Darryl Wilkinson

I hate – no, I loathe – headphone cords. Maybe it’s because I was traumatized as a child by a menacing coiled cord on an old landline phone that was mounted on the wall in our home. I can’t tell you how many times the handset was yanked out of my hand when I reached the outer limits of the coiled cord’s length. Nor can I tell you how many times I’ve had one or both earbuds forcibly ejected from my ears after I’ve gotten the headphone cord caught on something. In fact, I’ve broken more than one pair of earbuds that way… So you can understand my appreciation of CordCruncher’s new Earbud Headphones that come with a unique, tangle-free, "crunchable" headphone cord. There are two main aspects to the CordCruncher Cord Management System. The first is the special kinked-cord design that allows the cord to resist tangling as well as compress when not in use, in some ways similar to the way a coiled cord functions. The second component of the system is an elastic sleeve that covers the all or as much of the crunched headphone cord as you wish. The sleeve covers the cord and keeps it from tangling when you’re finished listening to music and have thrown the earbuds in your briefcase, purse, or on your desk. The 3.5 mm headphone jack can be inserted into the other end of the elastic sleeve to create a necklace or, when doubled up, a wrist band. Currently the CordCruncher Earbuds are available in Glo Orange, Matte Black, and Pearl Blue color options for $24.99 each. Unfortunately, the CordCruncher cord/sleeve combo isn’t available in a universal version to use with other brands of earbuds and headphones. (The sleeve, by the way, is made from 95% protein-free, medical-grade latex rubber, so people who are allergic to latex may want to look for some other type of cord management system.)

Just when you thought eating utensils couldn’t get any better than the plastic spork, HAPILABS develops the HAPIfork – “an electronic fork that monitors your eating habits…and alerts you with the help of indicator lights and gentle vibrations when you are eating too fast.” In addition to larding it over the knife and spoon, the HAPIfork also connects to your iOS/Android/Windows device and keeps track of your eating performance, or you can use an online dashboard at HAPILABS website. (Now that I think of it, it could also be used to aid in training aspiring eating contest champions…) The HAPIfork has a unique HAPIbutton that lets you track HAPImoments by pressing and holding in the HAPIbutton from 1 (“meh”) to 10 (“orgasmic”) seconds. No doubt the next HAPIgadget to appear will be a HAPIremote that will warn you when you’ve been sitting on your butt for too long in front of the TV. It should also track how often you change the channel. And how often your family fights over who gets to hold the remote control.

For the past nine years, Lutron Electronics has brought together a number of editors and writers in the industry to review and judge a towering stack of anonymous submissions from dealers vying to win one of the lighting control company’s annual Excellence Awards. This year, six writers/editors plus myself were locked in a room at Lutron’s Residential & Commercial Experience Center in Irvine, California, and told we couldn’t leave until—after much discussion, arguing, hair-pulling, and some brutal name-calling—we had collectively decided which projects were the most amazingly cool, excellently conceived, and beautifully implemented in their categories.

Soundbars promise to deliver a full home theater experience with much less complication and confusion—and usually at a much lower price—than a traditional home theater system with an A/V receiver and multiple speakers. But how close can a svelt 43-inch-wide cabinet with nine drivers crammed in it come to actually pulling it off? Veteran speaker reviewer Darryl Wilkinson hooks up Definitive Technology's new SoloCinema XTR to find out.