylan was breaking hearts and blowing minds back in '66, he would have been able to play both the acoustic and electric portions of his concert on the same guitar. With its round sound hole and naturally resonant body, the Acoustasonic plays and sounds like an acoustic guitar. But inside the instrument is an array of electronics that lets the player dial in a wide variety of sounds; when amplified, the Acoustasonic can take on the tonal character of different styles of acoustic guitar as well as solid-body and hollow-body electrics. Read the full story.
EmbrAlways Too Hot or Cold? The Embr Wave Is Your Personal Thermostat
Feeling a little stuffy on the subway, or chilly in the over-air-conditioned office? Adjust the temperature of this wrist-worn wearable, which looks like an Apple Watch and promises to regulate the wearer's temperature. When it heats up or cools down, you'll feel as if you turned on a personal thermostat only for you. Read the full story.
SamsungThe Samsung Space Monitor Liberates Your Desk
Samsung’s minimalist Space Monitor dazzles by demanding less of your space rather than more. Using a discreet black arm to clamp onto the back of a desk, it can sit flush against the wall when not in use. When you require its services, a hinge allows the Space Monitor to extend back from the wall onto your desk, and then tilt to your preferred angle. You can adjust the height of the stand itself as well, from as tall as 8.4 inches above the desk all the way down to surface level. Read the full story.
Beth HolzerGive Your Beats a Boost With the New Maschine Mikro
Breathe a little humanity into your next electronic anthem with the tactile Maschine Mikro MK3. The controller’s footprint is smaller than the laptop you’ll plug into, and it draws all its power via the USB cable. Load up a set of sounds in the companion Maschine app—choose from built-in libraries, your own samples, or loops from Native Instruments’ Sounds.com community site—then tap out kick and snare patterns, exuberant handclaps, or cone-rattling bass bombs on the 16-pad grid. Read the full story.
CoinUp/Getty ImagesGoogle's New Interpreter Mode Translates Your Conversation
Need to make a dinner reservation by picking up the phone and speaking to a real live human being? Google Assistant can do that for you. Need to screen a call that you suspect is from a spam caller, for the 27th time that day? The Assistant will take care of that too. Now, it can also act as a real-time language translator. Interpreter Mode turns the virtual assistant into an interpreter between two people who are trying to chat in the same physical space, but who speak different languages, leveraging Google's experience in translation software. Read the full story.
AmazonThe Prime Challenges for Amazon's New Delivery Robot
Amazon's latest idea to delivery Prime package comes in the form of a six-wheeled, battery-powered, autonomous robot. The robot—which Amazon calls Scout and has begun pilot testing—will augment the company's fleet of delivery trucks, drones, and humans. But it's also very late to the ground-based delivery robot party, which is already crowded with many players. Read the full story.
