Every so often, it seems broadcasters remember Twitter is a platform they can use to promote their content. Case and point: ViacomCBS just announced a multi-year deal that will see the social media network stream video from across its brand portfolio. Additionally, the two companies plan to host three Paramount+ watch parties. ViacomCBS didn’t say what shows it will air through the effort, but they’ll all be from the platform’s original content library. As part of the deal, ViacomCBS also plans to leverage Twitter’s marketing tools, including Moments.
The deal builds on a previous agreement Twitter had in place with Viacom prior to the company’s $30 billion merger with CBS in 2019. Notably, it’s more expansive in scope, with Twitter gaining access to ViacomCBS’ entire portfolio, including brands like CBS Sports, BET and Nickelodeon, in addition to the ability to stream content globally. Twitter and ViacomCBS did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement. In theory, the deal is a win for everyone. ViacomCBS gets a chance to promote its content, and Twitter gains access to additional revenue.
Charts have long been a useful way for Spotify users to check out the top songs on a given day as well as what's trending. The company is giving fans and artists more charts to check out, as well as a dedicated website on which to peruse them.
New to the platform are weekly genre charts. You'll be able to see the top 200 songs across 17 genres, with user playlists and editorial input used to categorize tunes. You can also take a peek at artist charts. These will be updated every Friday to show the top 200 artists globally, as well as in each of Spotify's top 65 markets, based on streams from an artist's entire catalogs.
What's more, users can dive into more than 200 city charts to see the biggest songs in specific locations. Local pulse charts, meanwhile, show how popular a song is in a city compared with how big that track is around the world. That should provide a sense of how listeners' tastes in one city match up against the broader Spotify userbase.
Spotify
There are a few features tailored toward artists as part of this expansion. They can see when a song entered the chart, its peak position and streaks. Credits are now included for each song on charts under the "more" option. If a song is doing particularly well, artists and fans can share that success using promo cards that Spotify created.
Spotify also expanded its podcast charts this year. There's now an option to see the top podcast episodes, in addition to the most popular shows.
YouTube's experiment with hiding dislikes was apparently successful. The service is rolling out a change that will make dislike counts private for videos across YouTube. The button will still exist (and affect your recommendations), and producers can still see the count — you just won't see the numbers as a viewer.
The Google-owned brand is aware that some people used the counts to make viewing decisions, but felt secret counts would help the community at large. New and smaller creators are more often targeted by dislike campaigns, YouTube said, and the test reduced that harassment. The move will theoretically create an "inclusive and respectful" space where video makers both have a better chance to succeed and feel safe.
There's no guarantee this benefit will reach every user, or that it won't prompt determined harassers to find alternatives. It's also no secret YouTube has its own motivations as a victim of dislike attacks — just ask the Rewind 2018 team. All the same, this could discourage 'casual' abuses of the dislike button, not to mention brigading from groups hoping to suppress videos that clash with their views.
Hacking groups aren't always divided between state sponsorship and strictly personal gain. Sometimes, they'll work for any customer with a large-enough bank account. The Recordreports that Trend Micro has identified Void Balaur, a "cybermercenary" group that has struck both political and commercial targets since 2015. It primarily steals data to sell to whoever's willing to pay, whether that's a government or a fraudster.
Void Balaur was initially linked to attacks against human rights activists and journalists in Uzbekistan. More recently, it attacked Belarusian presidential candidates in 2020 and several political leaders in an unnamed Eastern European country. However, the hacking outfit also targeted executives and directors at a very large Russian company between 2020 and 2021, and has been attacking and selling data from telecoms, banks and cryptocurrency users. The group has been linked to the on-demand hacking site RocketHack.me.
It's not clear just where Void Balaur operates from, or whether it has official government support. There's some overlap between Void's targets and those of the Russia-backed APT28 (aka Fancy Bear or Pawn Storm), but not enough to establish a clear link. And while the group has only ever advertised its services on Russian-language sites, it's not necessarily operating from Russia. We'd add that Russia usually turns a blind eye to cybercriminals only so long as they don't attack Russian interests — Void doesn't have problems attacking Russian businesses.
The study illustrates the difficulty in pinpointing the nature of some hackers, let alone catching them. Cybermercenaries also pose a particularly severe threat as they're often happy to attack any target without reservations. It won't be surprising if there are more groups like Void Balaur that have simply gone undetected.
Microsoft and Facebook's parent company Meta have teamed up to integrate Teams and Workplace. Companies that use both platforms can try the integration at no extra cost. Through a pinned tab in Teams, workers can access Workplace content, including a condensed version of the Workplace news feed, without having to switch between apps. They can react to and comment on Workplace posts in Teams too.
Starting next year, companies will be able to stream Teams meetings to Workplace groups. As such, you'll be able to watch meetings and events in either app or check out a recording later on Workplace.
Meta and Microsoft have previously brought their enterprise and productivity products together on other fronts. Office 365 tools such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint are already available on Workplace, as are SharePoint and OneDrive. Workplace is also integrated into the Azure Active Directory.
In addition, Meta recently said Teams will be available on Meta Portal products in December. People will be able to use the devices for Teams video calls.
If there’s an artist in your life the best gift you can give them is inspiration. Whether they’re a painter, writer, musician or anything else. Something to get their creative juices flowing will be welcome. Trust us. There are countless ways to spur creativity and aid the creative process — many of which don’t require spending any money, like meditation or simply taking a long walk. But there are tools out there that can help someone stretch beyond their comfort zone, or simply document and fine-tune their own ideas. From subscriptions, to books, to extremely bizarre instruments, here are the best gifts for the creative in your life.
You Are an Artist by Sarah Urist Green
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Penguin Books
It might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes just being told what to do is a great way to spur creativity. Because, truth is, rarely is the actually creative part in the original idea, but rather in the execution of it. The problem is, once someone leaves school nobody is giving them assignments any more. That’s where You Are an Artist comes in, a book compiled by Sarah Urist Green, the host of PBS’ The Art Assignment on YouTube. It’s a collection of 50 assignments crafted by a diverse set of artists to help get the creative on your list, well, creating.
Many of the assignments focus on visual arts, asking them to make endless copies of an image using a Xerox machine, or to take random photos of a location and make notes on details they might normally miss. But there are others that encourage them to hum or clap along with the sounds of traffic, or engage in word games. You Are an Artist is the sort of book they’ll probably revisit time and time again. — Terrence O'Brien, Managing Editor
The iPad has become a key tool for creatives over the years and arguably nothing has contributed to that more than the Apple Pencil. Most of the newest iPads support the second-generation Pencil and it’s admittedly much more convenient than the first purely for its magnetic charging method. But otherwise, the Apple Pencil is the best stylus I’ve ever used because it has little to no latency and that helps mimic the feeling of drawing with a traditional pen and paper.
While investing in a paper-like screen protector will blur the lines even further, you don’t have to do that to get an excellent experience from the Apple Pencil. Drawing is seamless, taking notes is a breeze (especially with iPadOS 15 if you use Apple’s Notes app) and the possibilities are endless once you get familiar with third-party programs like Procreate. Battery life is superb, too: I’ve spent hours drawing in Procreate or experimenting with different planner layouts in GoodNotes and I have yet to pause a session to recharge the Pencil. While the Apple Pencil hasn’t completely replaced traditional art forms for me, it’s certainly the most useful tool I own for when I want to be creative. — Valentina Palladino, Commerce Editor
The Freewrite smart typewriter is a niche device that would nonetheless make a wonderful present for any aspiring writer. Or, come to think of it, anyone who is already committed to the art of putting words to the page. The Freewrite combines an excellent mechanical keyboard with an E Ink display, and while it can get online to sync drafts to the web, that's the only thing it can do. There's no way to browse the web, play a game, or watch YouTube on the Freewrite, which makes it a lot easier to just sit down and get into a flow state. The E Ink screen and keyboard can take a little getting used to, but both things quickly become assets when just looking to get some writing done. And thanks to the low-power display, the Freewrite lasts for a week or two of heavy writing. At $600, it's a serious investment — but gifting one to an aspiring writer should give them great motivation to write that book they're always talking about. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Managing Editor
Decades worth of record label design offers a wellspring of visual aesthetics to kickstart your own creativity. There are even a few monoliths of music and design culture that succeeded in the record industry without succumbing to the corporate machine. Factory and Mute records are such creatures. Spawned in the UK in the late ‘70s (though only Mute remains today), both companies informed generations through tales of — sometimes careless — business tactics and quality curated output. In general, they were groups driven by a DIY aesthetic and creativity unhindered by official structure.
Not only did these labels champion freedom of musical expression and help drive new genres of music, but they also became an outlet for visual designers. Most notably, Peter Saville’s (found) cover art for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album (Factory) is ubiquitous today with its mountainous range of wavy lines. Spending time digging through either of these books which are chock full of art, music and history can get your creative juices flowing. Either are a welcome gift for family, friends or even yourself. — Jon Turi, Homepage Editor
I’ve gotten to the point in my cooking journey where trying recipes isn’t as interesting to me as learning new techniques. Do I have a pile of go-to recipes in my Paprika app? Yes, but now I’m more interested in mastering cooking methods that essentially set you up to make your own recipes from scratch. Ruhlman’s Twenty is one of the “cookbooks” I’ve been turning to the most in my quest, and if some of the concepts in the book may seem basic, that’s because they are. Most cooking shows and online recipe blogs don’t explain why they add an acid to a tomato sauce or how to get a perfectly crispy french fry rather than an oily, soggy mess — but this book does. It takes you back to basics, explaining the proper techniques behind different ways of cooking, so that you can understand what’s happening to your food as you prepare it. And don’t worry, it doesn’t read like a textbook and there are even complete recipes in there for you to follow if you wish. Ultimately, Ruhlman’s Twenty has made me a more competent cook who isn’t forced to consult a recipe every time I prepare a meal. — V.P.
A new instrument can be a decent way to snap someone out of a creative rut. But even better than a new instrument is a weird instrument. And if the musician in your life likes things on the weird side, I highly recommend the Make Noise Strega. It was designed in collaboration with Alessandro Cortini (touring member of Nine Inch Nails), and eschews most of your usual synth controls and makes sounds that are best described as weathered.
The front panel is a confounding array of glyphs and lines that look like something out of a book on the occult. The express goal of the Strega is to get someone experimenting — literally poking and prodding at the various touch panels that serve as modulation sources and destinations using a person's own body as a patch cable. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re shopping for the kind of person who loves lo-fi warbles and nightmarish drones, they’ll love the Strega. — T.O.
Okay, calling the Sound Urchin an “instrument” might seem like a stretch, but the otherworldly sounds it creates are sure to inspire the musician in your life to tackle composing differently. It’s essentially a bunch of metal rods stuck to a guitar pedal enclosure with a microphone inside it. The rods aren’t really tuned in any traditional way, which allows for the creation of unexpected melodies, but it can also be a source of clanging percussion or ominous wails. When paired with some effects this strange little box is capable of being the basis for an entire composition — albeit a slightly odd one.
This particular recommendation came courtesy of Abby Santourian, a Chicago-based musician and music gear expert at Reverb who told Engadget via email: “For centuries, artists have been inspired by the sea, but I think this takes that idea to a new level…. When combined with other pedals and effects, the sonic possibilities and combinations are seriously endless.” — T.O.
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Souvenir Press
If you’ve heard about Morning Pages, or Artist Dates, both are two core habits established inThe Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s decades-old book on creative practice. That’s probably the most straightforward way to describe this book, which walks you through a 12-week program of writing exercises and tasks, all aimed at freeing up your creative powers. The crux of it is demanding three pages of handwritten writing every day. While it’s often a stream of consciousness — and if your handwriting is atrocious, barely legible — Cameron’s advice is to simply put the writing out there, and see where it takes you. Famous fans include Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, Alicia Keys and practically half of the comedians whose podcasts I listen to, it seems. The book does get a little bit spiritual at times, which you may or may not be fine with, but the core exercises and ideas can be pretty powerful, especially if you’re in a creative rut, or simply looking to add more artistic output to your day-to-day life. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief
Another slightly weird instrument to consider is the Moog Subharmonicon. The sounds it produces are more “standard” than the Strega (for lack of a better term), but its sequencer and focus on subharmonics are anything but. It takes inspiration from a pair of early experimental electronic instruments — the Mixtur-Trautonium and the Rhythmicon. The Subharmonicon encourages one to explore the concepts of subharmonics and polyrhythms to create unexpected melodies and rhythms. It’s capable of that classic Moog sound, but it will also force someone out of their comfort zone. — T.O.
Sometimes a person doesn’t need whole new sounds to get the creative juices flowing, but just a new way of making those sounds. The Sensel Morph is an impressively portable and flexible MPE MIDI controller with amazing shapeshifting possibilities. It can be a piano, a pad-based drum machine, a sketch pad, or an obscure controller inspired by Don Buchla — the driving force of West Coast-style synthesis.
The Buchla Thunder overlay marries the expressive possibilities of the Morph with an approach to composing melodies and harmonies that it’s fairly safe to assume your giftee has never experienced. Instead of a traditional piano layout it’s a series of pads organized into a roughly bird-like shape that you’re supposed to tap and slide along to create unique timbres. Its unfamiliarity forces anyone to stop thinking about what they already know about playing music and focus instead on the results.
Plus, the Morph has a number of other overlays so, if the Thunder has worn out its welcome, it’s still incredibly useful and flexible. — T.O.
Sure it’s easy to just grab a drum loop from the top of the Splice charts and wind up sounding like everyone else. But there are far more interesting ways to find sounds. For one, search results can be shuffled. So, rather than just using the same Rhodes sample that thousands of other bedroom producers have relied on, a person can hit the shuffle button and grab something that might be flying under the radar. This technique can also be combined with searching for random terms on Splice, rather than pulling up specific instruments. (Just Google “random word generator” and use that as the basis for a search.) There are lots of interesting and sometimes strange sounds and loops to be found by searching for things like “clinic” and “preparation.”
The entry-level $10 Sounds+ plan includes 100 sample credits. But your giftee would probably really appreciate the upgrade to the Creator Plan. That includes 200 credits, plus access to Splice’s surprisingly excellent Astra soft synth, its Beatmaker drum machine plugin and a library of tutorials and lessons on music production under the Skills banner. Sometimes, when you’re not sure what to do, simply learning a new skill or trick can get the creative juices flowing again. — T.O.
A decent field recorder should be in pretty much every artist’s arsenal. For a musician, obviously, it’s valuable for recording samples and capturing impromptu jam sessions. Anyone can buy sample packs, sure, but building a custom drum kit from snapping twigs and the crunch of dead leaves is a surefire way to get someone thinking outside the box.
But even beyond that, it’s great for documenting ideas and finding inspiration. Yes, there are voice-note apps, but your giftee might like having a dedicated (and distraction-free) tool for documenting ideas, inspiring sounds and capturing interesting lectures or panels. A writer can set a recorder up and talk through the plot of a novel they’re working on, without worrying that their battery will die. Or a painter can record the ambience of a cafe they frequented while traveling in Paris and revisit it to find inspiration for a new work. — T.O.
NASA is once again struggling to keep the Hubble Space Telescope running. Wiredreports the Hubble team is slowly reviving its telescope following multiple instrument sync failures that prompted a switch to "safe mode" in late October. Engineers reactivated the Advanced Camera for Surveys on November 7th, but they'll need to verify the device's output this week before they enable any other affected components.
The problems began October 23rd, when NASA noticed that instruments weren't receiving sync messages from Hubble's control unit. Those communication problems continued for two days, prompting the emergency shutdowns. The space agency can't revive Hubble quickly — rapid power and temperature changes risk shortening the telescope's lifespan.
The failure is the second in 2021 to prompt an extended shutdown (the June payload flaw prompted NASA to invoke a month-long "coma" in July), and that's on top of previous problems. NASA had to restart Hubble's gyroscopes in 2018, for instance. The mounting problems suggest the 31-year-old observer is running out of time, and there's no Space Shuttle available if a hardware replacement is necessary.
Astronomers might not be too worried. The James Webb Space Telescope is due to launch December 18th and may serve as a spiritual successor to Hubble, even if it's not focusing on the same wavelengths. Hubble is also contributing to significant discoveries to this day. In that sense, Hubble is effectively signalling that it's ready to pass the torch.
Keeping your home clean, organized and secure can be a chore, and your loved ones likely feel the same way. Fortunately, there are gadgets that can help make it a little easier. We review smart speakers, robotic vacuums and Instant Pots all year long, and for the holiday season we’ve compiled a list of our recent favorites in the home tech space that will make excellent gifts. And your giftee doesn’t have to be tech savvy to use all of them either — plenty of our recommendations amount to baby steps into the smart home world for those who would rather start off slow.
Instant Pot Pro
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Instant Pot
We almost always recommend the multi-purpose Instant Pot in our holiday gift guides and this year is no exception. But instead of giving your loved one the regular model, why not level up? Designed for avid cook, the Instant Pot Pro brings several key upgrades over previous models. The inner pot has an extra thick bottom that lets you heat it on the stove, plus handles that make it easier to lift. It has 28 customizable programs for different foods, and there are five favorite buttons that you can assign to frequently cooked meals. It also has steam release reminder alerts with 5- and 10-minute pre-sets. It’s available in two different sizes, but we’d recommend the six-quart version for most families.
Sous vide cooking essentially means keeping foods in a temperature-controlled water bath, ensuring they’re done to perfection. This used to require expensive equipment, but sous vide cookers have become inexpensive over the past few years. One such device is the Anova Precision Cooker Nano, which can be found for around $100, and can be controlled through either an app or physical buttons. It’s one of the most affordable sous vide machines around, yet it delivers precise temperature controls. The app also comes with an assortment of helpful recipes to help get users started on their sous vide journey.
If you don’t mind spending a bit more, we also like Breville’s Joule for its sleek, minimalist design. It doesn’t have the physical controls that the Nano does, but it makes up for that with its compact form factor that’s a little easier to fit in a kitchen drawer. Either option will ensure medium-rare steak, juicy chicken breasts or just a perfectly soft-cooked egg.
If your loved one is a great cook with counter space to spare, consider getting them the Anova Precision Oven. It’s a luxury purchase, for sure, but it’s well worth the price for serious home cooks. This combination convection-steam oven can cook food in both wet and dry heat, letting you control temperature and humidity levels. What this means is that your special someone can make juicy roast chicken with crispy skin as well as crusty artisan-style bread all in one machine. Plus, it has WiFi and a companion app that lets cooks keep an eye on their food from anywhere.
Video doorbells are useful for seeing who’s at the front door from the comfort of your couch. One of our favorites is the Nest Hello (now called the Nest Doorbell Wired), which is why we were pleased when Nest came out with a new battery-operated version, the Nest Doorbell Battery. It’s a great gift for both homeowners and renters, as you don’t need to hardwire it. Battery life is anywhere from one to six months depending on how active it is (it’s shorter if you live on a busy street, for example). The Doorbell notifies them whenever there’s a person, animal or vehicle near the front door. It can also let them know when a package has been placed, which is great for pre-empting theft. In addition, it offers three hours of event video history for free, with the option to purchase more space through a Nest Aware subscription.
If you do get a Nest Doorbell for someone, you might want to consider gifting them a Nest Hub as well. The two are designed to work together: anytime someone rings the doorbell, the camera view of who’s at the front door will show up on the Nest Hub’s screen. Even without the doorbell, however, the smart display is a great device to have around the home — especially if your loved one already uses the Google Assistant. It works as a digital photo frame and they can use it to watch YouTube and Netflix. It can also make calls via Google Duo and offers recipe videos along with step-by-step cooking instructions. If the user so chooses, they can track their sleeping patterns when they place the device next to their bed.
For those who prefer Alexa over the Google Assistant, the Echo Show 8 is a great alternative to the Nest Hub. It also works as a digital photo frame and its 8-inch display is a good size for streaming shows from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu while prepping dinner. It can also be used to keep up with the news, check the weather and control smart home devices. Since Amazon has a partnership with Allrecipes and Food Network Kitchen, users can find assorted recipes and instructional videos as well.
Air purifiers are great gifts for anyone who has allergies, lives in a polluted area or just wants to breathe easier at home. And if you want to give someone a smarter air purifier, consider the Mila Air. It ships with one of seven pre-configured HEPA filters that can filter out particles and allergens like pollen and dust. It also has a ton of customization options: there’s a “Housekeeping Service” mode that goes full blast when no one’s in the room, a “Sleep Mode” that turns the lights off and reduces the fan speeds at night, plus a “White Noise” mode that mimics soothing sounds like waterfalls. The Mila also has a bevy of sensors that can tell you if there’s carbon monoxide in the air, or if the humidity is too high.
Blink’s indoor camera offers the gift of peace of mind in a compact and affordable package. Your loved one will appreciate the fact that Blink is wireless and battery-powered; since they don’t have to place it near an electrical outlet, it can sit almost anywhere. They also won’t have to worry about recharging the camera since it can last up to two years on its two included AA batteries. Aside from just letting them monitor their home, it also features customizable motion alerts so they’ll only get alerted when they want to. Plus, there’s two-way audio so they can hear and speak to the person (or pet) on the other end.
Maybe you have someone in your life who could use a little help cleaning up after themselves. For that, we recommend getting them one of our favorite robot vacuum cleaners, the iRobot Roomba 694. It can suck up dirt and debris from both hardwood and carpeted floors, with an edge-sweeping brush taking care of dusty corners. The companion app lets them control it remotely, or they can set up a cleaning schedule so the little robot can do its thing at a set time. It even automatically docks and recharges itself if it’s low on battery.
Smart locks are a great way to add security and convenience to any home. We recommend August’s WiFi smart lock because it’s easy to use, and since it fits over an existing deadbolt, it’s great for both homeowners and renters. It lets your loved ones unlock the door completely hands-free, which is great if they have their arms full of groceries. They can set it so that it automatically locks once the door is closed, or after a set period of time. If someone’s at the door but they’re at the office or in the backyard, they can easily let them in with a single finger tap. Plus, they can grant access for specific friends or family members, which means they might never need to put the key under the doormat ever again.
With a smart plug, any appliance can be part of a connected home for not a lot of money. TP-Link’s Kasa smart plug is a particularly good one because it is both affordable and incredibly compact (and if you’re really short on space, there’s a mini version that’s even smaller). Together with its companion app, they can schedule a timer to turn on and off anything from Christmas lights to a coffee maker. It’s also compatible with both Alexa and Google Assistant, which lets them add voice control to any outlet.
With most of us having so many gadgets and smart home devices, perhaps the best thing you can give your loved one is the gift of better WiFi to keep things running smoothly. Amazon’s Eero routers will deliver just that. The latest models support WiFi 6, the latest and fastest WiFi standard, and will support 75-plus devices simultaneously. It also covers up to 1,500 square feet with WiFi speeds up to 900 Mbps, so it’s unlikely they’ll ever have to deal with dead spots or buffering again. The Eero 6 also comes with a built-in Zigbee smart home hub that lets them connect compatible devices without having to purchase a separate device.
Add some color to your loved one’s life with the Philips LED smart bulb starter kit, which comes with four multi-color bulbs plus a Hue Hub that connects them all together. The bulbs can fill the room with millions of different colors so they can choose from warm moody lighting for a cozy atmosphere or rainbows for parties. In the companion app, they can create timers and routines so that their lights gradually turn on in the morning or off in the evening. And it’s scalable: They can eventually have up to 50 lights connected to one Hue Hub, giving them the freedom to outfit their whole home with smart lights if they wish.
Microsoft's game development teams are having a banner year. The company's gaming head Phil Spencer has revealed that Forza Horizon 5 had the best launch day of any Xbox Game Studios title. There have been over 4.5 million people playing the arcade racer across all platforms (Xbox, Windows and cloud) to date, and its peak concurrent players were three times those of its predecessor.
Horizon 5 is enjoyable, as you might have gathered from our hands-on, but it also helps that the game had one of Microsoft's widest releases yet. The new Forza launched simultaneously on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, the Microsoft Store on Windows and through Steam. It's much easier to pick up the game this time around, and it's a major showcase for both Microsoft's latest consoles as well as PCs with high-end video cards.
All the same, it's a significant moment for Microsoft after years of buying and fostering developers to make Xbox Game Studios a well-known brand. There's a real chance the company will eclipse itself, too, with Halo Infinite poised to launch in less than a month. It's just a question of whether or not these standout launches will translate to better Xbox sales.
We've invested for years in Xbox so more people can play. With 4.5+ million players so far across PC, cloud & console, Forza Horizon 5 shows that promise coming to life. Largest launch day for XGS game, peak concurrent 3x FH4 high. Thank you players & congrats to @WeArePlayground
One of the problems with the traditional weight belts or vests is that they’re often bulky and ill-suited to you retaining your full range of motion. It’s a problem that Omorpho is looking to tackle with its new Gravity Sportswear, which spreads the weight across the garment. The rationale for this, and the use of what it’s calling MicroLoad Spheres which are dotted all over like Michael B. Jordan’s torso from Black Panther, is to offer greater resistance during workouts, but not at the expense of movement.
Omorpho may be a new company but it comes from some pretty experienced names, since it was founded by 21-year Nike veteran Stefan Olander. He is joined by a group of former Nike employees which have worked to build the clothes and finesse this system of weighting clothes. The process of developing the garments has reportedly taken more than three years, and uses premium fabrics in the construction. And there are a number of big-name athletes pitching the clothes, including Julio Jones, Maria Sharapova and Annie Kunz.
The entire collection, which includes long and short-sleeve tops, vests and leggings, is available to buy from Omorpho's website today. Prices start from $150 for the biker short, through to $400 for the beefiest G-Vests, all of which have a set weight that they can add to your daily workout.
