Provides: In-ear audio reproduction with in-line smart remote and microphone
Developer: Sennheiser
Minimum Requirements: 1/8” audio output, Apple iPhone for mic functionality
Price: $129.95
Availability: Now

If you’ve read any of my previous headphone reviews at Appletell, you know I’m not a huge fan of in-ear headphones, especially Apple’s. I’ve reviewed some good sets, but still prefer to use over-the-ear sets when possible. Trouble is, they’re not as portable. You can’t take them for a jog, and they’re sometimes too much to carry onto an airplane, bus and such.

So, if I have to use in-ear headphones, they have to be pretty darn good. Sennheiser’s MM 70 iP headphones for mobile phones are better than that. They get great sound, they’re comfortable, and they include a microphone for use with Apple’s iPhone. It’s everything you wish Apple’s earbuds were, for about $100 more.

Of course, you get a lot for you money, as you can see in the image below.

Considering you get six “ear sleeves” (S/M/L in standard and lamella designs), you’re pretty much assured of getting a good fit. The speaker is a bit larger than you’re likely used to seeing, so the sleeves are a bit thinner, making them easier to fit. You still get good noise isolation, however, so you won’t have to turn the headphones up too loud to overpower out most background noises.

The ear pieces themselves are quite light, and the cord is thin enough so they stay in place well. In fact, considering how thin the cord is, I was quite surprised at how good the sound reproduction is.

The shorter left cord contains the inline controls and microphone, which hung just a couple of inches below my chin. The + and – volume buttons are a bit too small for my thumb, so I occasionally hit the center control when I really just wanted to adjust the audio level. That’s not uncommon, though. The center button allows you to pause the track, fast forward to the next track (double click) or back up to the previous track (triple click). When a call comes in, you click it to accept the call or click and hold for a couple seconds to reject it. Quite simple.

The microphone quality is fine. People with whom I tested it didn’t know I was doing anything different, but would acknowledge a slight difference after I pointed out I was on headphones (especially if I wasn’t holding the mic to my mouth).

What really matters here, though, is the audio quality of the speakers, and that’s quite impressive.

Technical data:

You can see the full spec list at Sennheiser’s website.

The headphones don’t handle bass as well as I prefer, but my tastes pretty much demand over-the-hear headphones for that. Compared to other in-ear headphones, the MM 70 iP is right up there amongst the better models I’ve evaluated. Mids and highs are clean and crisp…probably better than you need with the old MP3s on your iPhone, and certainly better than you’ve heard if you’re used to Apple’s.

The main benefit here is with music, of course, but you’ll also be surprised by how much better phone calls sound. You’ll find yourself saying, “Can I call you back when I get home?” much less often.

Whether you need a set of $130 headphones for your iPhone depends specifically upon your use. I’m never opposed to paying that much for quality audio reproduction, but you can do better for this price. However, you likely won’t get the in-line controls and iPhone microphone functionality.

So, if your iPhone is your audio system when you’re exercising or travelling, the MM 70 iP offers a fair balance between audio reproduction, portability and phone functionality.

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I don’t know about you guys, but ever since all this bedbug information has been hitting the news I am scared to death to stay in a hotel, or even sit with my head against an airplane seat, just the thought of these creepy critters gets my skin crawling, I just can’t relax.

Well, now I have something new to add to my obsessive-compulsive arsenal, the Bedbug Camera. This web enabled USB microscope camera, can zoom into any object and examine it very closely using the 10x magnification or it can zoom all the way up to 300x for a much closer look.

This camera is perfect for identifying bed bugs or any other tiny particles. Imagine your delight when you realize for certain, that you are not in fact overrun with bedbugs, but merely inundated with Oreo crumbs from your husbands midnight snack.

You can share your images with the world by posting the high resolution photos or streaming live video over the Internet to your fellow insect-phobes. With LED lights illuminating the subject area, and its excellent magnification capabilities you can rest easy, knowing just what it is thats going to get you in your sleep.

Ahhhh… how relaxing is that? Get yours now for $129.95 from   www.brickhousesecurity.com

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Boxee just before New Year’s apologized for the delayed additions of Netflix and Vudu to its Mac and Windows desktop apps and the Boxee Box while giving new timetables. The Vudu update will be the first and should arrive next week to provide per-title movie purchases and rentals. Netflix is now due to reach Boxee before the end of January.

“I am disappointed that we couldn?t make it happen in time for the end of the year,” founder Avner Ronen said. “However I?d ask that you put your faith in us. There are countless devices with access to these services available, but I?d like to think you chose Boxee because we offer something different, in our approach, in our commitment, in our passion, in the way we communicate (whether its [sic] good stuff or bad), and in how quickly we move on the stuff that matters most to our users.”

He briefly mentioned that more content should be coming to Boxee apps and hardware in 2011, including outside of the US. More devices were coming as well, he said, without saying which.

The Boxee Box hardware has been a minor hit for Boxee, for whom the media hub was its first ever physical product. Its sales trail well behind Apple TV but also come with limited retail reach and marketing.

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Intel is rumored to be planning to outsource the production of its Panther Point chipsets, according to a report. Industry sources are claiming that Intel plans to partner with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacture Company (TSMC), which will fabricate the Panther Point chipsets, which will be paired with Intel?s Ivy Bridge processors. The move is aimed at reducing manufacturing costs in order to address AMD?s competitively priced Fusion APU?s (Accelerated Processing Units).

It is also claimed that in outsourcing the production of its next gen chipsets, Intel will be able to focus on producing advanced technology processes. The Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, due in the first quarter of 2012, are a 22nm die-shrunk version of Intel?s 32nm Sandy Bridge processors. Notebooks featuring the Sandy Bridge architecture have recently begun to surface ahead of its formal unveiling at CES 2011.

Intel has been upgrading four plants in Oregon and Arizona, equipping them in order to fabricate the Ivy Bridge processors. However, instead of fabricating the matched chipsets itself, Intel was reportedly persuaded to outsource their production as TSMC has recently announced an additional US$5.9 billion investment in its infrastructure, making such a move feasible.

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LG continued a series of pre-CES unveilings today by releasing its first attempt at a purely digital media hub. The Smart TV Upgrader ST600 gives any TV, including those from LG’s competitors, the same access to LG’s Internet TV functions and TV app store as one of its own TV sets. In the US, that should bring Netflix and Vudu movies as well as a full web browser and DLNA media sharing.

The emphasis on streaming keeps the hardware requirements light similar to those of the Apple TV the Smart TV Upgrader competes against. A minimal Broadcom BCM7615 serves as the main processor, and it carries just 384MB of RAM along with 1GB of flash storage. Ethernet and Wi-Fi provide the networking. Out of the box, the device comes with a touch-driven remote, but a USB port provides either room for a mouse or a place for external media storage.

LG plans to formally unveil the set-top box at CES next week and will ship it in the spring. Pricing hasn’t been given out, but the reduced specs could price it below Apple, Roku and others with network-only media hardware.

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A new Trojan horse aimed at Android devices has recently surfaced in China.

Named “Geinimi,” San Francisco firm Lookout Mobile Security says the Trojan is “the most sophisticated Android malware [the firm has] seen to date.”

“Geinimi is effectively being ‘grafted’ onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications,” most of which have been games, the firm says. The apps are then sold in Chinese third-party Android app markets. Affected apps will request permissions “over and above”  those requested by the legitimate version of an app.

“Users should make sure that the program is asking for permissions appropriate to the app,” a spokesperson from Lookout told Wired. “If the program is asking for your IMEI or your location, and it has nothing to do with the app’s function, that’s a big red flag.”

IMEI is short for International Mobile Equipment Identity, the internationally-used, unique identity number used by many phones.

Lookout hasn’t yet established an intent for Geinimi, though the firm claims the Trojan is “the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities.” The firm claims that it’s “botnet-like” because it hasn’t yet seen the command server communicate back to affected devices, a Lookout spokesperson told Wired.

The firm has evidence that Geinimi is being distributed only through third-party Chinese app markets. Lookout hasn’t seen any Geinimi-compromised apps in the official Google Android marketplace.

Lookout released an update to its own Android antivirus app, which it says will protect users against Geinimi.

Photo: alachia/Flickr

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Don’t believe the recent gossip that Nokia and Microsoft are hooking up to make a Windows phone. A soon-to-be-former employee of Nokia claims it isn’t happening.

On his personal blog, Watts Martin explained that a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia isn’t even close to happening, because it’s unlikely Nokia would cede control of an OS to a third party.

“There is no guarantee of that at all, because it is stark raving loony,” Martin wrote. “A lot of the reporting on Nokia I’ve seen seems to miss a fundamental fact: they are, in their fashion, just as insistent on control over their ecosystem as Apple is.”

Nokia has been a diehard supporter of Symbian, an open-source operating system that’s a decade old. For years, Symbian has been the worldwide leader in smartphone OS marketshare, but some analysts say it could soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, which has a more modern user interface and several manufacturing partners.

“Market share is an existential threat to Symbian, it imperils the very existence of the platform,” said Gartner analyst Nick Jones. “And the main reason Symbian is losing share is the user experience which isn’t competitive with Apple or Android.”

Eldar Murtazin, editor in chief of Mobile-Review editor, claimed last week that Microsoft had begun talks to make Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. The bleak outlook for Symbian got the tech press wondering if such a partnership would be likely.

Martin’s answer to that question would be a firm “No.”

“Nokia really does have their OS strategy figured out, and it’s a good one,” he said. “What they don’t have figured out is user experience design…. The good news for them is that over the last year they’ve started to take all those problem seriously. The bad news is that they needed to have been taking them seriously in 2007.”

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Consumer electronics companies are betting that 3-D is going to be the next big thing, and several are heavily promoting the latest 3-D televisions. But the advent of consumer-level 3-D has been accompanied by concerns about what effect the hardware might have on the human visual system. Although there’s no evidence of harm, most of these companies have issued disclaimers warning against the use of this hardware by children.

Now, Nintendo Japan has joined them, warning against the use of its upcoming Nintendo 3DS system by anyone under the age of six.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company posted the warning on its Japanese website in advance of an event promoting the device’s February release. According to its translation, the company is warning that, “For children under the age of six, looking at 3-D images for a long time could possibly have a negative impact on the growth of their eyes.”

We’ll hope that the “growth of their eyes” bit is just a bad translation. Concerns about the impact of 3-D are based on the fact that, outside of holograms, no system is actually capable of generating an actual 3-D image. Instead, various systems work by creating the illusion of depth by carefully manipulating the information received by the human visual system. In effect, 3-D involves playing tricks on our ability to perceive depth.

None of this will harm the actual eye itself, much less any growth it undergoes during childhood. The concern is that the portions of our visual systems that reside in the brain are adaptive; they adjust to the information we receive, and can remap connections in order to operate more efficiently on a typical input.

This is especially true in infants, as the visual system is still developing at the earliest stages of life. This ability to rewire our visual system on the fly is behind the 3-D health concerns. If our brains are fed a heavy diet of 3-D, they might start adjusting to process it more efficiently, and that process could come at the expense of regular vision.

As of now, however, there is no research indicating that there’s a anything to these worries. The last time a 3-D panic occurred—and they seem to occur every few years—we did an extensive literature search, and checked papers that people had pointed to as evidence of the technology’s harm. Most addressed other topics, and the few studies that were relevant were small and involved short-term disorientation in adults.

In short, Nintendo’s warning may be reasonable and cautious, but it doesn’t reflect a known health risk.

So far, factors other than health worries seem to be affecting the sales of 3-D televisions, and it’s probably safe to say that the sales of the 3DS will also be driven by the hardware, the price, and its game library.

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MSI at a Taipei preview of its CES plans had a demonstration (below) of the WindPad 100W. Despite plans to launch it in 2011, the Windows 7 slate is entirely unchanged from its May appearance at Computex and still runs a 1.66GHz Atom Z530, 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD. The processor is reportedly the best MSI could manage on a Windows tablet without having to use a noisy fan, NetbookNews was told in its look.

In testing the device, the system was considered disappointing. The decision to use the older processor made it “thick and outdated,” they said. Hands-on time in the video showed that the Intel graphics are slow to redraw when the tablet rotates and that either the multi-touch screen, Windows 7 or both aren’t immediately responsive.

Company chair Joseph Hsu said better WindPads won’t start arriving until March, when the company’s model using an Oak Trail-based Atom provides a modest boost. He also confirmed rumors that MSI was waiting until April for Android and would use Honeycomb (Android 2.4/3.0) along with NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor.

Microsoft has been counting on having a slew of Windows tablets to try again at rivalling the iPad, but the lack of an updated WindPad at the show would hurt its stance at a Las Vegas show where both Android and support for the iPad are expected to take center stage.

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A rare prediction of Nokia’s smarphone sales came today from Finland-based equity research group Inderes Oy. Pointing to chip orders, Nokia’s recruitment at its Salo factory and even web search traffic, analysts estimated that Nokia would ship about four million units of its N8 smartphone flagship this fall. The demand so far was the highest in both Nokia’s Finnish homeland and in countries where Apple and Google didn’t have a significant footprint to start with, including India, Malaysia and the UAE.

While web traffic was readily admitted as an imperfect measurement of sales, sharp increases in searches indexed by Google Trends were often uncannily accurate at reflecting how well a given device was selling, Inderes Oy said. It pointed to search volume for the iPhone often correlating to the ratio by which Apple’s sales went up. Searches in western countries often reflect an intention to buy.

By these ratios, the N8 would be selling only slightly slower than HTC’s most popular phone line, the Desire, but above the Samsung Galaxy S. Samsung would still sell more of its phone as it started shipping earlier, in June versus September, but Nokia might be catching up relatively quickly.

Areas where the N8 led in searches often had distinct problems affording devices like the iPhone. Few Indians buy iPhones because the price is often well beyond their means, the analysts said; the least expensive iPhone costs the equivalent of $745, or enough that buying three could match the price of Tata’s Nano car.

The results could show that the N8 wasn’t a flop, such as with the N96, N97 and N900. Researchers attributed it to some users buying the 12-megapixel camera phone as an alternative to a dedicated point-and-shoot. The company nonetheless warned that Symbian^3 was still well behind Android and iOS and didn’t say how well it expected other Nokia phones to manage, possibly leading to a decline even if the N8 fared well.

Nokia recently delayed the E7 to 2011 and has been mum on plans for the first part of the year beyond catching up on earlier predictions.

Google Trends for HTC, Nokia and Samsung over the four quarters of 2010

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