Dealzmodo Review: The $300 Sonos Rig [Review]
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/gXIKhmJF2as/dealzmodo-review-the-300-sonos-rig
I say "you can start" your rig because one of the Sonos' main selling points is its ability to wirelessly coordinate ZonePlayers all throughout the house for flawlessly synced music playback. The idea is that you spend $300 on the ZP80 (or $350 on a ZP90 if you miss out on the clearance inventory) and then later on, when times aren't so tough, you can add more ZonePlayers as you go. 
In my house, it all plays out rather well:
When my laptop is awake and on the network, the ZonePlayer I have connected directly to my router (via Ethernet) and a stereo system can access all of my non-DRM tracks. I can sort through all those tracks via the Sonos Desktop Controller, which works on both Macs and PCs and whose setup was ridiculously easy. 
Say I close or power down my laptop, or my wife wants to get on the Sonos while I am away, laptop in tow. There are so many sources of music available via the Sonos Controller app, she may not actually even notice that my vast library is gone. (I could, obviously, load the Sonos control on her laptop so that it would serve her music, too, but based on what I'm telling you, that has so far proven irrelevant.)
My wife loves Fresh Air with Terry Gross. By searching for the show in the Radio section, she can not only find out when it's on next, but can listen to recent shows in full, at a much better sound quality than those damn Audible downloads, for zero money. She can also search for different radio stations and add them to favorites—we have both our favorite NYC and Seattle radio side by side. You can't yet bookmark actual radio shows, a la Fresh Air, in Favorites, but I'm hoping that's something that will be worked out soon.
Controlling the system over Wi-Fi is easy, too. You kinda have to get used to the queue concept that goes back to desktop music jukeboxes of olde—once you add songs to the queue, they're there until you clear them, even after they've played. But you can add many songs and radio shows of differing sources to the same queue, making for a highly programmable audio experience: I can listen to the new-ish Coldplay, followed by Terry Gross's interview with Seth Meyers, followed by a classic mix playlist I devised in iTunes (automatically recognized by Sonos), all queued up in just a few minutes. The volume control is funny—on the iTouch, you have to tap to the left or right of the slider to make it go up or down, but once I figured that out, it was smooth sailing.
What don't I like? I feel like this new setup has answered my biggest historical gripes with the system; though it would be nice for it to play iTunes DRM tracks, and it would be convenient for the first ZonePlayer to connect wirelessly and not via hard Ethernet (it does this so that it can create its own super-stable Wi-Fi network), the thing is getting better and cheaper at the same time—$300 for clearance ZP80s, potentially even less on eBay. If that isn't go! od news in these troubled times, I don't know what is. [Sonos]
Emoji: if you've never heard of it, that's because you're probably not living in Japan, 12 years old, and a highly social schoolgirl. An emoticon standard that is widely used in the country, it was included in the iPhone 2.2 firmware on the SoftBank network, but not for anyone else. Apparently fed up with his lack of ability to graphically express his numerous LOLs, a developer has figured out a simple tweak to enable these icons system-wide, no matter which carrier you're with. Naturally, to show anything other than unintelligible strings of Unicode the recipient's phone has to support Emoji emoticons, but apparently all 2.2 iPhones, hacked or not, can display the icons. The patching process, after the jump, isn't terribly complicated.
Nanobioscience's AdminPatch sounds like a pretty amazing way to deliver drugs into the body: it's got a metal surface covered in millions of tiny microneedles that puncture the skin. You may instantly think "Ouch!" but since these are so small and pierce the skin shallow enough to avoid pain receptors, the system is apparently painless.
Ok, so it's only a selection of the sale products, but Amazon's 
Posts
