Harman creates individual zones for car audio

Are you and your family always arguing about who gets to play their music on the car stereo? Now, Harman’s going to make you a bit more anti-social with its new in-car setup. It lets drivers create “individual sound zones,” which won’t interfere with the different sounds played in the other areas. It breaks down the interior into “virtual, simultaneous in-car entertainment systems.” It will be created using the car’s current setup as well as the addition of twin 50mm directional units added to the headrests and flat electrodynamic planar loudspeakers in the car’s headlining.

The zones can be controlled individually by the passengers but, of course, it doesn’t offer complete isolation. It does limit it so you wouldn’t be distracted to what your sister is listening to beside you. It can be integrated into any Harman audio system through an amplifier or be tailored to fit a specific vehicle layout. And it can be paired with Harman’s HALOsonic active noise cancellation technology, which is created to combat road and engine noise.

Source: Gizmag

SoundCloud updates Android app to infuse Material Design

SoundCloud took a bit of inspiration from Android’s Material Design with its latest update. It now supports Lollipop notifications and has rounded menus and a more spacious action bar. It also blurs out the background when you pause a song. Facebook integration has also been updated as well as French translation addition. A bug that stops stream paging prematurely has also been squashed as well as login crashes affecting some Samsung devices running Android 4.2.2.

Source: Android Police | Download: Google Play Store (Free)

CES 2015: Asus brings the same RAM capacity of your laptop to the ZenFone 2

The day has come that smartphones have caught up with laptops in terms of RAM capacity. Asus’s ZenFone 2 can carry up to 4GB of RAM. Aside from that, it is built with a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS display, 64-bit 2.3GHz Super quad-core Intel Atom processor, dual SIM support, and a 13-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel front shooter. Connectivity options include 4G LTE (speeds up to 150Mbit/s) and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. It’ll run on Android 5.0 Lollipop with ZenUI skin layered on top.

The 2GB version of the ZenFone 2 retails for US$199 and will be available in March. No word yet on the price of the 4GB model. It will, of course, be more expensive but it can still be considered a steal with the specs of the device.

Source: Epoch Times

CES 2015: Sony introduces stainless steel version of SmartWatch 3

Sony is looking to make its SmartWatch 3 more fashionable with the latest iteration of the smartwatch. It now also has a stainless steel model, which gives it a more traditional watch feel to it. Its insides will remain the same though. It still has a 1.6-inch 320 x 320 transflective touch display, built-in GPS, IP68 certification, 4GB of flash memory, NFC capability, and microUSB charging. If you want to swap it with the original rubber straps, you can do so as well. The SmartWatch 3 will be available starting next month.

Source: PCPro