The fun and weird moments of Tokyo Game Show 2014
The annual Tokyo Game Show has just wrapped up, and while there weren’t any major console announcements, we still had our fair share of memorable moments on the show floor. On top of trying several different virtual reality demos, we also watched Japanese girls giggle away at a romance simulation booth, and we even bumped into Japanese porn stars without realizing who they were at the time. Check out our list of TGS highlights in the gallery below.
Filed under: Gaming, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo
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UPS now lets you use 3D printers in nearly 100 US stores
UPS’ experiment with in-store 3D printers apparently went off without a hitch — the shipping service has expanded the availability of 3D printing services from six test markets to nearly 100 locations across the US. While the hardware is still concentrated in a relatively small batch of cities, such as New York and Chicago, there’s now a much better chance that a shop near you has the gear for printing everything from prototypes to a one-of-a-kind phone cases. There’s no word of any additional rollouts at this stage. However, it’s reasonable to presume that more stores will get on-the-spot object making if it proves popular with crafters nationwide.
Filed under: Peripherals
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Ray Ozzie’s ‘Talko’ app is not the right productivity tool for the Atlanta Hawks
New team collaboration / messaging apps are seemingly everywhere, from Trello to Slack to (now Microsoft-owned) Yammer. A new entrant Talko is interesting not only for its pedigree — the team is led by Lotus Notes co-creator and former Microsoft Chief Technical Officer / Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie — but because it marks a return to the days when our phone was a tool for voice communication, instead of primarily text or pictures. In an introductory blog post, the Talko team describes an app that lets users talk, share and do. The idea is that communicating by voice while everyone is online is easier and others can catch up with the conversation at any time, since the data is cached on Talko’s servers. Right now the app is iPhone only, while Talko says Android and web apps are on the way.
http://www.engadget.com/embed-5min/?sid=577&playList=518428078&responsive=false
Dropping in photos and sorting ideas with various forms of tags is nothing new, but Talko is focusing on the first element, voice communication, whether it’s through real-time live chatting or shared messages left for the team. The “social productivity” tool is free to try and the team tells TechCrunch that it plans a business model where users pay a fee to have access to older archives of their calls or data. A price isn’t set yet either, but it’s “likely” to cost less than $10 per month to look back further than a week or so. As-is, it’s probably worth downloading and poking around a bit before that guy at the office (you know which one) brings it up on a conference call tomorrow before you go back to using Google Docs.
Today’s our grand opening. Welcome to Talko! http://t.co/4LGzy7rc7a https://t.co/iG9imhzrL6
– Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) September 23, 2014
The journey begins… @rozzie: Today’s our grand opening. Welcome to Talko! http://t.co/EV69blhmaS
– Matt Pope (@spacklr) September 23, 2014
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Source: Talko Blog (Medium), Talko (iTunes)
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Already?!: Googlers are already dropping the Android M name even before Android L is released
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
I’m sure many of us in the Android community are waiting with bated breath for the day that Android L – whether it be called Lemon Meringue Pie, Lion, or Lollipop – is finally released into the wild after it was announced at Google I/O earlier this year. That still hasn’t stopped some people talking about the next version of Android, though, provisionally called Android M. This all seems a bit ridiculous given that Android L isn’t even out, but Google developers have been spotted referring to a future build of Android called “M”.
Now, we don’t really need Google developers to tell us that the next version is going to go by a name starting with the letter M – since the very beginning, Android builds have sequentially progressed through the alphabet and M would be a logical successor to L. However it is interesting to get a bit more of an idea how Google operates, developing things effectively in parallel – this way, releases get more than just one year of development. Android M isn’t expected for at least another year, or longer, though rumours are already suggesting that it’s going to be called “Milkshake”.
What do you think about Android M already having its named dropped? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: myce.com
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The post Already?!: Googlers are already dropping the Android M name even before Android L is released appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
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MakerBot’s Bre Pettis opens a workshop for 3D printing innovation
When MakerBot announced that Bre Pettis would be stepping down as CEO earlier this month, we knew he wasn’t going far. Today, the 3D printing guru’s new project was revealed. The Pettis-led Innovation Workshop at Stratasys is called Bold Machines, and it looks to push “the frontier of 3D printing technology.” Leveraging Solidscape 3D printers and devices both of the aforementioned outfits, the studio will work alongside “innovators” to flex its muscle. So, what’s on tap to start? A movie made entirely with 3D-printed characters. The film focuses on Margo, a detective whose parents have gone missing during a space exploring expedition, and a businessman’s evil schemes. In fact, you can go ahead and print your own Margot figure now, and production files for other characters, including the sinister Mr. Walthersnap (pictured with Pettis above), will be made available for at-home printing in the future.
Filed under: Peripherals
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Bold Machines (1), (2), (3)
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Dartmouth’s StudentLife app can tell you if your mental health is hurting your grades
Not sure if you’re depressed? Your smartphone may be able to clue you in. Researchers at Dartmouth have developed an Android app that keep stabs on student behavior — silently logging how long they sleep, the number of conversations they have, how much time they spend in class, at social events or at the gym and even stress levels and eating habits. Using well-known mental health surveys as a benchmark, researchers were able to use the data to determine if students in its test group were depressed, stressed out or lonely, and eventually found correlations between mental health and academic performance.
Researchers discovered, for instance, that students with high levels of social activity tend to have higher grades, but also may be less physically active. Students who were found to be more physically active and socially engaged tended to be less depressed, too. A more fleshed out version of the app could potentially warn students if their mental state is worsening, and could additionally use that data to predict their GPA. Still, such an app could be awhile off: the app’s creators admit that there are some security concerns that need to be worked out. The test program, at least, is secure – researchers anonymize all of the data taken in my the smartphones, and at this point participants aren’t even given feedback from the app, as it could effect student behaviors and contaminate the research. Either way, the functionality is compelling: in the future, your phone might be able to give you mental health diagnosis on the fly.
[Image credit: Alamy]
Filed under: Cellphones
Via: Technology Review
Source: Dartmouth, Science Daily
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Mobile Chrome apps get improved notifications and sign-ins
Google’s Chrome Apps for Mobile project has been handy for developers who want to repackage their websites as native apps for your phone, but the resulting projects have been limited in what they can do — it’s pretty obvious that they’re recycled. As of now, though, they’ll behave much more like apps built from the ground up for your Android and iOS devices. A new version of the project lets you provide your identity to these apps by signing in, and they can send you rich notifications with content previews, much like what you’re used to on Android. There’s also much better support for messaging and other services that need to talk to servers. Developers will have to build these features into their software before you’ll notice the difference, but don’t be surprised if the lines between native and web apps suddenly get very blurry.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Google
Via: The Next Web
Source: Chromium Blog
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Cosmic dust definitely clouded Big Bang researchers’ findings
Earlier this year, researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica were thought to have found evidence of gravitational waves produced during the first moments of the big bang. The discovery was heralded as one of the most important discoveries of our era — unfortunately, the results were contaminated. While going through peer-review, astronomers began to wonder if cosmic dust may have skewed the results. Now the verdict is in: it did, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the theory is false.
A report sourcing data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite explains that there was too much dust in the original researcher’s view of the sky to guarantee that what they saw was really gravitational waves, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t measure any waves. The theory still makes sense in its own right, but now that researchers are aware of the effects of the cosmic dust on observing evince of it, it’s just harder to verify. Basically, more time and research is needed. That’s a little frustrating, sure, but hey — that’s science.
Filed under: Science
Source: New York Times, Arvix
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Adobe buys Aviary to bring photo editing to more mobile apps
The world of image editing has changed a lot in the past few years — you’re now about as likely to tweak a photo on your phone or tablet as you are on your PC. Adobe is clearly aware of this shift, as it just bought Aviary and its cloud-savvy image editing platform for an unspecified amount. The two firms will work together on bringing Adobe’s editing tools and Creative Cloud services to more mobile apps. That photography app you just downloaded on your phone could create Photoshop-friendly pictures, for example. There’s no set timetable for integrating Aviary into Adobe’s software platforms, but the quick turnaround from the Behance acquisition suggests that you’ll see more powerful mobile editing suites within a matter of months.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Internet, Software, Mobile
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Bench 2X Faster Charger Cable Review
Have you been in need of a way to charge your Android device quickly but don’t have access to a wall outlet? If so, then Pyramid Distribution may just have the cable you’ve been looking for. With regular USB cables, if you plug it into your computer to charge, you never know how long it’s going to take to charge your device since it’s also setup to transfer data. Pyramid may have solved this issue and if you want to find out, please read on. According to the company, since a regular USB cable is made to communicate or transfer data and to act as a power supply between your USB port and your device, it is the reason why charging is so slow when connected to your computer. Pyramid Distribution has solved this issue with it’s Bench 2X Faster Charger Cable that essentially that can be turned on or off and allows your device to charge faster when plugged into your computer or the USB port in your car. One other thing that they note is that if you’re one who is worried about accidental data transfers, the “DouBBleTime mode” will prevent accidental data exchange when plugged into a foreign charge source since it blocks all data communication between your phone and the USB port.
Testing
By switching the cable into “DouBBleTime mode” it basically stops all data transfer and improve the electric current up to about 2,000mA. In practice, the cable while a very simple thing, works extremely well. When I tested it, I charged my device for an hour each, the first time doing it with “DouBBleTime mode” on and the second time with it off. My results were that when in “DouBBleTime mode” the charger gave me about 10 percent more power. I went from 45 percent to 70 percent in an hour then when I had it plugged in with data transfer enabled, it only went up to about 85 percent. It may not seem like a lot more power, but I was impressed none the less. Pyramid Distribution also notes that when using a normal USB in the car, it’s almost impossible for it to supply your smartphone some power if you’re using many of the functions at the same time, such as the GPS, music, Bluetooth, etc. Using my normal charger in my car, I always found this to be the case, especially when listening to music and having my smartphone connected to my Pebble smartwatch. I found that the “DouBBleTime mode” also held true in the car and was able to supply that same 10 percent more power while commuting and my device would actually charge instead of continuing to drain slowly.
Overall/Conclusion
The Bench 2X Faster Charger Cable from Pyramid Distribution is an accessory that works exactly as advertised. It allows you to have the charging capabilities that you would when plugged into a wall outlet and to get the most out of your electrical current. Selling for only $14.99, I think it’s fairly cheap and is worth every penny, especially if you’re always plugged into a computer USB port at work or while on the go. I would have liked to see it charge my device faster, but it seems that all depends on your specific device. I tested this out with two different devices, first the LG Nexus 4 then the OnePlus One and I found that while both charged faster in “DouBBleTime mode” the OnePlus was the winner as far as who was able to charge more. So, it all depends on how fast your device is able to charge. If you do pick up this charger, please note that you should not use it with a USB hub since the max current is 500mA. Although I didn’t get to test it since I don’t own any Apple iOS devices, the cable will work with either iOS or Android. Pyramid notes that the included a chipset in the cable to check for Android or iOS and there is a different charging algorithm depending on the device. You can pick up your Bench 2X faster Charger Cable from Pyramid Distribution here now.
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AIVAnet 