water

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2009, held last week in Denver, showcased the best and brightest in high-end audio gear.

Hundreds of high-end manufacturers, from tiny one-person operations all the way up to industry giants like JBL were on hand. RMAF has a very different vibe than the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January--RMAF is a more grassroots affair.

I never heard of RAAL, a company based in Serbia, but its small (I'm guessing 7-inch-tall) speakers, produced a huge, room-filling sound. The speakers totally disappeared as sound sources.

The speaker uses twin aluminum cylinders, with 4-inch drivers firing up and down and a special "ribbon tweeter" sandwiched between the two cylinders, firing front and rear. Each speaker has its own, separate woofer, housed in another tube with 6-inch woofers at each end.

It's a fully powered system; just hook up a source such as a CD player and you're good to go. Price and availability weren't announced, but the company is hoping the complete system will cost around $4,000.

TAD (a division of Pioneer Electronics) had the best sound I heard at RMAF. Their newly revised Reference One speaker ($60,000 per pair) was far from the most expensive speaker in Denver, but the 330-pound towers produced the most vivid, clear, and transparent sound. Bass drums were tight, pitch-perfect; stereo imaging was, again, remarkably precise and three-dimensional. Vocalists virtually materialized between the two Reference Ones.

Some of that amazing sound quality has to be attributed to the Bel Canto electronics that TAD was using. The compact e.One Series components use just a tiny fraction of the AC power consumed by their hotter running, bigger and heftier competition. Bel Canto does things differently.… Read more

Levers is a clever puzzle game with an artsy aesthetic and relaxing--almost hypnotic--sound, graphics, and gameplay. Spare by design, this balancing game makes even learning how to play part of the challenge. The object is simple: you have to keep a series of increasingly bizarre objects out of the water, by tilting your phone and dragging and dropping them onto a mobile-like set of hangers that you build out as the game progresses.

Without spoiling too many of the game's surprises, you soon discover that the objects--including a bowling ball, a pipe-smoking snowman, and a birdhouse with three very … Read more

Lake Wave Screensaver is a mediocre program with minimal features and settings that don't work. To put it simply, we were not impressed.

The entire screensaver consists of three images, one of which was pixelated. The trick of this screensaver is that any image can be used with it; all it does is apply a wave effect to the bottom two thirds of the screen. If users look closely at the images that are included they'll see how sloppily this is executed; the bottoms of rocks and mountains are subjected to the wave effect as well as the … Read more

The taste of filtered water tends to taste better than what comes out of the tap, but few of us want to buy bottle after bottle of water. The CleanWater Countertop Filtration System, from Cuisinart, brings filtered water to your counter, providing fresh water at the touch of a button. It can dispense hot, cold, and even room-temperature water with a design that makes it easy to fill glasses and other containers. The filtration system can hold two gallons at a time, and has a water tank that can be removed and refilled easily. When water has been filtered and … Read more

Ace Pro Screensaver Creator allows users to create screensavers using their photos. However, the program hits a home run by providing all the tools to protect and sell that screensaver.

We were surprised and very satisfied with this program's interface. A helpful wizard allowed us to input all the necessary pictures and data through a menu screen without needing to visit the Help file. The wizard allowed us to collect the perfect number of pictures, choose the transition times, and customize the effects for those transitions. These tools worked great for us, but were nothing out of the ordinary … Read more

Most of the time, you get everything BUT the kitchen sink. But being that we're the Gadgettes, we've decided you deserve a little something extra. So we decided to give you a kitchen sink too.

Misting kitchen sink

Water Lounge Offers Relaxing Stink Control

Gorenje unveils new generation of kitchen appliances at IFA 2009 (thanks Karl!)

Rhapsody approved for iphone

USB Posture Alert Reminder will set you on the straight and narrow

Fug Hoof shoes (thanks Sparkman!)

Why Didn’t … Read more

Even as billions of dollars are being spent around the world to modernize the electricity grid, the systems to delivery fresh water are also in desperate need of a 21st century upgrade.

IBM is developing a portfolio of IT-related water management technologies, a business that it estimates can total $20 billion within five years. At a water conference next week, IBM and Intel will be forming a working group to study how information and technology can be used to improve water management, according to IBM.

The goal is to sketch out the technical architecture required to more efficiently use fresh … Read more

When talking toilets, it's easy to succumb to potty humor and puns (see headline), but the news out of Stockholm is no joke. Indian sanitation expert Bindeshwar Pathak was honored for his revolutionary toilet with the Stockholm Water Prize at the World Water Week conference held in Stockholm last week.

The Sulabh (translation: "easily available") is a twin-pit, pour-flush toilet (you pour the water yourself) that employs two tanks for waste storage. It does double duty as both a sustainable alternative (it uses less than a third of a gallon of water instead of almost three gallons … Read more

Waterslide Extreme is a free arcade racing game sponsored by the British credit-card company Barclaycard, based on one of their TV commercials in which a waterslide weaves between the buildings of a city. The interface of Waterslide Extreme is intuitive and easy: you steer by tilting your device left and right, and you can slow down by either pressing a touch-screen brake button or tilting your device back (with options for calibrating and adjusting accelerometer sensitivity). You can choose a male or female avatar, with first- or third-person view, as you slide down nine separate levels, collecting power-ups and point-award … Read more