Good news for parents who were stung by children's in-app purchases: Apple is now reaching out to affected customers, with disputed purchases under $30 qualifying for a $5 iTunes voucher in compensation and larger sums being fully refunded in cash.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/good-news-for-parents-who-were-stung-by-childrens-in-ap-554579738
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Brought to you by Global Home Improvement
Standing seam metal roofing is the most versatile roofing in the world and with over 35 color selections it can also be the most challenging to select your favorite! At Global Home Improvement we think all metal roofing colors look great, but here is a simple guide to choosing the color that best fits your home and style.
Check out Our Metal Roof Color Chart for All 35 Color Choices.
House Style ? Country Farm House
Recommended Color ? Colonial Red
This color evokes the warm feeling and rich color of bricks used in colonial times. Colonial red is often chosen as an alternative to brilliance red or ?screaming? red as some of our customers call it because of its subtle yet statement making hue.
House Style ? Historic or Provincial
Recommended Color ? Charcoal Gray
Charcoal gray is widely popular because of its neutral color. Additionally, when installed on historic or provincial homes it can replicate the color pattern of natural slate at a fraction of the cost. Charcoal gray is a color that looks good on a variety of homes because it is dark and dramatic but when the light reflects off of it, it shows great dimension, contrast and contour.
House Style ? Contemporary
Recommended Color ? Mansard Brown
I know what you?re thinking, mansard brown on a contemporary home when you have all these other choices. And the answer is yes! Many contemporary homes in the area were built in the 1970?s with a T-111 wood panel siding and the mansard brown is the perfect color to go with that type of siding. It is dark, rich and goes well in wooded areas with homes that are set back from the street. Other popular contemporary choices are medium bronze and dark bronze.
House Style ? Federal or Prairie Style
Recommended Color ? Patina Green
If your home is grandeur in size and stature then consider going with a patina green color that replicates the look of aged copper. Patina green may seem dramatic to some but look around and you will realize how often this color comes into play and blends in with a city or towns architecture. All major cities have this color because it?s what copper looks like after 100+ years with the best known example, the Statue of Liberty!
House Style ? Accents for Any Home
Recommended Color ? Metallic Copper
All homeowners love copper but many of them want the shiny metallic look of copper that only lasts 1-2 years before it starts to oxidize! That is where metallic copper painted standing seam comes into play. This metallic copper will not rust, rot or fade for over 35 years and costs a fraction of what real copper does. Consider a metallic copper bay window, front porch or back portico for your metal roofing project.
For more information on standing seam color choices call Global Home Improvement at 888-234-2929 or online at www.globalhomeinc.com.
Copyright Global Home Improvement 2013. Serving PA, NJ and DE.
Source: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/01/25/the-5-most-popular-metal-roof-color-choices/
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Abuse rates of stimulants meant to control attention deficit are officially out of control, according to a new U.S. study of emergency room visits, and it?s young adults confirming the legend that college students use the drugs to stay awake and focus.
ER visits involving the stimulants more than doubled in five years, moving from 13,379 in 2005 to 31,244 in 2010 nationwide, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report. By far the greatest jump was in those aged 18 to 25, who saw ER visits related to the stimulants go from 2,131 to 8,148. Visits more than tripled in the next age group, 26 to 34.
Many of those visits are from abuse, or non-medical use of the stimulants. This would mean somebody using a stimulant they weren?t prescribed to do something the medication was not intended for. While the stimulants can help young people focus, they are not meant to be a ?stay up all night for finals? drug. Adderall is one of the common brands associated with the ADHD drugs.
Half of the ER visits from the stimulants came from non-medical use of the drugs.
We?ll be seeking comments from local ER doctors, which we?ll add later to this blog.
Source: http://blogs.denverpost.com/health/2013/01/24/stimulant-abuse-control-federal-study-shows/2570/
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Gov. Jerry Brown will give his State of the State speech Thursday ? a week after saying the state is no longer running deficits. Now he has to lay out a new vision.
Gov. Jerry Brown points to a chart showing an increase in education funding during a news conference where he unveiled his proposed 2013-14 state budget at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., last week.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP
EnlargeWhen Gov. Jerry Brown (D) of California ascends to the podium for his third State of the State address Thursday morning, he will be faced with one overarching question: What will he do for a second act?
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Since being elected in 2010, he has focused on fiscally turning around a state that ran deficits of as much as $27 billion annually. Last November, he got the last piece of his strategic puzzle when voters approved Proposition 30, Governor Brown's plea for a temporary tax hike.
Now, he says, the state is in the black (though some analysts dispute that). What no one disputes is that he has the wind in his sails, and that Wednesday's speech will go some way toward laying out where his administration is likely to go from here.
The problem is that California is still not in a position to loosen the purse strings, says Barbara O?Connor, director emeritus of the Institute for Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento.
?Jerry?s challenge is that he has to show that California can grow when it needs to grow in an era of fiscal austerity, and he has some real problems,? she says. ?Yes, we are out of the woods, but we could turn back into the woods real quickly.?
The hurdles ahead include prison funding, education reform, climate change, and implementation of the federal health-care act.
Brown is also expected to take on two major infrastructure projects: a $23 billion set of underground canals to transport water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta south and restore Delta habitat, and the first link of a $69 billion high-speed rail corridor.
How to maintain big ideas while spending wisely could hold lessons for other states.
?He is pushing forward a state that hasn't seen his brand of leadership in a generation or more,? says David McCuan, a political scientist at Sonoma State University. ?Chris Christie of New Jersey may be the candid governor of the land, but Jerry Brown is the seasoned political pro who also thinks big and pushes ideas well before they seep into the public consciousness.?
Brown will need to use his powers of persuasion with the rail project, says Michael Shires, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. It needs tens of billions of dollars that have yet to materialize from either voters or the federal government, and polls show that support from Californians is, at best, tepid.
In the Legislature, Brown has a Democratic supermajority. But that could be a problem, too, if Democrats use the more promising budget picture as an excuse to undo Brown's billions of dollars in cuts to education and social services, says Professor Shires.
?The greatest threat to his agenda will come not from business or the powerless Republican presence in Sacramento, but from within his own party as they clamor to entrench their more left-leaning agenda in the state?s fiscal and policy landscape before their two-thirds majority is put to the test in 2014,? he adds.
Moreover, the accuracy of Brown's Jan. 10 pronouncement that California is in the black is up for debate. It is premature to say that his $97 billion budget won't create new deficits, experts say.
?California's state budget is certainly in much better shape than in past years, but no one can predict that it is in the black until after the fiscal year is completed,? says Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies. ?There are too many variables: federal funding, the up and down economy, and unforeseen events, such as wildfires, earthquakes, etc.?
Then there's the budget itself, which is an inexact document, says Professor McCuan.
?The budget numbers are a credit to this governor and his fiscal-nose-to-the-grindstone approach," he says. "But this has not come without some smoke and mirrors attached to the numbers ? both for how we got here and how we got out.?
That is why experts are preaching caution.
?California has been painted as the poster child of profligate spending,? says Professor O?Connor. ?The question is: Can it grow where it needs to grow and embrace the new century, while remaining sound fiscally? It is a real challenge. I think he can do it, and this speech will be the clues to how he will try.?
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Art Liscano knows he's an endangered species in the job market: He's a meter reader in Fresno, Calif. For 26 years, he's driven from house to house, checking how much electricity Pacific Gas & Electric customers have used.
But PG&E doesn't need many people like Liscano making rounds anymore. Every day, the utility replaces 1,200 old-fashioned meters with digital versions that can collect information without human help, generate more accurate power bills, even send an alert if the power goes out.
"I can see why technology is taking over," says Liscano, 66, who earns $67,000 a year. "We can see the writing on the wall." His department employed 50 full-time meter readers just six years ago. Now, it has six.
From giant corporations to university libraries to start-up businesses, employers are using rapidly improving technology to do tasks that humans used to do. That means millions of workers are caught in a competition they can't win against machines that keep getting more powerful, cheaper and easier to use.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: Second in a three-part series on the loss of middle-class jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, and the role of technology.
___
To better understand the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs and workers who are competing with smarter machines.
The AP found that almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. Jobs that form the backbone of the middle class in developed countries in Europe, North America and Asia.
In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, and the numbers are even more grim in the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency. A total of 7.6 million midpay jobs disappeared in those countries from January 2008 through last June.
Those jobs are being replaced in many cases by machines and software that can do the same work better and cheaper.
"Everything that humans can do a machine can do," says Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Things are happening that look like science fiction."
Google and Toyota are rolling out cars that can drive themselves. The Pentagon deploys robots to find roadside explosives in Afghanistan and wages war from the air with drone aircraft. North Carolina State University this month introduced a high-tech library where robots ? "bookBots" ? retrieve books when students request them, instead of humans. The library's 1.5 million books are no longer displayed on shelves; they're kept in 18,000 metal bins that require one-ninth the space.
The advance of technology is producing wondrous products and services that once were unthinkable. But it's also taking a toll on people because they so easily can be replaced.
In the U.S., more than 1.1 million secretaries vanished from the job market between 2000 and 2010, their job security shattered by software that lets bosses field calls themselves and arrange their own meetings and trips. Over the same period, the number of telephone operators plunged by 64 percent, word processors and typists by 63 percent, travel agents by 46 percent and bookkeepers by 26 percent, according to Labor Department statistics.
In Europe, technology is shaking up human resources departments across the continent. "Nowadays, employees are expected to do a lot of what we used to think of as HR from behind their own computer," says Ron van Baden, a negotiator with the Dutch labor union federation FNV. "It used to be that you could walk into the employee affairs office with a question about your pension, or the terms of your contract. That's all gone and automated."
Two-thirds of the 7.6 million middle-class jobs that vanished in Europe were the victims of technology, estimates economist Maarten Goos at Belgium's University of Leuven.
Does technology also create jobs? Of course. But at nowhere near the rate that it's killing them off ? at least for the foreseeable future.
Here's a look at three technological factors reshaping the economies and job markets in developed countries:
BIG DATA
At the heart of the biggest technological changes today is what computer scientists call "Big Data." Computers thrive on information, and they're feasting on an unprecedented amount of it ? from the Internet, from Twitter messages and other social media sources, from the barcodes and sensors being slapped on everything from boxes of Huggies diapers to stamping machines in car plants.
According to a Harvard Business Review article by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more information now crosses the Internet every second than the entire Internet stored 20 years ago. Every hour, they note, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. collects 50 million filing cabinets' worth of information from its dealings with customers.
No human could make sense of so much data. But computers can. They can sift through mountains of information and deliver valuable insights to decision-makers in businesses and government agencies. For instance, Wal-Mart's analysis of Twitter traffic helped convince it to increase the amount of "Avengers" merchandise it offered when the superhero movie came out last year and to introduce a private-label corn chip in the American Southwest.
Google's automated car can only drive by itself by tapping into Google's vast collection of maps and using information pouring in from special sensors to negotiate traffic.
"What's different to me is the raw amount of data out there because of the Web, because of these devices, because we're attaching sensors to things," says McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT's Center for Digital Business and the co-author of "Race Against the Machine."
"The fuel of science is data," he says. "We have so much more of that rocket fuel."
So far, public attention has focused on the potential threats to privacy as companies use technology to gather clues about their customers' buying habits and lifestyles.
"What is less visible," says software entrepreneur Martin Ford, "is that organizations are collecting huge amounts of data about their internal operations and about what their employees are doing." The computers can use that information to "figure out how to do a great many jobs" that humans do now.
Gary Mintchell, editor in chief of Automation World, recalls starting work in manufacturing years ago as a "grunge, white-collar worker." He'd walk around the factory floor with a clipboard, recording information from machines, then go back to an office and enter the data by hand onto a spreadsheet.
Now that grunge work is conducted by powerful "operations management" software systems developed by businesses such as General Electric Intelligent Platforms in Charlottesville, Va. These systems continuously collect, analyze and summarize in digestible form information about all aspects of factory operations ?energy consumption, labor costs, quality problems, customer orders.
And the guys wandering the factory floor with clipboards? They're gone.
THE CLOUD
In the old days ? say, five years ago ? businesses that had to track lots of information needed to install servers in their offices and hire technical staff to run them. "Cloud computing" has changed everything.
Now, companies can store information on the Internet ? perhaps through Amazon Web Services or Google App Engine ? and grab it when they need it. And they don't need to hire experts to do it.
Cloud computing "is a catch-all term for the ability to rent as much computer power as you need without having to buy it, without having to know a lot about it," McAfee says. "It really has opened up very high-powered computing to the masses."
Small businesses, which have no budget for a big technology department, are especially eager to take advantage of the cheap computer power offered in the cloud.
Hilliard's Beer in Seattle, founded in October 2011, bought software from the German company SAP that allows it to use cloud computing to track sales and inventory and to produce the reports that federal regulators require.
"It automates a lot of the stuff that we do," owner Ryan Hilliard says. "I know what it takes to run a server. I didn't want to hire an IT guy."
And the brewery keeps finding new ways to use the beefed-up computing power. For example, it's now tracking what happens to the kegs it delivers to restaurants and retrieving them sooner for reuse. "Kegs are a pretty big expense for a small brewery," Hilliard says.
Automated Insights in Durham, N.C., draws on the computing power of the cloud to produce automated sports stories, such as customized weekly summaries for fantasy football leagues. "We're able to create over 1,000 pieces of content per second at a very cost-effective rate," says founder Robbie Allen. He says his startup would not have been possible without cloud computing.
SMARTER MACHINES
Though many are still working out the kinks, software is making machines and devices smarter every year. They can learn your habits, recognize your voice, do the things that travel agents, secretaries and interpreters have traditionally done.
Microsoft has unveiled a system that can translate what you say into Mandarin and play it back ? in your voice. The Google Now personal assistant can tell you if there's a traffic jam on your regular route home and suggest an alternative. Talk to Apple's Siri and she can reschedule an appointment. IBM's Watson supercomputer can field an awkwardly worded question, figure out what you're trying to ask, retrieve the answer and spit it out fast enough to beat human champions on the TV quiz show "Jeopardy!" Computers with that much brainpower increasingly will invade traditional office work.
Besides becoming more powerful and creative, machines and their software are becoming easier to use. That has made consumers increasingly comfortable relying on them to transact business. As well as eliminated jobs of bank tellers, ticket agents and checkout cashiers.
People who used to say "Let me talk to a person. I don't want to deal with this machine" are now using check-in kiosks at airports and self-checkout lanes at supermarkets and drugstores, says Jeff Connally, CEO of CMIT Solutions, a technology consultancy.
The most important change in technology, he says, is "the profound simplification of the user interface."
Four years ago, the Darien, Conn., public library bought self-service check-out machines from 3M Co. Now, with customers scanning books themselves, the library is processing more books than ever while shaving 15 percent from staff hours by using fewer part-time workers.
So machines are getting smarter and people are more comfortable using them. Those factors, combined with the financial pressures of the Great Recession, have led companies and government agencies to cut jobs the past five years, yet continue to operate just as well.
How is that happening?
?Reduced aid from Indiana's state government and other budget problems forced the Gary, Ind., public school system last year to cut its annual transportation budget in half, to $5 million. The school district responded by using sophisticated software to draw up new, more efficient bus routes. And it cut 80 of 160 drivers.
When the Great Recession struck, the Seattle police department didn't have money to replace retiring officers. So it turned to technology ? a new software system that lets police officers file crime-scene reports from laptops in their patrol cars.
The software was nothing fancy, just a collection of forms and pull-down menus, but the impact was huge. The shift from paper eliminated the need for two dozen transcribers and filing staff at police headquarters, and freed desk-bound officers to return to the streets.
"A sergeant used to read them, sign them, an officer would photocopy them and another drive them to headquarters," says Dick Reed, an assistant chief overseeing technology. "Think of the time, think of the salary. You're paying an officer to make photocopies."
Thanks to the software, the department has been able to maintain the number of cops on the street at 600.
The software, from Versaterm, a Canadian company, is being used by police in dozens of cities, including Denver, Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas.
?In South Korea, Standard Chartered is expanding "smart banking" branches that employ a staff of three, compared with an average of about eight in traditional branches. The bank has closed a dozen full-service branches, replacing them with the smart branches, and expects to have 30 more by the end of this year. Customers do most of their banking on computer screens, and can connect with Standard Chartered specialists elsewhere by video-conference if they need help.
Comerica, a bank based in Dallas, is using new video-conferencing equipment that lets cash-management experts make pitches to potential corporate clients from their desks. Those experts, based in Livonia, Mich., used to board planes and visit prospects in person. Now, they get Comerica colleagues in various cities to pay visits to local companies and conference them in.
"The technology for delivering (high quality) video over a public Internet connection was unavailable 12 or 18 months ago," says Paul Obermeyer, Comerica's chief information officer. "Now, we're able to generate more revenue with the same employee base."
The networking equipment also allows video to be delivered to smart phones, so the experts can make pitches on the run, too.
?The British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans last year to invest $518 million in the world's first long-haul, heavy-duty driverless train system at its Pilbara iron ore mines in Western Australia. The automated trains are expected to start running next year. The trains are part of what Rio Tinto calls its "Mine of the Future" program, which includes 150 driverless trucks and automated drills.
Like many technologically savvy startups, Dirk Vander Kooij's furniture-making company in the Netherlands needs only a skeleton crew ? four people. The hard work at the Eindhoven-based company is carried out by an old industrial robot that Vander Kooij fashioned into a 3D printer. Using plastic recycled from old refrigerators, the machine "prints" furniture ? ranging in price from a $300 chair to a $3,000 lamp ? the way an ordinary printer uses ink to print documents. Many analysts expect 3D printing to revolutionize manufacturing, allowing small firms like Vander Kooij's to make niche products without hiring many people.
?Google's driverless car and the Pentagon's drone aircraft are raising the specter of highways and skies filled with cars and planes that can get around by themselves.
"A pilotless airliner is going to come; it's just a question of when," James Albaugh, retired CEO of Boeing Commercial Airlines, said in 2011, according to IEEE Spectrum magazine. "You'll see it in freighters first, over water probably, landing very close to the shore."
Unmanned trains already have arrived. The United Arab Emirates introduced the world's longest automated rail system ? 32 miles ? in Dubai in 2009.
And the trains on several Japanese rail lines run by themselves. Tokyo's Yurikamome Line, which skirts Tokyo Bay, is completely automated. The line ? named for the black-headed sea gull that is Tokyo's official bird ? employs only about 60 employees at its 16 stations. "Certainly, using the automated systems does reduce the number of staff we need," says Katsuya Hagane, the manager in charge of operations at New Transit Yurikamome.
Driverless cars will have a revolutionary impact on traffic one day ? and the job market. In the United States alone, 3.1 million people drive trucks for a living, 573,000 drive buses, 342,000 drive taxis or limousines. All those jobs will be threatened by automated vehicles.
?Phone companies and gas and electric utilities are using technology to reduce their payrolls. Since 2007, for instance, telecommunications giant Verizon has increased its annual revenue 19 percent ? while employing 17 percent fewer workers. The smaller work force partly reflects the shift toward cellphones and away from landlines, which require considerably more maintenance. But even the landlines need less human attention because Verizon is rapidly replacing old-fashioned copper lines with lower-maintenance, fiber-optic cables.
Verizon also makes it easier for customers to deal with problems themselves without calling a repairman. From their homes, consumers can open Verizon's In-home Agent software on their computers. The system can determine why a cable TV box isn't working or why the Internet connection is down ? and fix the problem in minutes. The program has been downloaded more than 2 million times, Verizon says.
And then there are the meter readers like PG&E's Liscano. Their future looks grim.
Southern California Edison finished its digital meter installation program late last year. All but 20,000 of its 5.3 million customers have their power usage beamed directly to the utility.
Nearly all of the 972 meter readers in Southern California Edison's territory accepted retirement packages or were transferred within the company, says Pat Lavin of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. But 92 workers are being laid off this month.
"Trying to keep it from happening would have been like the Teamsters in the early 1900s trying to stop the combustion engine," Lavin says. "You can't stand in the way of technology."
___
NEXT: Will smart machines create a world without work?
___
Bernard Condon and Jonathan Fahey reported from New York. AP Business Writers Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington, Youkyung Lee in Seoul, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo contributed to this report. You can reach the writers on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BernardFCondon and www.twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP. Join in a Twitter chat about this story on Thursday, Jan. 24, at noon E.S.T. using the hashtag (hash)TheGreatReset.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Second in a three-part series on the loss of middle-class jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, and the role of technology.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/practically-human-smart-machines-job-052642993--finance.html
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If you've been looking for a wireless speaker that is capable of outfitting your music gear, IK Multimedia is looking to oblige with it's latest offerings. The company has announced the iLoud and iLoud Mini Bluetooth speakers ahead of the official start of NAMM 2013. In addition to that wireless connectivity, the duo sports rechargeable batteries for supplying jams on-the-go and a 1/8-inch jack for connecting those trusty peripherals the good ol' fashioned way. Boasting big volume in rather small frames, the larger unit touts 40W RMS of power and the smaller clocks in at 12W RMS. The larger of the two units, the iLoud, tacks on a full-sized 1/4-inch jack for connecting that axe should you feel the need offer up your best Stevie Ray Vaughan. While both are set to arrive sometime in Q2 of 2013, the iLoud will sport a $299.99 (€239.99) price tag and the iLoud Mini is set to dock wallets for $199.99 (€159.99).
IK Multimedia Announces iLoud, the First Portable Speakers Designed for Musicians
The range of portable speakers that sound like studio monitors
January 23, 2013 - IK Multimedia is proud to announce iLoud(R), the first portable stereo speakers designed for musicians. IK leveraged its 16 years of pro-audio engineering expertise, and its experience as the leading developer of mobile music-creation apps and accessories, to design battery-operated speakers that combine superior power, pristine frequency response and amazing low-end in an ultra-portable form factor that make them the perfect alternative to studio speakers for music creation and composition on the go.
The iLoud line consists of two models, iLoud and iLoud MINI, both of which provide musicians with sonic accuracy that's on par with professional studio monitors, making it possible, for the first time, to compose, record, and mix from a mobile speaker system.
Dynamic Duo
Despite their diminutive size, both iLoud speakers are indeed very loud. In fact, they're 2 to 3 times louder than comparable size speakers. The iLoud model offers a blasting 40W RMS of power, and it's little brother, iLoud MINI, a robust 12W RMS.
Both iLoud models provide highly accurate reproduction of a wide range of musical styles from rock, hip-hop and electronic dance music, to more nuanced and sonically demanding genres like classical and acoustic. The speakers are equipped with onboard DSP, for maintaining accuracy and efficiency at all volume levels, and high-quality, custom-designed neodymium loudspeakers. iLoud is equipped with a bi-amped 4-driver array, and iLoud MINI with a pair of full-range speakers. The enclosures feature bass-reflex and passive radiators construction, which helps create their superior bass response, with tilted profile for perfect listening position.
Plug and Play Convenience
iLoud also offers the possibility to connect a guitar, bass or dynamic microphone directly to the speaker and process the sound with a multitude of real-time effects apps. Featuring the same circuitry as IK's iRig - the most popular mobile interface of all time - the input allows users to plug in an instrument and access AmpliTube or other audio apps on their mobile device for practicing, performing and recording. The input also accommodates dynamic microphones, making it possible to run an app such as IK's VocaLive for realtime vocal effects and recording.
Ultra-Portability
In addition to their impressive response, volume, and features, the iLoud speakers are surprisingly small, exceptionally portable, and can be used everywhere. iLoud MINI, the smaller of the two, is only about the width and height of an iPad mini while iLoud has the size of an iPad. Only 6cm / 2.3" thick, either model can easily fit in a laptop bag or backpack. Both iLoud and iLoud MINI are also equipped with a high-performance Li-Ion rechargeable battery with smart power-management features that reduce its power consumption, making possible to go long periods without recharging, an important factor for mobile users.
Wired and Wireless
Both iLoud models support Bluetooth operation, which adds even more to their mobility. Users can stream music to them from any compatible mobile device such as an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad for casual listening. For sound sources like MP3 players that don't have Bluetooth capabilities, the iLoud speakers each have a stereo 1/8" mini-jack input for connecting line-level devices such as home stereos, DJ gear, mixers, MP3 players, and more.
Pricing and Availability
iLoud will be priced $299.99 / €239.99 and iLoud MINI $199.99 / €159.99 (excluding taxes) and they will be available in the second quarter of 2013 from the IK network of music and electronic retailers around the world.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video
Source: IK Multimedia
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/23/ik-multimedia-iloud-and-iloud-mini/
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