Posts Tagged ‘web’

Leap Motion debuted in June 2012 with an impressively polished demo , but after its attention-getting debut, the company’s path to market has been a bit rockier. It’s had to woo partners on both the software and hardware side, while navigating an often unpredictable production process and at least one major delay. They’ve attracted big-name partners like Best Buy, Asus and Corel, but will it be enough to convince users to sign on for a new way of controlling their computers? Continue reading…

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Leap Motion’s quest to bring gesture control to the PC

Two US Navy dolphins discovered an antique torpedo off the coast of San Diego, CA. The Howell torpedo is one of 50 produced, remarkable as it is the first locomotive torpedo developed and was fly-wheel powered. Surprisingly this marks the 24th recovered! Check out HNGN for the story: An early naval torpedo was discovered deep        

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Navy dolphins find antique torpedo

“What if it wasn’t a green light? After all, green can just be so incredibly boring , old sport. What if it was a teal light?

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90 Seconds on The Verge: Yahoo, PlayStation 4, and ‘Star Wars Rebels’

Olympia Circuits is best known for its Arno board and Arno Shield , which are designed to ease the Arduino learning curve by providing a bevy of pre-wired sensors and controls along with detailed instructions for several DIY projects. The company announced a couple of new products at Maker Faire this past weekend: the Arno Digital RGB Add-On and the SODA HE-1.0 Arduino datalogger. With the former, your Arno simply gains three RGB LEDs, while the latter stands for “Simple, Open Data Acquisition, High Efficiency.” It’s an Arduino board with screw terminals designed around Atmel ‘s ATmega32u4 that features a real-time clock (RTC) with battery backup, a high-precision ADC and a microSD card slot. The RTC can either wake the entire board or trigger an interrupt at set intervals, which makes the board very power efficient when used in the field. Olympia Circuits will be updating its website with more info shortly (including availability and pricing)

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Olympia Circuits shows Arduino datalogger and Arno Add-Ons at Maker Faire 2013

Here’s a excerpt from Jeffrey Brown’s latest book, Vader’s Little Princess. In this irresistibly funny follow-up to the breakout bestseller Darth Vader and Son, Vader—Sith Lord and leader of the Galactic Empire—now faces the trials, joys, and mood swings of raising his daughter Leia as she grows from a sweet little girl into a rebellious        

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Vader’s Little Princess: Excerpt

At today’s press event, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced that Yahoo will be opening a brand-new corporate office space in Manhattan to serve as a hub for the company’s local employees. “We’re going to gather all of our 500 New York employees here,” Mayer said. Yahoo will be setting up in the old New York Times building in Times Square. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand to ring in the announcement, offering particularly kind words for Tumblr — which has long operated out of Manhattan.

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Yahoo to open office in New York City’s Times Square

When Chinese hackers attacked Google in 2009, they may have gained access to years’ worth of government surveillance records, The Washington Post reports . Google reported the hack publicly years ago, saying that the “sophisticated” attack resulted in the theft of Google intellectual property and the partial compromise of some human rights activists’ email accounts. But according to anonymous government officials, hackers also compromised a database holding “thousands” of court orders requesting information about or access to specific Gmail accounts as part of law enforcement activities. Many of these orders came from police departments, which routinely request email data for cases. But some were also issued under the Foreign..

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Chinese hackers gained access to ‘thousands’ of surveillance orders, says Washington Post

Google+ received some significant updates at Google I/O last week, many of which focused on a new and improved photo experience for users, and now the company is bringing that experience to its Android app. Just like the desktop version, Google+ for Android now includes auto highlight (for a selection of “top shots” from each gallery you upload), auto enhance, and auto awesome (which searches through your images to automatically build new creations like animations or panoramas). Given the major emphasis Google placed on these features last week, we’re not at all surprised to see them show up in the Android app. Google+ continues to push photos as its killer feature Further photo enhancements come in the form of Snapseed integration —… Continue reading…

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Google+ update for Android 4.2 includes improved photo experience and Snapseed integration

Google (and especially the Google+ team) are keeping themselves very busy. While I/O 2013 may have wrapped up last week, the company’s just unveiled a new update for its social network on Android devices. Packing some familiar new photo skills (like auto-backup and auto-highlights ), the refresh includes even more Snapseed filters and tools. Location sharing can now tap into your circle arrangements, and you’ll be able to share geo-locations with specific sets of people. Related hashtags will now function within the app, like we’ve already seen on the web-based version , while (perhaps predictably) there’s now one-tap access to Mountain View’s Hangouts app too

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Google+ app update for Android adds auto-backup and enhancement tools for photos

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

Info about the Iconia W3 Windows 8 tablet has already slipped out a few times, and now this 8.1-incher is live on Acer’s Finnish website. While there’s no mention of price or availability, the specifications list matches what’s already been leaked. You’re looking at Windows 8 Pro running atop an Intel Atom Z2760 CPU, aided by 2GB of RAM. Other features include a 1,280 x 768 touchscreen, an eight-hour battery, up to 64GB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. Port lovers will be pleased to find micro-HDMI and micro-USB hookups onboard, as well as a microSD slot

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Iconia W3 tablet live on Acer’s Finnish website, confirms 8.1 inches of Windows 8 Pro

Today is YouTube’s eighth birthday, and to mark the occasion Google is revealing new statistics that underline what a cultural sensation its video site has become. Most staggeringly, over 100 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube each and every minute. One year ago on this day, that figure stood at 72 hours per minute (it was 48 hours in 2011). So aside from record-breaking viewership — over one billion people now visit YouTube monthly — more and more users are continuing to upload their own clips to the site in hopes of creating the next viral phenomenon

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YouTube users now upload 100 hours of video every minute

The battle of the bands, featuring acts from Ireland to Israel, is underway as we speak. Embedded above is Cezar Ouatu’s particularly excellent It’s my life, this year’s Transylvanian entry. Our Europe Correspondent Leigh Alexander will be filing a report, but not until she’s had a bit of a lie down.        

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Is this the best song from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest?

I reviewed Ronald Diebert’s new book Black Code in this weekend’s edition of the Globe and Mail. Diebert runs the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and has been instrumental in several high-profile reports that outed government spying (like Chinese hackers who compromised the Dalai Lama’s computer and turned it into a covert CCTV)        

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Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

When Cards Against Humanity saw its $4,000 Kickstarter campaign successfully raise almost four times its original goal, its makers were ecstatic. Two years later, the cards-based party game, which is available as a free PDF download or for $25 as a ready-made package, has generated an estimated $12 million in revenue, and in the past year alone was downloaded 1.5 million times from its website. It’s also spawned a reseller culture, with frequent stock shortages leading opportunists to sell the game for as much as $100 on sites like eBay. Despite that, its makers have stayed true to their cause, and have refused several investment and merchandising offers, preferring to go it alone.

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How the $4,000 ‘Cards Against Humanity’ Kickstarter became a multi-million dollar business

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

It appears that Canada will become the latest country to look into the business practices of search giant Google. The Financial Post reports that Canada’s Competition Bureau — a law-enforcement agency focused on ensuring competitive conditions in the marketplace — has notified Google that it will be investigating the company’s Canadian operations. It’s not clear at this time what the scope of the investigation will be, or what specific Google products and services will be targeted. The investigation will follow a series of other Google investigations, including ones launched by the Federal Trade Commission and EU regulators. Google reached a settlement with the FTC earlier this year; the company offered to make changes to address EU..

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Google’s business practices to be investigated by Canadian Competition Bureau

OMICS Publishing Group, an Indian scholarly publisher has threatened to sue one of its critics, Metadata librarian Jeffrey Beall, for $1 billion, and has threatened him with prison time over posts he made to his prominent Scholarly Open Access site. OMICS cites India’s terrible Information Technology Act as the basis for its threats. However, it        

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India’s OMICS Publishing Group threatens scholarly critic with $1 billion lawsuit, jail time

I’ve written before about Moran Cerf — celebrated neuroscientist, former military hacker, and good-guy bank robber — who also happens to be a great storyteller. Here’s a video in which Cerf recounts some clever and fascinating neuroscience experiments that use neurofeedback to help people resolve competition between different thoughts and wills in their minds. The        

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Brain hacking: using neurofeedback to master conflicting wills in your mind

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Danny. Happy birthday to you

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90 Seconds on The Verge: Yahoo, Wii U, and iTunes

The Public Domain Review has a nice gallery of plates from Lieutenant Colonel Frank Sheffield’s 1902 book “How I killed the tiger; being an account of my encounter with a royal Bengal tiger, with an appendix containing some general information about India,” which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: My main purpose in        

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HOWTO kill a tiger (1902)

Dell introduced Project Ophelia to the world at CES back in January , and now it’s revealed shipping timeframes for the Android-powered MHL stick. Ophelia will ship in May to developers, with cable providers and telecoms able to buy it in July. A consumer release will follow shortly thereafter. When it does ship, the tiny device (about the same size as a portable USB stick) will convert any HDMI-ready display into an Android computer. Naturally Google Play is built right in, so you’ll have access to your entire library of Android software

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Dell’s Project Ophelia will turn any HDTV into an Android computer this May

NASA’s Curiosity rover has stolen much of the spotlight on Mars lately with its discoveries of once-watery environments and strange, door-handle shaped rocks . But this week, NASA’s older rover Opportunity drove into the history books , becoming the furthest NASA object to travel on the surface of another body in the solar system. Opportunity’s total 22.22 miles driven on Mars since landing there January 2004 is still short of the all-time record for interplanetary driving, the 23 miles that the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 rover drove over the surface of the Moon in 1973. But Opportunity’s long journey beats NASA’s previous record, the 19.3 miles that NASA astronauts traveled in the Apollo 17 lunar rover in 1972.

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Mars rover Opportunity breaks record for longest NASA drive off Earth

The I/O keynote may be a fading memory, but Google’s work isn’t done just yet. Today its various services are getting little more tightly knit as Offers comes to your Google+ stream. A select few brands ( Zagat , Hello Kitty , Art.com, NOOK and Adafruit ) will be part of the pilot program, which will allow businesses to post special updates that include discounts you can save directly to your Offers queue. Obviously, you can also share these offers with people in your circles who you think might be interested.

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Google Offers comes to Google+ with in-line save and share feature

alphadogg writes “A data center in Sweden has cut its energy bills by a million dollars a year using seawater to cool its servers, though jellyfish are an occasional hazard. Interxion, a collocation company in the Netherlands that rents data center space in 11 countries, uses water pumped from the Baltic Sea to cool the IT equipment at its facilities in Stockholm. The energy used to cool IT equipment is one of the costliest areas of running a data center. Companies have traditionally used big, mechanical chillers, but some are turning to outside air and evaporative techniques as lower-cost alternatives.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Swedish Data Center Saves $1M a Year Using Seawater For Cooling