CrunchGear

The Amico Bracelet: Restoring A Little Mystery To Meeting People
Fly Or Die: Amazon Kindle Fire HD
Machina MIDI Jacket: Sound, Movement and Fashion
Apple iPhone Event Rumors: What Will, Won’t And Might Be Announced

The Amico Bracelet: Restoring A Little Mystery To Meeting People

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 07:17 PM PDT

Do you remember life before the Internet? Can you recall a time when meeting someone new took place serendipitously and was uncluttered with all the profile searching and stalking? A time when there was a little mystery in taking weeks or months to uncover the contents of a new friend’s music collection?

A time where, when you did meet someone interesting, you didn’t have every bit of information about them instantly available — where they studied, where they work, what food they like.

Let me be clear, the Amico Bracelet would not restore this earlier era. But this concept could possibly restore just a little bit of mystery to meeting people — when you are actively trying to meet people, that is.

The Amico, made by Trovare, is (or will be) a wearable Bluetooth 4-enabled bracelet. It will synchronize with a mobile app that aggregates your social network profile and port that info into the bracelet’s onboard memory. It will then broadcast an aggregate view of this social profile (at a distance of about 50 meters). Other people who are wearing an Amico will also broadcast their profile. When two profiles that are deemed to be a good match come within proximity of each other…both bracelets will vibrate. Boom! Fireworks.

There you have it. You will be notified when the girl/guy of your dreams is within 50 meters of you. But you won’t explicitly know what the person looks like or any other info about them. You will just know that a match is nearby and it will be up to you to get off your ass and work to find that dreamboat.

I mean, this is still cheating right? The deck is stacked in your favor and the device is doing work for you that you should probably be doing yourself — reading body language, searching for intangibles or absorbing pheromones. But still, there is some mystery here.

It’s a compelling concept, but what is at play here that makes this interesting? A couple of things.

Gamification
There is an element of gameplay to this concept. The thrill of an imminent meetup without a spoiler.

Runs In The Background
It pushes search into the background a bit and doesn’t require you to feverishly and addictively consult your mobile phone every five seconds to see who’s checked into the bar you’re in (but let’s be honest, you are still probably going to do that anyway).

A Second Chance
Most interestingly, the system is designed in such a way that if you did get a notification that a match is nearby, but you just can’t find each other, both profiles will show up back in the app upon your next sync. So you could get a second chance to meet.

The company has raised $250,000 in private funding, but is seeking another $750,000 – $1,000,000 to get the device into production.

When the Amico eventually comes to market, it should be priced at around $40 or so. A small price to pay to keep the one that got away from getting away.

Fly Or Die: Amazon Kindle Fire HD

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 06:00 PM PDT

The Kindle Fire HD is a big deal. Big.

It has rather excellent specs — a 1280×800 7-inch display, TI OMAP processor, dual stereo speakers, and dual-antennae Wifi (with MIMO) — and it comes at a ridiculously low price: $199.

If the original Fire was competitive (and trust me, it was), this one is about to entirely disrupt the tablet space. We all agree. For the perhaps the first time ever, John, Matt and I all believe that the Kindle Fire HD is a fly.

The build quality is superior to the Nexus 7, which is the tablet’s only direct competition. The display resolution is on par (but doesn’t quite beat) the new iPad. The form factor is all the rage. Plus, it has a bevy of new features including Whispersync for Games, X-Ray for movies, and Parental Controls. Why wouldn’t this tablet be a fly?

Oh, and let’s not forget, it’s hooked into Amazon’s incredibly bountiful ecosystem. Winning on all counts.

Until the iPad Mini…

Machina MIDI Jacket: Sound, Movement and Fashion

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 08:35 AM PDT

Machina is a menswear clothing brand that is in the process of mounting a Kickstarter campaign to promote a new product. The campaign doesn’t start for about a month, but the company has a demo version of its unique “wearable” MIDI controller live on the floor of TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this week.

The Machina MIDI Jacket will come in a couple of different styles, but the basic concept is that it is a jacket or vest that is outfitted with several different sensors (multiple MIDI touch sensors, accelerometer, etc.) that can control beats and samples via Wi-Fi and MIDI.

So you can effectively trigger and alter tones by moving your fingers accross the three sliders on the front of the vest. You can also affect the speed of a beat or sample by moving your arm and the accelerometer in the sleeve. This is a cool concept and an interesting and kinetic way to trigger and control beats and sounds. It works with a custom Mac OS X application that the company also created, with iOS versions soon to follow (for maximum portability).

I got a hold of their Kickstarter video a bit early, and they gave me permission to post it. They will have more info about this new concept at their website in the coming weeks.

Apple iPhone Event Rumors: What Will, Won’t And Might Be Announced

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 08:07 AM PDT

We’re getting close. I can almost smell that new iPhone. But what else will we see at the event? There have been plenty of rumors leading up to Wednesday’s announcement, as is often the case with Apple functions, but divining the odds on how many of those will actually come true is a thorny undertaking. Here’s a high-level overview to get your betting pools started.

The iPhone

The iPhone 5 is literally the overshadowing element of the event invite, and we’ll see it. If you bet against a new iPhone unveiling Wednesday, you should stay far away from Vegas. But what it’ll look like is more up in the air.

I provided a look at what you can expect from the iPhone 5 last week, but here’s the CliffsNotes version, along with probabilities:

Bigger, 4-inch diagonal screen (very high)
LTE (very high)
Redesigned dock connector (high)
New design with more metal and less glass (high)
NFC (low to nil)
New earbuds (medium)
A6 processor (high)

That’s pretty much the whole picture, discounting some of the more out-there possibilities. Here’s one thing it definitely won’t have: a discounted, ad-supported version.

iOS 6

This one’s coming. Apple telegraphed it way back at WWDC in June. Features are also already known, because Apple showed them off. Some highlights include a more knowledgeable Siri (though not necessarily a smarter one), system-level Facebook integration, call response features that allow you to answer inbound phone calls with canned or custom text messages, FaceTime over 3G (where carriers allow), Passbook, and more. All of these things are definitely coming, but Apple could always sneak a feature or two in there under the radar, though it isn’t very likely given the forensic level of attention paid to iOS 6 beta releases.

iPad mini

Steve Jobs used to seem to hate the idea of a smaller iPad, but, lately, rumors around such a device have reached a fever pitch. Truth be told, it feels a lot like the atmosphere around the original iPad’s release, which was also long-rumored before it became a reality. Is one in the works? Yes. Is one taking the stage on Wednesday. Smart money says no.

An iPad mini is a marquee product, and the iPhone is a marquee product. It’s true that they probably won’t compete with one another in any essential way, but why split the spotlight when it makes far more sense to keep the mini in your pocket as a pre-holiday special? Let fans spend on the iPhone, recover slightly, and then scratch that gift-giving itch with a smaller, more affordable version of Apple’s best-selling tablet.

Plus the Apple blog-o-sphere has already declared separate events much more likely, with The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple giving the textual equivalent of a knowing link to John Gruber’s supposition.

Facebook Integration For Mountain Lion

Apple said it was coming eventually, and the company showed it off at WWDC. Dates were set for fall, and it seems like issuing an update for OS X alongside Facebook coming to iOS makes sense. Just for the sake of symmetry. Or Apple could just as easily throw this one out quietly on its own, since it doesn’t really need the attention of an event stage. I’m 50/50 on this one.

That’s how I’m betting for Wednesday. Feel free to jump in with your own odds, or with anything else I might have missed.