Google’s digital art prize winner is a poem you control with your body
Google asked artists to prove that code could be beautiful with its DevArt competition, and hundreds delivered on that promise. However, there can only be one winner: The Metamorphosis of Mr. Kalia, a visual poem from Cyril Diagne and Béatrice Lartigue. The project lets you use your body movement to control Mr. Kalia as he undergoes strange, symbolic transformations throughout his life. Metamorphosis is using little more than a standard Kinect sensor to track your motion and send it to a Chrome browser, so it’s easy to both play with and set up — it even works over a basic internet connection.
The win gives the creators both £25,000 ($42,000) as well as an exhibition at London’s Barbican, where it will sit alongside commissioned digital artwork starting on July 3rd. It’s doubtful that you’ll have an opportunity to see this in person, but the good news is that you can try it yourself. In addition to the video you see here, you’ll find both the code and guidelines below — it’s possible to produce your own masterpiece at home.
Source: DevArt
Titanfall pushes Xbox One sales to 5 million total, but it can’t pass PlayStation
Sony and Microsoft’s console sales were neck and neck for awhile, but the gap is starting to widen: according to the latest NPD numbers, Sony is winning the race. Yesterday, the Japanese hardware manufacturer announced that it has moved more than seven million PlayStation 4s worldwide — today Microsoft countered with a total of five million, trailing Sony in both monthly and lifelong sales. A stark difference, sure, but it’s not all bad: the Xbox exclusive Titanfall is the industry’s top-selling title right now, and the second highest selling for the platform overall. The new console is also outpacing the Xbox 360′s first-year sales by more than 60 percent; it’s doing well, it’s just not top dog. The latest inFamous game (a PS4 exclusive) ranked the second highest selling game for the month of March, followed by multiplatform titles like South Park: The Stick of Truth, Call of Duty Ghosts and Dark Souls II.
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Sony, Microsoft
Via: Joystiq
Source: Xbox
RunKeeper gets into the step-tracking game with Breeze
When it comes to being fit, it’s really the small stuff that counts. You can go to the gym as much as you want, run five miles every morning — but if you eat like crap, drive yourself to the corner store and take the elevator every morning to your 2nd floor office, it’ll be all for naught. RunKeeper can already help track each training session as you make your way from couch to 5K, now it’s trying to motivate you to keep moving between runs with Breeze. The iOS-only app uses the iPhone 5s’ M7 chip to track your movements and count the number of steps you take. Of course, pedometer apps are quickly becoming a dime a dozen. Breeze attempts to set itself apart through simplicity and minimizing user interaction.
The biggest part of the app are its notifications. If you’re sedentary for too long a motivating message pops up to get you off your ass. Every morning you’ll get a daily goal pushed to your phone and you’ll get an occasional status update to let you know how close you’re getting. It can even map out when the most active parts of your day are and where you are at those times. It’s not all notifications though, there is an actual app that you can launch and poke around in. The UI is stunningly simple, making it easy for the uninitiated to find their way around. But you won’t find the same depth of features and reporting here that you would with companion apps designed for wearables like Fitbit and the Jawbone UP.
RunKeeper is already planning for the future as well. The company is promising that its flagship activity tracker will integrate with Breeze. And while only the iPhone 5s is supported at the moment, other devices are on the horizon. Though we have no specifics about what phones will be supported or when.
Source: RunKeeper
Twitter’s new Windows Phone beta ties into your photo collection
A handful of those eager to install the Windows Phone 8.1 preview just got an additional perk for being early adopters. NokiaNewsIreland has discovered an unannounced (and now unavailable) open beta for Twitter’s Windows Phone 8.1 app that makes much better use of Microsoft’s mobile OS than the regular client. For a start, it now ties into the Photos Hub — it’s now easy to browse the pictures you’ve tweeted, even if they didn’t come from your phone.
The test build also ties into your Me tile by launching Twitter when you want to post an update, and app-based sharing is once again functional. It even addresses a longstanding annoyance by jumping to your latest mentions rather than making you wade through past replies. Twitter hasn’t said when the new features will reach the officially sanctioned release, but the apparently polished state of the beta suggests that Windows Phone owners may not have to wait much longer.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Via: NokiaNewsIreland.com, WPCentral
Source: Windows Phone Store
RadioShack Drops iPhone 5s Price to $99 [iOS Blog]
Beginning tomorrow, Radio Shack will be selling the 16GB iPhone 5s for $99 with two-year contract on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. This is $100 off the standard $199 price and one of the lowest prices we’ve seen for a new iPhone 5s.
It’s unclear if the price drop will be permanent or just a temporary price, but a source at Radio Shack says the promotion does not currently have an end date. For many, the discount will matter less with the new pay-by-the-month phone financing plans offered by AT&T and Verizon, but for customers still on a two-year contract plan, the $100 discount could encourage customers to choose the iPhone 5s over the 5c.
Radio Shack has sold the iPhone since 2009 and has often offered discounts on refreshed and new iPhones numerous times a year. Radio Shack is offering trade-ins on older iPhones, including a minimum of $100 on the iPhone 4s, meaning customers trading in that phone can receive the iPhone 5s for free.
Flickr Debuts Redesigned iOS App With Live Filters, HD Video Recording [iOS Blog]
Yahoo today updated its Flickr photo sharing app to version 3.0, introducing a major design overhaul that revamps the look and feel of the app. Aiming to make capturing and editing photos easier, the app features 14 live filters for the app’s camera, allowing users to see what edits will look like before an image is captured.
The app also has a cleaner, better organized grid-style gallery view for browsing through photos and its camera capture and filter menu now resembles Instagram’s successful image editing layout. Searching for captured photos is easier, with a revamped “intelligent” search engine that can filter by date, time, place, and even scenes and objects like “car” or “sunset.”
A new Auto Sync feature lets users upload photos from the camera roll to Flickr automatically, creating a cloud-based backup of all iPhone images. As announced last year, Flickr provides all of its users with 1TB of free storage space.
Video recording, previously unavailable in the Flickr app, is has also been added, allowing Flickr to compete with other photo and video sharing services like Instagram and Vine. There are simple video customization features available and the new live filters also apply to video footage.
Welcome to Flickr 3.0! We have completely rebuilt and redesigned the app to make it simple, beautiful, and easy to use.
Favorite features:
– Capture everything: Take stunning photos and videos. We make it easy.
– Save it all: All your pictures in one place. Take them everywhere.
– Advanced editing: Gorgeous live filters. Powerful editing tools. All for free.Helpful Tips:
– Capture the world in all new HD video you can share to Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
– Explore our editing tools: Levels, Crop, Color Balance, Contrast, Saturation and more.
– Follow friends and the world’s best photographers. Always discover something new.
– Customize your privacy settings so you can make a photo as public or private as you like.
– Take lots of photos! Everyone gets 1,000GB of free storage.
Flickr can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Don’t wait for SportsCenter, SlingPlayer update brings the highlights in real-time
Slingbox has pushed out a handful of updates for SlingPlayer on iOS and Android, adding new features on both platforms. On the Android side, Slingbox joined forces with sporting-app Thuuz. Now if you have to skip watching the Giants game for work, SlingPlayer will let you know Tim Lincecum is using his secret mustache powers to pitch a no-hitter . If you can sneak away from your meeting for a “bathroom break,” a link within the app will instantly tune you into the hair-raising action. The sports app won’t be integrated into the iPhone version of SlingPlayer until this summer, but iOS users can still download it on its own to try out now.
While iOS users will have to wait until football season for Thuuz, they did get a little something new this week.Up until now, if you wanted to sling some Scandal to your Apple TV via Airplay you’d have to sacrifice your phone for the duration of the marathon. If you tried to back out of the app to respond to your bosses emails (he’s probably wondering why you’re watching Scandal instead of working) your video would stop playing. The update allows you to put the app in the background, so you can start streaming and then go back to your game of Angry Birds (you’ll beat those piggies eventually, we promise). Keeping with the exclusive theme, right now the feature is iPhone only. However, the plan is to bring the fun to the iPad this summer — just in time to use your tablet as a second screen during premiere season.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Wireless, HD, Mobile
Via: Slingbox
Source: Google Play, iTunes
NASA found an Earth-sized planet that could support life
NASA’s Kepler telescope has discovered a veritable bounty of alien planets, but none of them have been quite like Earth — until now. Today, the agency announced that Kepler-186f is the first confirmed Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of another star. In other words, it’s the right size and distance from its sun to have properties similar to our planet — namely, a rocky composition and liquid water on its surface.
The planet’s discovery is the result of analyzing data collected by Kepler between March of 2009 and May of 2013. Other planets detected by the telescope were so big that they were more likely to be composed of gas, or were too close to (or far from) their sun to maintain liquid water on their surface. Even those previously spotted in the habitable zone were 40 percent larger than our blue marble. Kepler-186f, however, only differs in size with Earth by ten percent. Despite the similarities, the planet orbits its star every 130 days and receives just one-third less light than Earth.
What’s more, the planet orbits an M dwarf (or red dwarf) star, which are smaller, cooler and dimmer than the Sun. Thanks to these differences, NASA considers this planet more of a cousin rather than a duplicate or brother of Earth. Don’t set your hopes on crashing the couch of our newly-found planetary kin, however, as it lives 500 light years away.
Although Kepler-186f is certainly in the sweet spot, what its atmosphere is like remains unknown. Kepler doesn’t have the hardware to detect if the planet has the right atmospheric conditions for good ol’ H2O and balmy temperatures suitable for life as we know it. The responsibility of analyzing such concerns falls to the James Webb Space Telescope, which heads to orbit in 2018.
Filed under: Science
Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Google apes Warby Parker, lets you try on Glass before you buy
Tempted by Google’s Glass headset, but worried it’ll make you look like a doofus? It’s a legitimate concern, but there’s hope: Google is now sending out non-functional dummy units that you can try on at home. Potential Explorers were sent an email advertising a “home try-on kit” with four Google Glass frame styles in four colors – all titanium, of course. After trying on the frames and picking a favorite, participants send the units back with pre-paid labels. Easy. The trial program isn’t listed on the official Glass website yet, but anyone can sign up by calling 855-9Glass9. The cost of pretending you have Mountain View’s most exclusive accessory? Absolutely free, though Google will put a $50 hold on your credit card until you return the headgear. Just because it doesn’t work doesn’t mean the company doesn’t want it back.
Filed under: Google
Via: Android Community, TechCrunch
Hulu Plus, Crackle, and SHOWTIME Anytime Gain Fire TV Voice Search Function
When your remote doesn’t have a full fledged keyboard you have to do something to make it fun and easy for users to search out content. That is exactly what the Amazon Fire TV is doing with the help of companies of popular streaming apps. Today Amazon announced that Hulu Plus, Crackle, and SHOWTIME Anytime have integrated their entire catelogs into the Fire TV‘s unified voice search. To put it as simple as possible, you can talk to the remote in any of those apps, plus VEVO, and search out shows and movies with ease.
“We’re excited and energized by the momentum we’re seeing with Fire TV,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Devices. “Customers are telling us they love it, developers are building for it, and we’re working hard to expand existing features and build new ones. We’re thrilled to have Hulu Plus, Crackle, and SHOWTIME integrating their full selection of movies and TV shows into Fire TV’s unified voice search.”
We are always leery of a new set-top box gaining support from app developers. Without the devs getting involved and updating their apps to utilize functions of the device, it can make things a bit difficult. On the Amazon front, we didn’t have many reservations that the big names would hold back for long. The more connected devices they can be easily accessed on and utilized on easily means more profits and users paying and watching.
Anyone out there sporting that fancy fan-dangled Amazon Fire TV box give the voice search a shot on the new additions yet?
Full press release at Amazon
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