Learning to play the piano can sometimes feel impossible, taking hours of practice and consistent dedication — especially without a teacher to guide you. Roli, the company whose original claim to fame was an expressive digital ‘Seaboard‘ that allows for multiple degrees of expression, thinks its Lumi Keys can help. A small modular digital piano with light-up keys, the $299 Lumi promises to be one of the most intuitive ways of getting started playing the keyboard. It all starts with those pretty colors. The Lumi is far from the first digital piano to use lights to guide players to their next notes, but I’ve never seen a treatment quite so colorful.
If you’ve ever gotten your phone wet in the rain, dropped it in water or spilled liquid over it, you’re not alone. One study suggests 25% of smartphone users have damaged their smartphone with water or some other kind of liquid. Liquid penetrating a smartphone can affect the device in several ways. It could lead to:blurry photos, if moisture gets trapped in the camera lensruffled audio, or no audioliquid droplets under the screenan inability to chargethe rusting of internal parts, ora total end to all functionality.While new phones are advertised as “water resistant”, this doesn’t mean they are waterproof, or totally immune to water.
In this episode of our video series Unwind With Boris, in which TNW CEO Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten talks shop with Dutch entrepreneurs and innovators, Sungevity co-founder and chief mission officer Roebyem Anders shares her vision for a sustainable future. It’s not often you find a founder so smitten with their own product as Roebyem Anders is with solar panels. Not only did she dedicate her career to getting them on every single rooftop; she also owns a solar panel-covered dress. Anders says she “fell in love” with the technology during a business trip in Mexico. “I was there for one of my first solar energy projects.
Companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus produce flagship phones with an aim to overtake or at least get close to other established flagships such as Samsung’s Galaxy S series or Huawei’s P series. This year, with the Mi 11, Xiaomi is betting on a curved design, a good-looking AMOLED screen, and a 108-megapixel primary sensor to beat its competition. The company unveiled this phone last December in China, and launched it globally in February. I’ve been using this device over the last few weeks and its design and primary camera have impressed me. The Mi 11 could be a good phone for anyone looking to spend less than $800.
In our video series, Unwind with Boris, TNW CEO Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten talks shop with Dutch entrepreneurs and innovators. Check out this latest episode in which Niki Sie, the CEO, and founder of car-sharing website Juuve, shares his vision for the car of the future. When COVID-19 hit last year, Juuve CEO Niki Sie feared it would be the end of his three-year-old company. The car-sharing platform was just starting to gain some traction. Sie was expanding the selection of cars, when suddenly the whole country was requested to stay home as much as possible. “Many of our users book cars for business reasons — they’re needed for a trip to the office or to a meeting,” says Sie.
Over the past year, businesses have had to quickly adapt and adjust to new and varied patterns of customer behavior as their previous models were thrown off course. Those who accelerated their analytical capabilities were better able to handle huge changes in user behavior and the economic environment, as data analytics became, “an essential navigation tool,” according to senior partners at McKinsey. 2020 told us loud and clear that it would be foolhardy to always assume prior performance can predict future results. But the inexorable rise of computing power and storage, coupled with an ever-increasing array of data sources, also means that we no longer need to rely on gut decisions.
Annual car sales are unlikely to reach pre-COVID-19 levels anytime soon. In fact, experts say that the rate of recovery is forecasted to be a result of a slowdown in internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, with electric vehicles gaining a positive trajectory during the pandemic recovery period and beyond. According to a recent Deloitte study, EVs are likely to secure 32% of the global market share for new car sales by 2030. More electric vehicles! Sounds great for the environment, right? Yes, but electric car manufacturers have to tread carefully. More EVs means more batteries, and it’s essential that companies source the raw materials needed for batters ethically, particularly cobalt.
A Long Journey to an Uncertain End is an upcoming strategy management game from recently-founded studio Crispy Creative. I’ve had my hands on a demo for the past few weeks and I can sincerely say it’s my most anticipated game of the year. The game (we’ll call it ALJ for short) is a gorgeous mashup of space opera, crew/time management, and deep storytelling. It’s set in a far future that conjures up Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, and The 5th Element in equal parts while also revealing a completely original world. What’s interesting about ALJ is that it’s essentially a queer video game.
Much of the world is still online, but just because we’re at home doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy an event with great speakers, sessions, and networking potential. Most conferences in 2020 went fully virtual so that no one would miss out on the experience — TNW 2020 included — and now we can begin the year right with the Sofa Summit. Sofa Summit is organized by Smartly.io, and it’s the world’s largest social advertising event. Lasting for almost 15 hours and running from January 27-28, Sofa Summit features over 50 sessions, as well as networking opportunities and a closing party.
