bars

When Altec Lansing asked if I would take a look at its new desktop speaker replacement, I was interested in the possibilities. According to the company, the SoundBar was designed to fit onto a desk with little room left without sacrificing high-quality audio. Unfortunately, the SoundBar only delivers on the first goal.… Read more

We always thought the term "candy bar" was something of a misnomer as applied to mobile phones, especially those that more resembled bricks while claiming to be skinnier than they really were a few years back. And giving names like "Chocolate" to sliders and such just confused the matter.

But Au's new "Infobar" actually comes close--not just because it's only 15.5 millimeters thick, but because it's got rounded corners and tapered edges. Kind of like a 3 Musketeers bar, but wider and without the nougat. It also comes in some … Read more

The coolest after-dark attractions just have to be across the pond, don't they? I'm drooling over screenshots of Twentyfour, which looks pretty darn awesome (though who knows what the crowd's like). With over a thousand LED color combinations available, this is one place where the decor won't get boring--and did I mention the walls are actually projection screens?

The video walls kind of remind me of the Nokia flagship store in Manhattan, but from what it sounds like, they're a lot more functional. Bar patrons can control, or even contribute their own scenery somehow--I should … Read more

Falling off a barstool has never been this refreshing.

The Aquapub is either the best idea ever, the worst idea ever, or somewhere close to either hash mark. It's been available for a while, but it's hard to find any pricing info on the official site. Other blogs claim it costs around $1,400.

The six-person table weighs about 90 lbs. and can be used both in the water and poolside. The Aquapub's surface is made from recycled materials, and the table itself is filled with polyurethane to keep it from sinking.

Obvious pros include having your … Read more

As impressive as the "Vin au Verre" was and is, we always thought it was a bit, well, low-tech. There's no law, after all, that says bars can't join the digital age.

Enter "MyFountain," a wonder machine that stores up to a dozen beverages, all accessible (and, more important, dispensible) by a touch-screen color LCD that features pictures of said libations. Great for beginning barkeeps.

It will even mix drinks according to your requests, according to BornRich, a feature that would come in increasingly handy for an imbibing host as the night wears on. … Read more

Among boutique technology companies there is esoterica, and then there is esoterica. Zachary Vex falls into whichever category is more extreme.

We learned of ZVEX's wares last winter upon encountering its "Nano Head," which it described as "the world's smallest production tube amp." Its mission has apparently continued undaunted, for we now see that it has created "the world's smallest vacuum tube stereo power amplifier" (pausing to inhale). There must be so much competition in developing these products.

ZVEX's "iMP" amp can be used with pretty much any … Read more

We can't work all the time, you know. Those of us at this year's E3--reporters, analysts, game developers, and so on--have been more or less running back and forth between meetings and events at various hotels around the Santa Monica coast, wishing we were sitting on the beach rather than being tragically forced to try out new Xbox games that aren't on the market yet. (Woe is us.) But that all changes after about 6 p.m., when a whole host of software companies make us feel better by throwing parties and treating us to free food and an open bar.

One of the E3-related shindigs on Wednesday night was the Bethesda Softworks party at a delightfully cheesy Sunset Boulevard joint known as the Saddle Ranch Chop House.

It was a good half-hour drive out of the way, and there were plenty of other game companies that threw parties that night, but this one had a mechanical bull. (Not sure about where you're from, but on my home turf, ride-the-bull attractions are pretty rare. I think there's a total of two of them on the entire island of Manhattan.) Check out what happens when a bunch of geeks invade a bar that looks like it fell out of Disney World's Frontierland...and try to conquer a piece of "interactive entertainment" that doesn't involve a console or a joystick.

As you can see from the extensive footage above, the average E3 attendee does not appear to be particularly good at bull riding. Maybe the Wii Balance Board could help with that.… Read more

In my summer camp days, we did things like swim, play Capture the Flag, and fashion crafts out of Popsicle sticks and Elmer's Glue.

Traditions get turned slightly on their head when an uberhyped phone and grown-up geeks are involved. This weekend, Adobe Systems is hosting a summer camp of a different kind--one for developing iPhone applications. Yes, that's right: a whole three days of nothing but stirring Web developers into an iPhone-related frenzy.

Adobe's swank San Francisco offices are set to host about 250 engineers, designers, iPhone owners and anyone else with a knack for … Read more

Sometimes on Crave I talk about my dream office. This would undoubtedly be a part of it. I think it might be the most beautiful bar ever; yes, even cooler than the inflatable one. This is, like, the iPhone of bars. Crafted out of a combination of brushed and polished stainless steel, it comes with a bottle cooler and a sink that you can connect to your water supply. They really thought of everything.

Additionally, the panels on the front are luminescent, so this is guaranteed to look extra awesome after dark. At the (discounted!) price of $7,365, that'… Read more