Author: Brett Venter

Samsung has apparently had a line of headphones in the works for some time and they’ve unveiled the products that will be going on sale in the States later on today. The product lineup, dubbed Level, consists of in-ear and over-ear headphones as well as Bluetooth speakers and the offerings are being compared to Beats devices, for obvious reasons. The timing might seem a bit fishy though, seeing as how Apple recently bought up Beats but that’s competition for you. Engadget reports that the Level lineup was first heard of just prior to rumours of Apple’s purchase first hitting online…

We’ve got a lot of love for LG smartphones in the Stuff offices, purely based on the performance of last year’s high-end masterpiece – the G2. The time has finally come to see whether LG has managed to replicate the feat that they pulled off in 2013 by knocking every other phone down a rung in our estimations. Your mileage may vary but it looks like they have indeed created a worth successor to the G2. It’s definitely beaten out everything else we’ve see so far this year. Screen Test So why has it outperformed the G2 and all other…

Consider yourself a superhero? Then you’re going to be pleased that Google has rolled back the real name requirement for Google Plus, meaning that your real identity is now as safe as it’s going to get – minus the hazards of a supervillain spotting you getting changed in public, of course. Google’s statement on the move, posted on Google Plus (link), says “Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we…

Cats and the internet go hand-in-hand so it shouldn’t be too surprising that cat-based technology is on the way. Like what, you ask? How about an automatic cat feeder that relies on feline facial recognition in order to give munchies to Mittens? That’s the idea behind Bistro, a project that is being funded on IndieGoGo at the moment. Bistro uses a scale, camera and automatic feeder – along with an app – to detect which cat is standing by waiting to be fed. The system is able to track the weight of your feline, recognise which of your cats (should…

What if you could sellotape a Kindle to your smartphone while sandwiching fitness app functions into the resulting Franken-phone? That’s the concept behind a Kickstarter project called InkCase Plus (link), which has already smashed its $100,000 goal (with a whole 29 days still remaining to fund it, to boot). The InkCase Plus is a smartphone case that adds an e-ink display to the front of your phone. Flip it open and you’ve got a smartphone as usual, keep it closed and you can use the InkCase Plus to read books, load fitness apps or display images. The screen is just…

Google’s Project Ara modular phone continues to move towards a viable product, though we have yet to see an actual demonstration take place other than the Google I/O presentation that had a sort of working unit shown to developers. But devs are set to get a more concrete example of what Ara is capable of when developer units are shipped out to those who have requested them later this month. The test kits are running some fairly creaky smartphone hardware, which will likely be upgraded as time goes by, but obviously Google thinks that early-stage tests don’t need anything much…

Twitter is hardly a private service, unless you lock down your profile so severely that just about nobody is able to view it. While that might be a good idea at times, it’s not feasible in most cases. But there’s a new web service available, called Privatize, that gives Twitter users the option to send mostly-secret links to followers. How Privatize works is that you’ll log into the service, using your Twitter credentials, and then specify which link you want to be kept secret. You’ll also specify which follower is able to access the link and Privatize does the rest,…

About a month ago we saw that the Hexo+ drone, a little programmable photographer that is able to follow the user and shoot whatever they’re up to, was doing rather well on Kickstarter. At the time we predicted that they’d manage to nail their stretch goal on the crowdfunding service, which would mean that they had managed to go well over their initial asking sum of $50,000 and break the $1 million mark. Well, with just hours to go before the Kickstarter terminates, they’ve definitely done it. At the time of writing, the Hexo+ has received backing to the tune…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muy3PaaETKs Assassin’s Creed has another installment on the way and Unity, the newest adventure in the ongoing saga, takes place in Revolutionary France. Quite a change from the Caribbean and the pirate sea shanties from Assassin’s Creed IV. We’ve seen hints of what is to come with the French company’s French outing for the series but Ubi have since dropped a slightly longer trailer on us, showing what Unity will be capable of. The visuals are hefty, showing one of the most detailed settings we’ve ever seen in the series. Large-scale crowd movement, character animation and backgrounds are all looking…

It’s not all that often that an Alcatel phone catches our attention. This is probably because, in the scheme of smartphones, we’re not used to seeing something from the company that stacks up to the HTCs, Samsungs and Apples that proliferate in the Stuff offices. With the recently launched OneTouch Idol Alpha, despite its Street Fighter-like naming convention, that might change. Alcatel clearly wants this Android 4.2 handset to stand out from what they’ve done in the past while at the same time standing out from what all those other companies are doing. Style Over Substance And, on a visual…