Find your happy place with a pair of Sol Republic headphones

What do the Nike+ FuelBand, the Boxee box, and the Xbox 360+ have in common? All were all given a boost by Astro Studios a small San Francisco-based design outfit you’ve probably never heard of.

One Friday in April, while most of the 25-30 staffers were hustling to get their South of Market space prepped for a gallery opening, Astro’s top tier sat down to discuss their process — how they’re able to so reliably churn out an innovative, eye-grabbing solution to a range of design problems.

Sometimes companies come calling hoping for a bit of inspiration to give their product a boost on the shelf. Other times entrepreneurs seek out the studio to transform their kernel or bit of raw technology into an entirely new brand.

The founder of Sol Republic headphones came hoping for a complete refresh. A year before the cans popped up at the Apple Store in October 2011, Kevin Lee, the son of Monster Cable’s founder and an ex Beats by Dr. Dre exec, asked Astro to help develop a new headphone concept.

Astro already had a whole division devoted to making headphones for gamers. Lee had a hunch that there would be demand for high-style, quality headphones for less than the $250 sticker shock of the Beats by Dr. Dre.

Astro Studios early Sol Republic prototypes

Astro was in. But before they started mucking around with ink, pixels, and materials, they had to figure who they were designing for. Where does their target consumer shop? (Answer: Nixon or Diesel) What do they listen to? (Answer: hip-hop, electronica) What kinds of clothes do they wear? (Answer: G-Star jeans, sports stuff) Knowing the landscape helps designers better understand how their headphones might fit into the early-to-mid twenty something dude demographic. (Yes, as it turns out, headphones are gendered.)

“First you immerse yourself in a lot of different info, then you put it all in a funnel in the designers hands,” says Brett Lovelady, Astro’s founder and CEO.

Sketching out the design

Early on, the designers used the information to dream up a wide range of possible forms. “There is still lots of hand sketching, but they can quickly take that to a computer and give it some life, some color, three dimensionality,” says Lovelady. On the computer, they used a white light scan of a head as their canvas. The scan allows designers to sketch their ideas out in 3-D.

Once they think they’ve landed on something, the designers print out the possibility. In just a few hours Astro’s in-house 3-D printer produces a model to manipulate and try on.

Parts from Astro’s in-house 3D printer

One thing the team realized while tinkering is that headphones are often overly complex. The wiring is largely to blame. Unlike earbuds, most over-the-ear headphones have one cord that stretches up to one speaker and then over the head to the next. The setup makes adjustment complicated and the profile clunky. So why not go the way of the earbud? Keeping the cord off the dome would cut down the cost and streamline the style. Win.

The result is a simple stand-alone band that relies on friction to adjust — enough so that the speakers won’t slide, but not so much that they wont budge when you need them to. It also means the band is replaceable. Sick of standard black? Swap it for red instead.

Astro’s design ‘problem’ ended up being what made the brand stand out

The band solved a lot of problems, but it created a few, too. When the speakers slide on the band to fit your head, excess plastic is left dangling, like on a belt. For a while Astro considered making the material snap-able by scoring the plastic. The idea was that once someone nailed the fit, the leftover would be easily to trim off.

But before they made any drastic changes in design, the company gave the prototype the mirror test. “We found that people didn’t mind [the extra length],” says Astro partner Kyle Swen.

It’s a lesson in allowing designers to fail their way to success: Astro’s design ‘problem’ — the band that extends past the speakers — ended up being what made the brand stand out. So much so, they decided to incorporate the silhouette into the earbuds, too.

The result is a headphone concept worthy of its those hip-hop-grooving, G-Star-sporting dudes. Astro says Lee agreed to tattoo the Sol Republic logo on his body should they come up with one that was worthy of his product.

No word on whether or not he’s got a sound wave on his bicep yet. But if the headphones hit, he’ll know Astro’s design is more than skin-deep.

Logos that didn’t make the cut

All photos courtesy of Astro Studios

Disco queen Donna Summer performs in 1980.
Photo: Bruno Torres/Bettmann/Corbis

Donna Summer, the disco queen whose 1977 smash hit “I Feel Love” was nothing short of seismic in its impact on electronic music, died Thursday of cancer at the age of 63.

Produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, “I Feel Love” fused Summer’s breathy, ethereal vocals with a hard, driving synthesizer pulse. Few tracks can lay claim to altering the course of popular music, but the reverberations of “I Feel Love” could be felt in the electro, house and techno that followed in the 1980s and beyond.

“It’s basically the blueprint for all electronic music that came after it,” said Peter Shapiro, author of Turn the Beat Around: A Secret History of Disco, in a phone interview with Wired. “It came out in 1977, the same year that [Kraftwerk's] ‘Trans-Europe Express’ came out, the year that Parliament did ‘Flashlight.’ To me, those are the three great synth tracks.”

In a 1978 issue of Interview, Brian Eno prophesized that the music of the future would pair a hard, rigid electronic sound with its opposite.

“What I would really like to do,” Eno said, “if I could have a sort of kingship for a short time and organize the group of my dreams — I would make one group which was a combination of, say, Parliament and Kraftwerk — put those two together and say, ‘Make a record.’ Something like that would be an extraordinary combination: the weird, physical feeling of Parliament, with this strange, rigid, stiff stuff over the top of it.

“Donna Summer was actually the beginning of this idea for me,” Eno continued. “When I heard ["I Feel Love"], I was so knocked out, I thought it was really making progress.”

Summer’s voice was perfect for disco’s eventual shift from lush, soulful, symphonic orchestrations to a more overtly electronic sound.

“Moroder and Bellotte found the perfect frame for her voice in ‘I Feel Love,’ in the synth cathedral they created for her,” said Shapiro. “The reason she was a great singer for disco is that she wasn’t a traditional soul singer at all. She’s much more of a Broadway singer, kind of a show tunes singer. In fact, that’s the way Moroder discovered her — she was in the touring company of Hair…. In the sense that disco is in some ways a break from traditional soul, her style was perfect.”

Summer had several hits over the course of her storied career, from 1975′s epic “Love to Love You Baby” to a string of successes in the late ’70s and early ’80s, including “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” “MacArthur Park” and many more. But “I Feel Love” was the track that made her immortal.

Our new fave in the Android realm. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The HTC One X is one of the best smartphones on the market, and the best Android phone you can buy right now, period.

It’s fast, it’s gorgeous, it’s lightweight and it has a stellar battery that lasts all day. The camera is also outstanding. It’s the best I’ve seen on an Android phone, though it falls just short of the camera on the iPhone 4S.

It’s not just the hardware — the One X runs version 4.0 of Android, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, which is overlaid by HTC’s own Sense skin. It’s fast and easy to use. Combine that with the excellent hardware and you’ve got a handset worthy of being a flagship device for both HTC and AT&T (even though you might have to wait a bit to get one).

It’s fast, it’s gorgeous, it’s lightweight and it has a stellar battery that lasts all day. The camera is also outstanding.

In fact, the one thing I really don’t like about the One X is its exclusivity to AT&T, the only carrier that sells the phone in the U.S. It’s a shame this phone isn’t available on T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon.

Android handset makers don’t have the same leverage as Apple when it comes to dealing with telecommunications companies, so they continue to pump out a few slightly different versions of every phone, each one exclusive to a different carrier. It’s unnecessary and insane — HTC produced more than 50 different handsets last year alone.

The One X, being a stellar phone, serves as a testament that Android handset makers should go the iPhone route and make fewer phones of higher quality available through multiple carriers. The hardware companies would of course gain from this, but the payoff for the consumer would be huge as well.

To wit: Nearly every quibble I had with the T-Mobile-exclusive One S — a fine mid-range handset being sold at a flagship price — was fixed in the One X.

My biggest complaint with the One S was its display, and the feature I enjoyed most on the One X was — you guessed it — the display.

The One X has a 4.7-inch, 1280×720 IPS LCD touchscreen, covered in Corning’s durable, crystal-clear Gorilla Glass. The viewing angles on the screen are some of the best I’ve seen on a smartphone. Colors are bright and accurate, producing consistently true-to-life images across websites and apps. Pixel edges are indistinguishable with the display’s density of 316 pixels per inch.

Let me put it this way: The One X’s screen is on the same level as the iPhone’s Retina display. I love looking at it, and it blows away the PenTile displays found on the One S and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (my former favorite Android handset).

Beneath the fantastic touchscreen, the One X is a beast, with a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage (the same set-up found in the One S). Performance is blazing-fast, and though the AT&T handset doesn’t pack the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor found in Europe and Asia’s One X, it doesn’t feel any less capable. The U.S. model is just as good and just as impressive as what HTC is offering overseas.

The U.S. version of the One X, unlike its overseas counterpart, runs on AT&T’s 4G LTE network, which is only available in a small number of cities right now. In San Francisco, the One X downloaded and uploaded data quickly, whether connected to AT&T’s 4G LTE, 4G HSPA+ or 3G service.

But despite performing like a beast, the One X is also a beauty.

The 0.36-inch chassis is made of a single piece of polycarbonate, giving the handset a sophisticated look free of seams or gaps, as seen on past HTC hardware. Given its size, the phone is also surprisingly light, weighing in at 4.6 ounces.

The One X is a handsome, well-designed phone. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

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Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel “Starship Troopers” presents a futuristic war fought by heavily armored infantry, that when suited up, makes you look like a “big steel gorilla.” Today, the U.S. Army and Marines are edging closer to the Mobile Infantry of Heinlein’s world by reportedly taking an interest in armored face shields.

The Army hasn’t made the shields part of its standard kit — not yet. But, according to Military Times, it has deployed thousands of them, and is looking to buy 160 more, with potentially 2,000 more shields to follow. The Marine Corps, meanwhile, is “keeping tabs on the Army’s plan to test face shields,” and is looking at “gear that will protect Marines’ faces.” Currently, individual Marines deployed to Afghanistan pay for face shields on their own — the Corps has so far not ponied up the money to field the shields.

Designed to protect turret gunners against explosive fragments, the shields are starting to find a role with infantrymen and are now advanced enough to stop rifle rounds. In a demonstration by Indiana-based manufacturer MTek (above), a 7.62mm round fired from an AKM variant impacts one of the company’s FAST G3A shield, blowing it off a mannequin’s head. (Before being blasted off, the shield was bolted onto the mannequin’s helmet.) The shield’s polyethylene armor stops the bullet, but looks painful. A bullet hitting a face shield can possibly break bones and knock out teeth. Though, consider the alternative.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to hurt,” said Gunnery Sgt. Ryan Bowser, a Marine reservist and business development manager for MTek. “It’s going to hurt a lot, probably. But it’s better than the other option. You get hit in the face with an AK round, it’s probably not going to hurt because you’re dead.”

The video requires a little bit of explanation, too. The mask being flung off by the bullet is the “absolute worst case scenario,” Bowser said. “The only way that effect would be exactly replicated on a person is if they were standing with their heels, their rear end, their back and head up against a wall,” he added. And that’s without the added weight of a 200-lb Marine (not including equipment) helping absorb the kinetic energy.

Fortunately, the likelihood of being hit in the face with a bullet is pretty slim in comparison to the massive threat posed by bomb fragments. Still, “guys are using them for everything,” Bowser said. The shields are popular with members of the military’s bomb squads, and the company has released a lighter and more compact model for dismounted soldiers and Marines, which helps get around the problem posed by larger face shields, namely disrupting the the wearer’s ability to manipulate small arms.

But there’s also questions over how much armor is too much. How much armor is necessary to save lives without cutting into Marines’ speed and maneuverability? (MTek’s latest shield weighs less than one pound — not a lot, unless it’s hanging on your head.) How much armor is too much? At what point do troops keep behind the armor instead of moving forward to confront the enemy? Too much “turtling” behind body armor and giant blast-resistant trucks can also put distance between troops and the civilian populations they’re supposed to protect.

Often, groups of heavily armed Marines can be intimidating to the locals. Want to make them more intimidating? Face shields.

Another problem is that the larger shields can block a soldier or Marine’s cheek from his or her rifle stock, disrupting the ability to quickly acquire a sight picture. MTek’s newer PREDATOR FAST G4 is shaped with this in mind, Bowser said, allowing a dismounted soldier or Marine to use his weapon more effectively than if he or she was wearing a bulkier version intended for vehicle-mounted troops.

“It can be done, but it’s like any piece of equipment,” he said. “It takes some time and practice to do that. Depending on what kind of suite you’re using, what kind of suiting you’re doing. You absolutely can put it on and engage with an M4 or an M16, or any of those things.”

Perhaps the best news is the shield’s potential to “mitigate some brain trauma sustained in bomb blasts,” according to the Military Times. This is because the shield works to help absorb explosive blast waves, which can cause traumatic brain injuries that contribute to early dementia.

And if the Army makes face shields standard, and the Marines follow, that could be a sign the military might again dial up the armor. During the Iraq War, some up-armoring was necessary to protect against lethal bombs, but the military slowed the trend as it shifted to COIN — or counterinsurgency — doctrine that emphasized engagement with the civilian populace instead of riding around behind steel plates. And at some point, all this armoring gets kind of ridiculous.

COVER: Marc Andreessen Knows What’s Coming Next / pg. 162 

No one has done more to change the way we communicate than Marc Andreessen. At 22, he invented Mosaic, the first easy-to-use web browser. He later helped bring the Internet to the masses by co-founding Netscape and then took it public in a massive IPO. In the last few years he has backed an astonishing array of startups, including Twitter, Skype, Instagram, and Airbnb. Andreessen talks to WIRED editor in chief Chris Anderson about the five big ideas that made his career.

How to Spot the Future / pg. 152

Our mission at WIRED is to pinpoint the ideas, inventions, trends and breakthroughs that will define the future—ideas that aren’t just interesting, but are world changing. After 20 years of watching how technology creates a better tomorrow, we’ve identified seven rules for spotting the future. PLUS: Future spotting insights from WIRED visionaries including Paul Saffo, Esther Dyson, Vint Cerf, and Tim O’Reilly.

The A/B Test / pg. 176

During the past decade, A/B testing—in which a fraction of users are given a unique version of a webpage and their behavior is compared against the mass of users on the regular site—has become the Silicon Valley standard for testing and improving online products. Even President Obama has harnessed its power: A/B testing helped his 2008 campaign raise more than $75 million. Obama’s former digital adviser Dan Siroker talks to WIRED about how A/B is rewriting the rules of business.

Popularity Counts / pg. 120

Are you being judged by your social media influence? Your Klout score—a single number from 1-100—could let you nab exclusive hotel upgrades, restaurant reservations, and other VIP perks. But if it’s too low, it could be a factor that helps a competitor nudge ahead of you. Seth Stevenson explains how the three-year-old startup intends to rank every person online and how that will infiltrate our everyday lives.

PLUS: The Avengers hit the big screen (pg. 172); the online bullies who stalked Korean pop star Daniel Lee (pg. 184); over-the-ear headphones, tested and rated (pg. 82)

** Debut Columnist: In a new monthly column, entrepreneur Anil Dash looks at big new ideas in tech (pg. 90)