Sonos has collaborated with IKEA on SYMFONISK, a range of speakers designed to democratize the home sound system. Combining our expertise in sound and technology with IKEA’s knowledge of home furnishing, SYMFONISK seamlessly fits into the home to enhance everyday life and integrates with the Sonos system.

A table lamp and a bookshelf speaker that doubles as a shelf. That’s the two new products out of the Sonos & Ikea partnership due to launch in August.

Each of the two new speakers are fully compatible Sonos speakers including the recently added AirPlay2 support. Essentially variants of the Sonos One speaker the new Ikea models can also be used in a 5.1 surround setup with either the Sonos Beam or Playbar.

Aesthetically the speakers will match most modern homes and whilst the lamp doesn’t include a smart bulb, could be easily retrofitted.

The bookshelf speaker is the most versatile of the two in terms of placement. It can be hung in a kitchen on a utensil rack, laid perfectly into the squares of their popular Kallax bookshelf, hung as a shelf of its own or just plugged in and placed anywhere you desire.

Priced at €179 for the lamp and €99 for the bookshelf version there is no word on available in Australia at this point but look out for more information soon.

Source: SYMFONISK: Stereo Furniture by Sonos and IKEA | Sonos

Beats have soft-announced their new H1 equipped Powerbeats Pro headphones, launching a website and adding them to their parent company’s (Apple) online store but not enabling that “Buy” button.

The new Powerbeats Pro look almost identical to the highly reviewed Powerbeats 3 with the cable between the buds removed and some slight bulk added to their main arm to allow for new sensors, controls and a larger battery that outdoes Apple’s 2019 AirPods, which is, ultimately, not a hard feat.

The Powerbeats Pro, like all wireless buds these days, make use of a charging case that sadly (likely due to their overlords influence) uses a lightning port to power them and in their one downside compared to the new AirPods, lack wireless charging.

Thankfully you wont have to make use of the case nearly as often as the AirPods’ dental floss container as the Powerbeats Pro rock in with a solid 9 hour battery life.

For those whom find the AirPods to never just quite fit (that’s me if you hadn’t guessed), or anyone wanting a high quality, in-ear audio experience the Powerbeats Pro look like a solid fit.

Supposedly on sale next month the new Powerbeats Pro will set you back A$349.

Source: Introducing Powerbeats Pro – Beats

Today we’re excited to announce what we began to plan more than two years ago: the 1.1.1.1 App with Warp performance and security technology. We built Warp from the ground up to thrive in the harsh conditions of the modern mobile Internet.

A year ago Cloudflare gave the internet the most secure, fast and more importantly, free DNS service for us all to use pledging to have user security and privacy at the forefront of their service.

Continuing with that train of thought they’ve announced a new service, which will further work towards personal privacy online with the introduction of a free VPN service.

Called “Warp“, the VPN makes use of the relatively new WireGuard system. Designed to offer a higher level of security whilst being faster to setup and easier to maintain, Cloudflare have taken WireGuard and have begun incorporating it into their “1.1.1.1” app.

Unlike the general use case for VPNs in Australia (ie. to change your location to watch US Netflix shows) Warp wont let you choose a location, nor is it designed to skirt geoblocking rules. Instead the idea is to reroute your traffic to make it faster whilst encrypting your data automatically when it can.

Unlike other pseudo VPNs cough Facebook cough Google cough, Cloudflare records no identifiable user data nor do they have any user tracking that’s onsold to advertisers. They will be offering a paid version of Warp called Warp+ however that’s designed to fund the new system. Warp+ will take advantage of Cloudflare’s enterprise Argo routing tech, that should theoretically boost your online experience even more.

While I don’t think many need the advantages of Warp+ here in Australia, having a VPN that provides more security without compromising speed (and potentially boosting it) is a major win.

You can join the waiting list (I hate this method of rollout BTW) for the new Warp service by installing the iOS or Android version of the 1.1.1.1 app and clicking on Warp. A desktop version of Warp for Mac & Windows will be released soon.

Source: Introducing Warp: Fixing Mobile Internet Performance and Security

…the European Parliament passed a directive to overhaul copyright law in the European Union and put more pressure on the likes of Google, Facebook, and Instagram to keep copyrighted material like photos and videos off their platforms.

Touted to bring copyright law into the digital the age many believe recently passed laws put forward in the European Parliament are a gigantic affront to our online freedoms.

Article 11 of the new legislation is being described as a “link tax”, allowing publishers charge platforms for using or displaying portions of their content. The change would result in the removal of any pre-amble from search results for news content heavily diminishing the quality of any news related search within the EU. It’s not the first time it’s been tried before. Both Spain & Germany have introduced a similar link tax on their own and both times it’s failed miserably.

Of larger concern is Article 13 (later changed to Article 17) known as the “meme-killer” in which the onus for copyright protection is placed on the service facilitating its publishing on the internet. This, many believe, will mean the implementation of upload filters to look for and remove any potentially copyright infringing content before it’s served.

Websites that make use of or have a high volume of meme content such as Reddit could cease to exist in the EU under such heavy legislation and the costs of implementing such systems prohibit tech growth within the EU.

Now passed it’s up to each EU member nation to draft and implement their own interpretation of the legislation within 24 months.

Source: Europe’s New Copyright Law Could Be Bad for Memes | WIRED

A Lithuanian man pleaded guilty today to wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and three counts of money laundering, after tricking employees of Alphabet’s Google unit and Facebook into wiring more than $100 million into bank accounts he controlled as part of multiple business email compromise (BEC) fraud attacks spanning from at least in or around 2013 through in or about 2015.

Credit where credit is due. This is by far one of the most astoundingly simple cases of fleecing cash from gigantic corporations I’ve ever seen. The fact it’s was carried out against two of the largest tech companies in the world is just the icing on the cake.

Described as a “blatant scheme” by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman, the man simply registered a company in Lithuania with the same name as an Asian hardware supplier and started sending the two companies invoices.

Clearly fooled, both Google & Facebook then went on to pay over US$120m to the man’s shell company between 2013 and 2015.

Since caught he’s surrendered nearly US$50m back to the US and pleaded guilty to wire fraud. The man now faces up to 30 years in prison.

Source: Lithuanian Pleads Guilty to Stealing $100 Million From Google, Facebook

Now with more talk time, voice-activated Siri access — and a new Wireless Charging Case — AirPods deliver an unparalleled wireless headphone experience.

If you can’t make an AirPower pad, change the products you’re supposed to charge on them so you can. I think that’s Apple’s new philosophy as we head into day 3 of Apple’s hardware-refresh-a-poolza.

Apple’s new A$319 AirPods with their now Qi compatible Wireless Charging case also introduce a new “H1” chip that boasts an extra hour of talk time, faster connection speed and “Hey Siri” activation support.

The new “H” for Headphone chips represent a new line of Apple’s ever-expanding chip lineup and will be iterated upon now made specifically for headphones. The “W” line that was used before will remain too but be used exclusively in Apple’s watches.

The new 2019 AirPods can also be bought without the Wireless Charging case (Why?) for A$249 and for those of you with an existing set you can buy just the case for A$129.

All of these are available for purchase now and will be shipping from Monday next week.

As for the AirPower pad… there are rumours swirling we may finally see that next week, now that they only have to deal with two types of charging instead of three.

Source: AirPods – Apple (AU)

In an attempt to fool us all into thinking they’re still a hardware company Apple have trotted out the revised corpse of another long-lost product, the iPad Mini.

The new iPad Mini makes use of the same A12 Bionic chip you’ll find inside of the iPhone XS & iPhone XR. It now also includes a Retina display with True Tone and claims top spot across all of Apple’s devices when it comes to pixel density with 326 DPI.

The Apple Pencil will now also work with the iPad Mini, should you be inclined, but make sure you’re using the old 1st generation version as the newer one isn’t compatible. Weird.

Available to order now the new iPad Mini starts at A$599 for the WiFi 64GB version and goes up to A$1019 (why didn’t they just make it A$999, seriously) for the LTE, 256GB version.

In addition to the iPad Mini the iPad Air was updated to use the same A12 Bionic chip but also receives a bump in screen size going from 9.7″ to 10.5″ making the Air all but identical to the Mini but for screen size.

The 2019 iPad Air starts from A$779 (64GB, WiFi) and goes up to A$1,199 (256GB, LTE).

Both the Air & Mini will ship Monday March 25th, a day ahead of Apple’s giant video service reveal.

• iPad Mini – A$599 – $1,019
• iPad Air – A$779 – $1,199