Engadget Daily: Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, transparent solar panels and more!
Today, we take the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook for a spin, round up a few of our favorite phones, learn about transparent solar panels, and more! Read on for Engadget’s news highlights from the last 24 hours.
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These beautiful objects symbolize human contact using cold, hidden machinery
Ask anyone who’s tried maintaining a long-distance relationship: it’s hard, and video chats, text messages and phone calls don’t always satisfy our emotional needs. A lot of human relations are indirect, subtle actions of body language or behavior that aren’t easily captured in video or text. Capturing the feeling of these unspoken cues seems is the point of “Saying things that can’t be said,” two students’ final project at the Holon Institute of Technology. The series uses a mix of technology and familiar objects to create an abstract sense of presence between two distant partners.
The project consists of three pieces, but none of them directly simulate touch. “I’m with you,” for instance, is a pair of pineapple-shaped objects that “beat” with the pulse of the other user — implying closeness, but not mimicking it. Another pair of devices allows one user to playfully blow on a pinwheel, prompting an object at their partner’s end to shoot bubbles. A third display simulates “blowing a kiss” by having one user’s breath remotely flap a paper butterfly’s wings.
All of the objects are subtle, but beautifully made. They aren’t enough to make you feel as if your loved ones are really present, but the echo of presence they imply may satisfy an emotional need that videos, text and images can’t. At the very least, the abstract objects are an interesting idea — and even its creators admit that something suggested can be more real that something simulated. “It was important to me not to try and reenact the feelings of touch, pressure and warmth we feel when we hug or a caress our loved one,” Student Daniel Sher said of the project. “Trying to imitate that will always feel fake.”
Via: VICE
Source: Design Boom
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Photo of Possible 5.5-Inch iPhone 6 Rear Shell Surfaces
While we’ve seen dozens of part leaks for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, parts for the rumored 5.5-inch version of the device have thus far been scarce, possibly due to the fact that the larger iPhone 6 is said to have entered production later than the 4.7-inch iPhone 6.
Photos depicting what might be the rear shell of the larger device have finally surfaced, however, and have been shared by Evasi0nJailbreak.com. According to the site, the photos have been sourced from “deep within Apple’s supply chain in China,” and may be only a prototype of the final rear shell.
Outside of 5.5-inch iPhone 6 rear shell compared to inside of 4.7-inch rear shell
That said, the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 rear shell images, which are compared in the photos to the rear shell of a 4.7-inch iPhone, do resemble early images of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 rear shell, depicting thick antenna breaks, a rounded True Tone flash, a cutout for an embedded Apple logo, the camera, and the microphone.
Inside of 5.5-inch iPhone 6 rear shell compared to outside of 4.7-inch rear shell
More convincingly, the screw holes on the rear shell image accurately match up with the screw holes on an earlier leaked image of a logic board said to be for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6, so this may be our first look at a true 5.5-inch iPhone 6 rear shell.
Apple is expected to introduce the iPhone 6 at an event on September 9, but it is unclear whether the company will show off both the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models at the same time. If the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 does make an appearance at the event, it may not ship to customers until several months after the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 ships due to production delays.
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China’s ‘bullet screens’ combine movies and your snarky texts
Movie theater texters here in the US are (rightfully!) viewed as the lowest of the low, but certain spots in China look far more kindly on those cinematic simpletons. Why? Because some of their hastily composed missives actually become part of the show itself. According to the New York Times, some Chinese theaters are experimenting with what they call “bullet screens,” which meld movies with text messages sent in from the audience. For the low, low price of 0.1 renminbi (or a dime), a film connoisseur can watch as their most poignant wisecracks scroll across the screen with countless others… for better or worse.
Sound familiar? This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the line between content and comments blur — Japan’s niconico video service (see above) would’ve just been a regional YouTube knock-off were it not for the occasionally insane stream of comments sweeping across videos as they played. The end result is a visually jarring, often hilarious union of art and critique, a text-only version of MST3K unfolding before your very eyes. Our only question: when can we unleash our sparkling wit on a movie screen near us?
Source: New York Times
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What if your Netflix queue was just a big, virtual room?
Sure, we know Oculus VR chief technology officer John Carmack’s likes watching movies on the Rift headset from bed when he’s sick, but what if you’d rather catch up on Orange is the New Black instead? A recent hackathon at Netflix produced something that could make that possible. The custom UI, dubbed “Oculix,” shows off what it’d be like to navigate the interface in a virtual space replete with gesture control. It looks pretty neat if you ask us. What, with its floating tiles and text descriptions and all that. Sadly, unlike the home-brew Oculus apps we’re used to, whether or not the greater community will get to give this a shot is up in the air. As is typical with Netflix’s Hack Day projects, the outfit is making no promises of Oculix ever seeing the light of day.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Via: The Verge
Source: Netflix
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Parties for Secret users get you spilling the beans in real life
Part of the allure of Secret’s app is supposed to be the anonymity; you can confess your innermost thoughts without facing any accusing fingers. However, people are now using Secret as a launching pad for parties where the very point is to confide in others you can see across the table. As Recode notes from first-hand experience, it’s like seeing the app unfold in real life. Rather than make small talk, guests share their sincerest feelings about family and relationships — you may find more about a stranger in a few hours than you would by following them on Facebook for a year. Even meeting up is dependent on revealing interesting tidbits, so you end up breaking the ice before you know anyone’s names.
These parties are still new, and there’s a distinct possibility that they’ll fade out. However, the Secret-inspired occasions appear to have some benefits for real socialization. They help people meet strangers (albeit ones connected to existing friends), and you don’t get the sense that these would-be friends have something to hide. Secret can be used for some decidedly malicious purposes, but these get-togethers suggest that it can be a force for good in the right hands.
[Image credit: Jupiterimages]
Filed under: Internet
Source: Recode
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Watch two fish duke it out in ‘Street Fighter’ on a live internet stream
The bar has been raised for fish-controlled video games. Not content with the solo action of Fish Plays Pokemon, Andrew Hill has launched FishPlayStreetFighter, a Twitch stream that lets you watch two fish (Aquarius and Robert the Bruce) square off in Capcom’s classic Street Fighter II. It’s mapping movement around the tank like before, but it’s using a significantly more advanced control scheme to liven things up. Color detection makes the two-player mode possible, and the fish can string together input combos based on where they’re swimming — watch for long enough and you’ll see a goldfish throw its opponent across the room. The best part is that the matches actually move along pretty quickly. While you’ll sometimes see the fighters wasting time, one fish usually gets a knockout before time is up. The feed doesn’t run at all hours (usually between 7:30AM and 10PM Eastern), but it should easily keep you distracted while you’re at work.
Source: Twitch, Andew Hill (Twitter)
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MLB hopes to ease blackouts on streaming local games
With MLB.tv, Major League Baseball’s subscription-based streaming option, your local team’s home games are blacked out due to TV and/or cable deals. That could change as early as next season though, as Bob Bowman, the league’s head of Advanced Media, expects a revised online viewing agreement soon with broadcasters and teams. Networks pay millions for the rights to beam the action into living rooms, so we’d surmise there’s quite a sum of money to discuss. When the restrictions are lifted, you’ll likely need a cable plan to access those games — just like FOX required for the All-Star Game this summer and ESPN does for its streaming option.
[Photo credit: Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images]
Source: Associated Press
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Google sees over 1 million daily takedown requests for pirate links
While sites like The Pirate Bay are busy improving the experience for the torrent-loving crowd, Google’s facing the task of processing an extreme amount of removal request for pirate links. According to a recent transparency report on the matter, Google is now seeing more than 1 million DMCA takedown notices per day. In the previous week alone, for instance, the tech giant was asked to remove about 8 million results from its search engine. As TorrentFreak points out, the amount of copyright removal notices sent to Google has seen a tremendous spike in recent times — it wasn’t long ago that the number of takedown requests was in the low-hundreds for the entire year. With the growth of the internet as a whole, however, it’s easy to see how that’s come to be. You can peruse the report in full here, if you’re into that sort of thing.
[Image credit: will never stop us/Flickr ]
Via: TorrentFreak
Source: Google
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The Big Picture: NASA’s electric plane achieves vertical takeoff
While EVs like the Tesla Model S and Renovo Coupe gain steam here on the ground, engineers at NASA’s Langley Research Center are taking electric propulsion technology to new heights. What you see above is the GL-10 — AKA Greased Lightning. This serious looking unmanned aerial system has a 10-foot wingspan and is powered by 10 individual electric motors with enough torque to propel it straight up in the air like a Harrier Jet. The GL-10 is nowhere near the size or weight of a Boeing V-22 Osprey, but that sort of maneuver is nonetheless impressive for a battery-powered machine.
Source: NASA
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AIVAnet 