We love sharing things with our friends: pictures, status updates, videos, music and anything else we can send digitally. But when you want to share a song that’s playing on your iPod right now, how do you handle it? Do you hand your friend one of your earbuds and deal with hearing only half of the audio? Do you hand over your headphones entirely and miss the song yourself? Do you fiddle with one of those earphone splitters that makes the music sound kind of terrible?

Dutch designer Dorien van Heijst has a new idea for sharing your music. Her Plug It In! headphones are retro-styled listening devices with a fun addition: an extra jack in one of the earpieces allowing for a friend to plug in. The unique design lets friends instantly share a great song or interesting podcast without dealing with the annoying aspects of splitters.

Van Heijst points out that with her design there is no static or degradation of sound quality or volume – all important points for audiophiles. The design combines a nostalgic appearance with a very modern type of function.

The post Don’t Be Selfish: Cool Headphones Let Friends Share Tunes first appeared on Gajitz.

IPod speakers are generally very stylized and modern-looking, so it’s unusual to see one that goes for bare-bones, simplistic design. The Audio Can speaker from designer Dean Brown is about as simple and non-stylized as you can get: it uses a plain tin can to house a battery-powered speaker.

Used individually or in a daisy-chained system, the can-clad speakers offer a rather playful approach to portable sound. While most designers are concerned with coming up with the most innovative, futuristic designs, Brown took a common household item and made it into an audio accessory. According to him, the sound quality is excellent – not at all what you’d expect coming from a tin can.

The Audio Can comes with a removable label, a battery and the appropriate audio cable. Besides offering a unique (yet utterly simple to disguise) design, the speaker gives users a very no-nonsense way to add ambient music to their surroundings. What you might miss in added features is more than compensated for in its ease of use and portability.

The post What Your Audio Can Do: Clever Super-Simple Speakers first appeared on Gajitz.