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Wondering when you could get your hands on the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3? You know, the Android smartphone that can take calls upside down? Well, it shouldn't be too much longer. Pre-orders start April 21st with a $249 asking price for the 5.5-inch version. As Android Central notes, that's a $30 break if you lay money down now as opposed to later on down the road. The official launch date is still rather ambiguous, but a press release over on 9to5Google says that the unlocked Lollipop devices start shipping sometime in May.

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Sure, Netflix's first Marvel superhero series Daredevil premieres in just a few hours, but it has more on the way. Season three of Orange is the New Black is coming up June 12th, as well as a new series Grace and Frankie starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda May 8th -- check the trailers for both after the break. The blessing and the curse that is binge watching means each new series drop may only be satisfying for a couple of days (or just one long night), but the streaming service still has quite a packed lineup.

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If you're a Windows user who's tired of flipping back and forth the Xbox Music and Video stores to get your media fix, then you'll be pleased to know that will all change with the next version of Windows. Microsoft has revealed today that, at long last, it plans on combining music, video and apps in a single unified store in Windows 10. You can start to see the change already if you're signed up for the Windows 10 Technical Preview -- indeed, Microsoft has just started rolling out the Movies & TV page in the Store beta. With the recent release of preview versions of the Music and Videos apps, you can go ahead and browse, search and view rented or purchased media in those two apps, just like you could with their Xbox equivalents. Of course, this is all still very much in beta at the moment, but it's a good sneak peek at how Microsoft plans to unify its store experience across all of its products.

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The Google Art Project already archived thousands of murals, paintings and more for viewing on the web. Not all artifacts are flat, though, but the folks in Mountain View added nearly 300 3D scans so you can examine detailed animal skulls and ornate sculptures from the comfort of your sofa. Flip through new collections from six museums before rotating a skull with your mouse or touchpad to see features from every angle -- like the Helmeted hornbill above from the California Academy of Sciences. If you're not into animal bones, don't fret: There's art, too. Thanks to places like the Dallas Museum of Art and Museo d'Arte Orientale, you can ogle sculptures, masks and other ancient artifacts as well. And all without having to get in the car.

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Most people would consider going to the movies a way to avoid inclement weather, but drop into a 4DX theater and you'll be taking the rain and snow with you. The "4D" cinemas, which only landed on American shores last year, augment the standard big screen and booming sound with smells (like flowers or gunpowder), wind and even fake lightening. At CinemaCon in Las Vegas the company behind 4DX, CJ Group, will be demonstrating new effects, including rainstorm, snow and warm air. Why would you want to be showered with rain, shrouded in fog or buried in snow while you're trying to watch a movie? That's a good question, CJ Group would argue it creates a more immersive experience. Though, it remains to be seen how "immersed" people want to feel in the brutal sand storms of Mad Max.

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Mini is rolling out a new product, and no, it's not a car. Announced at the Auto Shanghai show, the Mini Augmented Vision is actually a pair of augmented reality glasses that offers up info about your ride in your field of vision. You can see some of the following details as you're riding around in your Mini vehicle of choice: destination points that you can select pre-ride, the navigation display of your first and last mile, heads up info like speeds and speed limits, navigation arrows plus points of interest on your route, incoming message notifications, an X-ray view of the vehicle, plus a view of the curb from the car's external cameras so you can park easier. And, of course, since it's AR and see-through, you can still see the road in front of you. As you might expect, there's no details about pricing or availability just yet, but we'll be sure to update the post with more when we hear more.

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General Atmosphere at Comic-Con International 2013

Can't make it down to San Diego for the annual geek Mecca that is Comic-Con? Well, you'll seen be able to get a taste of it on your couch. Comic-Con International announced this morning that it's teaming up with Lionsgate, the studio behind the blockbuster Hunger Games franchise, to launch a subscription-based video-on-demand service later this year. As you'd expect, it'll include plenty of archival footage from the convention, "exclusive" short content and movies and shows from Lionsgate. Given that Comic-Con lasts a scant four days (only three of which have major events), it's difficult to imagine how a standalone VOD channel could host enough content to last a year. And it's also unclear what the exclusive content will be for subscribers.

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Drawing on forty years of peer-reviewed research, a team of researchers from the University of Southern California have generated the world's first "wiring diagram" of a rat's central nervous system. And, as it turns out, their brain structures are uncannily similar to the internet's physical architecture. What's more, this could help us better understanding of our own neural organization. "The cerebral cortex is like a mini-Internet," USC professor and corresponding author of the study Larry Swanson said in a statement. "The Internet has countless local area networks that then connect with larger, regional networks and ultimately with the backbone of the Internet. The brain operates in a similar way."

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SoundCloud has partnered with rights management company Zefr to identify music owned by major labels uploaded to the streaming service. The partnership announcement is pretty vague, but Zefr co-founder Rich Raddon told Engadget that the deal is currently about sharing data and insights with SoundCloud with a focus on the remixes. Raddon said that these uploaded songs are "highly engaging" and that it's great for the fans, the platform and the media-rights holders. "We started referring to services like SoundCloud as social networks because of the very social act of uploading content," Raddon added. So instead of issuing copyright takedown orders because you sampled Iggy Azalea's Fancy, Zefr will share that information with SoundCloud. Of course in the future the data could result in On SoundCloud ads being placed in or around those audio files. But for now, the two companies seem more interested in giving you a place to upload your remixed versions of Pharrell's Happy than pushing ads.

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