Sabtu, 26 Maret 2011

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What's new on SlashGear.com

Can You Live Without First-Person Shooters?

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 01:30 PM PDT

I recently found myself in a rather interesting video game-related conversation. My friend and I were playing Call of Duty: Black Ops, and he asked me if I could live without first-person shooters.

It was an interesting question that I didn't answer so quickly. I thought of a world without first-person shooters. I imagined the gaming industry being filled with more adventure games. Madden would still be wildly popular. And role-playing games would have more of a presence in the industry than they do now.

Some of the biggest publishers in the business wouldn't be so big. And there would be a chance that smaller studios would have the ability to develop worthwhile games without worrying so much about the industry's high barriers to entry.

After visualizing all that, I reasoned that yes, I could live in a world without first-person shooters. Moreover, I think I'd prefer that world.

Now, I'm sure that there are many gamers out there that scoff at such a statement. They love first-person shooters and derive all kinds of enjoyment from them. To them, the thought of first-person shooters being expelled from the gaming industry is too much to bear.

But when I look at first-person shooters, I think of a category of games that might have done more to hurt the industry than help it. Many of the titles are big on graphics and action, but lacking in storylines and in-depth gameplay. The success of first-person shooters has helped spur a get-rich-quick mentality in the industry that causes developers to turn their backs on innovative ideas and stick with the run-and-guns that are most likely to make money.

Worst of all, every time I play a first-person shooter, I'm reminded of how derivative they really are. I'm a solider of some sort that needs to stop a catastrophe. I have weapons and grenades. Every now and then, I can get into a vehicle. Often times, the same voice actors are in multiple games. And in the vast majority of cases, the multitplayer element is given more thought than the single-player campaign.

When it comes to first-person shooters, it's the same game with a different name.

Of course, I realize that I'm probably one of a select few that can live without first-person shooters. After all, games like Call of Duty: Black Ops continue to set sales records. People around the globe salivate at the thought of sniping others from a perch online. Playing a first-person shooter is simply the favorite pastime of millions of people around the globe.

Luckily for those folks, first-person shooters are here to stay. They represent too much revenue potential for developers to shelve them now. And franchises like Call of Duty have become such an integral part to the financial operations of companies that the chances of first-person shooters not coming to store shelves in droves seem awfully slim.

So, we don't need to worry about living in a world without first-person shooters. But if we did, I think I'd be just fine.

What about you?

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SlashGear Science Week In Review

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 01:20 PM PDT

Welcome to the first SlashGear Science Week In Review. Each Saturday, we will round up our favorite science stories of the week for your perusal. Some are stories that we covered, others we didn’t get to. A sample of this week’s stories: A new form of matter, a hexacopter with superpowers, a robotic cloud, a supercool brown dwarf star, playing music using only your mind, and our ancestors on Mars. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

Did Life on Earth Originate on Mars?

Researchers at MIT and Harvard are working on a device that would help us determine whether life on Earth originated on Mars, or vice versa. The SETG (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes) device is designed to take a sample of Martian soil and process it to find any living or dead organisms, at least within the last 10 million years.

The SETG prototype includes a 1 inch by 1 inch chip with fluidic circuitry and tiny channels that feed in soil samples. The samples are analyzed by using blue light to excite flourescent dyes which help identify DNA within 3072 cubic chambers. Each chamber is about the width of a human hair.

The chances of finding any intact DNA on the surface of the red planet are slim due to the ultraviolet radiation bombarding the surface, so scientists hope to drill down as deep as possible for soil samples.

The instrument is not yet ready to be launched, but scientists hope to have it up and running in about two years. Before being used in space, it would be tested in Antarctica or Chile’s Atacama Desert.

When it actually gets to Mars, all analysis will be done on the planet. You never know, your great, great, great…grandcestor might have been a Martian.

[via Space.com]

A New Phase of Matter?

Strange behavior in warm superconductors has puzzled scientists for over 20 years, and now researchers at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), which is a joint institute of the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, are looking for answers.

Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency, losing nothing to resistance. But there is an “energy gap”, or “pseudogap” that appears when the material enters its superconducting phase.

Electrons pair off at a lower energy to begin superconducting electric current. But now, the scientists have discovered that in one type of copper-based warm superconductor, the electrons are not actually pairing up, they are reorganizing into a distinct order. This new formation remains even after the material begins superconducting. And the new formation may exhibit a new phase of matter, which is not solid, liquid, gas or plasma. In the photo below, the circular formations at the bottom are electrons pairing off, and the orange plumes are the new order forming.

The press release from SLAC is located here.

[via PopSci]

Robotic Cloud Could Cool Qatar’s World Cup Stadium


One of the concerns (aside from terrorism and the treatment of women) about having the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is the blistering 120 degree F heat. Saud Abdul Ghani, the head of the mechanical and industrial engineering department at Qatar University has a possible solution. He has proposed a remote controlled robotic cloud-like structure that would hover over the stadium, shielding it from direct sunlight. The cloud, made of a lightweight carbon structure, would be injected with helium to make it float, and it would be kept in the air by four solar-powered engines. It would be programmed to follow the path of the sun, blocking the sunlight from the stadium as the day progresses. A video showing the cloud in action is here.

[via Discovery Tech]

Play Music Using Only Your Mind

Eduardo Miranda, composer and computer-music teacher, has created a system where someone can play music with their mind. The brain-computer interface tracks and picks up neural impulses from your brain and translates them into musical notes.

To make the system work, the uses wears an EEG skull cap and concentrates on four “buttons” on a screen. When the user is focusing on the button, their brain fires off a unique series of impulses specific to each button. The impulses are captured by the skull cap, and then a series of notes are played. The device has to be calibrated for each user, which takes about two hours right now, but Miranda hopes to streamline the system so it can be dialed in more quickly.

[via Rue Liu on SlashGear]

The Supermoon, Did You See It?


A week ago today, March 19th, the moon was at the perigee of its elliptical orbit, meaning it was at the point in its orbit where it is closest to the earth. This time was extra special, since the moon was both at its perigee and it was full. This occurence only happens about once every twenty years. This time, it had been a little less than that, since the last occurence was 18 years ago, in March of 1993. The visual size of the moon was 14% larger, and our own Kevin Fubar was howling extra loud. How about you? Were you howling, or did you miss the sight? I’m ashamed to say I missed it, but my excuse is that it was cloudy that night (I think…). Check out the original post for a great video explaining the Supermoon in more detail.

[via Kevin Fubar, SlashGear]

Hexacopter Senses Motion and Breathing Through Concrete

TiaLinx has unveiled its Phoenix 40-A unmanned hexacopter (helicopter with six blades) which can sense breathing and motion in buildings on the ground. This is the newest addition to the line of life-sensing bots that includes the Cougar20-H, a rolling ground-based robot that can detect breathing through a concrete wall.

The copter is able to travel long distances and record video in both day and night vision formats. It uses a narrow beam of multi-gigahertz radio frequencies to penetrate reinforced concrete and detect breathing and movement inside a building. It can land on top of a building and perform a scan for human presence, or it can scan while flying.

The copter can also generate the layout of a multi-story building and send that information back to troops or law enforcement so that they have an idea of what they are walking into before entering a building. It has many applications: military surveilance, search and rescue, even locating landmines.
[via SlashGear]

More science stories from SlashGear:

A brown dwarf star not hot enough to boil water

A single lens creates microscopic 3D images

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Nokia T7-00 leaks (but sorry, it’s no tablet)

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 12:02 PM PDT

News of a new Nokia device has leaked, courtesy of the OVI Publisher tools, the Nokia T7-00. The first of what would be a new line of nomenclature for the company, while it’s tempting to think that “T” stands for “Tablet”, unfortunately that doesn’t seem particularly likely; well, not unless you like your slates particularly low-resolution.

In fact, the T7-00 gets its mention under Symbian^3 devices, and in among the handsets with 360 x 640 resolution displays. That means it’s running the same OS and has the same resolution as the N8 and C7; there’s also a mention of the still-unconfirmed Nokia E6-00, complete with a 640 x 480 resolution display.

So, a new range of devices but no indication as to what segment the TSeries might target. Plus still no sign of the much-rumored Nokia tablet. The company has promised 150m more Symbian device sales in 2011.

[via MobilesGuruji]

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Samsung Galaxy S II with TouchWiz 4.0 gets hands-on walkthrough [Video]

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 11:35 AM PDT

Samsung has been on a roll this past week, with the ultra-slim Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 tablets finally bringing some serious competition – in specs, design and price – to the iPad 2, and helping the company dominate the news cycle at CTIA 2011. Samsung also brought along the Galaxy S II to the show, and our sibling site Android Community grabbed some hands-on time with the dual-core smartphone.

Video demo after the cut

As we found back in our initial hands-on with the Galaxy S II back at MWC 2011 last month, the 8.49mm smartphone certainly makes a great first-impression, with its huge 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display and pair of 8-megapixel and 2-megapixel cameras. A familiar face walked Android Community through the key features, as you can see in the video below.

There’s also a full demonstration of TouchWiz 4.0, complete with new Live Tile widgets, new gestures and more. The phone itself is expected to drop in Q2 2011, pricing to be confirmed.

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Samsung Galaxy S 4G reviewed at Android Community

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 11:25 AM PDT

Samsung’s Galaxy S 4G is the latest iteration of Samsung’s best-selling phone, delivering Android 2.2.1 Froyo  along with a shot of T-Mobile’s HSPA+ speed. Still, with dual-core Android phones – including Samsung’s own Galaxy S II – looking to dominate the high-end market in 2011, is 4G enough to keep things flying? Android Community took a look at the Galaxy S 4G to find out.

On the plus side, it’s a lightweight, reasonably inexpensive and highly usable device, with Android Community reckoning that Samsung’s TouchWiz UI grows on you the more time you spend with it. As for negatives, it’s an aging design and its 1GHz Hummingbird processor is outclassed by the dual-cores we’re seeing of late.

4G speeds vary widely, and while Verizon’s LTE may be faster in our experience than T-Mobile’s HSPA+, it all depends on whether you have coverage of either. In the end, the Galaxy S 4G is a known quantity, though not necessarily any worse for that; for the full run-down check out the Android Community review.

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Apple’s OS X Lion Golden Master first-attempt imminent?

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 11:14 AM PDT

Apple is reportedly readying a Golden Master release of OS X Lion, the next iteration of the company’s Mac OS. However, while a Golden Master build is normally one step away from a complete, public release, there’s talk that this particular version is only GM1 in what will be several phases of release. According to TechCrunch‘s sources, the upcoming OS X Lion GM1 will be the first attempt at a bug-free and full-performance version of the software.

If the bugs are truly absent then it could mean Apple’s release schedule accelerates, however that’s unlikely to be the case. OS X Lion is expected to see its full release in the summer, potentially around WWDC 2011 which is expected in early June. A developer preview was pushed into the wild last month, complete with full-screen app support, pinch and double-tap zoom in Safari and a document saving system called Versions.

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iPad 2 Compact Flash card reader ideal for mobile videographers [Video]

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 11:03 AM PDT

As we discovered in our review of the iPad 2, the new iMovie for iPad app turns the iOS slate into quite the portable video editing studio (you can see a demo of quite how easy it is after the cut). Apple’s official Camera Connector Kit will get you going with SD memory cards, but until now if you recorded to CompactFlash you were out of luck. That’s all changed, however, with the new M.I.C. CF connector kit.

Video demo after the cut

As with the SD card reader Apple offers, the CF adapter plugs straight into the iPad 2 (and, indeed the original iPad) dock connector. You can then import directly from the memory card onto the iPad’s storage, and from there import photos and video clips into iMovie for iPad. There’s also a USB port for hooking up cameras via a cable.

The adapter is a terribly reasonable $29.90, and will begin shipping from April 25. More details in the video below, though be warned it doesn’t support the Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

iMovie for iPad 2 media side-loading demo:

[youtube QTc6IJy_vNU]

[via Engadget]

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Bing Upgrades With Real-Time Twitter Feed

Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:42 PM PDT

Microsoft announced today that its Bing search engine will begin implementing tweets into its news search results as well as integrating more with Facebook. The Bing Team feels that the addition of the social media giants will help users "make more informed decisions in search by surfacing the kind of information you can only get from your friends, often in real-time."

Bing will show all the relevant tweets related to headlines in Bing News and augment the search results you get depending on what your friends "like.” Google did something similar to this last month by altering its search results based on whether certain information was shared by your friends. On Facebook you can now directly post search results from Bing on things like movies, artists, musicians, and TV shows.

Microsoft and Facebook have a pretty close relationship since 2007 when Microsoft outbid Google to invest $240 million in the social network. Bing is now the default search engine on Facebook and other deals have been struck between the two tech leaders. There will likely be more integration between Facebook and Microsoft in the near future.

[via CNET]

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Brain Waves Harnessed To Play Music

Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:40 PM PDT

Using the power of the brain has long been a science fiction staple. Eduardo Miranda, composer and computer-music teacher, has created a system where someone can play music with their mind. The brain-computer interface tracks and picks up neural impulses from your brains and translates them into musical notes. The type of technology is not entirely new as other types of brain-computer interfaces let people control prosthetic limbs and even type on a computer with their thoughts.

To use the system you have to don an EEG skull cap and concentrate on four "buttons" on a screen. When a user focuses on a button, their brain fires of a unique series of impulses specific to each button and those impulses are captured by the skull cap. A series of notes is played for each respective button. Since this type of interface is not intrinsically known, calibration is needed for each user. It takes a user with locked-in syndrome, a paralysis of the entire body except the eyes, about two hours to calibrate the system during trials at the University of Essex.

Miranda came up with the idea of using brain waves to make music over ten years ago and now its getting closer to fruition. He realized that this type of device would have a large impact in music therapy. He is hoping to develop and refine the system so that it doesn't take so long to calibrate. In the future the device will use algorithms to predict which notes the user wants to play.

[via Discovery]

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The Color App May Serve a Purpose After All

Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:06 PM PDT

Color is a new image sharing app that launched earlier this week and garnered a lot of attention with its large initial funding of $41 million. The company and its investors obviously believe they have a hit on their hands, but many are still wondering how the app would be useful. All Things Digital dug up an old Onion video that suggests just how the Color app could come in handy.

The video is funny because it's a plausible idea of trying to piece together an incident through pictures taken, just not taken to the extremes portrayed in the spoof. What Color does is share pictures people have taken with everyone in real time. The app uses your location to determine who gets to see your pictures, with no filtering or privacy settings. Users will get to see and share pictures, texts, or videos with people around their location and other members they've expressed an interest in by viewing their pictures, liking them, or commenting on content.

The creators of Color feel that subscribing or "friending" someone is outdated. With Color relationships are implicit rather than explicit. So for large gatherings like a wedding, sporting event, or party, Color could let you share pictures with people you don't actually know. A user's interest may change over time and Color will augment a user's list of contacts to reflect that. The app is now available to download for iOS devices and Android, with RIM and Windows Phone versions coming soon reportedly.

[via All Things Digital]

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