Streaming hasn't killed physical media. It's made us crave it more. CDs are back in rotation, showing up in record stores, apartments, and design studios with a renewed sense of purpose.
The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s.
The Maxell Wireless Cassette Player, known as the MXCP-P100, is a compact device that allows users to play their old mixtapes while streaming audio to Bluetooth headphones or speakers.
The allure of the project is that the magnetic tape doesn't reproduce audio cleanly because the oxide coating introduces a slight instability in playback speed. But these are the 'flaws' that Iulius Curt is after, allowing the resulting sound to have that lo-fi warmth that's ideal for ambient listening.
The TTT-W magnetic modular wall rack is flushed against the wall, featuring four circular magnetic pads that create a vertical design piece, unifying the audio devices.
Developers are planning to bring ABBA Voyage, the high-tech concert experience built around holographic versions of the Swedish pop group, to Hell's Kitchen. The project is one step closer to reality and, if all goes as planned, the show will open in 2028 inside a purpose-built venue on 11th Avenue between West 45th and 46th Streets.
Upload any picture or video, and Musubi uses artificial intelligence to extract the most important part and hover it in space as a 3D image within the frame. That could be a video of a child's first steps or a snapshot of a birthday party. The image will be displayed in 3D form, viewable in all its holographic glory across nearly 170 degrees.
Looking Glass has been doggedly committed to making holographic displays the next big thing since 2019, and with its new Musubi digital photo frame, it might finally be offering its tech at a price that's hard to deny. Musubi is scheduled to start shipping in June, and unlike the company's previous, more developer-focused kits, the company's new display only costs $149.
I wanted to write a book about how the smartphone changed the world, but the more I researched, the clearer it became that phones were actually the latest step in this evolution of storytelling technology that stretches all the way back to prehistoric times.
The company is building directly on its major success supplying its waveguide technology to glasses, and proving that geometric waveguides work at consumer scale with standard glass. At CES, Lumus showcased a ZOE prototype with a field of view of more than 70 degrees, an optimized Z-30 with 40% more brightness, and a Z-30 2.0 preview that's 40% thinner. David Goldman, VP of marketing, walked me through each demo with clear enthusiasm about the progress Lumus is making.
Usually, my handbag is a medley of digital devices and life essentials my phone, iPad, chargers, keys, tampons. But lately, you're likely to also find a half-done newspaper crossword, a ton of stationery, the book I've restarted three times, and whatever scraps and trinkets I've picked up throughout the day to put in my scrapbook. Analog is back, and it feels like we need it more than ever.
The robot repeatedly inscribes text and images onto the glass surface using a marker, then removes them with a sponge. This cyclical action renders visible the process through which present events transition into recorded history, emphasizing the instability and revisability of historical narratives.
Publishers' adoption of generative AI is reducing the friction between content and format, making it easier for the same story to appear as shorter summaries, audio, or video, often in real time. To some publishers, a text article may soon be more of a vehicle for original reporting, not a final product. That information could become no longer available strictly in a static piece of content, but transformed into different shapes and formats, based on a reader's signals and preferences.
Radioposter has built what it calls Paper-fi: physical books with synchronized audio soundtracks that follow readers in real time as they turn each page. No chips embedded in the paper, no QR codes to scan. The system uses patented computer vision and other modes through a smartphone or smart glasses to track your place in the book and play the corresponding audio.
In theory, movies are more accessible than ever before. You are literally reading this on a device that likely has access to a dozen or more streaming video apps and stores, like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Hulu. And yet, in reality, things are dire. Movies can be pulled instantly from a service, bad versions can be uploaded and replace what existed before, and trying to manage multiple apps is expensive and annoying. It all sucks so much.
Physical media sales, DVDs especially, are experiencing a new burst of popularity. After a decade of freefall, enthusiasm among Gen Z halved a 20 percent sales decline in 2024 to just 9 percent in 2025. Stores have noticed. The Times' Karla Gachet spoke with staff at cultural hubs like Cinefile and Vidiots to discover why 2026 is already shaping up to be their biggest year, with the latter renting a surprising 1,000 DVDs a week.
The profile also explains why "Ambersons," while much less famous than Welles' first film "Citizen Kane," remains so tantalizing - Welles himself claimed it was a "much better picture" than "Kane," but after a disastrous preview screening, the studio cut 43 minutes from the film, added an abrupt and unconvincing happy ending, and eventually destroyed the excised footage to make space in its vaults.
When a stranger smiles at you, you smile back. That is why, when Sir Ian McKellen ( The Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Amadeus) walked on the stage in front of me, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled at me, I smiled back. It was the polite thing to do. It was also completely unnecessary, because McKellen was not actually on the stage in front of me. He smiled at me through a pair of special glasses.
Chances are this does exactly what you need. It will play your old CDs, your new CDs, your homemade mixtapes, the whole nine yards. You can even listen wirelessly thanks to onboard Bluetooth. It's got a decent battery life that can last you up to six hours, and it uses a USB-C to recharge. We usually have one of those on hand.
It's similar to a vinyl record, but the tracks are in a USB drive. It has no moving parts inside, so it's totally digital in how it stores sound. But it has a physical shape users can hold, flip over, look at, and collect, so in a way, the designer is asking: what if digital music had a physical body?