Gadgetwise Blog: Great Sound, and Easy on the Wallet

The Jax in-ear headphones from Sol Republic.

Expanding its stable of audio products, Sol Republic recently introduced a line of low-priced in-ear headphones called Jax.

Jax headphones run about $40 each, or $20 less than Amp headphones, their counterparts at Sol Republic. The sound engine in Jax is new, but not as powerful as Amp’s. Still, Jax delivers clarity and a booming bass, Sol Republic’s signature sound.

Designed for everyday use, Jax has a long, flat cord that won’t tangle. And at 54 inches long, it easily reaches my work computer, allowing me to lean back in my desk chair while listening to music. The durable cord is equally capable on the go; I could plug the headphones into my iPhone, slide the phone into my pocket and head home on the subway without worrying about disconnecting the cord.

However, I was concerned about the earbuds, which were a bit too heavy and had a tendency to pop out of my ears. And that long cord actually worked against the headphones, constantly tugging at the earbuds. I was eager to try the headphones on a run in Central Park, but I was distracted the whole time because I was trying to find a secure fit.

I tried replacing the ear tips with other sizes, but I still could not get a good fit. My other option was to jam the tips into my ear canal, something I’m certain my doctor would not recommend.

A three-button remote control and microphone at the yoke allows for adjusting the volume and switching to phone calls on Apple devices. The remote also works as a single-button universal control that is compatible with other devices, including Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy.

The Jax headphones come in blue or white and are available on the Sol Republic Web site and at electronics retailers. Offering great sound, they are a good alternative to higher-priced in-ear headphones; I just wish the design was better.

Unboxed: Big Data Is Great, but Don’t Forget Intuition

Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business, led off the conference by saying that Big Data would be “the next big chapter of our business history.” Next on stage was Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor and director of the M.I.T. center and a co-author of the article with Dr. McAfee. Big Data, said Professor Brynjolfsson, will “replace ideas, paradigms, organizations and ways of thinking about the world.”

These drumroll claims rest on the premise that data like Web-browsing trails, sensor signals, GPS tracking, and social network messages will open the door to measuring and monitoring people and machines as never before. And by setting clever computer algorithms loose on the data troves, you can predict behavior of all kinds: shopping, dating and voting, for example.

The results, according to technologists and business executives, will be a smarter world, with more efficient companies, better-served consumers and superior decisions guided by data and analysis.

I’ve written about what is now being called Big Data a fair bit over the years, and I think it’s a powerful tool and an unstoppable trend. But a year-end column, I thought, might be a time for reflection, questions and qualms about this technology.

The quest to draw useful insights from business measurements is nothing new. Big Data is a descendant of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “scientific management” of more than a century ago. Taylor’s instrument of measurement was the stopwatch, timing and monitoring a worker’s every movement. Taylor and his acolytes used these time-and-motion studies to redesign work for maximum efficiency. The excesses of this approach would become satirical grist for Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.” The enthusiasm for quantitative methods has waxed and waned ever since.

Big Data proponents point to the Internet for examples of triumphant data businesses, notably Google. But many of the Big Data techniques of math modeling, predictive algorithms and artificial intelligence software were first widely applied on Wall Street.

At the M.I.T. conference, a panel was asked to cite examples of big failures in Big Data. No one could really think of any. Soon after, though, Roberto Rigobon could barely contain himself as he took to the stage. Mr. Rigobon, a professor at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, said that the financial crisis certainly humbled the data hounds. “Hedge funds failed all over the world,” he said.

The problem is that a math model, like a metaphor, is a simplification. This type of modeling came out of the sciences, where the behavior of particles in a fluid, for example, is predictable according to the laws of physics.

In so many Big Data applications, a math model attaches a crisp number to human behavior, interests and preferences. The peril of that approach, as in finance, was the subject of a recent book by Emanuel Derman, a former quant at Goldman Sachs and now a professor at Columbia University. Its title is “Models. Behaving. Badly.”

Claudia Perlich, chief scientist at Media6Degrees, an online ad-targeting start-up in New York, puts the problem this way: “You can fool yourself with data like you can’t with anything else. I fear a Big Data bubble.”

The bubble that concerns Ms. Perlich is not so much a surge of investment, with new companies forming and then failing in large numbers. That’s capitalism, she says. She is worried about a rush of people calling themselves “data scientists,” doing poor work and giving the field a bad name.

Indeed, Big Data does seem to be facing a work-force bottleneck.

“We can’t grow the skills fast enough,” says Ms. Perlich, who formerly worked for I.B.M. Watson Labs and is an adjunct professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

A report last year by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm, projected that the United States needed 140,000 to 190,000 more workers with “deep analytical” expertise and 1.5 million more data-literate managers, whether retrained or hired.

Thomas H. Davenport, a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, is writing a book called “Keeping Up With the Quants” to help managers cope with the Big Data challenge. A major part of managing Big Data projects, he says, is asking the right questions: How do you define the problem? What data do you need? Where does it come from? What are the assumptions behind the model that the data is fed into? How is the model different from reality?

Society might be well served if the model makers pondered the ethical dimensions of their work as well as studying the math, according to Rachel Schutt, a senior statistician at Google Research.

“Models do not just predict, but they can make things happen,” says Ms. Schutt, who taught a data science course this year at Columbia. “That’s not discussed generally in our field.”

Models can create what data scientists call a behavioral loop. A person feeds in data, which is collected by an algorithm that then presents the user with choices, thus steering behavior.

Consider Facebook. You put personal data on your Facebook page, and Facebook’s software tracks your clicks and your searches on the site. Then, algorithms sift through that data to present you with “friend” suggestions.

Understandably, the increasing use of software that microscopically tracks and monitors online behavior has raised privacy worries. Will Big Data usher in a digital surveillance state, mainly serving corporate interests?

Personally, my bigger concern is that the algorithms that are shaping my digital world are too simple-minded, rather than too smart. That was a theme of a book by Eli Pariser, titled “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You.”

It’s encouraging that thoughtful data scientists like Ms. Perlich and Ms. Schutt recognize the limits and shortcomings of the Big Data technology that they are building. Listening to the data is important, they say, but so is experience and intuition. After all, what is intuition at its best but large amounts of data of all kinds filtered through a human brain rather than a math model?

At the M.I.T. conference, Ms. Schutt was asked what makes a good data scientist. Obviously, she replied, the requirements include computer science and math skills, but you also want someone who has a deep, wide-ranging curiosity, is innovative and is guided by experience as well as data.

“I don’t worship the machine,” she said.

State of the Art: Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC Windows Phone 8X Are Great, and Yet

Because competition drives innovation. Innovation leads to improvement. Improvement begets happiness.

In the tech world, some companies do their most innovative work when their backs are against the wall — especially Microsoft. Last month, it took the wraps off Windows Phone 8, the most polished edition yet of its beautiful, crystal-clear software for touch-screen phones. (My review of Windows Phone 8 is at http://j.mp/Qqfz2F.)

Unfortunately, as a Microsoft product manager told me understatedly, “We have an awareness problem.” Translation: Nobody is buying Windows phones. And since nobody’s buying them, nobody’s writing apps for them. And since nobody’s writing apps — well, you can see where this is going.

Still, Microsoft isn’t giving up. This month, Windows Phone 8 arrives aboard two fascinating new phones: the Nokia Lumia 920 ($100 with a new AT&T contract) and the HTC Windows Phone 8X ($200 from AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile).

It’s funny about Nokia and HTC; they, too, are fallen giants. Nokia was the world’s largest cellphone maker for 14 years straight; not anymore. At the moment, it’s in seventh place among smartphone makers. It has shed tens of thousands of employees. HTC is struggling, too, having sold 36 percent fewer smartphones this year than last.

How intriguing, then, that HTC and Nokia have each chosen Microsoft as its savior, and vice versa. Loser + loser = winner?

Yes, actually. The two new phones have a lot in common — for one thing, they’re both awesome. For another, both have bigger, sharper screens than the iPhone’s famous Retina screen. (The HTC and Nokia phones have 4.3- and 4.5-inch screens. That’s 1,280 by 720 pixels, packed in 341 and 332 to the inch.)

Both have rounded backs and edges, which make them both exceptionally comfortable to hold. (The curve also makes it easy to pull them out of your pocket the right way.)

Both come in a choice of bright colors. Both phones have the same blazing fast processor. Both can get onto their respective carriers’ 4G LTE data networks (meaning very fast Internet), in the cities where those are available.

And get this — both of these phones can also charge without being plugged in. That’s right: magnetic charging is finally built right into phones. Come home at the end of the day, throw your keys in the bowl, set the phone down on the charging pad (a $50 option) — and a little chime tells you that it’s happily charging, even though no cable is in sight.

It’s pretty great. It will become even greater if this charging method (an industry standard called Qi, pronounced chee) catches on. Someday there may be charging surfaces at coffee shops, airports and hotel rooms. (Only the Verizon version of the HTC phone has this feature turned on — not the AT&T or T-Mobile versions.)

Both phones also have built-in NFC chips. These allow near-field communications, which means “this phone can do things when you tap it against another gadget.” The promise is that you’ll be able to tap on a cash-register terminal to pay for something; tap against an NFC-enabled bus shelter ad to download promotional goodies; tap two phones together to transfer a photo or address; and tap against a Bluetooth speaker to “pair” it with the phone.

In practice, there’s more to it than that. Unfortunately, the tap only introduces the phones; Bluetooth or some other technology is needed to complete the connection. And Microsoft’s coming tap-to-pay initiative is incompatible with the one Google has spent millions of dollars setting up at cash registers across the land. But we can always hope.

The HTC Windows Phone 8X is the smaller of the two new phones, but even so, it dwarfs the iPhone — it’s wider, taller, heavier and thicker. If you get the Verizon model, your Internet experience will be faster and better in more cities than on the Nokia phone, which is available only on AT&T.

The back panel is faintly textured, so you’re less likely to drop this phone than you are the shiny-backed Nokia. But the buttons — power, volume, camera — are skinny and utterly flush with the phone’s body; you practically need an ice pick to push them in.

App Smart: News360, Edge Extended, Need for Speed and Other Great Android Apps

If you’re a new owner of one of these, you’ll be happy to know that there’s many an app that will simultaneously thrill you, inform you and welcome you into the world of tablet computing.

For a great news experience, the free app News360 has to be one of the better news-aggregating ones I’ve seen on any platform. When you first open the app, you are presented with a long list of topics that it can aggregate for your convenience into different categories, from arts through science to zombies.

The app uses this profile to grab news from the Web and present it to you within its elegant interface. This is dominated by picture-based “tiles” for each news article the app collects. Each tile tells you the appropriate category, where the news item came from and when. Tapping on one of these tiles takes you to a new page that contains a screen grab of the original online source, alongside the text the app has collected from the article.

The pleasure of News360 is that you can either satisfy your curiosity by tapping on a link to read the original article or decide you have learned enough and navigate on. You can also mark the article as interesting, save it for reading offline — perhaps on a commute — or share it on a social network. These controls are also accessible from the initial “tiles” screen, where you flip over an article’s tile to see the controls. The flip is accompanied by a very pleasing animation. It’s just a little graphical touch, but small details like this make an app great fun.

Part of the fun of having a new tablet is showing off its graphical prowess. Games are a great way to do this. I’ve had immense fun with Edge Extended (about $3 on Google Play). In this game, you play a multicolored cube that you roll around a blocky terrain to collect targets. You swipe your finger on the screen to make the cube flop onto its faces to move. There are all the classic elements of collecting points, avoiding pitfalls, activating switches and so on. But despite its graphical simplicity, the app is swift-paced and very satisfying; it even gave me that sensation of falling from a height in some of its trickier parts.

If you really want to impress people with your tablet’s screen, then you’ll probably get a kick out of a game like Need for Speed Most Wanted ($7 on Google play). It’s a racing game that uses motion to control steering and simple tap controls to brake, slide the car in a drift or turn on a nitrous turbo boost. True to the “Most Wanted” title, you race on regular roads, not racetracks, and can get in trouble with the police. This app has all the typical racing fun, along with the ability to earn points that unlock better cars and so on. But the standout feature is the attractiveness of the graphics, and the image rendering even includes reflections of passing buildings in puddles. It’s really eye-popping, and it even works on a diminutive tablet like the Nexus 7.

If racing’s not your thing, you may like SoulCraft THD instead. In this hack-and-slash role-playing game, you control your character from above as it fights its way through a fantasy landscape of dungeons and cities. As on a standard computer action game, you can earn spells and improve your character’s powers.

The game is “freemium” so it’s free to download and play, but you have to make in-game purchases with real money to advance quickly. The graphics are slick, but don’t expect the kind of detailed rendering you would see on a gaming PC.

If you want to make your pals who own iPads jealous, turn on an animated background. This shows off the computing power of your tablet and Android’s skills, too.

Right now my tablet is rocking the seasonal Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper, which is $1. You can control all sorts of aspects of the app, including what type of trees wave their autumnal leaves in the wind, and it’s delightful. It’s also something that a stock iPad absolutely can’t do.

Have fun, but here’s a big reminder for you: Not all Android tablets will play nicely with all tablet apps, and some features depend on installing the latest edition of the operating system.

Quick Calls

Fresh and free on Android and iOS is a highly unusual “experimental” game, Curiosity. It’s a cube with faces made of millions of smaller cubes. Players all around the world hack away at these by tapping on their devices. A single prize is hidden inside an unknown number of layers. It’s weirdly fun to play ... One of the earliest and slickest apps for Windows 8/RT devices is the official Wikipedia app (free), which shows the online encyclopedia in its most elegant, graphical format yet.

What's so Great About iOS 6?

iOS 6: All the Best New Features - IGN var IGN = IGN || {}; IGN.pagetype = "article"; var igndrones = igndrones || {};igndrones.async = igndrones.async || [];igndrones.async.push(function() { igndrones.init({"audience":{"csid":"C07583","property":"ign","pagetype":"article","topic_wireless":"yes"},"chartbeat":{"uid":"21105","domain":"ign.com","authors":"Jon Fox","sections":"Desktop Web,articles"},"comscore":{"c2":"3000068"},"exelate":{"p":"373","g":"001","c":"901810"},"ga":{"account_number":"UA-23541058-1","_setDomainName":".ign.com","custom_vars":[[1,"pagetype","article",3],[3,"article-id","505a5f839e4ee52a5f9d4ec1",3],[4,"content-title","iOS 6: All the Best New Features",3],[5,"author","Jon Fox",3],[6,"publish-date","2012-09-19",3],[7,"article-type","news",3],[12,"categories","tech.wireless",3],[13,"tags","iphone",3],[15,"action","articleview",3],[16,"controller","v2articles",3],[17,"module","default",3],[18,"resource","articles",3],[20,"is-community","no",3],[21,"signed-in","no",2],[22,"subscriber","no",1]]},"linksmart":{"site_guid":"e8001434aabca750c585a401b7ccebf4adefde9ccece2151f848d46543c18009"}}); igndrones.fireTop();});SugarAds.adsData = {"adsDisabled":"false","dfp_network":"5691","dfp_adunit1":"IGN","resource":"articles","pagetype":"article","tags":["iphone"],"article_types":["news"],"categories":["tech","wireless"],"route":"articles","year":"2012","article_id":"505a5f839e4ee52a5f9d4ec1"};SugarAds.renderAds(["prestitial","728x90","300x250","featured","side300x250","s728x90","2x2"]); Prime Newsfeed Latest View My Newsfeed » Pick Your Xbox 360 Representative Xbox 360 PS3 Wii U PC Vita 3DS iPhone Tech Movies TV Comics Reviews Wikis & Cheats Upcoming News Videos Boards IPL Blogs Podcasts Blu-ray Games Sites Stars Wiki Guide News News Features Previews Reviews Videos Games iOS 6: All the Best New Features Before you get an iPhone 5, get the software that makes it tick. Facebook integration, new Maps with turn-by-turn navigation, Passbook, panoramic photos, other cool stuff. by Jon Fox September 19, 2012

Apple's latest refinement to its mobile operating system is now available. Just plug your iPhone, iPad, or recent iPod Touch into iTunes and check for a software update.

Whether you've been keeping up with Apple's announcements or not, here's a run-down of what to expect from the update:

No more Google Maps, but turn-by-turn is finally here.

Apple has ditched its Google-based Maps app, in favor of a home-grown solution. The good news: Apple's default Maps app finally incorporates turn-by-turn directions, and it's integrated with Siri.

The bad news: ditching Google means losing Google's map data. As Noam Bardi, CEO of mobile mapping company Waze, explained to Business Insider, Apple is "coming out with the lowest, weakest data set and competing against Google, which has the [largest] data set." So while you won't have to resort to a 3rd-party app to get turn-by-turn directions, Apple's maps won't be as complete or accurate as Google's for some time.

iOS gets friendly with Facebook.

Like one of your phone's new features? Good news: now you can "Like" it, as iOS 6 integrates Facebook with (almost) all corners of your iPhone or iPad. The best part of this, of course, is the automatic sync feature between your contacts in iCloud and your Facebook friends.

Also, a friendly reminder: Remember when Facebook changed the email address on your profile to something@facebook.com? Well if you haven't changed it back yet, all your friends with iOS 6 are about to think that's your email address.

Passbook eats half your wallet.

Say goodbye to loyalty-cards, movie tickets, gift cards and everything else that's got your poor wallet as bloated as Jabba the Hutt. Passbook is here! It may not support your whole wallet-distending miscellany out of the box, but just wait.

Siri gets smarter, sort of.

No offense to Apple's over-worked personal assistant software, but let's just say iOS 5 left room for improvement. Apple says it's arrived, and while we may not know how extensive the upgrades are till we've had a few weeks with them, at least we know Siri's kept up with iOS 6's brand new features.

Panorama mode does exactly what it sounds like.

Want to take panoramic photos with your iPhone but don't want to use a 3rd-party app? Now you can. Go nuts.

Do-Not-Disturb screens your calls for you.

It's true. You can auto-reply with an explanatory text or set yourself a location-based reminder to return the call when you get home.

iMessage issues get fixed (probably).

Had trouble getting integrated iMessages to work on your Mac? The iOS 6 update, along with Apple's 10.8.2 update to OS X Mountain Lion seems to have fixed whatever the problem was.

What about the YouTube app?

It's gone, but don't worry. Google already released a redesigned app, and it's better than the old one.

Let us know how you're liking the new OS (or what you're doing with yourself while you wait for that download) in the comments.

Five Great Game Center Games for Mac

When Mountain Lion released in July, it brought with it a host of welcome features for gamers. The new AirPlay mirroring Mac feature allows you to mirror your computer screen to your television at the press of a button. Just like that, you can be playing Diablo 3 on your 55" flatscreen, all without involving a single wire.

But Mountain Lion also brought Apple's social gaming hub Game Center to Mac, and it comes with all the leaderboards, achievements, and multiplayer modes of its iOS counterpart. While there still aren't a ton of Game Center games out now, a small handful of quality games let you to challenge your friends in real-time or asynchronously across platforms (iOS to Mac), or compare your highscores to your friends', regardless of where you were playing.

Here are five of our current favorite Game Center games for Mac.

Sky Gamblers: Air Supreme - $4.99

The first thing you'll notice about Sky Gamblers is that it's gorgeous. Shortly thereafter, you'll notice it's a ton of fun.

Sky Gamblers is one of those games just made to be mirrored from an iPad to your TV, where you can scream through the skies shooting down poor pilots. But if you're stuck at a desk, Sky Gamblers: Air Supreme for Mac is just as good, and the best part is you can quickly compete with a friend, in head to head multiplayer. It's tons of fun, and good for a quick dogfight between putting together Excel docs.

Conquist 2 Online Arena - $2.99

Conquist 2 is basically Risk, and that means it has a ton of competition in the App Store. There's an official Risk app, and about 46 million awesome Risk one-offs (like Strategery!) all competing for our time and affection.

But Conquist is also the first Risk one-off to be cross platform on Macs and iOS devices. While games like the aforementioned Sky Gamblers allows you to go head-to-head in awesome dogfights, Conquist's asynchronous gaming style means you can open the game intermittently throughout the day and play a few rounds. It's perfect for a slight reprieve from the workday grind.

Real Racing 2 - $12.99

Just about every gamer with an iOS device probably has a version of Real Racing, and for good reason - they're the best iOS racing games out there. We gave Firemint's excellent racer a 9 (read the review), even with a higher-than-most $9.99 price tag.

Real Racing 2 for Mac is our most expensive game on the list, but it's also fantastic and well worth the cash to race your iOS-wielding friends at anytime. This is a fantastically gorgeous game and looks even better on Retina Display Macbook Pros, for which it's been optimized. Better yet, it has Cross-platform save capabilities and USB controller support.

It might be expensive at $12.99 but it's well-worth the cash.

Two Towers - $.99

Two Towers is a bit different than everything else on the list - it's a very pretty, pretty complex card game, which allows you to challenge friends on iOS from your Mac. There's a lot to learn in Two Towers, but soon you'll be whipping through your 114 cards and almost 30 spells. You can practice up against the challenging AI before sending that Game Center challenge to your friends. Plus, it's $.99.

Anomaly - $4.99

Anomaly is the only game on our list that you doesn't allow you to challenge your iOS friends to a head-to-head match. But fortunately, the game is still an insanely fun tower defense game, the kind of game where the highest score actually matters. Plus the game is really, really attractive. Definitely worth your 5 bucks.

Do you have any favorite Game Center games? Leave your username in the replies and challenge your fellow IGNers.

Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as The Great Gatsby, Super Hexagon, and Mysteries of Pittsburgh. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.