How to choose headphone for your music

The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band use optical sensors to measure heart rate. The Jawbone Up3, which instead tracks your resting heart rate,  uses bioimpedance sensors and several electrodes to measure your skin’s resistance to a small amount of electrical current.

The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band use optical sensors to measure heart rate. The Jawbone Up3.

You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem. Steve Jobs

The Apple Watch and Microsoft Band use optical sensors to measure heart rate. The Jawbone Up3, which instead tracks your resting heart rate,  uses bioimpedance sensors and several electrodes to measure your skin’s resistance to a small amount of electrical current.

Figures & Captions

Chasing the blonde dragon is still a genuine plight, because the grass is always. There’s a misguided notion that natural beauty products just don’t do the job as well as conventional creams and cleansers. While that may be the case for some, i’ve found that many natural products are even better than the drugstore brands.

 

The headphone wars have begun

Chasing the blonde dragon is still a genuine plight, because the grass is always. There’s a misguided notion that natural beauty products just don’t do the job as well as conventional creams and cleansers. While that may be the case for some, i’ve found that many natural products are even better than the drugstore brands.

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Will a Sound Machine Help You Drift Off?

The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

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The temperature in your bedroom is perfect. Your blackout curtains have been drawn shut. And you’ve just finished a cup of chamomile tea and novel that made you laugh out loud and forget about whatever was bothering you earlier in the day.

You’re just about ready to drift off, and suddenly the air conditioner kicks on. Or a car alarm screeches through the night air. Or your partner sneezes. Suddenly, you’re wide-awake again. Your brain responds to noises when you’re awake and asleep. But if the interruptions wake you up, that can keep you from getting the restful shuteye that you need.

When ambient noise is disrupting your sleep, white (or pink) noise can help to smooth out the rough edges. Imagine sitting next to a person who is loudly chewing gum in a library. Then imagine sitting next to that same person in a crowded bar. It’s the same chomping gum, but underneath the drone of a crowded place, you can’t even hear it anymore. White noise, whether it’s from a sound machine, a simple fan, or crowd noise helps to mask noise-related disruptions by creating a constant ambient sound that makes a “peak” noise, like a door slamming, less of a contrast. And that makes you less likely to be startled awake.

Read more

Facebook at Work to take on LinkedIn and Google Drive

Facebook may control the social graph of 1.3 billion people, but now it has ambitions to stretch deeper into the workplace, according to the Financial Times’ report on plans for “Facebook at Work”.

This isn’t about getting around corporate firewalls to ensure you can see which Frozen character your friends are, though. It’s a proper move to compete with services from Google Drive and LinkedIn to Slack, and become a serious working tool.

“The Silicon Valley company is developing a new product designed to allow users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents,” claimed the FT.

“The new site will look very much like Facebook – with a newsfeed and groups – but will allow users to keep their personal profile with its holiday photos, political rants and silly videos separate from their work identity.”

It might be a sensible move for Facebook, but how will workers (and bosses) feel about their data being shared and stored on the social network? Workplace collaboration in the cloud isn’t an alien concept for many businesses now, but I wonder how Facebook providing this will be received.

What do you think? The comments section is open for your thoughts.

Also on the technology radar today:

Spotify and Uber team up for in-car music

Uber is holding a press call with a “special partner guest” later today, but their identity is out: streaming music service Spotify. You’ll apparently be able to control the music played in your Uber car from your smartphone, with the tunes delivered from Spotify to the driver’s handset.

Facebook to crack down on ‘overly promotional’ page posts

If you’ve liked Facebook pages that tend to pump out contests or “please buy our thing” posts, expect to see them less in your feed from January. “Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time,” explains the social network.

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The truth about Trader Joe’s

Ever tried Two Buck Chuck? The much beloved, and often maligned “super-value” wine, only available for sale at Trader Joe’s stores (that offer booze), has been leaving Trader Joe’s doors by the case since they began to offer the brand in 2002.

But how much do you really know about your favorite $2 bottle of vino? Fantastic rumors have swirled since Two Buck Chuck (aka Charles Shaw wines) hit the market. Speculation on how they manage to bring the wine to us at such a ridiculously low cost, urban legends about how the wine ever came to be, and mystery about Charles Shaw himself (does he exist?) make Two Buck Chuck an intriguing wine with an even more intriguing story.

I remember buying my first ever bottle of “two buck Chuck” at the brand new Trader Joe’s in NYC way back in 2005, and being slightly bummed to discover that I was actually buying three buck Chuck. I chalked it up to everything in NYC being pricey, but it turns out that the $2 price tag isn’t the standard in every Trader Joe’s location. The price of shipping, taxes, and pesky local liquor laws mean the budget price can vary from state to state, with California being the one place you can count on getting a true $2 bottle.

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