Night Sky MiniScope Review: This iPhone Telescope is More Frustrating Than Fun
iCandi Apps makes a series of popular star gazing apps designed to let iPhone owners discover constellations, stars, planets, satellites, and more just by pointing an iPhone at the sky. For kids and people interested in learning more about the night sky, these kind of apps are invaluable, and now iCandi Apps has released a new device for home astronomers — the Night Sky MiniScope.
Night Sky MiniScope is a full portable telescope that attaches to your iPhone and pairs with the Night Sky app so you can capture photographs of stars, planets, the Moon, and more. Night Sky MiniScope is not cheap, priced at $349, but it’s undeniably unique.
I want to make it clear that this review is written from a layperson’s point of view. I have never owned a telescope, I don’t do astrophotography, and I can’t review the Night Sky MiniScope comparative to other similarly priced telescopes because I don’t have a point of reference. I’m coming to this review as someone who has an iPhone, an interest in stargazing apps, and experience with photography, so testing the MiniScope is a new experience for me.
The Hardware
iCandi Apps packages the Night Sky MiniScope beautifully. It comes in a custom-designed box that houses the telescope itself, the miniature tripod, case adapters for six different iPhone models, lens caps, and a carry case.
The Night Sky MiniScope is made from a brushed aluminum that matches the aluminum finish on the iPhone. It’s much smaller than a standard telescope and is compact enough to fit into a backpack or a large purse, so it can be taken along on a hike or a camping trip. It’s not going to fit in a pocket or anything, but it’s more portable than the average telescope.
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The software Stephen Hawking uses to talk to the world is now free
For almost 20 years, Intel has been building technology to help Stephen Hawking communicate with the world — and now the company is making the same software the world renowned physicist uses to write books, give speeches and talk available to everybody. For free.
It’s called the Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT), and it’s the very same software Intel baked Swiftkey into for Hawkings early last year. Releasing it as open source software was always the plan, giving engineers, developers and researchers a groundwork they can use to create technology that improves the lives of patients with motor neuron disease and other conditions that make using typical computer interfaces impossible.
Right now ACAT uses webcam-based face recognition for user control, but Intel says developers can augment it with custom inputs. As is, it still works pretty well: I installed it on a Windows tablet for a quick test run and was able to type simple words by flexing my face muscles in the same manner as Professor Hawking — patiently waiting for the ACAT system to highlight the menu, letter or predictive text word I wanted before moving my cheek. The system can also open documents, browse the web and gives users surprisingly precise cursor control.
The base software is available for free on Github, and Intel is hosting a separate site with documentation, videos on features and compatible sensors and a detailed manual to help users get started. If you’re having trouble, you can even contact the project’s lead directly (his email is published on the ACAT website) for help. All in all, the project’s public release is a great step forward to achieving Professor Hawking’s dream of making connected wheelchair and assistive computer technology to every person that needs it.
Check out the project’s official Git.Hub page or Intel’s project page at the source link below.
[Top image credit: Jason Bye / Alamy]
Tags: acat, AssistiveTechnology, hawking, intel, stephenhawking
Invest in the development of your favorite video games with ‘Fig’
When Double Fine launched a Kickstarter campaign for an unnamed adventure game in 2012, it changed the gaming industry in a huge way. The project asked for $400,000 but raised more than $3 million in about a month, setting records at the time and jump-starting the video game crowdfunding craze. And then, in 2013, Double Fine announced it needed more money to finish its adventure game, now titled Broken Age. Even with millions of dollars, widespread publicity and thousands of fans, Double Fine ran into costly issues during development, and not all backers were receptive to the studio’s reasoning. Some of them wanted more say in how the game was made, seeing their donation as a legitimate stake in Broken Age‘s development — something that the Kickstarter campaign never promised.
Flash forward to August 2015: Former Double Fine COO Justin Bailey launches Fig, a video game crowdfunding platform that offers investment opportunities with cash returns and promises to provide backers with an inside look at how game development actually goes down.
Fig’s advisory board includes Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer (the man behind 2012’s game-changing Kickstarter), plus Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart, inXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo and Indie Fund co-founder Aaron Isaksen. The first game up for funding is Outer Wilds, an award-winning space exploration experience from Mobius Digital, a team of young artists and developers led by Heroes actor Masi Oka. Oka previously worked as a VFX Artist on the second Star Wars trilogy at Industrial Light & Magic.
Outer Wilds is looking to raise $125,000 in 30 days, and in the first few hours it’s already generated about $50,000. Fig features different tiers for potential contributors — lower tiers, starting at $20, are similar to Kickstarter’s reward system, offering copies of the game and other related swag. However, if you’re an SEC-accredited investor and throw down at least $1,000 toward Outer Wilds‘ development, you’ll receive a portion of the game’s net revenue on certain PC platforms. At its heart, Fig is a combination of rewards-based crowdfunding and traditional investing.
“By launching a Fig campaign, game studios can combine these two powerful methods of raising funds while retaining creative control and offering fans new ways to get involved,” Fig’s About page reads. “By supporting a campaign, fans journey with each studio as they go from development to launch (and beyond), all while gaining real insights and transparency into the business of making games.”
As for the transparency part of Fig’s plan, the site so far features a “development stage” timeline that displays where Outer Wilds is in the game-making process. There’s a section for updates from the developer as well, and a comments section open to those who pledge $20 or more to the project.
The plan is for Fig to eventually allow anyone, even non-accredited people, to invest in games on the platform, Bailey tells Games Industry. Fig itself has financial support from Spark Captial, a venture capital firm that’s invested in Oculus, Slack, Tumblr and other tech-adjacent companies. Fig isn’t the only new crowdfunding site to feature a twist on Kickstarter’s model: StartEngine, for example, comes from Activision co-founder Howard Marks and allows people to invest in private companies, something that Kickstarter doesn’t do.
With all of these crowdfunding choices, pick your favorite model and let the games begin.
Via:
Game Informer
Source:
Fig
Tags: CrowdFunding, DoubleFine, fig, hdpostcross, Investing, Investment, kickstarter, VideoGames
Target’s data breach payout to Visa may hit $67 million
It’s nearly two years since Target suffered its giant shopping data breach, and the retailer is still paying for its mistakes. In the wake of a $19 million payout to MasterCard, Target has reached a settlement with Visa over compensation for the many, many customers exposed to potential credit and debit card fraud. Neither side is revealing the specifics, but the Wall Street Journal understands that Target will pay up to $67 million. That’s a significant blow for a breach, though not crushing for a company that raked in $635 million in profit last quarter. Target adds that it already factored these costs into its previous earnings reports, but this should still serve as a friendly reminder that lax security can prove costly in more ways than one.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty]
Filed under:
Internet
Via:
Bloomberg
Source:
Wall Street Journal
Tags: breach, data, databreach, fraud, internet, retail, settlement, shopping, target, visa
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