boom

Congrats to John B. of Doral, Fla., for winning a bag of CNET swag in last week's giveaway. This week, we've got a little prize with big sound.

The Bem Wireless Boom Box measures about 12 inches by 9.5 inches by 5 inches and brings 2.1 stereo sound with you wherever you go. It connects to smartphones, tablets, and other Bluetooth devices, with up to 40 feet of working wireless range and about 10 hours of battery life per charge.

Now that spring is here and summer's on its way, this little audio accessory would … Read more

Boom is an app designed to let you adjust the output stream of a Mac, adjusting the equalization and volume. Available from the App Store for $6.99, Boom installs easily.

Boom consists of a graphic equalizer, which allows you to adjust specific frequencies of an audio stream, as well as a volume control, both to better control the output from your Mac's audio outputs. Boom can work with any players (video and audio) including iTunes, or you can drag-and-drop audio or video files on the Boom interface. While most users will use Boom to adjust the volume of … Read more

Adding blinking lights to anything is a surefire way to make it totally obnoxious. For some of you, that's a good thing.

Here are two techniques you can use to add sound-reactive lights to your stereo, boom box, computer, or pretty much anything that makes music.

The first option is to use something like an EL Wire Sound Kit. These are sold online from various places and include some combination of electroluminescent wire, a power adapter, and a special power inverter that drives the wire's power in response to sound picked up by an integrated microphone.

The whole … Read more

I'm going to resist the easy Spinal Tap reference and skip right to the part where I tell you Boom is a Mac app that can increase the volume of your Mac's speakers. The app costs $6.99, but its developer, Global Delight, offers a free, seven-day trial. If you are often underwhelmed by the audio output of your MacBook's speakers, Boom is worth taking for a spin.

The free trial is available at Global Delight's Web site. After installing, the app places an icon in the menu bar. Clicking on it reveals a simple volume … Read more

A few days ago, CNET photographer Josh Miller was going around the office making Cinemagrams. I had seen the app before on the iTunes App Store most-popular lists, but had assumed it was simply a version of Instagram for video. When Josh showed me how the app worked, I was really impressed.

After seeing what Cinemagram could do (more about that below), I started wondering about other animation apps in the App Store and came upon several that were impressive for different reasons, but popular for the interesting animations you could make with your iPhone.

This week's collection of apps is all about making short animations. The first makes stop-motion animations by taking several photos of a moving object. The second makes short videos into animated GIFs you can add to text messages. The third is Cinemagram, an app that lets you make photo and video hybrids that are simple and fascinating.… Read more

Sacramento, Calif.-based "Mr. Simo" makes one-of-a-kind speaker facades out of old suitcases. They look amazing, so I got in touch with the company's owner, Dominic Odbert, to learn more about his designs.

Each BoomCase is a unique creation, so if you see one on Odbert's Web site that catches your fancy, don't think about it too long, because once it's sold, there's never going to be another one exactly like it.

Odbert's has a background in fine art, and he's been building audio gear since he was a kid. Odbert … Read more

'Tis the season for holiday parties, and we suppose you could entertain your guests with tunes using one of these iPod speakers. But if you really want to impress your party-goers, may we suggest the 700-pound iNuke Boom?

You see, the fine folks at Behringer, a professional audio and music equipment company from Germany, weren't satisfied with building just another portable speaker system for the iPhone and iPod. Instead, it went the other direction and came up with the iNuke Boom, an 8-foot-tall by 4-foot-wide speaker that's capable of blasting 10,000 watts of power. … Read more

Boom isn't your everyday mobile banking service.

While much of the attention in mobile payments has focused on affluent smartphone-wielding consumers and their top-tier banks, m-Via has gone the opposite route. The company has built Boom as a service almost entirely devoted to the migrant worker population in the U.S., allowing them to easily set up a bank account they can access on their phone, and use the account to send money back home.

M-Via is tapping into a largely unnoticed, but extremely large segment of the population with its Boom service. The company charges a flat $25 … Read more

Remember the dream of the Concorde? It was that supersonic passenger jet that would ferry passengers from New York to London in less than 3 hours, but supersonic travel never took off because of the loud sonic booms that the planes would generate as they broke the sound barrier.

NASA is working on new technology that would dampen or eliminate those booms, and the space agency is hoping that this will usher in a new era of supersonic travel.

Early experiments add a 24-foot-long spike to the plane mounted on the nose of the aircraft that creates three smaller shockwaves to greatly reduce the noise as the aircraft hits Mach 1. It could mean shorter travel time for consumers, but Jeff is more excited to wean himself off the sleeping pills he takes every time he boards an aircraft.

In less exciting historical innovations, New Yorker Till Krautkraemer is touting a beverage that offers a new way to supplement your protein intake: drink it! MeatWater is intended as a meal supplement with flavors like Peking Duck, Beef Stroganof, and Fish'n Chips; but the liquid contains zero animal byproducts, so vegans and vegetarians are encouraged to consume it for their daily dose of protein.

This is not a joke. According to the Web site, MeatWater has 22 amino acids that aid in performance recovery and decrease body fat when ingested with liquids, and it's recommended that you drink MeatWater warm, as the flavors and aromas are heightened this way.

And while we're solving first-world problems with technology, check out this double USB concept that hopes to save precious microseconds and the frustration you experience from "plug rejection."

Finally, Intel is following in the footsteps of Polaroid and Lady Gaga by introducing its own celebrity employee: Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am has been appointed director of creative innovation, a role that places him as an ambassador to the company and collaborator in "new technologies, music and tech advocacy."

There's not much to say about this should-be joke, so we're just waiting to hear the BEP single that samples the Intel Inside chime. Wait, he's already doing that.