It's that time of year again: it's music festival season! Coachella's second weekend kicks off on Friday — with Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Lollapalooza, and more to follow. So what's topping our packing list? A standout crossbody bag, tribal wooden necklaces, and a pair of patent boots, to name a few. Watch on as our reporters Matthew Rodrigues and Allison McNamara talk all things music-festival style. On Allison McNamara: BCBG Max Azria jacket and top, Forever 21 skirt.
Enter Starbucks on a weekday morning, and it'll likely be filed with Work From Home warriors, emailing, freelancing, and PowerPointing between latte sips. Free, reliable WiFi is a tech-savvy worker necessity, but for those with more tactile creative pursuits, the traditional coffee shop scene isn't conducive to, say, creating a line of wallets to sell on Etsy or experimenting with the latest in 3D printing technology. Specific needs like these are what caused Tim Wong to open FabCafe in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo, as he told us at this year's SXSW Interactive.
Alongside the usual cafe fare like caffeinated drinks and small bites is the heart of Tim's vision, a studio where local designers can rent use of a laser printer to cut from Adobe Illustration files for about $20 per 30 minutes. Rather than going the way of a Kinko's where people come in to use the machines and leave in a hurry, FabCafe draws the local design community with artist lectures and workshops.
The workshops are when the six 3D printers are put to use, since the cost of the materials and machines makes regular renting of them less than feasible. Look for more FabCafe locations to open in Taipei and Barcelona this year. Take a look at some of the cafe's work, and tell us: what would you do at FabCafe if you had the chance?
Mood rings were cool as a kid, but now that you've moved on to bigger tech horizons, your mind-reading technology has got to move on up as well. From Neurowear, the creators of the Necomimi Cat Ears Headset ($70), which use brain-wave technology to move up and down depending on your mood, comes Mico, a pair of brain-wave-sensing headphones that make song recommendations based on the user's current state of mind. The gadget, which is strictly prototype only for now, made its world debut this year in Austin, TX, at SXSW Interactive.
The over-the-ear headphones (seen above) slip on like normal, except with two sensors, one that slips on the earlobe and one that touches the forehead. Those sensors work with Mico's accompanying music app to measure brain-wave activity and decipher mood, which then queues up songs based on the user's feelings.
In its current state, Mico has a catalog of 100 songs, but imagine the possibilities if Neurowear were to partner with a music service like Spotify or Pandora, with a library of millions of songs. Anxious and stressed in the office? Allow Mico to play some Frank Ocean to soothe your soul. A Friday at 4 p.m., ready to hit happy hour calls for a dose of the latest pop princess, says the headphones.
The biometric algorithm that recommends songs was developed in part with Keio University in Tokyo, with a team researching signal processing. Watch Neurowear's first preview of Mico after the break.
The 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival has come to a close, and we're taking a look at all the stars who popped up in Austin, TX, to join in the fun. Zac Efron linked up with costar Dennis Quaid to premiere their At Any Price, while Justin Timberlake performed at a secret show. Selena Gomez showed skin in a crop top for her Spring Breakers premiere, and Usher took the stage at the Converse party. Click through to see all the star-studded action at SXSW!
The annual South by Southwest festival drew a crowd of Hollywood trendsetters to Austin, TX — and we broke down every noteworthy look they packed with them. The festival closed out this weekend, but before we say goodbye we're taking a look at every red carpet arrival and onstage appearance from our favorite style setters. Click on to see Solange working her signature prints, the Spring Breakers cast in their lineup of red-carpet dresses, Sophia Bush giving us a dose of cool-girl styling, and much, much more.
We headed to SXSW Interactive in Austin to check out the latest tech, Internet, and social-media developments. Get the scoop on Google Glass, a pair of futuristic headphones, and the Internet's most famous feline.
In today's SXSW recap, we update you about Drunk History, coming to Comedy Central; James Franco's festival film Maladies; and all the must-see music acts happening in Austin.
With SXSW providing the unofficial start to music-festival season, there's no better time to zero in on the pieces worth packing for whichever (music-minded) occasion comes next. Thankfully, that's where H&M's latest Spring/Summer collections come in. Coachella, set in the Indio, CA, desert, is an expectedly heated affair, while the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England, presents a trickier outfit equation, due to unpredictable weather. Throw in Bonnaroo, Governors Ball, Lollapalooza, and Outside Lands, and you've got more than one kind of festivalgoer dress code to contend with too. The basics are the same — a t-shirt, denim staples, and a little fringe go a long way — but it's how you accent your look to fit the locale and the climate that will set you apart. Herein, find our favorite pieces from H&M's Divided and Summer 2013 collections, perfect for the music festivities ahead.
Photo courtesy of H&M
For the fifth year, the latest and greatest of the tech world's startups descended upon Austin, TX, to pitch their companies and products as part of SXSW's Interactive Accelerator, a competition to highlight the year's best innovators. The winners of 2013's startups range from the medically groundbreaking — Alzheimer's detection years before symptoms manifest — to customizable 3D-printed dolls that may have kids next Christmas season saying, "Barbie who?" Here, a look at the cream of the interactive startup crop.
South by Southwest is under way in Austin, TX, and the celebrities in attendance have been lining the event's yellow-backdropped red carpets galore. Whether it's Selena Gomez and the ladies of the much-anticipated Spring Breakers or Olivia Wilde for her new film, Drinking Buddies, catch up with the beauty looks that have been spotted at the festival.
