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Harman Kardon trots out five iPhone-matching headsets, keeps you in high Apple fashion
There's no shortage of iPhone-friendly headsets. Not many are actually designed to match an iPhone's looks, however, and Harman Kardon is counting on that urge to coordinate to draw a few listeners into a new line of very tersely-named headphones and headsets. The more conspicuous resemblances to Apple's creation come through the wired CL on-ear headphones, the Bluetooth-equipped BT over-ears and the noise-cancelling NC over-ears, all of which share a distinctly familiar-looking leather-and-steel design. Subtler listeners will still get a trace of similarity with the in-ear NI and upgraded AE buds, although most of the iPhone friendliness at their size comes through an in-line microphone and remote. Both the BT and NC are battery-powered and last for 12 and 30 hours for their respective special tricks; they'll both keep working through a wire if you've forgotten to charge up just before that Hong Kong vacation. In step with the iPhone-heavy focus, Harman Kardon is only selling the quintet of headphones through Apple's online and physical stores, where they start at $100 for the NI and peak at the NC's $299. One caveat: we wouldn't factor the NC into any short-term trips, as it won't show until the late summer. %Gallery-158092%
Native Instruments rolls out Traktor 2, Maschine 1.6 update
There isn't any hardware that will make you a better (or hell, a good) DJ, although we always seem to forget this whenever we see one of Native Instruments' invariably mind-blowing product demos. If you're a DMC-level DJ, it certainly looks like the newly available Traktor 2 will suit all of your needs nicely. If you're not? Well, you can always enjoy DJ Craze going wild on the video after the break (be advised, however, that the F-bomb drops about a gazillion times on the thing, so this might not be safe for your workplace). And while we're at it, if you own NI's Maschine, the 1.6 software that we first got a look at in early February is available: launch the NI Service Center app to upgrade.
PrimeSense's Tamir Berliner on the future of natural interaction
Many gamers might not know it, but 2010 has been a big year for PrimeSense, and it's thanks to Kinect. The depth sensor might be a Microsoft product, but there's plenty of PrimeSense tech inside making it tick. As a company devoted to natural interaction (NI) interfaces, it must be pretty gratifying to see one of the first major NI devices selling over 2 million units in its first month of availability. Kinect, however, is just the beginning for PrimeSense. Earlier this month, the company helped found OpenNI, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting "the compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware." So far, the organization has released the OpenNI Framework, including open source drivers and skeleton tracking middleware for NI devices. Although the software was created to support PrimeSense's own 3D sensor development kit, the community quickly (and unsurprisingly) adapted it to work with Kinect as well. We recently spoke with PrimeSense's Tamir Berliner about the creation of OpenNI. As might be expected, he foresees a bright future for natural interaction.
The Daily Grind: Are 'quest contacts' becoming outdated?
Everybody knows and understands the quest model. You go to see a guy. The guy asks you to do something. You go and kill the ten rats, or click the object, or fetch the shrubbery, or whatever. You return to the guy. He rewards you and may ask you to do something else. Repeat, with variations, several gazillion times over. Ever since the first RPGs had you encounter the Guy in the Tavern who Needed Something Done, quests and contacts have been a staple of the genre.But the model is mutating more and more. Warhammer Online's public quests do away with the need for a quest-giving contact altogether. Although you still visit a Rally Master to cash in your Influence, the quest simply applies to an area, rather than being handed out by a contact. Now, we've learned that DC Universe Online will offer a great deal of dynamically spawned content centered upon the player, popping up as you move through the city, and though it will still have traditional questing it will generate a great deal of its content spontaneously, through 'encounters' instead of quests.Is this the way things are likely to go in the future? Is this the way we want them to go? Are we collectively tired of the Guy who Needs Something Done, and yearning for new mechanics? Or are we risking tinkering with something too fundamental to change?
