ASUS unveils pocket-sized projector that can play videos from your Android device via USB
ASUS has been extremely busy at the Computex event today. First it announced the ZenWatch 2, then a new Chromebox and just now, a pocket-sized projector that can play video from Android smartphones and tablets via a micro-USB.
Obviously, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen projectors for mobile devices that can fit in your pocket, but it is the first time we’ve seen one that is compatible with a USB cable as opposed to an HDMI, which makes it that little bit more portable as you don’t have to carry a second cable.
The unit itself features a whopping 6,000 mAh battery, which doubles as a portable battery pack, allowing you to charge any smartphone or tablet via its USB port, which is pretty useful if you’re mirroring a movie and don’t want your handset to die.
Unfortunately, there’s no solid information with regards to pricing or availability just yet, but some ASUS representatives have hinted that it may have a $200 price tag. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Come comment on this article: ASUS unveils pocket-sized projector that can play videos from your Android device via USB
How laser scans and VR are preserving London’s hidden ‘Mail Rail’
Deep in the heart of London, buried beneath 70 feet of soil and concrete, lies a hidden underground railway. For almost 80 years, the UK’s “Mail Rail” transported letters and parcels between the capital’s main post offices and a few overground train stations, where they could then be delivered across the country. It was a unique way to avoid street congestion, but by 2003 the line had become uneconomical to run. The decision was made to shut it down and it’s laid dormant ever since, invisible to the public.
Now, the British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) wants to open the Mail Rail to the masses. The organization’s plan is to open a new museum near Mount Pleasant station and convert a section of the line into a ride. It will, inevitably, mean making some changes to the railway as it stands today. But before any renovations are made, the BPMA wants to preserve the space with a digital archive. Rather than simply taking some photos though, or moving the best artifacts into glass cabinets, the organization opted for a technology called LIDAR. Similar to radar or sonar, this process involves firing a laser in every direction and measuring the time it takes to reflect off other objects. All of these recordings then create a “point cloud,” which specialist companies can use to create 3D models. It’s also the same technology that self-driving cars use to detect and analyze their surroundings.
Hiring the experts
To record such an unusual site, BPMA enlisted ScanLab Projects. Based in London’s Bethnal Green, the company has used LIDAR to document a raft of spectacular places, including the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, France; a shipping gallery in London’s Science Museum; and parts of the Arctic Ocean near Svalbard, Norway. After capturing each location with the laser scanner, ScanLab goes over them again with a DSLR camera. Back in the office, the team then flattens the 3D model into 2D panoramas and lines them up with the DSLR photos. The images from the laser scanner contain depth information, meaning the colors captured by the DSLR can later be applied to the 3D model.
“Conceptually, this removes the need to take a photograph and choose the angle when you’re at the location,” ScanLab co-founder William Trossell says. “You can come back into our office and spend months, or years finding exactly the right perspective.”
The process is time-consuming and resource-intensive, but if any space deserves such a detailed and meticulous treatment, it’s the Mail Rail. While it was operational, the carriages would carry up to 4 million letters along 23 miles of track every day. It was the first driverless, electrified railway and the only purpose-built underground mail transit system in the world. The line was originally called the “Post Office Underground Railway” and it launched in 1927, but the initial tunneling work was actually completed a decade earlier. Its structural integrity proved useful in World War I when it was used to protect art pieces from The National Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the British Museum during German bombing raids. In World War II, the network also doubled as dormitories for post office staff.
Most importantly, the Mail Rail has been left untouched since its closure. A few engineers still work on the line to check for water damage and other structural problems, but otherwise nothing has been moved. Royal Mail never planned to close the Mail Rail down completely, so on the last “official” day in 2003, staff simply downed their tools and left. They unknowingly created a near-perfect time capsule, a snapshot in history.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/124635236?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0
ScanLab spent five days mapping the railway with two separate scanning teams. Even now, the BPMA isn’t sure how it’ll use the data inside the new museum. VR is one option, but the team is also considering mobile apps. Visitors could hold their phones up at the walls, for instance, and see the original space like a rift in the fabric of time. Parts could also be used as projections during the ride, or as an alternative experience for visitors with disabilities. “For people with claustrophobia, or people that aren’t comfortable with enclosed spaces, it’s not going to be a pleasant experience on the ride,” a BPMA spokesperson said. “However, we want them to be able to experience it, so applications like this are some of the options we’re now exploring to try and bring that experience to them.”
LIDAR data can be used for many different purposes. A surveyor might be interested in the raw geographical information — just a spreadsheet with the numbers the LIDAR spat out. An architect, however, could request a top-down plan of a building. “We can take the roof off the structure and then pull the first floor away from the second floor — almost architecturally dissect the building,” Trossell adds. “Then it becomes a good tool for investigative processes, where you’re trying to forensically re-examine a crime scene, or work out where the light sockets are because you need to know where to put the new ones.” Other LIDAR and 3D visualization companies are doing similar work; Digital Surveys, for instance, mapped a ship called the Northern Wave vessel to help engineers design new upgrades; Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art are scanning 10 historic landmarks, including five World Heritage Sites in Scotland, for preservation purposes.
Taking a trip in VR
LIDAR visualizations are rarely used in VR experiences though. That’s hardly a surprise, given VR is an emerging technology and major players such as Oculus VR, Sony and Valve have yet to release consumer hardware. But ScanLab has been pressing forward and exploring how its model could be adapted for virtual reality. In its spacious design studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the company has rigged up an Oculus Rift DK2 headset with plastic prongs and white balls attached on top. Six cameras on the ceiling track their whereabouts and replicate the users’ movement inside the Mail Rail visualization.
The experience differs from typical VR demos because it shows an exact reproduction of a real-world location, rather than a level from a video game. The idea is that users will be drawn to the Mail Rail’s nooks and crannies and everyday objects knowing that, over a decade ago, real people were interacting with them. Walking through the model from the same perspective as an employee should, in theory, help people to visualize what it must’ve been like down there, especially during the two World Wars.
For now, ScanLab is only loading a portion of its 3D model inside the Oculus Rift. Booting up the entire visualization, at least with their current hardware, would involve too much processing. Not that it really matters — ScanLab’s motion-tracking setup is in the middle of its office, so testers can only walk three or four steps before bumping into tables and chairs anyway. At such close quarters, the quality of the model isn’t perfect either. Everything looks just a tad grainy, like an analog TV that hasn’t been tuned correctly. In addition, ScanLab can only load a single LIDAR scan at once. It means that if you look in places that, at the time of capture, were blocked by other objects in front of the scanner, you’ll sometimes see black “data shadows.” However, this experience is only an experiment — a version for the museum would no doubt incorporate a more complete model.
VR is an immersive way to experience any 3D space. But ultimately, the work BPMA and ScanLab have done goes beyond a cumbersome set of goggles. They have digitally archived a place that few people have ever seen before, and soon it’ll be available to anyone that’s able to travel to London. In humanity’s quest to preserve historic spaces, LIDAR is proving itself to be a valuable tool. The challenge now is to apply that data in a way that benefits the upcoming museum and the stories its curators want to tell.
[Image Credits: British Postal Museum & Archive/Miles Willis (Lead photo, Mount Pleasant Mail Rail station photos); ScanLab Projects (Mail Rail graphic and gallery)]
Filed under: Transportation, Alt
Why ‘Rock Band 4’ got the gang back together
Walking onto the roof of the Shangri La Hotel in Santa Monica, California, I was nervous and curious to see Rock Band 4. After all it had been five years since Rock Band 3. Would it still feel good? Is this really the right time to bring back Harmonix’s brilliant karaoke video game, with its comfy plastic instruments and catalog of songs? After playing it and then talking with Greg LoPiccolo, one of the creators of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, my fears were laid to rest. Under a thick smear of sweet rock and roll, of course.
Rock Band 4 feels familiar in all the best ways, with low-impact, welcome changes that just feel right. The instruments, mostly indistinguishable from Rock Band 3‘s drums and guitar, still feel approachable and toy-like, well-suited to the game’s cartoony musicians. Barring one intriguing new feature that we’re not allowed to talk about just yet, the other changes are goofy fun. Take the new intros: The screen prompts you to yell, “Hello, Boston!” Are you ready to rock?” Unless you do your best Steven Tyler at an ’80s Aerosmith concert, the whole shebang won’t start. It also feels great to seamlessly put together a playlist. If you finish a song and want to keep going, one player picks the next jam from a list and others vote, selecting from categories like “play a song from 1991.”
While the game still felt just right in my hands, I still wanted to know why Harmonix decided that right now was the time to bring it back. LoPiccolo expounded on that subject and more.
The last time we spoke was in March of 2013, just before Harmonix delivered the very last weekly downloadable update for Rock Band 3. My very first question for you then was, “Is the plan to bring Rock Band back in five years, otherwise known as the perfect window to hit the nostalgia market?” You said to me, “Well… we’ll see!” You sounded like a man with a plan. Now here’s Rock Band 4. Was this always the plan to bring Rock Band 4 out within a few years?
No. I can’t in good conscience say this was always the plan. It was way more improvisational.
What was the plan, then?
We didn’t ever want Rock Band to fade away. We love it! We love working on it; we love watching people have fun with it. It exceeded beyond our wildest expectations when it came out, but a lot of things have to line up if you’re going to drop seven or eight figures on developing a video game, you know? One of the things I think was true was that after the eighth-gen consoles came out, our usual sweet spot isn’t in year one. That’s when Halo and the hardcore games come out. Our thinking was, let’s wait to let these consoles establish themselves and then see what we got. Then we dipped our toe in the water and people got excited, so let’s do it!
Speaking of the survey Harmonix put out earlier this year asking what people want from a new Rock Band. What surprised you about people’s response?
I don’t know if we were surprised so much as it confirmed what we hoped was true. It confirmed that people actually still cared about Rock Band. Yeah, people still want to play this game and they were very specific about what they cared about being in it. Like, DLC should carry over! People don’t want to have to buy their songs again; they don’t want to have to buy their instruments again if they still have them. So we took that stuff seriously and worked on a plan to carry all that stuff forward. Which was a lot of work.
I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds on the business end, but I know that licensing these songs has always been the biggest hurdle. Has anything changed in the past five years since Rock Band 3 to make your lives easier?
Not really. We occupy this weird little corner of that ecosystem. The thing that makes us unique, where those streaming issues aren’t really relevant, is that we need track masters to craft our gameplay. You don’t stream masters. Someone’s got to go down to the basement, blow the dust off them and transfer them to us. That’s still true: We still hand build our gameplay from the original master recordings.
Has there been any change in how you produce a song or did you just go back to the old process because it works?
Well, we’ve had to change our authoring format for our new features. We have our freestyle vocal feature which means that the game needs to know what key you’re singing in at any given time. If you sing on hard or expert difficulty, you don’t have to stick to the authored notes. You can sing any chord and as long as it’s in tune with the song, you can score on that. That didn’t exist in the old songs so we had to redo that and go back to retrofit it into the old songs as well.
In April, I got to sit down with Guitar Hero Live and we discussed their turnaround time for getting a song into their game. The way they explained their pipeline was that if there’s a hit single making the rounds on YouTube, they can turn it around in a day and have it online. Have you changed your process at all to satisfy a faster pace?
Most of the material our players care about isn’t necessarily from last month; it’s from 10 years ago!
As far as I can tell, that’s not what’s driving our audience. New songs are always coming, but most of the material our players care about isn’t necessarily from last month; it’s from 10 years ago! Or 30 years ago! So we want to continue to add stuff to our catalog that’s current, and Rock Band 4 will have current songs, but it’s all about the catalog, having this huge library of material. We have 2,000-plus songs at this point. That’s awesome and that’s something we’re really proud of. We’ve made this huge effort to cover the breadth of rock history as best we can, across styles and decades.
Literally every person I talked to at Harmonix who worked on Rock Band told me that they had the same regret: That they never got Led Zeppelin. So tell me: Zeppelin?
I have no comment at this time!
That’s my favorite answer.
We would still like Zeppelin. Clearly. But I have nothing to tell you.
Mad Catz is helping publish Rock Band 4. How did that happen?
We worked with them on Rock Band 3 so our relationship does go back a ways. They made the Mustang guitar for us as well as the keyboard and did a terrific job. So when we got in touch with them about the idea of bringing back Rock Band 4, they were into it and they were an ideal partner for us.
We would still like Zeppelin. Clearly.
Was there ever a point that you weren’t going to call this Rock Band 4? Slapping a number on a popular video game series carries a lot of weight. It can push away new players unfamiliar with a series, but it also lets your most diehard fans know that this is the real deal, a full-on sequel.
There was a little bit of back and forth about that but everything else just seemed too gimmicky. Rock Band Reunion! That’s stupid. At the end we didn’t even argue about it. It’s Rock Band 4.
Typo’s Smartphone Keyboard Business Comes to an End Following BlackBerry Lawsuits [iOS Blog]
BlackBerry and Typo Keyboard have reached the end of a lengthy lawsuit over Typo’s BlackBerry-esque iPhone case that adds a physical keyboard to the Apple product (via The Verge). The lawsuit dating back to January 2014 argued that Typo, which saw significant publicity due to Ryan Seacrest’s backing, willfully infringed on patents and “blatantly copied” BlackBerry’s keyboard design. Today’s settlement brings the news that Typo now essentially is prevented from making keyboards for any smartphone in the future.
While neither company released the full settlement terms, a brief press release from BlackBerry notes that Typo has agreed not to produce keyboards for devices with screens smaller than 7.9 inches. The essentially precludes Typo from making keyboards for any smartphone, but leaves the door open for keyboards for tablets or any other device with a screen larger than 7.9 inches.
As part of the settlement, Typo Products LLC, Typo Innovations LLC, Show Media LLC, Hallier Investments LLC, and Laurence Hallier have agreed to permanently discontinue selling anywhere in the world keyboards for smartphones and mobile devices with a screen size of less than 7.9 inches. Typo Products LLC, Typo Innovations LLC, Show Media LLC, Hallier Investments LLC, and Laurence Hallier may continue to sell keyboards for devices with a screen size of 7.9 inches or larger. Other terms of the settlement are confidential.
Thanks to BlackBerry’s constant pursuit of a lawsuit against the company, the Typo Keyboard for iPhone faced a very rocky road since its debut in January of 2014. Typo kept moving forward, however, just last December introducing the Typo2 for iPhone 6 that the company promised was designed to avoid the legal pitfalls of its previous case. BlackBerry was unconvinced, however, once again filing suit against Typo over the new product in February.
OnePlus One to go on flash sales throughout the week, starting from $249
OnePlus’s big announcement for today is not the OnePlus 2 some of you may have wanted, but a $50 off promo on the OnePlus One.
After dropping the invite system for good (though invites will still be required for the OnePlus 2), the Chinese company is now putting the OnePlus One on sale. But, this being OnePlus, it’s not a regular promo: instead of a one limited time deal, the OnePlus One will be made available with a $50 discount in a series of daily flash sales. The first round is already underway (and stock is likely exhausted), and here’s the schedule for the entire week:
- June 1 – 12:00 GMT (8 am EST)
- June 2 – 2:00 GMT (10 pm EST -1 day)
- June 3 – 12:00 GMT (8 am EST)
- June 4 – 2:00 GMT (10 pm EST -1 day)
- June 5 – 12:00 GMT (8 am EST)
- June 6 – 2:00 GMT (10 pm EST -1 day)
- June 7 – 12:00 GMT (8 am EST)
During the flash sales, the 16GB Silk White model will cost $249, while the 64GB Sandstone Black model will be $299.
OnePlus will announce the sales on its social channels, but you can simply go to OnePlus.net at the announced times and hope for the best.
One more thing, this promo is only open for the global version of the device, so OnePlus fans in India and Southeast Asia will have to sit this one out.
As for the second generation of the OnePlus, the official timeline is still Q3 2015, or from July to September. OnePlus fans may have a long wait ahead, but the thought of a second, fashion-focused OnePlus phone should bring them some solace.
Let us know if you managed to snag a OnePlus One today!
Sound Guys Monthly – UE BOOM International Giveaway
We try to review a few different types of items every now and then, but it seems that May was a month of firsts. Not only did we review our first 5.1-channel home theater speaker system, but we also reviewed our first pair of computer speakers.
Of course, the world doesn’t (entirely) revolve around Sound Guys. Cool stuff happened elsewhere in the world of audio too.
The SuperStar BackFloat is Monster’s new waterproof speaker
We didn’t fall in love with the Monster SuperStar when we reviewed iast year, but it was still a decent Bluetooth speaker. Make it float, and it could be a lot cooler. That’s what the SuperStar BackFloat is all about. We remain dubious about the sound quality, but we’re willing to wait and see.
The new RHA T20 in-ears are coming this summer
On the other hand, we fell in love with the RHA T10s. Finding out that the company is releasing a sequel definitely has us excited. They’re keeping the build and swappable filters, but making the insides even better. We can’t wait to see these.
The Sound Torch is a Bluetooth speaker for pyromaniacs
It’s an indisputable fact that while fire may not always make things better, it will absolutely always make things more awesome. A Bluetooth speaker that spits fire out of the top while you’re listening? That is Mad Max levels of awesome.
Sonos PLAY:1 speaker starter set saves you $50
Sonos systems are great, but getting started can be a little tough, especially when you don’t know which speaker to go with first. The company has made that a little easier with a new bundle pack that features two speakers that can be used independently or as a stereo pair. Oh, and it shaves $50 off the price.
Denon announces the HEOS 1 and HEOS 1 Go pack
Denon’s HEOS system is a Sonos competitor of sorts, and while it’s picking up steam, it still has a way to go. The new entry-level HEOS 1 and the HEOS 1 Go pack, which adds Bluetooth functionality, should go a long way toward getting more people onboard.
Coolest of the month: Monoprice 8427 5.1-channel home theater speaker system
It’s usually tough picking the coolest thing we reviewed in any given month, but to be honest, this month it was pretty easy. A full 5.1 speaker system for under $100 bucks? That’s impressive.
Best bang for the buck: Creative Sound Blaster Jam
It was tempting to give this to the Monoprice 8247, but the Creative Sound Blaster Jam is a pair of Bluetooth headphones that costs roughly $50 and actually sounds good. Bargains like that are what this category was made for.
Giveaway: UE BOOM
Congratulations to the winner of last month’s giveaway, Jeromy L from Hong Kong, who won the Beats Powerbeats 2. This month we’re giving away the well-loved UE BOOM. While I didn’t love it as much as everyone else does, we’re sure there are plenty of people who will be happy to win it.
For information on how to enter, head over to Sound Guys!
Asus adds two capable 13MP cameras to the ZenFone recipe: meet the ZenFone Selfie
Asus is jumping on the selfie-phone bandwagon with the ZenFone Selfie, a 5-5-incher whose claim to fame is its dual 13MP camera setup.
Announced today in the opening of Computex Taipei along the ZenWatch 2 and the new ZenPad series, the ZenFone Selfie keeps many of the specs of the well-reviewed ZenFone 2, and adds some goodies that will please the selfie-crazed crowd.
Starting with the basics, the ZenFone Selfie is similar to the ZenFone 2, featuring the same general design with rear-mounted buttons, but with a more cheerful, pastel color scheme. On the inside, the 5.5-inch Full HD ZenFone Selfie features a Snapdragon 615 processor (64-bit, octo-core), 2GB or 4GB of RAM, and 16, 32, or 64GB of expandable internal storage.
The Selfie comes with 13MP cameras both on the front and back, and both shooters make use of dual-tone LED flashes. There are some differences: the f 2.0 rear camera is equipped with a laser-assisted auto-focus system, a la LG G4, while the front shooter features an f 2.2 lens with an 80-degree viewing angle. Like any selfie-centric phone worth its salt, the ZenFone Selfie packs a beautification mode that can “soften facial features, slim cheeks, and enhance skin tone to add vibrancy, all in real time.” Now that’s progress! There’s also a panorama selfie mode, that stitches together several shots, perfect for group selfies, or as Huawei memorably called them, “groufies.”
Available in cyan, pink, and white, the ZenFone Selfie comes with an optional accessory called Swing, that can act like a kickstand or as an arm extender of sorts, selfie sticks be damned! Check it out in action, via Engadget.
Like with its other announcements today, Asus has not revealed pricing and availability details for the Selfie. But if the ZenFone 2 is any indication, we expect an affordable price tag and a rather long wait to actually see the ZenFone Selfie in stores.
Nikkei reports that next Nintendo console could be running Android
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If I said that it were possible that the next Nintendo console could be running Android, I wouldn’t be surprised if you called me sacrilegious. Unusually, that is exactly the news that has dropped today according to Japanese financial paper, Nikkei, who claims that not only will the games giant develop games for Android, but also build hardware that will run Google’s operating system. This would be a huge change in direction for Nintendo who has up till now relied on their own proprietary hardware and software to power its video game consoles.
There are pros and cons for Nintendo if this does turn out to be true – an Android based console would definitely make Nintendo relevant again in a console war that is increasingly only about Sony and Microsoft. On the other hand, current Android games are hardly console-ready – a handful could pass for low budget games while others were console games 5+ years ago. Either way, it’s a tantalizing possibility, and we hope we find out more about this possible Nintendo-Android console sooner rather than later. E3 2015 here we come!
What do you think about a Nintendo console running Android? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
The post Nikkei reports that next Nintendo console could be running Android appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Android Lollipop update for Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to roll out by the end of July
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It’s been a pretty messy year of software updates and plenty of people are left wondering when their Android Lollipop fix is going to come. In particular, the Android Lollipop update for Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has been a long time coming, but thankfully the wait might not be for much longer. According to a report by SamMobile, the update for the Note 4 will be rolling out by the end of July, though as always, don’t expect to have Lollipop by July 31st on the dot – your upgrade could lag a few weeks depending on where you are in the world.
Still, it’s good news that Samsung hasn’t forgotten the Note 4, and in turn, its other devices like the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 3 which are next in line for the update in the near future – assuming Android M doesn’t come out before then.
What do you think about the Android Lollipop update for Samsung Galaxy Note 4 coming out by the end of July? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: SamMobile
The post Android Lollipop update for Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to roll out by the end of July appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
ASUS announces the ASUS ZenWatch 2 at Computex with more sizes and a new button
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Right on the heels of Google I/O, as usual, is Computex, Asia’s version of Mobile World Congress, and ASUS has kicked off in typical style with the announcement of several heavy hitting devices. Chief among these is a new Android Wear smartwatch, the ASUS ZenWatch 2, the follow up its original ZenWatch and was introduced with a number of things that make it seem quite a lot like another recently released smartwatch (read: the Apple Watch).
The similarities begin with the ZenWatch 2 being offered in two different size variants, with 22mm and 18mm watch band versions – no doubt this is probably to cater for the female audience who generally have the smaller wrists. Overally, the ZenWatch 2 doesn’t look too dissimilar to its predecessor – the curved glass over the display returns, but is now joined by a button on the side, which kind of makes sense for a watch but almost looks ungainly on the sleek ZenWatch 2 profile.
In terms of colour choice, you’ll be able to select from either a silver, gunmetal or rose-gold body as well as a number of different straps made from rubber, leather, metal or even a crystal encrusted watch band. That’s all the details we have right now, but no doubt more information will become available as Computex wears on.
What do you think about the ASUS ZenWatch 2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: engadget
The post ASUS announces the ASUS ZenWatch 2 at Computex with more sizes and a new button appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
AIVAnet 