Author: Press Room
In today’s world, smartphones are the go-to devices for remote music listening. But decades ago, the iconic Sony Walkman was the preferred choice for listening through headphones to music on walks, runs, or just lounging around. The Sony Walkman product line held immense cultural significance. Sony introduced it in 1979, and it lasted without interruption until 2010. Although the company has occasionally released new models since then, they aren’t targeting the masses like the halcyon days of cassette. Sony originally called their portable cassette player the Roundabout in the United States and the Freestyle in other countries like Australia and…
Plex is also surprising me with its suite of features, from its ability to work with useful add-ons to even being useful for accessing personal images, like my own cloud storage. Not to mention the companion apps, like Plexamp, which is my personal favorite media player for playing back my CD collection. Fortunately, Plex isn’t done surprising me, because I dug deeper into the settings and found several useful tools that completely changed how I use it. As it turned out, I could use it for more than streaming my personal collection of movies and series—I can stream so much…
Handheld gaming is having a moment. If you’re looking for the best way to play your games on the go, you’ve come to the right place. From big hitters like the Switch and Steam Deck, to powerful Windows machines, cloud-based creations and curios like the Playdate, we’ve reviewed the best handheld gaming console you can buy right now. To test the best handheld gaming console contenders, we use them in every situation we think you will. That meant long sessions on the sofa, dealing with our backlogs in bed, killing time during flights and even booting up a game in…
“Would you like me to make a chart to help visualize your data?” No, I wouldn’t. Everything that feels wrong about ChatGPT today began when it went mainstream. It started as a productivity tool, but was gradually downgraded into a “chatbot.” A chatbot exists to chat. That’s the difference. OpenAI’s focus shifted, and ever since then, ChatGPT has been obsessed with being conversational and engaging. No matter how many times I’ve told it not to do that — don’t try to engage, don’t echo my tone, don’t compliment me — it refuses to stop. It remembers the instruction but ignores…
Introduction There are oodles of options in the crossover SUV arena right now and here’s another; the Leapmotor B10. It’s a Chinese brand part owned by Stellantis, which in itself has many of the rival options pitched directly at it, including the Peugeot e-2008, Vauxhall Mokka Electric, Alfa Romeo Junior and Jeep Avenger. Other obvious contenders for your mid-market custom are the Ford Puma Gen-E or Hyundai Kona Electric, not to mention the perennially popular MG S5.That’s why I approached my road test of the Leapmotor B10, seen here in the Design model variant destined for the UK market, with…
Among the most popular streaming platforms, Netflix was consistently my favorite to navigate. The size of the tiles, in addition to the number, is just enough that you aren’t presented with too many options or too few. This ratio was also extended to your watch list, but the keyword here is “was.” Now that Netflix has changed one of my favorite aspects of its UI, I’ve moved my watch list to Letterboxd. I needed a good reason to create an account, but now that I’m making headway on my watch list, I’m really glad I jumped over to Letterboxd. You…
I have a habit of annoying audiophiles. While I love playing and creating music, I’ve long been suspicious of an industry a little too happy with snake oil. Ludicrously spendy cables with equally ludicrously spendy ‘risers’. Special SSDs that somehow make digital audio sound ‘richer’. Downloadable audio files that feature frequencies only a terrifying bat-elephant hybrid could hear. Headphones that cost as much as a car, with audio output described in the same florid, over-the-top, extravagantly metaphorical way a wine critic might wax lyrical about a glass of plonk. In short: not keen. I vividly recall attending an event for very high-end…
In mid-October, YouTube debuted a new UI design that makes a number of seemingly small changes: icons look a little altered, comments work a bit differently, and the way you save videos to playlists has been tweaked. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but you wouldn’t know that by the way some folks have reacted. YouTube is the biggest streaming platform in the world, so whenever something is modified even a little bit, people are going to notice, and some of those people are going to hate it. We’ll get to them. Happily, there are some changes that pretty much everyone agrees are…
I admit to being a little wary of AI, especially in matters related to artistic endeavors, where it already threatens to replace human creativity. However, when OpenAI introduced the capability to link my Spotify account directly to ChatGPT, my curiosity was piqued. I had to see for myself whether AI could truly understand my musical tastes and create playlists tailored to my specific mood on any given day. If this were the case, it could streamline my listening habits and enable me to find music that exists far beyond my radar. It was time to give it a try. Setting…
Along with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video is one of the longest-running video streaming services available, but for many, it remains a bit of an enigma. Tied into the retail behemoth’s Prime subscription service and having been known by several slightly different names throughout its life (at the time of writing, Amazon is very keen that we refer to it simply as ‘Prime Video’ rather than ‘Amazon Prime Video’ – go figure), it’s never enjoyed the ubiquity of Netflix or the strong brand appeal of Disney+. So what exactly is Prime Video? What does it offer? How can I watch it?…