Reality Bites
In an interview with Swiss television, Carmen Scheifele, H.R. Giger’s wife, reported that the famed designer will be onboard for Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel, which will be in 3-D and may consist of two films. More »
FOX is 100% committed to Fringe, just not the Fringe you’ve been watching. In comments made to EW’s Jeff Jensen, FOX execs described their game-plan to save the show – which doesn’t need saving, according to them (confusing!) – by reinventing the image of Fringe from dense character driven adult SciFi to rebellious-teen targeted horror.
We’re assuming it would still prefer you use Internet Explorer for all your web browsing needs, but Microsoft is now lending something of a helping hand to Windows 7 users that insist on using Firefox for one reason or another. It’s just released a plug-in that gets around Firefox’s current limitations in handling H.264-encoded videos on HTML5 pages by taking advantage of the H.264 support built into Windows 7. On a more technical level, that means the plug-in parses HTML5 pages and replaces the Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in, which then allows the content to be played right in the browser. Sound like just what you’ve been waiting for? Hit up the link below to download the add-on and try it yourself.
Microsoft releases H.264 video plug-in for Windows 7 Firefox users originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A train from Baltimore to Philadelphia stalled on the tracks for ten hours last night. With doors locked and electricity waning, passengers cried and fought for emergency rations. A local news reporter happened to be on board, and tweeted it. More »
A-suh-ss? Ah-sue-ss? As-ses? Nope, all wrong. We’ve been informed by ASUS that its head honcho has recently set a new rule in an attempt to rid our frustration, so what used to be “Ah-seuss” is now “A-seuss” (or “Eh-SUS” according to Taiwanese phonetics, as pictured). The logic behind this? Apparently it’s a direct chop from the pronunciation of “pegasus” — the origin of the company’s name — which ironically seems to favor the former diction. Anyhow, let’s not confuse ourselves any further and just study this lovely lady’s video demo after the break.
Continue reading How to pronounce ASUS (video)
How to pronounce ASUS (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In gaming, 3D graphics get more powerful, environments get more expansive, enemies get more intelligent, but still facial animations haven’t progressed much since Pac-Man chomped his first power pellet in 1980. Finally, a major breakthrough courtesy of Australian company Depth Analysis. It has developed technology called MotionScan, which enables a high-res 3D recreation of a person’s face — not just capturing bits and pieces of facial animation but their entire head, right down to the hairstyle. It’s getting its first use in next year’s L.A. Noire, a 1940s PS3 and Xbox 360 murder mystery game from Rockstar, and while we don’t know enough about the title to be able to say whether it’s worth plunking down a pre-order now, after watching the video embedded below it’s clear that the bar has been raised.
Continue reading L.A. Noire’s amazing MotionScan facial capture system demonstrated (video)
L.A. Noire’s amazing MotionScan facial capture system demonstrated (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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North Korea warns South Korea to stop planned artillery drills on an island the North bombed last month, saying its retaliation would be even more intense than its original attack.
Lindsay Powers
The net released a movie-style trailer to declare the show won’t go off the air when it moves…
Full story at The Live Feed
Windows: We’ve learned to stop worrying about antivirus software since Microsoft released their great Microsoft Security Essentials suite, but today it gets even better, improving Windows Firewall integration, network traffic inspection, and an heuristic scanning engine. More »
Collaborating on a spreadsheet is different than collaborating on a text document—if someone messes up a cell, for example, it's harder to see the change in the bigger picture. No longer, at least if you're using Google Docs, which has implemented revision history for spreadsheets, a feature which even Microsoft Office doesn’t seem to offer in Excel. [Docs Blog] More »
Every so often an idea comes along that perfectly realizes the potential of its platform, leaving us in complete awe. Simple, yet brilliant, and executed just right. Today that idea is embodied in Word Lens, an augmented reality iPhone app that uses Optical Character Recognition to translate words from one language to another. Word Lens will grab an image, interpret it, and draw the words right back onto the screen–but in another language.
If you’ve ever need proof that augmented reality is the future of mobile technology, this is it. Watch the video below–you won’t be disappointed.
Word Lens is a free download on the App Store, but the two currently available dictionaries–Spanish/English and English/Spanish–cost $5 each. The app only works on iDevices with video cameras, which should be obvious given its augmented reality nature. Because Word Lens is primarily a word-to-word translation system, it’s not going to retain the nuances of grammar or sentence structure. But it’ll get the idea across.
With more languages likely to come in the future from developer Quest Visual, Word Lens and Google’s Text-to-Voice ambitions may revolutionize international travel and communication within the next few years. So long as you have a smart phone, anyway.
RIM dropped an intriguing hint about a likely release date for the BlackBerry PlayBook during its Q3 earnings call this week — namely, that the company expects the first revenue from the dual-core tablet to arrive in the first quarter of the company’s fiscal year. “There are no PlayBook revenues included in our Q4 guidance, and we expect the first revenue impact from PlayBook will be in RIM’s first quarter,” a RIM spokeswoman said, adding that the PlayBook is still slated to ship in the first quarter of the calendar year. If that still sounds like financial gibberish, let us clarify a tad — RIM’s first fiscal quarter doesn’t start till March, which happens to be when the first calendar quarter ends. Oh, RIM can certainly revise its guidance to shareholders and launch the BlackBerry PlayBook earlier or later if that’s what execs deem fit, but if both of RIM’s statements remain true, then March is when the PlayBook will ship. Isn’t logic wonderful?
BlackBerry PlayBook will ship in March, assuming inertial momentum originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Del.icio.us, a beloved social bookmarking service, is being killed off as part of some "organizational streamlining" by Yahoo and we're already in tears. Here's some advice on how to preserve the memories—and bookmarks—we have with the service. More »
While tossing hats onto the ice when a player scores three goals might be hockey’s most famous tossing tradition, it simply doesn’t compare to the Technicolor grandeur of 23,096 teddy bears and other stuffed animals blanketing the rink as they did at the Calgary Hitmen game on Sunday:
For 16 years the Hitmen, who were co-owned by and named after former WWF champion Bret Hart, have held a Teddy Bear Toss to benefit over 50 charities in Alberta that work with children. On Monday, after the 23,000-strong toss, the players hand-delivered teddy bears to the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
[Rewind: Fans protest by making it rain tennis balls]
The fans bring the stuffed animals to the game and then wait for the first goal to be scored. For the 16,844 fans at the Scotiabank Saddledome watching the Hitmen take on the Red Deer Rebels on Sunday, the honor went to Cody Sylvester at 3:49 of the first period. He scored, and the mayhem started and continued for 40 minutes while play was delayed. "It's unbelievable," Sylvester told the Examiner after the game. "Scoring in front of all those fans and all those teddy bears coming down on you — it's a pretty special moment."
Here’s a longer look at the Teddy Bear Toss: a five-minute clip that chronicles what it was like to sit against the glass and have 23,000 stuffed animals pelting you, the other fans and, eventually, the ice.
This year's total was an improvement on last season's 16,755 bears. The Hitmen own the world record for the Teddy Bear Toss, now a minor league hockey tradition, with 26,919 in 2007. If you’re wondering what that looked like, here’s a glimpse.
[Rewind: Fan taser incident interrupts game]
The Teddy Bear Toss may not be one of hockey's most well-known traditions, but for the teams that hold them there's nothing else like it.
Stick-tap to Deadspin for the clip.
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Android: Google Maps on Android has always been great, but today's update brings it to a new level of awesome, adding 3D maps, compass mode, and offline caching so you can get anywhere you need to go—even without internet. More »
Facebook has announced its latest plans to assimilate our lives—facial recognition. In a few weeks, the social network will scan pics you upload and attempt to identify your friends—then tag them. It's OK, you can turn it off. More »
South Korea says it will conduct artillery drills similar to ones that prompted North Korea to shell a front-line island last month.
The Windows Live Team has launched a new website showcasing and organizing plugins for Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Writer.
Photo Gallery plugins include, Inkubook (for creating professional looking photobooks), various uploaders (Facebook, Picasa, and Youtube) and other publishers for content management systems.
Movie Maker plugins are currently a little more limited,…