Mike Riley

As a major segment of the US population ages, so too grows the number of people showing signs of hearing loss. Whether you listened to or frequented rock concerts or danced the night away at thumping loud parties in your younger years, you may be experiencing hearing loss to some degree. Difficulty hearing can be both frustrating and inconvenient. While your hearing loss may not yet require an expensive audiologist screening or hearing aid, many folks notice that everyday sounds and conversations are inaudible. Olive Union designed an impressive wireless earbud called the Olive Smart Ear ($299) to amplify sound, which allows the wearer to hear different audio frequencies better.  Is it worth the three hundred-dollar price tag? Read on to find out.

As entertainment and mass communication redefine themselves in the age of social distancing, the tools to create your own professional-level content have never been more affordable. Anyone who has decided to finally start that podcast or livestream will be faced with a bewildering number of choices. Setting up a mixing board with high-end mics and cameras like those of successful professional podcasters and streamers will cost thousands of dollars. Until your podcast or stream attracts the same listeners and viewers as those top tier shows, it's hard to justify the initial cost to match those studios. At the same time, if your audio sounds like it was recorded on a cheap USB headset mic, listeners won't tolerate your content for very long. Elgato, a company that has reinvented itself as a digital broadcast equipment company, has, in my opinion, created one of the best microphones for aspiring podcasters and streamers without costing a fortune. Read on to discover why I'm giving Elgato's Wave:3 Microphone ($159.99) premium microphone and digital mixing solution a five star rating.

It was inevitable. Eve Systems, a company that has reimagined itself from an Apple Mac accessory company to a HomeKit automation powerhouse, has created a sprawling line of diverse products. These range from automated power strips that monitor your electrical use and temperature sensors that report indoor air quality. They further extend to a smart outdoor water controller that tracks water usage and even an indoor water detector that can be used to set off a cascade of automation events such as notifying you of a leak and, in turn, communicating with an Eve smart plug to deactivate the electrical pumping source of the water. And yet with all that HomeKit goodness, Eve didn't jump on the home video monitoring camera bandwagon, until now. Did Eve's drop dead simple HomeKit integration and stable quality make it into its first home security product?  Read on to find out.

Remember when Apple announced, and then later cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat? The concept was straightforward, simply have a flat surface upon which to lay your Apple iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch on, and have those devices recharge wirelessly. Apple shelved AirPower due to potential heating and uniform power concerns. Unsurprisingly, that hasn't stopped Apple third-party accessory companies from attempting to emulate the anticipated all-in-one wireless charging mat. Indeed, the Vissles-W 3-in-1 wireless charging pad ($45) even appears at first glance to be nearly identical to the Apple AirPower mat design. However, upon closer inspection, it isn't quite what Apple originally had in mind. Read on to find out why.