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Watch The Hackathon Presentations Live!
A mere 24 hours ago, coders started hacking with hopes and dreams of building the next great app or program. Many participants stayed overnight, fueled on gumption and Red Bull. Others cut out early, apparently satisfied with their creation. But they’re all back now, waiting to present on our massive Disrupt stage. Watch it live!
Click to view slideshow. More Hackathon Coverage!- The Disrupt 2012 NYC Hackathon Is Officially On!
- The Art Of Expression: T-Shirts Of The Disrupt NYC 2012 Hackathon
- The Disrupt NYC Hackathon: We’re 8 Hours In
- Meet The Disrupt NY 2012 Hackathon Hackers
- This City Never Sleeps, And Neither Do The Hackers
Samsung chief: we're open to a cross-licensing deal with Apple, but 4G chip shortage might last until the fall
The at times very heated legal battle between Apple and Samsung might be softening just a bit ahead of truce talks on May 21st. Samsung's mobile head JK Shin just left Seoul for the mediated discussions saying there were still "several negotiation options" on tap, including the possibility of cross-licensing patents. He warned that there was still a "big gap" between the two sides, and we'd tend to agree -- neither Apple nor Samsung is exactly backing off just yet. However, it's a definite shift in language from March, when Shin was vowing "no compromise," and it parallels Apple CEO Tim Cook's own disdain for lawsuits. We just wouldn't bet money on the two singing "Kumbaya" this week.
In same breath, Shin added that an ongoing 4G chipset shortage wasn't letting up: he didn't see things getting better until the start of the fourth quarter, or October for us common folk. That's a problem for Samsung's phones and tablets most of all, of course, and in a dire case could see LTE-packing American Galaxy S III variants rely on other vendors' chips to stay on the 4G bandwagon. There's also a chance of a ripple effect on other companies that want Samsung's parts, but short of getting a peek at Samsung's inner workings, we won't know the full impact for awhile yet.
Samsung chief: we're open to a cross-licensing deal with Apple, but 4G chip shortage might last until the fall originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Reuters | Email this | CommentsWhat’s Big, Blue, Hopes To Save Our Planet And Is Not Facebook?
There have been a lot of complaints voiced over the last couple of years from people who wish entrepreneurs would address the world’s “real problems” or do “something bigger” rather than create “me too” applications and websites. I’m not a fan of that sentiment but that’s really a whole other post I need to write. In all honesty, there’s a place and need in the world for all sorts of business visions – big and small.
And after watching a “big vision” TED talk from a few years ago, it has changed my life. Jane McGonigal presented this idea: Millions of people around the world are becoming gaming and computer virtuosos. Through video games, people journey to alternate “worlds” where they have epic journeys and become heroes. What if we tapped into that talent and desire for a world changing quest to change our own? What if we changed the idea behind gaming completely to create games that directly had a real world impact?
While at a recent Wild-Aid fund-raising event, I was thumbing through the live auctions and found a company called The Blu that is trying to do just that. Created by Academy Award winner Andy Jones (for Avatar), a digital whale named “Big Blu” takes followers on a journey through a digital ocean that the creators hope will teach us all about our underwater counterparts and why we might want to save whales and their underwater friends. I was intrigued, and the whale, in fact, sold for a whopping $10,000. Proceeds go towards both the team behind Big Blu and Wild-Aid’s outreach efforts.
Having been so enthralled by the concept, I was determined to meet the founders, so I sent this tweet:
Within 10 minutes, they were at my table. We chatted about the broader goals of The Blu and we talked about Jane’s vision, which they shared. The Blu is a beautiful digital ocean with revenue sharing for both the digital artists that create the fish and ocean life and the partner ocean conservation organizations around the world that support the educational mission. Its not exactly a game, but it is a real-time immersive experience that by itself is a big idea and can become much bigger.
Revenue sharing with non-profits through games is not a new idea. Zynga raised millions for Haiti and has had other such fund-raising initiatives behind their games, but this is one of the first games/platforms that I’ve seen that specifically is targeting changing something tangible in the real world, and where the product experience is truly aligned with that mission.
Towards the end of our discussion, it occurred to me that they should talk to Dr. Sylvia Earle. She’s a personal hero of mine and this seemed right up her alley with what she’s trying to accomplish. Dr. Sylvia Earle won the TED Prize for her wish to protect our oceans. Sylvia has spent over 50 years exploring and working on ocean exploration and conservation. She spearheaded the Google Ocean initiative to help go beneath the water’s surface in order to help give the world access to what she sees on her regular ocean dives, so that we can help her in her quest to save it.
They were already on it; I had somehow stumbled into a breaking story.
Sylvia teamed up with Sir Richard Branson, Jackson Browne, Dr. Rita Colwell, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Graeme Kelleher, Sven Lindblad, Her Majesty Queen Noor, Nainoa Thompson, Ted Turner, Captain Don Walsh, Neil Young and Gigi Brisson (the founder) to create the Ocean Elders, a group based off Richard Branson’s idea of elders who help guide world leaders and world issues, but specifically focused on the ocean.
These elders are going to get on The Blu, June 8th, in honor of World Oceans Day and interact with members during the launch (remember the digital whale?) into the digital wild. You can ask live questions and join them on their mission to save the ocean.
From their press release they are going to send out after this post:
What: OceanElders, WildAid, and theBlu.com are holding a global online celebration at theblu.com, in honor of World Oceans Day, June 8, 2012. Entitled, “If You Love The Ocean, Download It!” Interested parties are encouraged to start registering immediately to ensure best interaction with the celebrities and leading ocean advocates expected to participate.
I’m so excited about this. I’ve downloaded The Blu and it runs as a screen saver so you are constantly reminded of our beautiful and bountiful ocean that is sometimes too out of sight and out of mind. I plan on sponsoring loads of little digital fish and I will follow the company closely to see how they evolve.
Even though 70% of the earth’s surface is water, if you took all of it and put it in a sphere of its own, it is quite small in comparison to the Earth. 860 miles in diameter, it is one of the single most important resources to our planet and human-kind, yet no one owns any of it and therefore it has very little protection. Thank you team Blu for dreaming big and using the virtual metaphor to make preservation of the ocean more real.
SpaceX To Attempt A Second Launch On Tuesday, May 22
SpaceX and Elon Musk will not be held from the history books. Last night the company announced that engineers were currently replacing a faulty valve on engine #5, and if successful pending a data review today, the company would attempt a second launch on Tuesday, May 22nd. This comes as SpaceX’s maiden voyage to the International Space Station was cut a half second short by an automated safety function built into the rocket.
SpaceX is attempting to become the first privately owned entity to reach and dock a capsule with the ISS, therefore increasing its chance to win what will likely be a lucrative contract to ferry cargo and humans between Earth and Space. So far these duties have been carried out by the U.S., Russia and Japan. However, as governments are cutting space budget programs they are looking to hand over these relatively nominal duties to the private sector and redirect funds to long-range space exploration and science programs.
Come next Tuesday, SpaceX will attempt to make history again
In Which The Maker Faire Restores Your Humble Correspondent’s Faith In Humanity
A life-size fire-breathing dragon. A fully robotic calliope band. A full-scale flight simulator built by teenagers. An entire herd of homemade R2-D2s. Electric cars, steampunk fashion, a robot petting zoo, a piano made of bananas, and a cardboard Trojan Horse. Plus a zillion different interactive attractions, classes, and events for kids of all ages. Yes, the Maker Faire is back in town, and only just in time.
It was exactly the tonic I needed after my inability to get excited about the Facebook IPO and my ongoing sense that most of the Valley is focused on building meaningless mobile/social/local/scrapbooking sugar water. This was a place full of people building real, tangible things for the sake of sheer awesomeness. Oh–and while they’re at it, almost as a side effect, hidden behind their Burning Man-esque decor is a community and technology ready to turn the whole planet on its ear.
The maker movement has hit an interesting flux point; its amateurs and enthusiasts, much like the computer geeks of the 1970s and 1980s, now stand on the verge of watching their hobby erupt into big business that will reshape the way people everywhere live. Do I sound hyperbolic? Don’t just take my word for it; listen to the mighty Economist, which in its British understated fashion recently called digital manufacturing no less than “The third industrial revolution.”
“What happens when you give the tools of the industrial revolution to the creative class, for the cost of a bad coffee addiction?” asked Mark Hatch, CEO of TechShop, a company that offers its members access to workspaces armed with industrial-strength toolsets. Then he reeled off some impressive examples: James McKelvey built the first three prototypes of the Square card reader — in two weeks — at TechShop in Menlo Park. That’s also where Phil Hughes and Bob Lipp built their initial fanless liquid-cooling system for server farms, which went on to soundly defeat IBM in a “chill-off.”
But I’m most interested in the economic effects once the maker movement hits the developing world, where the demand for custom parts, recycled materials, and mechanical repairs is immense and inexhaustible. Or consider another of Hatch’s examples: the Embrace low-cost infant warmer which is reportedly on track to save the lives of 100,000 premature babies over the next five years.
And we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. When maker technology and spaces like TechShop begin to metastasize all over the planet, so that anyone and everyone can plausibly build their own solutions to their problems rather than waiting for some industrial-scale corporation to do so, that’s when a lot of lives will really begin to change. And TechShop is indeed expanding, although, alas, only in the USA for now: there’ll be “more than one open on the East Coast by the end of the year,” according to Hatch.
In the interim, drop by a Maker Faire if you can, to catch a glimpse of this nascent future in its larval stage, while it’s still messy and exuberant and fueled by amateurish enthusiasm. (Bay Areans: it’s open until 6PM today.) And the next times your eyes glaze over at the sight of yet another SoLoMo app, consider looking into what’s happening in the world of hand-made hardware instead. If nothing else, it’s awfully colorful:
The Ragtime Castaway Band, a fully robotic giant calliope band.
Laying down a beat with a piano made of bananas and a drum kit built from limes.
From A TC40 Win To A $170M Intuit Acquisition, Mint.com Tells All
With Disrupt NYC 2012 literally a day away (tickets here), it’s hard not to think about the past success of our former Battlefield startups. I’ve taken a close look at quite a few over the past couple weeks, and to be honest none have come as far as Mint.com. The company has rocketed to success since launching at TC40 in September, 2007, and subsequently winning the top prize at the Battlefield.
The personal finance service has raised a total of $38.1 million over the course of the past five years, and has gone on to be acquired by Intuit for a whopping $170 million in September of 2009.
When I spoke to VP and general manager of Mint, Aaron Forth, he said that two very specific things, the financial crisis of 2008/09 and a launch on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage, were the main factors of the company’s success, both in acquiring users and being acquired themselves.
Here’s what else he had to say:
TechCrunch: So tell me the story of Mint, from launch until now.
Mint.com: It’s been such a great run. We won TC40 in 2007, and that was the first time our product saw the light of day. It was an intense moment, debuting something we had put so much work into.
Winning gave us a great start. We hit 20,000 users within the first couple hours of the announcement. We’ve been on a crazy growth trajectory ever since, and we saw TechCrunch as a catalyst for getting out of the gate.
It’s a special place to launch, particularly for a service like ours. We were trying to disrupt the personal finance world. We were asking for sensitive information, and credentials to financial accounts. What TechCrunch gave us was access to a young, tech-savvy, comfortable-on-the-web readership that was excited about exploring the service. They didn’t get aggravated by security concerns.
It became a very viral growth process for us. We continue to spend very little money in marketing. Our growth is from word of mouth, and the TechCrunch crowd are great amplifiers.
TechCrunch: I seem to get really emotional during the Battlefield. People are launching products they’ve been working on for years sometimes, and it’s a huge moment in their lives. How was the experience of launching on stage?
Mint.com: We came out with a fairly immature product at TC40. So we realized that we had a ways to go. We were very focused on trying to demonstrate the value of the product and into pulling everything into one place. We wanted Mint to do all the work for you, which was our focus at TechCrunch.
But at the time we could only aggregate checking, savings and credit. Over the next two years we worked on rounding out the financial picture, pulling in investments, loan functionality, and adding budgeting features. This type of full view built up quite a lot of data.
We knew where consumers were shopping, and during the financial collapse in 2009, we became a huge resource to the media. Our data was anonymized and aggregated, and we could help the media tell a story with real data. It got our name out, and we continued to see really healthy growth during the economic downturn.
Then we brought out mobile apps. It’s started to really drive us a lot of new users at a very affective acquisition cost. In fact, 60 percent of our new users come from app stores. By then, interest from Intuit and others started to come our way.
As you already know, Intuit acquired us in September 2009 for $170 million, and we’ve continued to grow post-acquisition.
TechCrunch: Do you think your TC40 win may have strengthened the argument for you guys, whether it be with investments of with the acquisition?
Mint.com: Our win absolutely lent credibility. But then there’s the after effect. The amplifier that TechCrunch provides means that a lot of influential people end up following your service and getting buzz going. That, paired with attention from the media gave nothing but legitimacy to what we’re doing.
The idea of aggregated finances has been done before, but it didn’t get traction. We did it substantially differently. Having that kind of platform to be born into the world got our name out there, gave us a lot of users fairly quickly, and made it easy to demonstrate growth.
TechCrunch: So if you had to name a few things that led to your success, what would they be?
Mint.com: I think TC40 made us.
It was the launch at TechCrunch and the work we did to parlay that into making us a reputable service. Another thing that helped was the economic crisis. Being financially conscious was actually cool all of the sudden, and we could help people be cool and not be trapped in the desktop or a legacy personal finance tool. We modernized it and made it mobile.
TechCrunch: There are hundreds of entrepreneurs headed to New York right now, if they aren’t already here. As a winner, and a super successful member of the Disrupt alumni clan, what advice would you give to them as they launch their products on stage?
Mint.com: I think the demo has to impress, which rests on the strength of the product. the demo just makes it believable.
But the thing that really resonates — and you have to realize that the panels are made up of guys who are used to investing and seeing lots of ideas come by — is the value proposition of how your product is going to change lives.
If you have that hook, something that makes people believe in your company, then you have a chance.
The next thing that you’re sure to be challenged with is how you’ll do it better than other people. Be prepared to speak about it in those terms. “Here’s how we’re different and that’s why we’re going to win.”
If you can show the product and communicate a clear value proposition and how you’re going to win relative to competitors you’ll have a successful onstage launch.
Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.
If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.
Kudo Tsunoda: 'Waiting for the next big thing isn't about waiting for the Kinect 2'
Last summer, try as we might, we couldn't get too much out of Microsoft's creative director for Kinect Games, Kudo Tsunoda, about what's next from the interactive peripheral. More recently, in an interview with Venture Beat, Tsunoda was a little more verbose about what he thinks the next big thing in Kinect is -- and it isn't a Kinect 2. The good news is, he believes that no new hardware will be required, and the innovations will likely come from developers, as they better understand and utilize the capabilities. A combination of voice, tone and facial recognition along with motion detection will likely be the tools that push the experience into the next era -- such as allowing users to participate in a game's story like an actor. Hit the source if you want to read the full interview, but you can be sure we'll be at E3 again this year to beat him, and others, with the question stick once more.
Kudo Tsunoda: 'Waiting for the next big thing isn't about waiting for the Kinect 2' originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink GamesIndustry | Venture Beat | Email this | CommentsMorning, Hackers! The 24-Hour Disrupt NYC Hackathon: Coding Ends, Judging Starts Soon
It’s been a long, caffeine-fueled ride for the hundreds of hackers who have set up at our big Disrupt NY 2012 Hackathon, but the furious process of taking a wild idea and turning it into something real is finally winding down.
Projects were being finalized, UIs were being tweaked, last minute Red Bulls were being downed — it was a quite a sight to see everyone buckling down for those final few minutes before submissions were due.
It’s almost like a weight has been lifted off everyone’s shoulders though, and more than a few people have chosen to let off some of their stress-fueled steam by running around with the arsenal of Nerf guns we’ve left strewn about.
Oh, but it’s not over yet.
Now that everyone’s hacks have been collected, they’ll all start to take the stage here at Pier 94 and present the fruits of their hard work to our panel of judges. The chosen winners will then have the chance to present their projects at the Disrupt main stage in front of all of our wonderful attendees (but only after they get a few days to catch up on their sleep). On top of that, our API sponsors will be handing our prizes of their own, ranging from cold hard cash to a free Windows Phone.
The Hackathon finals are set to begin in just a few moments, so stay tuned for all the action!
Click to view slideshow.Sure, Draw Something. Just Not The Prophet
Pictures of the Prophet Mohammad have always been a highly contentious issue — they’re not explicitly prohibited in the Qu’ran but many Sunni Muslims forbid the idea, while others do not seem to mind as much. Among the latter group are those who feel that banning such images is a restriction on freedom of expression. The issue at the center of the Pakistan-blocks-Twitter story today has been reported to be around a viral activist campaign that’s been running for the past few years to point attention to this.
But as with the actual blocking of Twitter itself in Pakistan — there has been no official Pakistani government statement about what is actually behind the current Twitter block at the moment (here is a screenshot of an alleged email ordering the block to ISPs with no specific reason behind it) – it’s hard to pin down exactly what content was actually sent around that caused the block in the first place.
And at least one group is raising the question of whether this blockage could be related to the government testing an image filtering service — something with wider-ranging implications.
A Prophet-drawing campaign started on Facebook in 2010 with a specific page, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, created in response to the TV show South Park getting some heat for depicting the Prophet. The EDMD page was eventually taken down; but not before resulting in a temporary Facebook block in Pakistan. This year, according to Wikipedia, EDMD was specifically geared at sending pictures around via Twitter, to protest the arrest of Saudi poet/journalist Hamza Kashgari for writing “insulting” tweets about the Prophet. However, there are a number of Facebook pages that come up when one searches for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” — not clear whether any of these are “official.”
And at least one Pakistani blogger/activist (and, yes, dentist) Awab Alvi has raised the point that there may be no direct blasphemy accusation involved today at all. In a blog post Alvi explains:
Ever since the reports emerged we have asked affected users to help test the site from their ISP connections and within minutes we had hundreds of reports The traceroute shows a very interesting fact, the block is at the DNS level, the url is not resolving right from the get go… My gutt [sic] feeling is that PTA is just testing their URL Filtering system, we had reports of them testing some image servers on facebook last week, and it disappeared by the evening. PTA choose Sunday to avoid any legal backlash exploiting the courts day off….
…The civil society has to its credit a stay order on the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority preventing them from blocking websites obtained on 19th April 2012 which can be used against them.
Once they get through these testing days I am sure it can be later used as and when needed. Though the argument presented by PTA is that it needs this technology to crack down on Terrorism related issue, but one may never know when it can be used for political censorship
Regardless of what is really behind today’s Twitter block, the issue of not being able to easily access the social network clearly touches on a sensitive point in Pakistan around freedom of expression: watch #twitterban to see how people in Pakistan and elsewhere are responding to the story.
We have contacted the Ministry, Facebook and Twitter to try to get more information on this.
Fisker leak shows Atlantic production delayed to mid-2014, 0-60 in 6.5 seconds
Our hopes of taking the Fisker Atlantic for a spin next year just got dampened considerably: a big document leak has revealed that the more reasonably-priced alternative to the Karma won't be rolling off the production lines en masse until mid-2014, a year later than we'd expected. Thanks in part to a factory overhaul, the only Atlantics rolling on their hybrid-powered wheels in mid-2013 will be prototypes. On the upside, we've learned more about the car itself, including a fairly brisk 0-60 time of 6.5 seconds courtesy of a 300HP-equivalent motor. Green drivers who thought that the promised lower price would put it into entry-level luxury will nonetheless get a reality check with that $50,000 to $60,000 target, even if it's still a big savings over the six-digit Karma. There's still a huge amount of leeway for things to change, but with our compatriots at Autoblog having confirmed that the documents were real and "highly confidential," they may be a sign that the Tesla Model S will have free rein in the green luxury sedan world for a good year or more.
Fisker leak shows Atlantic production delayed to mid-2014, 0-60 in 6.5 seconds originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Autoblog | Inside EVs | Email this | CommentsReport: Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over Blasphemous Content, Facebook Complies?
Another day, another example of a country making it harder for its people to use the web and some of its most effective channels of communication? There are reports coming in from Pakistan that it has become the latest country to ban the use of Twitter.
According to the blog Dawn, the chairman of Pakistan’s telecommunications authority has today imposed the restriction because of blasphemous content: it reports that Chairman Mohammad Yaseen blocked the site today “because Twitter refused to remove material related to a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.” Facebook, apparently, has complied with the request, says the blog. Others are now starting to report the same, and below the break we have a screenshot of how accessing the site looks from one of our readers in Lahore who says he “cannot access the site at all.”
Getting blocked in Pakistan, if true, is particularly ironic because the two, paired up, played a major role in one of the most important news events to be broken in recent history: the raid and demise of Osama bin Laden, which was tweeted by at least two people watching the raids as they happened in the mountains of the country.
This is a developing (and slightly confusing) story: just yesterday, about 12 hours ago, Senator Rehman Malik, of Pakistan’s People Party, tweeted that nothing was getting blocked: “Dear all, I assure u that Twitter and FB will continue in our country and it will not be blocked. Pl do not believe in rumors,” he wrote. We have contacted Twitter and Facebook for their responses to this story.
Update: More details coming in from Pakistan’s Express Tribune: The request to block the site was made by the Ministry of Information and Technology, it says, citing a drawing competition (more on that here). The ministry, apparently, made several requests to Twitter, which responded that it “cannot stop any individual doing anything of this nature on the website.”
Directives to block the site were sent to ISPs in several parts of the country, including PTCL Broadband and Wi-Tribe. It also reports that Twitter is still accessible by mobile using secure browsers like Opera, as well as proxies and VPNs like Vtunnel. [original report continues]
This is not the first time that Twitter has been blocked in the country: a similar ban took place in 2010, Dawn reports. That lasted for two weeks.
The move underscores how susceptible social networks remain to higher powers in government. And Pakistan is not the only country to pull something like this.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter are still officially forbidden in China (although millions use it anyway using VPNs — virtual private networks), with the bans often having strong political overtones around people expressing contrary opinions. Developing countries with big populations represent some of the biggest potential growth opportunities for scale-oriented social networks — when they can get used.
Even developed countries like the UK have floated ideas about how to restrict the flow of information on social networks — this was something that came up last summer during the London riots and the role that some believed services like BlackBerry Messenger played in gangs getting organized to loot.
Update 2: One of our awesome readers in Lahore, Waqas Ali, sent us this screenshot:
Ali has also played a role in a past campaign in the country to keep Facebook from getting banned. He says that he cannot access Twitter at all right now but that a friend is able to use the Opera Mini browser to access the site.
Update 3: Here is a follow up post some back story on Prophet drawings, along with another theory: the blockage could be to do with Pakistan testing an image filtering service, which sounds even wider-ranging in its possibilities.
[Image: Farooq on Flickr]
Researchers develop silicon ReRAM chip, send warning shot to Flash memory
Does the word ReRAM ring a bell? No? Well, the key point is that it's much faster than NAND memory, and it's making its way into chips from Elpida, Sharp and Panasonic. Further proof that ReRAM is on the up and up? Researchers at University College London have used this technology to make a chip that operates at 100 times the speed of standard Flash memory. The device is composed completely of silicon oxide, which improves the chip's resistance, and it doesn't require a vacuum to work (which makes it cheaper to produce). But this new chip is more than just a faster alternative to Flash; its ability to move between different states of conductivity means it can be configured as a memristor, or a device that handles both data-processing and storage tasks. In the long term, researchers hope this technology can pave the way for silicon oxide CPUs -- and UCL is already using this design to help develop transparent memory chips for mobile devices. Need to know more? Feast your heart on the gritty details via the link below.
Researchers develop silicon ReRAM chip, send warning shot to Flash memory originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 06:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Phys.org | | Email this | CommentsNokia uses Lumia 900 as a hammer in a torture test, makes us wince (video)
As much as we're familiar with mobile device torture tests, they're normally inflicted by us or otherwise not-so-voluntary. Nokia, however, has stepped up to the plate and doled out the abuse to the Lumia 900 itself with a hammer and nail, all based on a wager that the Windows Phone's use of Gorilla Glass would hold up to Sonim-level punishment. The company's Chris Ruble and Mike Meyers (not that Mike Myers) used a Lumia 710 as a dry run before an on-camera demo that not only saw the 900 assaulted with the hammer, but used as a blunt instrument itself -- all without a crack or scratch. We imagine that other toughened-glass phones would survive the hit, and there's every possibility that smacking the polycarbonate plastic would leave more than a scuff mark. Nokia's test still proves that its pride and joy can withstand more than just a casual roughing up, and you can see the slightly cringe-inducing test in the video below.
Continue reading Nokia uses Lumia 900 as a hammer in a torture test, makes us wince (video)
Nokia uses Lumia 900 as a hammer in a torture test, makes us wince (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink WMPoweruser | Nokia Conversations | Email this | CommentsAlternative Wii U controller design makes brief appearance on Twitter, goes into hiding
Excited for Nintendo's new tablet-esque controller? So are the kids in TT Games' QA department. An over-excited tester tweeted out an image of a slightly different Wii U slab than the one we laid hands on at E3 2011, teasing "look we what we have at work!" Answering the call does indeed reveal something worth looking at -- a somewhat wider looking Wii U slate featuring two full-sized analog sticks (as opposed to 3DS-like circle pads), a pair of unmarked button-like squares, and a new starboard home for the controller's plus and minus buttons.
The tweet was summarily pulled, of course, but not before our friends at Joystiq nabbed a screenshot. Naturally, the rumor mill started right up, churning out speculation of developer specific slabs, early prototypes and late redesigns. The truth? We'll probably need to wait until E3 to find out, but we reached out to Nintendo for a comment all the same. We'll let you know if we hear anything more than the usual "Nintendo doesn't comment on rumors and speculation" line.
Alternative Wii U controller design makes brief appearance on Twitter, goes into hiding originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 02:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Joystiq | Twitter | Email this | CommentsBreaking my Production Website: A Post-Mortem
Neuroscientists develop game for stroke rehabilitation, give the Wii a run for its money
Think the Wii has the market cornered on gaming rehab? Think again -- neuroscientists at Newcastle University are developing a series of motion controlled video games to make stroke rehab more fun and accessible. The team's first title, dubbed Circus Challenge, lets patients digitally throw pies, tame lions and juggle to help them build strength and regain motor skills. As players progress, the game ratchets up its difficulty, presumably to match pace with their recovery.
Although Limbs Alive, the game's publisher, has only described their motion controller as "next-generation," it affirms that the game will be playable on PCs, laptops and tablets later this year. In an effort to lower costs and provide at-home therapy, the team hopes to leverage a £1.5 million award from the UK's Health Innovation Challenge Fund to build a system that will allow therapists to monitor patient progress remotely. The whole enchilada still needs some time to bake, but you can hit the break for a video and the full press release.
Neuroscientists develop game for stroke rehabilitation, give the Wii a run for its money originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 00:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink CNET | Newcastle University, Limbs Alive | Email this | Comments2-legged OAuth with OAuth 1.0 and 2.0
The Cloudcast: PaaS Meets Data Gravity
Developing a Sample Todo Desktop Application Using JavaFX and MongoDB
Getting Started With RESTEasy and NetBeans IDE 7.1
