Reality Bites
You’d be forgiven for having that reaction to this photo of the Ames Monument, a pyramid in Wyoming built to commemorate the transcontinental railroad. But that strange, unearthly light is just the beginning of the weirdness on display here. More »
Researchers from Brown University have developed a way to view the brain using two dimensional neural maps. With their software, you can navigate the brain the same way you would use a Google Street Map. The benefit to all this being that you can easily spot bundles of neurons (or whatever you're looking for) without the interference from all that other crap one stores up there. For instance, a doctor could inspect a specific group of fiber tracts by using their mouse to select that bundle of neurons. On top of improved visibility, they're also able to see extra info, statistics, and a 3D view of just that section. But I wonder what a Street View component would entail—Magic School Bus, anyone? [Brown University] More »
Is the company that revolutionized the mobile world now falling behind a more nimble and restless opponent? So it seems.
Apple has a reputation of shaking up every market that they go into. They did it in the PC industry, they did it with MP3 players, they did it in the phone market, and lastly they’re doing in the tablet world as well. Knowing that, I was expecting the company to wow me once again at its WWDC conference this morning. I kept waiting for that one feature that’d make me run to the nearest Apple store and sell my soul to Steve Jobs. But that never happened.
Instead, what I saw was a company that is now trying to keep up with the 800-pound gorilla of the mobile world: Android. Feature after feature I kept thinking to myself: “I already have this on my Android phone”. In fact, some of these “magical” features have been available since Android 1.0. Let’s take a look at some of them.
As we told you earlier today, Apple agrees with us in that the Android notification system is awesome. That’s why the company went ahead and copied it pixel by pixel. We don’t blame them, iOS’s previous notification system was a disaster. It interrupted whatever it was you were doing, it forced you to choose what to do right away, and there was no way to keep track of all of them in one single place. Now when your iPhone-touting friend shows you this new cool notification bar, you can just say: “You’re welcome”.
Launching apps right from the lock screen? Yep, Android did it. Samsung’s TouchWiz 4.0 and HTC’s Sense 3.0 both support this feature. It’s kind of ironic that Apple is suing both of these companies for copying iOS, but the company doesn’t have a problem with doing the same thing.
Twitter integration is coming to iOS in a big way. Pretty soon, iOS users will be able to tweet from their browsers, photo gallery, YouTube and Google Maps. Twitter information — like user name and photo — will also be added to any of your contacts that has a Twitter account. Sound familiar? It should, because Android has been doing this for ages, but only better. Due to Android’s openness, any third-party app is able to reach this same level of integration within the OS. From popular services like Twitter, to a hot new startup, everybody is able to do this on Android.
Safari’s version for the iPad is getting, wait for it, Tabs! You might say that this is just an obvious feature to bring from the desktop version of Safari, but the iPad has been available for a long time and interestingly, Google introduced this same feature a few months ago for Honeycomb. Coincidence? You tell me.
It’s not even fun anymore at this point. With iOS 5, users will be able to “Activate and set up your device wirelessly, right out of the box. Download free iOS software updates directly on your device.” As you probably know, Android has been doing this since the T-Mobile G1. Last time I connected my Android phone to a computer was to…. wait, I’ve never done such a thing. Welcome to a wires-free world, iOS users. We’ve been waiting for you for years.
You know you’ve fallen behind when most of the features you announce are in response to whatever the competition is doing. While Apple is busy adding all of these features, Google is already thinking about the next big thing. By the time iOS 5 arrives this Fall (in the Fall? really Apple?), Google will be getting ready to release Ice Cream Sandwich. If what we saw at Google I/O is any indication, Android’s next version will make iOS 5 look like a Fisher-Price OS.
Now that you’ve read about the features that Apple copied from Android, here are five features that Android needs to borrow from iOS. What do you guys think? Do you think Apple will ever be able to catch up to Google? Let us know in the comments.[1]
With Google’s fleet of Chromebooks making their way to market, Mozilla Labs has decided to release a similarly browser-based desktop interface, known as the Webian Shell. As of now, the prototype app consists of a screen-encompassing web browser, which essentially replaces your desktop interface. There’s an address bar running across the top of the screen, a clock in the bottom right corner, and a tab button for all your web apps. Developed as part of the company’s Mozilla Chromeless project, the tool was written entirely in HTML, CSS and JavaScript and, unlike Chrome OS, is designed to run on top of existing operating systems, rather than replace them. For now, the Shell is still in an early phase of development, looks pretty spartan and can’t control a system’s hardware. Mozilla, however, says it has plans to incorporate multiple home screens, split screen views and an on-screen keyboard, among other features. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users can download the Shell now, from the source link. Otherwise, you can just head past the break to see a brief demo video.
Continue reading Mozilla’s Webian Shell interface will cloak your OS in a browser (video)
Mozilla’s Webian Shell interface will cloak your OS in a browser (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Go Pro HDs are the camera for recording extreme activities. Like skiing. Or skimboarding. Or surfing. And hell, even hulahooping. A girl attached a Go Pro HD to record what it would look like from the inside and it’s crazy. More »
These may not have made the cut to appear in Microsoft’s E3 keynote earlier today but gamers will probably appreciate two new features mentioned in a letter from Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten. “Cloud Storage for Game Saves and Live Profiles” is first up and provides access to ones profile and saves from any console, at any time with the option to save to XBL servers instead of a memory unit or hard drive. It all sounds very similar to the service offered for PlayStation Plus but as Joystiq notes, so far exact details are scant. The other feature mentioned is support for “Beacons” which go one step further than broadcasting what you’re playing or watching right now by allowing users to flag what they want to play, and lets friends on XBL or Facebook see that so they can meet you for a game. Check out the full letter after the break or over on the ‘stiq, we’ll sit back and dream of a future world where bringing our XBL profile by a friend’s house to keep track of our beatdowns is as easy as just logging in.
Continue reading Xbox Live adds cloud saves, ‘beacons’ that tell friends what you want to play
Xbox Live adds cloud saves, ‘beacons’ that tell friends what you want to play originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Calgary Flames hired Craig Hartsburg as an associate coach Monday. Hartsburg, who spent the last two seasons with the WHL’s Everett Silvertips, has 14 years of coaching experience in the NHL, including head coaching stints with Chicago, Anaheim and Ottawa.
USB-powered monitors started out small but are finally getting big enough to serve as a main display. The 24-inch ASUS MS248B is brought to life with a single cable courtesy of USB 3.0’s extra current and bandwidth. What’s more, this is achieved with few compromises: the LED monitor is just 16.5mm (0.66-inches) thick, does 1080p with a 2ms response time and has a 10000000:1 contrast ratio (although this last spec requires the usual seasoning). Some extras did have to be thrown overboard to bring power consumption down — there’s no additional USB or audio ports, webcam, card reader or ability to daisy-chain. But then, how much could you achieve with a mere 9W?
ASUS MS248B 24-inch display does it all with one cable, thank you USB 3.0 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Antimatter atoms have been held captive and kept in existence for a whopping 16 minutes by a Canadian-led team, opening the door to new discoveries about the nature of antimatter.
The Apple vs. Android battle is about to get a little more heated, as new elements introduced for iOS 5 at today’s WWDC do little but blatantly copy what Android has already perfected. Pull-down notifications will ship as part of Apple’s latest iOS, and guess what…they are almost identical to what we have had on Android phones for years. Apple’s “Notification Center” gathers all of the iPhone’s system notifications into a single location, one which can be dragged down from the top status bar of the iOS user interface. Sound familiar? Apple, of course, will try to package the new feature as if it is revolutionary and something altogether new. Wrong. But then again, isn’t imitation the most sincere form of flattery? It’s all good, while Apple struggles to implement new UI elements, Google is already looking forward to bigger and better things.
Posted by Irene Chung, Software Engineer
Google Calendar has become indispensable for organizing my own time and sharing my schedule with friends and coworkers. But what about letting others know about my preferred availability? Likewise, when I look at my hairdresser’s online calendar, I wonder why I can’t just book the open slot instead of remembering to call during regular business hours. Now, with appointment slots in Google Calendar, any individual or business can manage appointment availability online 24/7.
Creating appointment slots
To get started, set up blocks of time you’d like to offer as appointment slots. Simply click anywhere on your calendar and then on “Appointment slots.” From there, create a single block of time or automatically split a larger block of time into smaller appointment slots.
When someone visits your sign up page, their calendar is overlaid for convenience and they can sign up directly for any available appointment slot. When they sign up, Google Calendar conveniently creates a new shared event on both of your calendars.
Et its E3 presser today, Microsoft finally made Halo 4 official, which we knew would someday happen since we saw Master Chief sailing off toward that random planet in Halo 3. But now it’s real, and 343 Industries gets to step up to the plate and see what they can do with a proper entry in the beloved franchise. Should be interesting, to say the least.
They revealed the game with a teaser that shows Chief and Cortana heading toward some sort of sphincter-looking thingie. That’s about it. No deets and no release window, but know it’s coming. Weirdly, they didn’t say it would support Kinect, but you know it will.
For months, Tepco and Japanese officials refused to admit that there had been any meltdowns at Fukushima.
Then they said there were meltdowns at reactors 1, 2 and 3 … but they might have only been partial meltdowns.
Finally, today, they admitted the obvious: there were total meltdowns at all 3 reactors. As CNN reports:
Japan’s
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at
three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the
country’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.
The
nuclear group’s new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than
previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an
earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
***
Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.
***
But
Tokyo Electric [on May 24th] released a second possible scenario for
reactors 2 and 3, one that estimated a full meltdown did not occur. In
that scenario, the company estimated the fuel rods may have broken but
may not have completely melted.
***
Temperature data showed
the two reactors had cooled substantially in the more than two months
since the incident, Tokyo Electric said in May.
***
Tokyo
Electric avoided using the term “meltdown,” and says it was keeping
the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN
after the company’s announcement in May said that while it may have
been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.
“On
the basis of what they showed, if there’s not fuel left in the core, I
don’t know what it is other than a complete meltdown,” said Gary Was, a
University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN
consultant. And given the damage reported at the other units, “It’s
hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors.”
As the Japan Times reports today, the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has “more than doubled its estimate of the radioactive material ejected into
the air in the early days of the Fukushima nuclear crisis”.
Japan Times also notes
that plutonium has been found in soil outside of the nuclear complex –
about 1.7 kilometers from the front gate of Fukushima. However, the
plutonium probably came from the so-called “hydrogen explosions”, which
hopefully won’t happen again. (However, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen believes that at least some of the explosions were caused by nuclear reactions in the fuel pools.)
While it is tempting to believe that the worst of the crisis is over, some of the reactors are more radioactive than ever, and nuclear chain reactions may still be occurring.
And it’s not just the reactors themselves.
Remember that – when the spent fuel rods stored onsite within the reactor buildings are included – the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.
For background, see this.
We quite liked X-Men: First Class, but sadly it failed to levitate the box office with the power of its mind. The mutant prequel made just $56 million in its opening weekend, less than the $69 million some analysts predicted. More »
Halo HD is hardly a secret at this point; all that was left was a real announcement, and that has finally been made at the MS E3 presser. Called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the game looks quite pretty; it isn’t just a new coat of paint on this baby. Also, it’ll come with new multiplayer maps. Look for it to street on November 15 of this year.
Microsoft confirmed the recent rumors and announced a new streaming TV implementation for the Xbox 360 today at its pre-E3 2011 keynote. The Kinect and Bing-powered voice search that can pull in content from online sources like Hulu, Netflix and Xbox Live Marketplace, will also work with live TV from IPTV partners. So far that list only includes Sky in the UK, Foxtel in Australia and Canal+ in France, but users there will be able to search across all the services and view them directly through the console itself. There's no word on any US-based partners but if we had to guess AT&T's U-verse will probably be first in line again. One thing you will be able to watch in the US — PPV UFC fights, streamed directly to the Xbox 360.
Update: The official press release is out (and included after the break) where Microsoft mentions its “commitment to expand access to live television programming on Xbox 360 to more providers in the United States and around the world during the upcoming year”. While U-verse’s Mediaroom underpinnings certainly put it in the lead, we can see others like FiOS or Comcast potentially swooping in as well. Finally, would it be too much to ask for some of this universal search magic to extend to the Media Center extender software as well?
Microsoft integrates live TV from Sky TV, Foxtel and Canal on Xbox 360 — more providers coming originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Quick refreshing of Microsoft’s E3 landing page has apparently revealed some of the things it will be announcing within a couple of hours at its E3 press conference, including new features for Xbox Live like Voice Search and new look for the service. With the explosive popularity of the Kinect add-on, it looks like the system is being refashioned with support built in from the ground up as opposed to the current menu system that’s more of an afterthought. Also mentioned on the page are Dance Central 2, Kinect Sports Season 2 and most importantly, two new Halo games. One is Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary which appears to be the HD (& possibly 3D) remake leaked by Joystiq previously, while the other is Halo 4 — no explanation needed. We’ll surely find out everything when the press conference kicks off live at 12:30 p.m. Eastern and of course we’ll be covering all of the news live right here.
Update: Microsoft’s just confirmed some of the leaked information onstage at its E3 keynote, with demonstrations of a deeply integrated voice command setup powered by Kinect. YouTube has been announced as an Xbox Live partner, while Bing is coming to the console to let users search across Netflix, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Hulu all at once.That universal search also extends to new live TV partnerships with Sky, Canal+ and Foxtel.
[Thanks, q & Pradeep]
Microsoft’s Kinect-based UI for XBL has Bing voice search across Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and live TV originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Kinect is almost as popular for its hacks as it is for actually playing games, but Microsoft and its third party developers are making a hard push for motion and voice-controlled games on the Xbox 360. Popular EA Sports franchises Madden NFL, FIFA World Cup, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour will all join the motion-gaming parade. No longer will you have to punch obscure sequences of buttons to pick plays, you’ll actually be able to call out running patterns to your offensive line. Plenty of others are also getting in on the shouting and arm-flailing action, including Mass Effect 3, Forza Motorsport 4, Fable: The Journey, and Ghost Recon — in fact, we were told, “all future titles in the Tom Clancy franchise will leverage Kinect.” Crytek also offered a sneak peak at Ryse, a Roman-era brawler that will have you headbutting the air to take out baddies. Looks like you’ll have to start stretching before firing up your console from now on.
The following games will also be coming to Xbox 360 with Kinect Support:
Update: We’ve got a slew of demo videos of Kinect Fun Labs after the break — it’s Kinect hacks for the masses!
Gallery: Kinect Fun Labs
Continue reading Kinect support explodes, EA Sports, Mass Effect 3, and more hop on board
Kinect support explodes, EA Sports, Mass Effect 3, and more hop on board originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Android: We were pretty excited when Read It Later first debuted for Android, but now that the price has gone up to $2.99, some of you may be a bit less excited. If you’d like to save and read articles offline but you don’t know if you’re ready to plop down three bucks yet, Read It Later now has a free version of Android that you can try out. Like the Pro version, you can save articles from just about anywhere and read them on your phone, whether you’re online or off. The free version only lets you view a limited number of articles from your queue, though, and you can’t search or sort through them. You also can’t view your list of unfinished articles, scroll with your volume keys, or lock your phone’s rotation. If you don’t really need those features, then it’s great; otherwise it’s a great way to see if the app is right for you. [Android Market via AddictiveTips] More »
Lightning is seen amid a cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue
volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on
June 5, 2011. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a
century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations for 3,500 people as it
sent a cloud of ash that reached Argentina. The National Service of
Geology and Mining said the explosion that sparked the eruption also
produced a column of gas 10 kilometers (six miles) high, hours after
warning of strong seismic activity in the area.
More info here.
