Posts Tagged ‘design’

The Very Large Telescope is about to turn 15, and to celebrate the European Southern Observatory has released a spectacular image of a radiant pink gas cloud. Naturally the shot you see above — showcasing just one nursery (IC 2944, according to Phys.org ) where stars are born in spectacular fashion — was captured by the VLT. The telescope’s massive optical power makes it feel as if you’re right there, but in reality this cloud lies some 6500 light-years away. Researchers turned on the Very Large Telescope in May of 1998, and since then it’s proven to be an indispensable tool cited in countless scientific papers and studies. And as you can clearly see, it’s still producing wondrous results

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As it turns 15, the ESO’s Very Large Telescope captures another interstellar stunner

Over 30 years after The Warriors took America on a dangerous midnight tour of New York, the city seems like a different world. Graffiti has been sanded, neighborhoods have gentrified, and citizens no longer fear attacks by roving mimes. But the traces of 1970s New York live on beneath repainted facades, and Scouting New York brings us along in a fascinating three-part attempt to find and photograph every location where The Warriors was filmed.

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Tracking ‘The Warriors’ through old New York, in 1979 and 2013

At a press event in Tokyo today, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced the long-awaited Japanese debut of Square. It’s a big deal for the company — its first expansion outside of North America, and in the third-largest economy in the world. But Japan also presents some unique challenges. The country is still overwhelmingly cash-based, and Square competitor PayPal launched its own PayPal Here payment system last year without much fanfare. But Dorsey thinks his company can take off where others have failed to

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Square arrives in Japan, its first market outside North America

Another high-level HTC executive has left the company. CNET reports that HTC Asia’s CEO Lennard Hoornik has now parted ways with the company after being on leave for two months. Hoornik was in charge of HTC’s Asian operations for just two years. It’s not clear why he was on leave, nor is it known whose decision the exit was

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HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik joins executive exodus

Amazon has proposed to add a huge artificial biome to its new Seattle campus. Rather than being decorative, however, the enormous greenhouse, which comprises of three 80-to-95 feet high connected domes, will serve as a work space. The new building will be filled with plants separated into botanical zones reflecting a number of different ecologies, and all the plants will be selected for their “ability to co-exist in a microclimate that also suits people.” The five-story complex will contain office space, meeting rooms, lounge areas, in-house dining, and publicly-accessible retail spaces. It makes up a tiny portion of Amazon’s planned “Rufus” campus, situated in a landscaped park between the three main 37-story office towers. If the…

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Amazon planning giant greenhouse offices for its new Seattle campus

Qualcomm has demonstrated a new prototype Mirasol display for use in smartphones, marking a return to the reflective technology designed to allow for comfortable outdoor reading on color e-readers and other devices. The new prototype is 5.1 inches diagonally and has a resolution of 2560 x 1440; at 576 pixels per inch, the display is sharper than the 443 ppi 5-inch 1080p panels that have found their way into multiple smartphones over the past six months. Engadget saw the prototype at SID Display Week in Vancouver, Canada, and reported that while the colors are somewhat less vibrant than those exhibited on other screen technologies, Qualcomm claims the display is six times more power efficient than LCD and OLED screens. The new… Continue reading…

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Qualcomm resurrects Mirasol reflective displays with new 576 ppi smartphone panel

In yet another sign of just how crowded the mobile payments market is becoming, Boost Mobile today launched its own mobile wallet app. Dubbed (predictably) Mobile Wallet, the new service allows customers of the Sprint -owned MVNO to make payments in over 135 countries and set up bill payments with more than 3,500 companies across the US. Of course, it also lets you re-up any of your Boost cellular accounts. Continue reading…

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Boost Mobile launches mobile wallet app, offers prepaid Visa card for in-store purchases

One of the most iconic chairs in modern design is returning to its structural roots, thanks to more environmentally-friendly developments in manufacturing. Furniture maker Herman Miller this week announced that its Eames Molded Plastic Chair and Side Chair will now be produced in fiberglass, more than 20 years after designer Ray Eames abandoned the material over environmental concerns. Both models will be available this summer in various bases and nine “vintage” colors. The Michigan-based Herman Miller began producing Ray and Charles Eames’ chair in 1950, using fiberglass-reinforced plastic

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Iconic Eames chair returns to its fiberglass roots

Over the seven months since Microsoft released Windows 8, the sales data haven’t been encouraging, with IDC reporting a 13.9 percent decline in the PC industry last quarter, its largest on record. But it looks like there’s one bright spot: as much as 10 percent of new laptops sold that quarter included touchscreens. The numbers — 46 million laptop shipments, 4.57 million with touchscreens — come from DisplayBank, a division of market research company IHS, but they’re close enough to the 50.5 million laptops quoted by Canalys to warrant a look. If the numbers are accurate, that’s a 51.8 percent increase in laptops with touchscreens over the past quarter

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One in ten laptops shipped last quarter had a touchscreen, says report

Nigel Warren, the New York tenant who ended up in trouble with the city after renting his room out on Airbnb , just got some bad news. A judge on the city’s Environmental Control Board (ECB), which arbitrates these matters, has found Warren’s landlord guilty of the violation and fined him $2,400. Although the fine was issued to the landlord, Warren officially accepted responsibility.

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New York City issues $2,400 fine for renting on Airbnb, but the law is still unclear

After launching an all-new app for iOS last December, Flickr is finally giving its Android offering a similar overhaul. Announced moments ago on stage at Yahoo’s New York City event , the revamped Flickr for Android is available today for both phones and tablets. “The new Flickr for Android maintains your photos’ original quality, so every image you take, edit, share, or view on your phone or tablet looks spectacular,” wrote CEO Marissa Mayer in a Tumblr post announcing the update.

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Flickr launches redesigned Android app for smartphones and tablets

Yahoo has just announced a complete redesign of Flickr at its New York City event — the new site is live now and it comes with one terabyte of free photo space. Yahoo SVP Adam Cahan just made the announcement and said that “Flickr had become about words, little images, blue links. It was not about the photo anymore.” But the new photostream changes that, will full-resolution images and a clean homepage with all the emphasis on images — it looks a lot like the Instagram web profile header. Other new features include iPhoto-style slideshows (complete with music), full-bleed photos with significantly-reduced UI elements, and extensive sharing options — you can push photos out to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest. However, the..

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Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space

Barnes & Noble’s E Ink e-readers are getting an update next month that will add a web browser and email client, reports TechCrunch . Citing an unnamed source, it writes that the Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with GlowLight will start receiving the updates on June 1st. The Nook Simple Touch shipped with a limited, hidden web browser when it was first released in 2011, but Barnes & Noble removed the function in a software update a few months later. The ability to check news headlines and do some light email work should give the $79 Nook platform some extra value, although slow-refreshing E Ink doesn’t really provide the best browsing experience. The low-priced Nooks aren’t the only ones to be getting extra attention from home…

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Nook Simple Touch e-readers reportedly adding web browser and email client next week

Laurene Powell Jobs’ first interview after the death of her husband Steve Jobs was an interview on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams , where she pledged her support for the DREAM act and immigration reform. Now, an in-depth profile in the Wall Street Journal explains why this particular issue caused Powell Jobs to break her silence and step out into the public eye. It seems that it all began in 1995, when she started tutoring low-income students, only to find that those who were in the US illegally were unable to secure financial aid to go to college.

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Why Laurene Powell Jobs broke her silence to support immigration reform

Sometimes the simplest games are the most difficult. That’s certainly the case in Rebound , a game in which the only goal is to get a pole as far to the right as possible, but where actually getting very far is incredibly challenging. The trick is that the pole’s only means of propulsion is bouncing off of the ground, and your only way to control it is by rotating it left or right. Grappling with the physics is hard enough, but then the game throws barriers in your way and slowly the ground will literally disappear beneath you. It only takes a few seconds to play, but actually making progress in Rebound will take a whole lot longer — check out the Windows, Mac, and web versions at the source link below.

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‘Rebound’ is a maddeningly simple physics game

Sometimes it pays to wait before spending your hard-earned cash on the year’s best games. If you haven’t yet played through BioShock Infinite , for example, Amazon just eliminated “price” as a valid reason for your willful ignorance. The heralded first-person shooter from Irrational Games is Amazon’s Deal of the Day across all platforms — though the cost isn’t uniform. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners can grab the title for $39.99. The asking price for either a physical or digital Windows version is $34.99.

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Good Deal: ‘BioShock Infinite’ on sale at Amazon for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC

Every time a reality TV star’s mouth is pixelated to obscure a curse, the producers are using a technique pioneered for Yul Brynner’s killer robot in Westworld . John Whitney Jr., who created the effect for director and writer Michael Crichton, wanted to simulate how an android might see the world. To do so, he divided the screen into tiny squares, calculating the average color of each one, and filling them with that color, creating a shifting low-resolution version of normal vision.

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How ‘Westworld’s’ killer android created movie pixelation

Artist Hiné Mizushima makes these super adorable models of microscopic crustaceans called Daphnia out of felt. Scientists like to get the real-world versions of these creatures drunk, and use them to study how alcohol affects the nervous system. I suspect that Daphnia are cute drunks. Via David Ng        

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The happiest little plankton in the world

Google CEO Larry Page has finally opened up about a recurring and noticeable health problem — what Google Chairman Eric Schmidt characterized as the loss of Page’s voice last year. In a post on his Google+ page today , Page describes how he first encountered the issue “about 14 years ago,” right around the time that he cofounded Google, when he suffered a cold and then a hoarse voice, from which he says he never fully recovered. As Page writes: “So I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis. This is a nerve problem that causes your left vocal cord to not move properly.” Continue reading…

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Google CEO Larry Page says his voice problems were caused by vocal cord paralysis

Following Outlook.com’s recent Skype integration , Microsoft is turning its integration focus to Google services today. Google Talk, an instant messaging service for text and audio, is being integrated directly into Outlook.com, Microsoft’s refreshed webmail service. The surprising move comes just days before Google is rumored to be rounding up its Google Talk and Hangouts services into a unified “Babel” service . Google Talk support just ahead of rumored Babel service Microsoft heard from Outlook.com users that they wanted to chat to their contacts using Google Talk, so the company utilized Google’s APIs to build the support.

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Outlook.com gets Google Talk support, rolling out worldwide this week

Relations between those who build mobile apps and their customers are getting a leg up today with Google’s announcement that all developers will now be able to reply to user reviews in the Play store. The company made the announcement on the Android Developers blog , discussing best practices like identifying and prioritizing bugs based on user impact and getting ideas for new improvements and features. The ability to respond to user reviews first started rolling out nearly a year ago, but now appears to finally be complete, following a false start in January . Continue reading…

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Google Play now lets all developers respond to user reviews

Members of the Avengers may not be hitting the small screen, but the peacekeeping and espionage agency that stands behind them, S.H.I.E.L.D., will be coming to ABC with its own set of heroes. The first trailer for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. aired last night, after being teased on Vine earlier in the day, and the all-too-quick 30-second spot paints the show as a mixture of spy thriller and superpower-studded action. ABC is yet to reveal a release date for the series, but as the network only recently announced that it had ordered a full season based off of the Joss Whedon-directed pilot, development of the show may only just be getting underway

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Superpowers and spies collide in ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ first look

If you’ve never owned a cellphone without a data plan, chances are good that you’ve never heard of Google’s SMS Search — a way to query the search engine by sending a text message, getting results back in the form of text rather than a list of web links. It’s probably just as well, since the company recently decided to close the service, reports TechCrunch . A Google spokesperson provided us with the following statement: Continue reading…

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Google’s SMS Search is the latest legacy service to get the axe

Google Maps is usually for helping you navigate, but a new game based on Street View is about being almost hopelessly lost. GeoGuessr drops you at a random Street View location across the earth, leaving you to move around the map as much as you’d like before ultimately taking a guess at where you’re actually standing. Though you’ll occasionally get lucky and start off right in front of a hotel billboard printed with a city’s name on it, for the most part you’ll be wandering around country roads, scrounging hints off of signs and license plates, and trying to make it back to civilization.

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Helplessness, despair, and Street View come together in ‘GeoGuessr’ Google Maps game

The New York Times reports that ABC will become the first network to live stream its local programming to users of its Watch ABC app starting this week. Beginning in New York and Philadelphia, the apps will receive a “live” button that allows viewers to tune in to live programming on their mobile devices. ABC’s move to live mobile TV follows an ongoing row between broadcasters TV companies and streaming startup Aereo, after it received a court victory allowing it to connect viewers to over-the-air broadcasts on web-connected devices. In response to Aereo, CBS invested in a streaming company called Syncbak, but ABC will be the first to strike with live service to mobile devices. As Variety reports , the live streaming service will only be..

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ABC will bring live television to mobile devices starting this week