Archive | November, 2010
Looks Like Kinect Got Hacked
The motion-tracking power of Kinect for Xbox 360 could soon be used in PCs or robots, whether Microsoft likes it or not.
A member of the Natural User Interface Group appears to have gained control over Microsoft’s motion-sensing camera. In one YouTube video, the hacker uses a Windows application to tilt the camera up and down. In another, a pair of videos provide feedback from Kinect’s depth and color sensors.
Engadget tracked down the hacker, who goes by “AlexP” in the NUI Group forums. He may not release his work to the public, intending instead to integrate it with CL Studio Live visualization software, but the quick hacking bodes well for other people who want to push Kinect beyond its intended use. There’s certainly an incentive; Adafruit Industries, a seller of do-it-yourself electronics kits, is offering a $2,000 reward to the first person to post open-source Kinect drivers.
Wake Up, You iPhone-Owning Sleepyhead
5. November 2010
Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Lark Up
Price: $99
It’s a charging dock for your iPhone or iPod Touch. It’s an alarm clock that doesn’t make any noise. It’s Lark Technologies’ Lark Up–and it is, if nothing else, unusual. You stick your iPhone or Touch in the bedside base station, where it tells you the time and lets you set an alarm. Then you put on the accompanying wrist strap. When it’s time to wake up, the strap vibrates, bringing you out of your slumber in a manner that the company says is “more peaceful” and “natural.” (It also lets anyone else nearby who might be asleep continue to snooze.)
The Lark Up will be available early next year. What’s your take–brilliant, silly, both, or neither?
Another War Game Tries to Get it Right
5. November 2010
Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo has a fascinating preview of Homefront, which he describes as “a war game that gets closer to what is awful about war, not just about what victors celebrate.”
Homefront is about a unified Korea’s invasion and occupation of America. That alone isn’t a novel idea — Russia was America’s occupant in Freedom Fighters — but Kaos Studios is apparently trying not to sugar-coat war’s harsh realities. In the game’s opening sequence, a mother pleas with her child to turn away before she and her husband are lined up and shot by Korean troops. Later, the player witnesses Korean Americans confined to a U.S. internment camp, an allusion to the United States’ treatment of Japanese Americans during World War 2.
Okay, so Homefront wants to be a serious game about war, and to move beyond simple entertainment, but it won’t be the first game in recent memory to try.
Death by Fabulously Successful iOS Launch
5. November 2010
It’s become a bizarre rite of passage: Interesting apps for the iPhone and iPad keep appearing, getting attention, and then being literally overwhelmed by consumer response.
The latest example: Skyfire, the smartphone browser that lets you watch some Flash videos on an iPhone. It hit the App Store on Wednesday. Then throngs of people read about it and downloaded it. The app, which is as much a service as a piece of software–it relies servers which translate Flash video into an iPhone-friendly format on the fly–stopped working in any sort of satisfactory way, and its creators yanked it from the App Store.
Now it’s back, sort of –they’re letting in new users in drips and drabs by putting Skyfire on the App Store and then taking it down and then putting it up again. (It seems to be up at the moment.)
The Best Gadgets of 2010: Your Nominations Needed
5. November 2010
In a couple of months at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Technologizer will cohost the 2011 edition of Last Gadget Standing, the awards ceremony that’s been a CES highlight for ten years. The goal is to find and celebrate the single coolest gadget at the show–we define “gadget” as any device that’s small enough to carry without too much trouble–and we need your help to identify contenders.
As usual, the CES show floors will be dense with stuff, including thousands of products introduced since the last CES. So start chiming in with nominations, please: What are the coolest, most interesting most innovative gadgets of 2011? Feel free to name either the ones you think have changed the industry the most, or the ones that have simply made your life better.
As we LGS judges draw up our list of contenders, we’ll draw on your recommendations. Thanks in advance, and let the debate begin!
This Isn’t Going to Last Long
5. November 2010
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In Sign of Ping Flop, Apple Pleas for Users
5. November 2010
Apple’s trying to get the word out about Ping, the iTunes-based social network that launched in September.
The outreach, according to Boy Genius Report, entails an e-mail blast to Apple customers. “Ping already has millions of users — including 2,000 artists — and is growing fast,” the note says. “Fast” is relative, of course, and the “millions” could include people like myself, who tried Ping once and promptly forgot about it. BGR notes that Apple doesn’t often send e-mails to remind users about successful products.
There are a lot of reasons I don’t use Ping, but the e-mail points to the social network’s biggest problem: It’s isolated from the rest of the world.
NudgeMail: A To-Do List So Simple It Doesn’t Involve a To-Do List
4. November 2010
I’m constantly searching for new ways to manage tasks, but I’m never going to live in any to-do manager. E-mail is the app I live in–and to be even more specific, what I live in is my inbox. I’m far from alone, and a clever new service called NudgeMail acknowledges that by turning e-mail into a to-do manager. (Or, if you prefer to think of it this way, a to-do manager into e-mail.)
Hulu Plus Now Open to All
4. November 2010
If you’re itching to pay $10 per month for Hulu Plus, you no longer have to get an invitation to the party.
Hulu announced today that its premium service is now open to everyone. Hulu Plus is still technically in its preview stage, but at least now you can try the service without waiting for an arbitrary go-ahead. (For Playstation 3 users, the service will stop requiring a Playstation Plus subscription within the next week.)
Nookcolor: The Third-Party Android App Story
4. November 2010
Barnes & Noble has been intimating that Android applications for the upcoming color version of its Nook e-reader will be different from those already downloadable from Google’s Android Market. But exactly how? For one thing, people accessing Android apps on the Nookcolor tablet won’t necessarily even need to know–or care–anything about Android, explained Claudia Romanini, the head of Nook developer arm Nookdeveloper, in an interview this week.
Instead, developers creating apps for the Nook e-reader will be urged to build “reader-center apps that will blend in seamlessly with our reader’s tablet environment,” she told me.
What Kinect and Windows Phone 7 Have in Common
4. November 2010
From the Kinect reviews I’ve read so far, there seems to be consensus on one thing: Microsoft’s Xbox 360 motion controller is a neat idea with flawed execution.
Although the technology is undeniably cool — Kinect detects your movement head-to-toe with a camera and responds to voice commands — the software is inconsistent, and unless you’ve got a large living room with even lighting and few no major obstructions, the hardware won’t work perfectly. There’s also a little bit of lag.
Kinect draws a parallel in my mind to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft’s new mobile platform lays a strong foundation — the tile menu is a fresh approach to smartphone interfaces, and the overall feel is like butter — but app selection is a concern, and the OS is held back by missing features and the occasional puzzling design choice.
Google Instant Gets Small–Maybe Too Small
4. November 2010
Google’s new Google Instant user interface, which debuted in the search engine’s PC-based service a couple of months ago, is now up and running in the version of Google you get on iPhones, iPod Touches, and Android devices. (Android 2.2 devices, that is–that Android fragmentation which supposedly doesn’t exist prevents users of earlier versions from getting the new interface–and to be fair, it also requires iOS 4.) It’s in beta, and you turn it on via a link below the search field on Google.com.
The mobile version of Google Instant is largely identical to the desktop one: As you type, Google shows you continuously-updated suggestions (which are helpful but not new–you get them even with Instant turned off) and displays a list of results without you having to press Search. But the fact it’s all happening on a phone screen changes the experience. For one thing, the on-screen keyboard on my iPhone covers most of the results, rendering the whole experience less instant. (This wouldn’t be an issue with an Android phone with a physical keyboard, such as Verizon’s Droid 2.)
A Security Blanket You Can Wear on Your Wrist
4. November 2010
Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Laipac S-911 Bracelet Locator
Price: $329
Think of the S-911 Bracelet Locator as a 911 call on steroids. It’s a multipurpose device that includes a digital watch, a GPS location tracker, an emergency cellular phone (with a tamper detection lock wrist band), an SOS Emergency button, and a motion sensor. A keypad lets users send alerts in the event of an emergency; they can enter a pre-defined group e-mail list that directs emergency events to any smart phone and/or call center. The S-911 uses intelligent motion detection and a geo-location system that uses GPS and a GSM/GPRS transceiver, integrated on the SIM card. The result is a lightweight watch-sized device with 40 hours of battery life that allows a person to move around without restricting his or her liberty. 
Wi-Fi Direct Hits Smartphones, Samsung Galaxy S
4. November 2010
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The Wi-Fi Alliance announced just over a week ago that it would begin certifying products under the new Wi-Fi Direct standard. Now, according to the organization’s own certification list, the first smartphone has qualified for new point-to-point Wi-Fi communications. The Samsung GT-I9000, aka the Galaxy S, received Wi-Fi Direct certification on November 1st. It’s eighth in a list of certified devices, but the first smartphone to make the cut. As a reminder, Wi-Fi Direct facilitates device-to-device wireless 802.11 communication without requiring a wireless access point or going out to the web. Best of all, only one device has to be Wi-Fi Direct certified to enable wireless networking with any other Wi-Fi gadget. That means Galaxy S owners will, in theory, be able to share photos, music, video, and other files over a localized network. It’s like Bluetooth, only you probably have a few more Wi-Fi devices lying around.
(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)
What to Do When Windows’ “Corrupt Files” Message Haunts You
4. November 2010
I did the unbelievable — a beginner’s mistake, if I ever heard one. I unplugged of a USB-attached device without using the Safely Remove Hardware applet. And up from the depths of the system tray came the here-comes-lunch “Windows – Corrupt File” message.
I was worried, and rightly so, because it was a client’s hard drive that now had a corrupt file. (He doesn’t read TechBite, so the secret’s safe.)
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8. November 2010
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