ifa 2014
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Panasonic's smart mirror turned me into a 1970s space princess
It was going to be either me or my male colleague. That's a lie: It was absolutely going to be me. It was my last day at IFA, Europe's biggest technology show, and Brad Molen and I were sitting inside a sparsely decorated smart home that Panasonic had built in the middle of the demo area. Panasonic needed a volunteer to sit in front of its prototypical smart mirror, which applies digital "makeup" so you can sample new looks. I exchanged a look with Brad, imagining his bearded cheeks with blush on them. Then I sat down and agreed to let a machine tell me everything that was wrong with my face.
LG covered some televisions in Swarovski crystals, because why not?
We'll be honest: We were expecting more. When we heard LG was coming out with a television covered in Swarovski crystals, we just assumed LG would go big. Crystals on the bezels. Crystals on the remote. Crystals coming out of the HDMI ports. Actually, though, it's just a dusting of 460 crystals on the base of an otherwise normal 55-inch OLED TV. Additionally, there's a version where the base is made of sculpted crystal. Like, the see-through kind. Not the sparkly Freddie Mercury kind. It'll ship by the end of this month for €4,000 in Germany, and maybe some other European countries. Because if there's anyone who knows class -- well, we won't go there.
ASUS teases smartwatch for September 3rd event
If we're honest, it's reasonable to assume that ASUS will announce a smartwatch on September 3rd. After all, if the rumors saying that the company's working on an Android Wear device aren't enough, then the pretty obvious teaser image should be. According to those pesky rumor-mongers, the unit will be priced between $99 and $149, making it the cheapest Google-approved wearable on the market. We've also heard, thanks to our own sources on the grapevine, that despite the lower price, the watch will use similar hardware to both the Gear Live and G Watch. The only concession apparently being in the battery life department, which will linger somewhere between the 300mAh on the Gear Live and the 400mAh found on the G Watch. Still, whatever the truth, there's only a fortnight to go before we'll find out for ourselves.
Bosch wants to run the power for all of your connected kitchen appliances
Until today, we thought that Bosch's HomeConnect system would only let you turn your washing machine on if you had Bosch (or Siemens)-branded hardware. Turns out, however, that the company wants to be the middleman for all of your internet-connected appliances. At an event in Turkey, a spokesperson revealed that HomeConnect will become a platform that'll let you control all of your kitchen gadgets, no matter which company makes them. That way, instead of having a smartphone chock-full of apps, each one dedicated to a separate appliance, it could all be run from HomeConnect.
