GEAR4Blog

Our Angry Birds Speakers featured on The Today Show yesterday morning!!

They featured as part of their Holiday Gift Guide and cited Justin Bieber as a huge fan, as well as all of the studio crew. What a treat for the run up to Christmas!!

The time has finally come, for some serious Mo praise and a fair amount of trimming to remove those Nose Neighbours as Movember draws to a close this Wednesday.

It's been a great Year 1 for the GEAR4 team, raising a whopping £488 in aid of men's health, and looking so dapper at the same time! An awesome array of Mo's are now dominating the offices here at G4 HQ for the final time this year and (some of us) will be sad to see them go, although many crew members are now fighting to save their wives/girlfriends after the long Movember month...

The final week provides the perfect opportunity for the final group pic, and what a smart one it is:

Top Row (L-R): Sibbs 'Silverback' Singh, Steve 'Stelios' Hollow, Jon 'Silky' Bull
Second Row (L-R): Brian 'Chopper' Humphris, Rudy 'El Bigote' Ross, Dan 'The Entrepreneur' Shepherd, Des 'The Pilot' Gayler
Third Row (L-R): Joe 'BFG' Burns, Pete 'The Baker' Procopio, Jamie 'Boyband' Cooper, Alastair 'Bear Grylls' Kingsland
Bottom Row (L-R): Ben 'NewBoy' Hewlett, 'Radio Ben' Russell, Parag 'Over The Air' Jani, Dan 'Too-Little-Too-Late' Hanusek, Timmy 'The Tortoise' Goodall

It's been a great month and some serious funds have been raised. A huge thank you to all the GEAR4 Mo supporters, but there is still time to donate and we are eager to hit the £500 mark. To donate please click here.

Well Mo fans, it's been emotional. MO-ver and Out...!

Everyone is loving our exclusive Angry Birds Speakers and they are literally flying off the shelves.

The craze has now hit TV screens, with the Red Bird being on ITV This Morning, a national UK channel, today!!

Suzi Perry, from the Gagdet Show, was the special tech guest reviewing the products. She makes sure that people get to listen to the awesome sound of the speaker, showing that it's not merely a novelty item. Suzi goes on to mention the Helmet Pig and Black Bird versions, which are perfect for charging your iDevice.

The perfect gift for Christmas just got its national TV debut!

Our friend Mark R. over at CoolestGadgets.com got a chance to play with the Gear4 PocketLoops keyboard. Read his account below:

"The first time I saw the PocketLoops from Gear4, I was at CTIA last Spring. I was pretty amazed that no one had ever thought about integrating an iPhone/iPod to a keyboard before.

PocketLoops might look pretty simple as only two octaves of piano keys are included, but it is actually pretty complex to use. The user can play the keys with 13 included synths to produce loops, and then combine them for a hit track. The beats created can be done with a drum kit that includes House, Drum & Bass, Hip Hop, Reggae, Rock, and more.

The PocketLoops comes with an App that is ready to download the moment you plug in your iDevice. You need iOS 4.2, but the App allows the user to share tracks with friends via email.

In addition to remixing some tunes with drums, bass, and melodies, the user can access some cool effects like Echo, Chorus, and the XY filter Pad.

Okay, so if you have this thing that can make cool tunes, could the next big music artist already be making the latest hit song on them at this moment? Stuff like that is something that I find fun to think about. If you want to try your skills on this, head over to the Gear 4 site here and pay $79.99."

Last week was an extremely busy week here at GEAR4, with our external teams all coming over to G4 HQ for the annual sales meeting and a big Company Meeting on the Thursday.

Our offices were bursting at the seams with our growing number of employees  and so we reconvened at the leafy Lane End Conference for a company presentation, followed by an afternoon of team events!

During the presentation we had a new addition to the meeting, the 1st Annual Disruptive Awards:

This year's awards went to:

• Golden Goose - Thomas T
• Every Cent Counts - Nigel
• All Round Good Egg - Kerri 
• Greater Good - Nimesh 
• Biggest D'oh! - Steve H
• The Entrepreneur - Dan S
• Unsung Hero - Kim C

Congratulations to you all!

The afternoon's activities consisted of a variety of events including Segway races, air rifle scrabble and motorised beer keg races, finishing off with some team ski racing.

The Segway races stole the show and here are some GEAR4 members testing their skills on course:

Eric and Steve H clearly had different Segway experiences...

The team skiing ended the day, with everyone in high spirits after some testing activities and some teams vying for the top spot.

Throughout the day Tom D was adamant that his team would not be coming second and, although victorious, he was extremely generous with the winning bottle of champagne, spraying anyone and everyone who was nearby...

So a fun day was had by all. What's more there were no injuries, which is more than can be said for whenever the GEAR4 football and netball teams play!

After huge hype, thousands of rumors and teasers, Apple finally held their 'Let's talk iPhone' event yesterday. Apple highlighted its upcoming iOS 5 operating system and iCloud, announced updates to the iPod nano and iPod touch, unveiled its new Cards and Find My Friends apps, and paved the way for the launch of the iPhone 4S.

No external changes, but some key features and updates inside the much anticipated iPhone 4S. With the dual-core A5 chip, all-new 8-megapixel camera and optics, iOS 5, iCloud, and Siri, Apple's new handset provides the power of an iPad 2 in a smartphone. 

Apple introduced Siri to the world at the event. Its intelligent assistant, using voice control, can make calls, send texts, set reminders, and more!

The iPhone 4S also boasts a much improved battery life, to the joy of millions of iPhone 4 owners, with: 8hrs 3G talk time; 6hrs 3G browsing; 9hrs Wi-Fi browsing; 10hrs Video use; and 40hrs Music use.

Here's Apple's official 'Introducing iPhone 4S' video, pulling apart all the features mentioned above:

After an eventful and extremely successful IFA 2011 the GEAR4 team are back, rested and recuperated. Just in time for some cheeky videos and photos to leak onto the web...

Our product guru Jamie puts the Red Bird to the test and shows us all how to be a GEAR4 ambassador in front of the camera. If you've got it, flaunt it. & trust us, he's got it!

Everybody went Angry Birds crazy on the GEAR4 stand this year, with our incredible Red Bird, Helmet Pig, and Black Bird speakers stealing the show. Even Steve D stepped up to show the world just how good this feisty fowl looks and sounds:

Our exclusive Angry Birds Speakers featured on several review sites and blogs throughout the week. Here are some of the links:

• Engadget: Angry Birds speakers are too adorable to slingshot
• Phones Review: Angry Birds Speakers for iPhone and Android
• PSFK: Product of the Week: Angry Birds Speakers

Meanwhile, members of our Product Team are currently on a little jaunt in the US. Although something tells me product development is the last thing on their mind:

This year at IFA we are showcasing our newest products on our biggest stand yet!

The GEAR4 stand has multiple sections, highlighting the wide range of speakers and accessories that we are launching in the coming months.

This includes our exclusive Angry Birds Speaker and Accessories zone, highlighted by its huge Catapult and some awesome graphics that are bound to draw a crowd:

We also have an extensive Speaker Zone that showcases the existing and newest additions to our SmartLink range. The zone also boasts the GEAR4 Wireless Speaker section where we are showing off our new BlueTooth and AirPlay speakers:

Not forgetting the PocketLoops DJ station! Budding music producers can come and test out their skills at our DJ booth using our new portable music creation device...Come see if you can beat any of the GEAR4 musicians and create your own track to send to us!

If you're lucky enough to be attending IFA Berlin this year then be sure to come visit the GEAR4 stand, have a chat with us, and test out some of the awesome new products coming to a market near you.

We're located in Hall 3.2 at Stand 125.

In the run up to the eagerly awaited iOS 5 update later this year Apple have just released a number of new ads, highlighting the seamless communication between iOS devices and other compatible partner devices.

The new AirPlay commercial is one of several 'If you don't have an iPhone...' formats recently seen across the TV and online, raising awareness of the capabilities and enhanced features of the iPhone and iPad:

This seems to be the beginning of a vamped up campaign for both Apple and its partner brands to educate consumers on the more technical advancements surrounding its iOS devices.

Expect to see more and more AirPlay focus as we near the busy Christmas period.

The announcement of an iOS overhaul from Apple's recent keynote gives light to a huge number of additional features for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users.

iOS 5 is a complete overhaul, as our previous post and video shows. It also has enhanced implications for Apple's previous release, Airplay. 

Airplay is summed up in the official demo video below:

Introduced in iOS 4.2, Airplay enables wireless streaming to Airplay-enabled devices such as, speakers, TVs, printers and more from your iOS device or Mac via Wi-Fi. 

With the introduction of iOS 5 in Autumn comes iPad mirroring, meaning that you can wirelessly mirror everything on an iPad 2 to an HDTV via Apple TV. Your apps are mirrored automatically. With additional APIs your app can display different content on each of the HDTV and the iPad 2 screens. In iOS 5, apps built with AV Foundation can now stream video and audio content through AirPlay, and AirPlay now supports encrypted streams delivered via HTTP Live Streaming.

It seems Apple have invested serious thought in this most recent software update. This is probably due to the rise of more and more smartphones and tablets in the marketplace. With iOS 5, iCloud and Airplay coming to fore, however, Apple are again at the pinnacle of the industry.