UE Wonderboom is a palm-sized explosion of Bluetooth wonderment

UE has announced a new Boom model, this time going smaller with the UE Wonderboom.

The Wonderboom carries all the hallmarks you’d expect from the family. It’s solidly built, waterproof and comes in a range of funky colours – grey, black, red, blue, pink and lilac. 

There’s a big 360-degree sound coming from this compact speaker, which is about 105mm tall and about 95mm across. That means it fits nicely into your hand, like a little musical grenade. 

That’s perhaps a fitting description too, as the UE Wonderboom brings signature loud performance, surprising for its compact size, while also being the perfect size to throw in your bag, throw to your friends and take your music just about anywhere. 

There are large volume controls on the side of the speaker, with a top power and pairing button. As with other UE Boom speakers, the Wonderboom can be paired up with another Wonderboom for instant stereo. 

That makes for a great instant party speaker, good for 10 hours of music, with a reported Bluetooth range of up to 30 metres. 

The UE Wonderboom will be available widely for £89.99 from April 2017.

Ultimate Ears UE Wonderboom review: An explosion of musical joy

UE is back with the Wonderboom, the latest Bluetooth speaker to join the Boom party. And this time it’s going small. 

Like the UE Roll 2, this speaker takes things smaller, making it even easier to port around its fun brand of Bluetooth music, but doing it so much better than 2014’s Mini Boom. This might be a smaller Boom, but the Wonderboom sound is still big. 

Rocking out with a £90 price tag, this could also be the most wonderful UE Boom to date. 

UE Wonderboom review: Palm-sized Bluetooth Boom

• 105 x 95mm
• IPX7 waterproofing
• Wonderboom floats

The Wonderboom takes that now iconic UE speaker design and squashes it down into a barrel shape. Yes, it looks like a grenade and that’s perhaps entirely fitting for this explosive little speaker.

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Funky colours – grey, black, blue, red, pink and lilac – are the order of the day, with 360-degree mesh meeting the harder rubberised ends. The top offers up the controls, with three buttons hiding under the rubberised finish, letting you control the power, Bluetooth pairing, as well as pairing to another Wonderboom in #PartyUp mode. Then there’s those distinctively massive volume controls.

The barrel shape gives this speaker and indestructible feel, something that’s common to all the UE Boom speakers. It’s not just a solid feel, this is a “lifeproof” speaker, happy to take a bit of rough: it’s waterproof with an IPX7 rating and it floats, too, so if you drop it in the pool then it really doesn’t matter. 

It also won’t care if it gets kicked by accident, but we’ve not stress tested it to the extremes of drop kicking it – it’s far too cool and we’d rather have a speaker than not. The shape also means it feels like a speaker that’s ready to be tossed around and we’ve spent some time playing catch with the Wonderboom and it’s totally happy to party on.

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There’s a small loop to the top that’s designed to give you a way of hanging this speaker up – it’s perfect for a hook on the back of the bathroom door, or just to attach somewhere so you don’t lose it.

There’s one downside of the design that we’ve found: the shape means that if you give the top-mounted power button a solid press, the speaker might fall over, because the base isn’t squared. It’s not a huge deal by any measure, just something to be careful of when you first jab that button.

UE Wonderboom review: An explosion of sound

• 360-degree sound
• 10-hour battery life, Micro-USB charging
• 30m Bluetooth range

The Wonderboom follows the path set by previous Boom speakers, offering 360-degree sound, so it really doesn’t matter where you are, you still get the music. This works a little better than the Megaboom, as it does sound just as good from all directions.

It’s not the clearest Bluetooth speaker out there, but that’s not the point. The point is that you can and will take this speaker with you wherever you go – pool, boat, camping, in the shower – and it really doesn’t matter.

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That default sound profile means you get a good meaty kick of bass. If you want to pop, rock or rave your way through the weekend then the Wonderboom will get you there.

Bass can typically lack from smaller speakers, but fear not, the Wonderboom might be a smaller speaker, but it will still shovel out loads of bass. It sounds best when you find a solid surface to put it on – but we’re impressed with the power it offers in various conditions.

The big plus and minus buttons on the front might look a little Christian in their placement, but are really easy to hit when you want to shift the volume up or down. One of the things we like the most about this speaker is that the low-level balance is still good: you can listen to this at low volumes and it sounds good, as it does when you crank it up, without too much distortion.

The battery life is average, however, giving you about 10 hours of music. There are now Bluetooth speakers that will give you longer play time. There’s a Micro-USB in the base for charging so if you’ve moved to USB Type-C on your phone, you’ll have to remember to take the right cable.

UE Wonderboom review: A perfect pairing

• One-touch pairing for stereo 

We mentioned #PartyUp previously and this is one of the fun things about the UE Boom speakers – you can easily pair them up to expand the music. That applies to the UE Wonderboom too. With a simple long press of the UE button on the top, you can have the speakers pair for stereo output. It’s easy.

That brings a lot of advantages to a small speaker like this. Firstly, as it’s only £90 you might consider buying two from the off – or buying one for each of your kids – knowing that pairing them up is a great way to use these speakers. We’ve found the connection to be very stable too – and as type of ad hoc pairing can lead to all sorts of confusion, it’s great that UE has nailed it here.

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While one Wonderboom is a great performer in its own right, when you have a perfect pair the music sounds that much sweeter, letting you place speakers across the room playing in perfect synchronicity. The volume controls then work across the pair too, meaning you can turn them up and down from the either speaker or from the source. 

One downside is that there’s no app to control the sound profile. The Wonderboom is designed to be used as is, but it sounds good and that will remove a layer of complexity that many users simply won’t need.

Verdict

We have enjoyed UE speakers for many years and the Wonderboom is an excellent smaller-scale proposition in the series. It’s ideal for those who want to get out into the world and not have to worry about dropping it or getting it wet. All without breaking the bank.

The fun and simple design has plenty of appeal, especially in its various colour options. Ok, so there are more sophisticated designs in speakers of this type – like the BeoPlay A1 which is an excellent performer (but a far pricier one), which might suit your décor at home a little better – but the UE Wonderboom is for the active generation.

If you camp, ski, have a pool, like to party, go outside or are just a free spirit who loves music, then it’s hard not to see the appeal of the UE Wonderboom. Just remember to buy a second speaker for your wife, child, husband, aunt, granny or dog too.

The alternatives to consider…

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B&O BeoPlay A1

The B&O BeoPlay A1 might be small and rather pricey (£199), but it’s an exemplary Bluetooth speaker that gets down to the job in producing great sound from a beautifully designed package. If sound quality is the most important thing you’re looking for from a small speaker, then this is the one you want and the one worth paying for.

Read the full review: B&O BeoPlay A1 review

Humax HB-1100S delivers 200 free channels and Wi-Fi for £99

If you’re already a Freesat user, or have a satellite dish in place and don’t fancy forking out large chunks of money of a monthly contract, then the Humax HB-1100S may just peak your interest.

Humax could easily be considered experts in the set-top box market, as the company caters for YouView and Freeview Play as well, so it knows what it’s doing. This new 1100S model replaces the HB-1000S, and with it, adds a few notable upgrades.

• Humax HB-1000S Freesat HD box review

Like its predecessor, the HB-1100S serves up more than 200 free-to-air channels, 14 of which are now in HD, compared to 11 on the 1000S. There’s no recording available on the box, but you can easily see what programmes are going to be on up to eight days in advance, or up to seven days in the past if you missed out on something.

Humax

This time round there’s built-in Wi-Fi, so no need to plug an Ethernet cable in, although a port is still available if you’d prefer a more stable connection. Connecting the box to the internet gives access to a number of catch-up and on-demand apps, including all the ones you’ll want to use: BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4 and Demand 5. Netflix is onboard too, although you will of course need a separate subscription to use it.

• What is Freeview Play, when is it coming to my TV and how can I get it?
• YouView unveils new faster, cleaner, TV user interface

A companion app is available for iOS, Android and Amazon Fire devices, which can be used to view the TV guide for the days ahead or act as a remote control when watching at home. Media content such as photos, videos and music can also be streamed to the box from a mobile device when connected to the same network via the Humax TV Portal, so you can share holiday snaps for example, on the big screen. 

The Humax HB-1100S will be available from mid-April for £99.

‘Serial’ team’s seven-episode podcast is ready for binging

When the Serial team announced their new spinoff podcast called S-Town, they promised a murder investigation in rural Alabama. While that’s what host Brian Reed went there to cover, somewhere along the way it turned into a treasure hunt for buried gold. Reed also ended up unraveling the mysteries of the person who called the team to his neck of the woods to investigate a wealthy man who was reportedly bragging about getting away with murder. The good news is that you won’t have to wait weeks to find out how the story ends. Reed and the team have given S-Town (or Shittown as the podcast revealed) the Netflix treatment — all seven episodes are now online and ready for binging.

We say “Netflix treatment,” but S-Town executive producer Julie Snyder told Wired that the spinoff actually used novels as a model in the same way Serial used TV. “In a novel, you’re entering into a hermetic world,” she said. “That’s what we were trying to do, that we hadn’t yet done with a podcast: where you can enter their specific world, and you don’t know really know what it’s about or where it’s going, but hopefully you’re compelled to stay in it the whole time.” Just don’t expect to be listening to the podcast equivalent of a crime novel, because what you’ll get is a Southern Gothic tale wrapped in layers of small-town mystery.

Source: S-Town

‘WONDERBOOM’ Speaker From Ultimate Ears Offers Big Sound in a Small Package

Ultimate Ears today announced the latest addition to its lineup of portable speakers, debuting the palm-sized $99 WONDERBOOM. The WONDERBOOM fits right in with its bigger siblings the UE Boom 2 and the MEGABOOM, offering 360 degree sound in a smaller, more affordable package.

Design wise, the WONDERBOOM looks a lot like the UE Boom 2, but it’s half as tall and a bit thicker. It’s 10.2cm tall with a diameter of 9.4cm, while the UE Boom 2 is 18cm tall with a diameter of 6.5cm.

The front of the WONDERBOOM features the iconic Ultimate Ears volume control buttons, denoted by a “+” and a “-“, and at the top, there’s a power button and a Bluetooth button for pairing the WONDERBOOM to an iPhone. A UE button, also at the top of the speaker, pauses and unpauses music that’s playing. A double tap on the UE button will skip to the next song.

The WONDERBOOM connects to a device through a standard Bluetooth connection and it is designed to maintain its connection up to 100 feet away.

All of the Ultimate Ears products offer surprisingly great sound for both their size and price point, and the WONDERBOOM is no exception. In our testing, it wasn’t far off from the sound of the UE Boom 2 and it was louder and carried more than the sound from a UE Roll. Sound was clear, even at high volume, and the bass was impressive for a small speaker.

Two WONDERBOOMs can be paired together (a long press on the UE button puts them into pairing mode) for larger spaces and louder sound, and there’s also a feature that allows two Bluetooth devices to connect to WONDERBOOM so multiple people can control the music.

A loop on the back of the WONDERBOOM allows it to hang anywhere, and it’s also waterproof (IPX7) and able to float, making it ideal for use at the pool, the beach, or in the bath. It can withstand immersion in up to one meter of water for 30 minutes. It’s also rugged, making it an ideal outdoor speaker — it’s drop proof from up to five feet.

WONDERBOOM charges using an included micro-USB cable, and it offers 10 hours of battery life per charge, long enough to last for a full day.

WONDERBOOM is priced at $99 and it is available in six colors: Stone (gray), Phantom (black), Fireball (red), SubZero (blue), Cashmere (pink), and Lilac (light purple). Ultimate Ears will begin selling the WONDERBOOM on its website in April of 2017.

Tag: Ultimate Ears
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Epic Strategy Classic ‘Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion’ Released on iPad

Feral interactive has announced the release of Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion for iPad. The game is a standalone expansion pack of the cult classic PC strategy title, Rome: Total War, and builds upon the empire-building mechanics of the original as well as introducing a dramatic new historical context.

Barbarian Invasion takes place in 363AD during the height of the Roman Empire, when the Barbarian hordes began fighting back against Roman supremacy in an attempt to reclaim lost territory.

Players can choose to take on the role of a Barbarian commander determined to bring down the Empire, or take up arms as a Roman General and fight to extend the civilization into a new age.

Woven into the historical narrative are clashes with Christian, Pagan, and Zoroastrian religions, along with a new Horde mechanic that commands factions to raid and plunder opposing settlements to sustain their nomadic lifestyle.

Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion requires a first-generation iPad Air or newer, an iPad mini 2 or newer, or any iPad Pro running iOS 10.2 or later, and just under 4GB of free space to install. The game is available to download on the App Store for $4.99.

Tag: Feral
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LastPass Working on Security Patch For Browser Extension Vulnerability

LastPass has advised all users of the password manager to launch sites directly from the LastPass vault and enable two-factor authentication wherever possible, until it addresses a vulnerability discovered in LastPass browser extensions.

The client-side vulnerability, discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy, allows for an attack that is “unique and highly sophisticated”, said LastPass in a blog post, without disclosing further details.

Ah-ha, I had an epiphany in the shower this morning and realized how to get codeexec in LastPass 4.1.43. Full report and exploit on the way. pic.twitter.com/vQn20D9VCy

— Tavis Ormandy (@taviso) March 25, 2017

Over the weekend, Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy reported a new client-side vulnerability in the LastPass browser extension. We are now actively addressing the vulnerability. This attack is unique and highly sophisticated. We don’t want to disclose anything specific about the vulnerability or our fix that could reveal anything to less sophisticated but nefarious parties. So you can expect a more detailed post mortem once this work is complete.

To secure sign-in credentials in the meantime, LastPass has recommended that users launch sites directly from the vault and make use of two-factor authentication on sites that offer it, while remaining vigilant to avoid phishing attempts.

The news follows the discovery and successful patching of earlier remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities that could be used to steal passwords from extensions for Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Edge. Safari was not mentioned in the original vulnerability alert, while mobile apps were not affected, but concerned users can follow the advice regardless until LastPass offers further news on the situation.

Tags: LastPass, security
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‘AmazonFresh Pickup’ offers drive-thru grocery shopping

Why it matters to you

Amazon grocery shoppers who don’t want to wait in for delivery or who need something quickly could find the new service useful.

Amazon’s checkout-less grab-and-go store may have hit a snag, but the company isn’t letting that get in the way of other grocery-focused initiatives.

The Seattle-based giant on Tuesday teased a new AmazonFresh Pickup service where Prime members will be able to order their groceries online before turning up to collect them – all bagged and ready to go — from an AmazonFresh depot.

Described by the company as “a fast and easy way to order groceries, pick them up, and be on your way in minutes,” the new service eliminates shipping costs for customers. It also provides them with more options for receiving their groceries, with offered items including everything from meat to dairy products, as well as a broad range of everyday essentials.

The service is currently being tested with Amazon employees at two depots in the company’s home city. It hasn’t announced an official launch date yet, but Tuesday’s release of a promo video (above) and webpage suggest its arrival is imminent.

Initial launch locations are likely to be places where the AmazonFresh delivery service is already operating, which includes cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Boston.

It’ll be free for $99-a-year Prime members, while AmazonFresh members paying the monthly $15 fee will see some extra benefits, such as having their grocery orders ready in as little as 15 minutes. Non-Fresh members, on the other hand, can only collect their order at least two hours after placing it.

More: 16 of the best shopping apps for iOS and Android

Amazon hopes the new service will prove popular with users who don’t like having to deal with delivery windows and prefer instead the convenience of popping into a depot to pick up their groceries at a time of their choosing, which could be while running errands or on the way home from work.

Advantages for Amazon include reduced pressure on its delivery services, and a possible boost in Prime membership if other shoppers like the sound of the scheme.

The company better known for its gigantic online operation has for several years been taking a closer look at how it might expand its business to physical locations. Pop-up stores have been used to promote its growing inventory of tech goods, while in 2015 it opened the first of several brick-and-mortar bookstores.

More recently it announced Amazon Go, a grocery store where you can grab what you need and leave without going to a checkout, with the cost of the goods automatically deducted from your bank account as you leave the store. However, reports this week suggested it’s facing challenges getting the technology to work properly. There’s also talk of the company building stores to sell furniture and appliances that may use augmented reality to help shoppers choose the most suitable items.

AmazonFresh Pickup, meanwhile, is another effort geared toward taking a larger chunk of America’s multi-billion-dollar grocery market.

Samsung takes aim at movie projectors with a 34-foot 4K screen

The newest generation of Samsung’s 4K televisions stretch its bright, vibrant QLED tech into bigger and bigger screens, topping out at the 88-inch Q9 the company introduced at CES in January. Clearly, these giant TVs are aimed at the home theater market. But the tech giant isn’t content with domestic domination. This week, Samsung debuted its 34-foot Samsung Cinema Screen during Cinemacon 2017, which the company claims is the world’s first HDR LED theater display.

Obviously, this isn’t something for the casual consumer, and even the hypothetical resolution aficionado willing to spend around $30,000 US on Samsung’s upcoming 88-inch Q9 would never afford the Cinema Screen’s as-yet unannounced pricetag. Rather, the company is positioning the mega-LED as the next technology movie theaters should choose now that viewers are used to the sharp quality of home TVs. Hence, the ridiculous feat of a 34-foot 4K screen.

To that end, their press release boasts that the Cinema Screen is ten times brighter than traditional theater screens while exceeding DCI specifications, though it’s yet to officially earn that certification. Whether theater chains glom to the product, it’s still impressive. It’s also a potential solution for smaller venues where resolution is far more noticeable, as well as art spaces that prioritize fidelity in their digital productions.

Source: Samsung

NASA made it easy for everyone to trawl its media archives

You won’t have to go through dozens of mission websites anymore just to find space photos to print or to use as desktop or mobile wallpapers. NASA has launched a new library to host its best high-res images, videos and audio files from across 60 collections. Best thing about it? It’s searchable and available to anyone who has an internet connection.

You won’t find all the photos and videos the agency’s probes and telescopes have ever taken. It hosts only the best of what NASA has ever released to the public, including historic ones like the Apollo 11 moon landing. Even then, the library still boasts over 140,000 searchable files, which you can sort by update date or popularity if you don’t even know where to begin.

Some images come with their EXIF/camera data, including the exposure, lens used and other information, while all video downloads come with a caption file. One huge plus is that its interface automatically scales for phones and tablets, so you can mine for NASA gold anywhere you are.

Source: NASA Image and Video Library