meade

It may not win any awards for audio performance, but just in time for Halloween, Steve Meade Designs stuffed a Rockford Fosgate Punch 8-inch subwoofer in a carved-out pumpkin.

Check out these Web videos Steve Meade Designs posted on Facebook and YouTube. The top video shows how the speaker was actually made. The second video shows how the pumpkin subwoofer performs.

SAN DIEGO--Sprint Nextel Chief Executive Dan Hesse said the wireless industry can help get the troubled economy back on track.

"Mobile has a direct and powerful impact on efficiency, productivity, and the economic performance of any business in this country," Hesse said during his keynote address at the CTIA Enterprise & Application conference today.

Hesse, Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead, and AT&T head of mobility Ralph de la Vega reunited for another round of keynote addresses at CTIA. Unlike the last CTIA gathering in March, the executives were scheduled to speak in separate addresses, avoiding the … Read more

With a roomful of journalists and a live Webcast audience as his witnesses, Verizon CEO Dan Mead officially launched the Verizon Application Innovation Center in downtown San Francisco today.

"Innovation is at the very core of what Verizon does, and what we stand for," Mead said. "LTE has become one of the signature factors driving innovation."

A sister site of the LTE Innovation Center that opened last month in Waltham, Mass., the application arm is essentially an office space for a relatively small group of Verizon employees, including engineers, to work with application developers and partner … Read more

The name "Etymotic" means "true to the ear" and is pronounced "et-im-oh-tik." Mead Killion founded Etymotic Research in 1983 to design products that accurately assess hearing, improve the lives of those with hearing loss, and protect hearing. His first in-ear headphone designs--the ER-1, 2, 3--were used for diagnostic testing and precision auditory research. The company's first noise-isolating in-ear earphone, the ER-4, debuted in 1991. I remember hearing an early ER-4 and it was radically better than any other portable headphone at the time.

The original ER-4P, which was designed for use with portable cassette and CD players, came out in 1994, long before the iPod catapulted the headphone market into the stratosphere. It was priced at $330, making it a very expensive headphone for the time. The current ER-4 models go for a little less, the ER-4PT runs $299, but Etymotic also offers a broad range of less expensive headphones.

ER-4 headphones are still made in Etymotic's Elk Grove Village, Ill., factory, and the left and right drivers are hand-matched to within 1 dB of each other. The headphone comes with a two-year warranty, double the length of most high-end headphones. If an ER-4 is returned for service, factory technicians confirm the left and right channels still match within the original tolerances before the unit is returned to its owner. Also noteworthy: each ER-4PT is shipped with a "channel-matching compliance graph," signed by the Etymotic engineer who precision matched and custom tuned the balanced-armature drivers.

The ER-4PT is very similar to the ER-4P, but the new model comes with extra mobile adapters, a large plastic storage case, a small travel pouch, and accessories for travelers. The braided cable and earpieces look slightly different than my old ER-4P. I have unusually shaped ear canals and don't always have the easiest time getting a good, air-tight fit with many in-ear headphones, but Etymotic's Triple Flange ear tips work like a charm. True, they must be deeply inserted into my ear canals, but they never accidentally fall out. … Read more

Verizon Communications has named Lowell McAdam as its new president and chief operating officer--a significant step along the path to succeed longtime CEO and Chairman Ivan Seidenberg.

McAdam, currently president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, will become responsible for the operations of Verizon Wireless, Verizon Telecom and Business, and Verizon Services Operations. McAdam, who is 56, will start his new job on October 1 and will report directly to Seidenberg.

The naming of McAdam as president and COO fills a job left empty after Dennis Strigl retired last year. More importantly, McAdam now becomes the logical candidate for the role … Read more

Update: We fixed the video. Thanks for your patience.

The maker of Natralock packaging has a new take on the traditional clamshell enclosures in which most of our favorite gadgets are sold.

Packaging company MeadWestvaco sent us this pretty much out of the blue. But it's a neat idea, so we thought we'd try it out here at Crave. The company says Natralock is better for the environment (half the plastic of clamshell); isn't totally impossible to open; and won't put you in danger of slicing yourself when it comes time for presents this December. As … Read more

There is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, which was created by the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River, will go dry by 2021 because of escalating human demand and climate change, according to a study by Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego.

Lake Mead straddles the Arizona-Nevada border, and Lake Powell is on the Arizona-Utah border. Aqueducts carry water from the system to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other communities in the Southwest.

By 2017, there is a 50 percent chance that the … Read more

One of the more popular gadgets on the market these days is the home planetarium, and Crave has responded with items ranging from the handheld version to egg-shaped aliens. But all these pale in comparison to the Meade RCX400 with its robotic Max Mount--a combined 500 pounds of star-gazing equipment.

As any amateur Galileo will tell you, it's nearly impossible to get a decent image of the heavens because of exposure issues and planet rotation. The solution, according to OhGizmo, is a robotic mount like this one that can track objects in the sky while they're moving.… Read more