The Moonwalkers Aero
These overshoes are cooler than a scooter and faster than walking
If you happened to be on the tranquil waterfront walkway in Manhattan’s Battery Park a couple of weeks ago and saw a rather clumsy older man walking unsteadily in an odd, robotic manner—not unreminiscent of a Buzz Lightyear toy—that, dear reader, was your columnist.
Strapped to my feet were a pair of app-connected, A.I.-enhanced electric overshoes designed to help you glide along a sidewalk at the speed of a gentle jog without any of the coordination required for Rollerblades, skateboards, mini-unicycles, and whatever other gadgets innovators have contrived to turbocharge God’s own walking.
While possibly not quite as easy to use as their Austin-based maker, Shift Robotics, says, Moonwalkers Aero work very well. As someone who could never skate, I was almost shocked by my ability to shimmy along as advertised after a few cautious steps, albeit at the lowest possible speed. Shift Robotics claims people typically learn within 10 steps. That’s not too much of an exaggeration.
The sensation of moonwalking, at least as a beginner, isn’t quite a frictionless glide. There’s a slight clomping action to it, which means your footsteps are rather noisier than you might like.
But you certainly do progress along the ground faster for less effort, and thanks to the clever electronics, which instantly sense when you want to stop, your forward momentum won’t accidentally propel you under the nearest bus. You can go from the top speed of seven m.p.h. to stationary within three feet, which is about the same stopping distance you’d experience while jogging.
If I were marketing Moonwalkers Aero, I would do anything to get one of the four surviving actual moon walkers to try them out. Though that might prove difficult because the youngest, Charles Duke, is 89. But I can confirm that shuffling along in them is a lot easier than Michael Jackson–style moonwalking, because Jackson once gave me a one-on-one lesson in his method, and I failed to get it. (For the skeptics among you, this occurred in 1998 at a private Thanksgiving-eve party in Englewood, New Jersey, and I have witnesses.)
Moonwalkers Aero are the second version of the product and a great improvement. They are lighter and have fewer wheels than the still-available original, the Moonwalkers X, which are $150 cheaper. They are one-size-fits-all and comfortably accommodate shoe sizes from women’s 6 to men’s 12.
Stairs are no problem—the wheels lock automatically—and although I didn’t attempt any slopes, the makers say you’ll never go into an uncontrolled roll downhill, as the A.I. slows the wheels. Also, the Moonwalkers can speed you up a hill as steep as 10 degrees. They work for around seven miles per charge and can carry users weighing up to 220 pounds.
If you’re at all nervous about trying Moonwalkers, I would suggest practicing in a large, carpeted area first—and perhaps wear a cycling helmet when you’re on city streets. You can customize their sportiness using the app. It’s also reassuring to know that Shift Robotic will accept returns as long as they’re within 14 days.
Moonwalkers Aero are a fun product, but they are more than a gimmick. Commuting on them is not a ridiculous idea, and for reasons I can’t quite articulate, they are an order of magnitude less irritating to the innocent bystander than adult scooters are.
The Newair Luma Kitchen Composter
The best way to compost in the city—and keep kids entertained
Today, composting your organic kitchen waste—vegetable peelings, overripe fruit, leftover food, and so forth—is not only a good thing; it’s also rather fashionable.
The trouble is, although it’s bacteria that do the real work in composting, the practice is nevertheless time- and labor-intensive for humans too. Additionally, composting outdoors is highly entertaining to flies, rats, squirrels, and other uninvited guests.
Which is why, over the past few months, a slew of odorless countertop composting appliances have been launched for eco-aware and waste-averse people who may not even have a backyard to fertilize but would like to give houseplants and balcony vegetable patches a nutritious treat.
We sampled one of the mid-priced examples of these, though at $319 it’s by no means cheap. The Luma Kitchen Composter is made by Newair, a California appliance company.
It’s a substantial and superbly built piece of equipment that does—be warned—require a sizable patch of counter space, so it’s not right for a cramped apartment kitchen. But it’s extremely simple and quiet in operation, and fortunately doesn’t have a companion app. You just fill it with scraps, then turn it on overnight.
Over four to six hours of heating, drying, grinding, and cooling, it reduces the scraps to a dry brown mulch of approximately one-tenth of their original volume, ready to be spread on your plant beds.
The question is: Is what the Luma so effectively produces actually compost? Or are countertop composters more compacters, a neat way of reducing the volume and unpleasantness of food waste?
The consensus among gardening experts is that although the claims of these machines’ promoters are not quite true, the stuff is nevertheless good for your plants.
One unexpected by-product of the Luma is that it made a nine-year-old grandson who is no fan of fruit and vegetables suddenly start consuming them in large quantities, simply for the pleasure of watching apple cores, orange peels, and banana skins reduced to dry, fibrous brown matter.
Overall, this is a satisfying and effective new kitchen appliance if you have the space.
THE LOEWE WE BEAM PROJECTOR
Project a display of up to 120 inches anywhere you can reasonably carry it
Your columnist has noticed a marked increase in both the U.S. and Europe in the number of homes he visits that do not have a TV or a monitor, or, if they do, refuse to let it be an altarpiece dominating their living room.
A lot of people prefer to avoid rotting their children’s brains, or frightening them with unrelentingly gloomy news shows. But more than a few times, I have also heard the same concerned parents regret having nothing other than a laptop or an iPad to watch the good stuff on streaming services. As a result, they consider getting a projector to bust out for special occasions.
As long as you have enough blank white wall space or space for a screen, there’s a plethora of good ones out there. This very upscale but ultra-compact projector from Germany’s fancy Loewe (nothing to do with the Spanish fashion brand, incidentally) performs bright, vivid living-room or bedroom projection admirably. But it has another trick that makes it hugely attractive, even if it’s a function not much on anyone’s mind at this time of year.
Loewe’s We Beam can go mobile. It’s the size and weight of a thick paperback, so you can take the device into the garden on a balmy night, or even on a camping trip, and it will project away, with a screen size of up to 120 inches and 10 watts of stereo sound.
The We Beam produces a lot of light and sound, so it’s too power-hungry to run on built-in batteries. For use in the wild, you will need a mobile power bank of the kind you can buy for $100 or less. And if you’re away from Wi-Fi, it’s better to show films downloaded onto a USB stick than to suck up signal from 5G. Where there is plentiful Internet, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube are built-in.
THE FIIO KA15 D.A.C.
Get the most from your special headphones while listening on your phone
However good your headphones are and however high the digital quality of the music you are streaming, for the best audio experience in your ears, you still can’t quite beat wired cans. Wireless can be magnificent, but to upgrade from super to sublime, a cable is needed—especially if you’re connecting over-ear headphones to your phone.
The problem is that high-end over-ear headphones require more than the power of a smartphone’s puny amplifier to perform adequately. You really need an in-line amplifier, known as a D.A.C. (digital-to-analog converter). And the problem with that is that D.A.C.’s are expensive and bulky.
This cute and convenient D.A.C. from China, however, does the job despite being less than two inches long, weighing under an ounce, and using barely any power from your hard-pressed phone battery.
The FiiO KA15 gives a clearly audible improvement to the delivered sound. In combination with its app, it also allows you to fiddle endlessly with the finer details of the output. Full disclosure—we didn’t bother with all that; we just plugged and played.
This solid, metal-cased little gadget is well worth the $100 or so it costs. Design-wise, it resembles an old-fashioned cassette tape, which is endearing even if it’s not entirely clear what it’s supposed to evoke. Nevertheless, the maker’s stated aspiration on its Web site—“to raise the reputation of ‘Made in China’”—is, albeit modestly, fulfilled.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer at the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology
