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YouTube testing 'pinch to zoom' feature for Premium users
YouTube has quietly introduced an experimental feature called pinch to zoom exclusively for Premium users.
Clubhouse is developing a new way to invite friends to chat called 'Wave'
Clubhouse is working on 'Wave' feature to invite friends to chat, Jane Manchun Wong has discovered.
Touchless tech mimics the ability to ‘press’ an elevator button
The studio’s Kinetic Touchless technology can mimic the movement of one’s fingers and recreate the tactile response of pushing a button.
YouTube limits experimental features to paid Premium subscribers
If you’ve used YouTube recently, you likely know that it really, really wants you to sign up for a paid Premium subscription. Now, Google is providing another incentive by allowing Premium users to try out experimental features still under development.
Pico System III review: A fun and simplified intro to modular synths
The Pico System III is a reasonably priced entry point into the world of modular and west coast synthesis. It has everything you need to get started exploring the nuts and bolts of analog sound design.
Moog Subharmonicon review: An experimental synth with an iconic sound
The Subharmonicon indulges its experimental side more than other Moog synths. It's inspired by the Mixtur-Trautonium and the Rhythmicon a pair of early electronic music instruments. Those avant-garde roots show and can make it a bit daunting if you’re just looking for a quick fix of that iconic bass sound. But patience and persistence reveal that the Subharmonicon, for all of its complexity, is still classic Moog.
Facebook is working on 'entirely new' apps and 'experiences'
Today, Facebook announced a New Product Experimentation (NPE) Team that will be responsible for developing new apps. The goal is to give people "entirely new experiences for building community" and to do so outside of Facebook's existing platforms. According to Facebook, it's a way to create small, focused apps and gauge users' interest. Some features may be rolled into Facebook's other products, but it's too soon to say for sure.
Tumblr Labs lets you experiment with new, optional settings
Care to take some risks with your personal Tumblr? Well, today's your day as the microblogging platform's launched a new Labs feature to let users opt-in for "experimental features." The option, accessible via Tumblr's web interface, adds four settings offering varying levels of usefulness. There's one, themed posts, which the company cheekily notes will turn your Tumblr into a "beautiful illegible rainbow" since it aligns the color of your Tumblr with that of your posts (see? questionable utility). The other three available settings will, respectively, give users the ability to add a button to posts to track reblog history; add granular scheduling options; and grant access to something cryptically referred to as "Inside Tumblrs." As the company notes in some fine script on the Labs site, these experiments are in-development and therefore prone to not work or suddenly disappear at any given time. So tread carefully if you decide to participate. All you need is an active Tumblr and a desire to microblog dangerously.
Cheap satellite-launching rocket fails on its maiden flight
Satellite-launching rocket programs like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are household names thanks to the larger-than-life personalities behind them. But you may not know about a modest program called Super Strypi. Developed by the University of Hawaii, Sandia National Laboratories and Aerojet Rocketdyne, it aims to use a small, three-stage "sounding rocket," to launch 300 kilogram (660 pound) payloads into low-earth orbit. Now that you're acquainted with it, we have bad news: It failed on its maiden launch in Kauai. The official video (below) shows the rocket apparently losing control, while a spectator video shows the in-flight breakup about 60 seconds after launch.
Parallels just made it easier to try Windows 10 on your Mac
If you're eager to try Microsoft's Windows 10 technical preview on a PC, you'll either need to mess with your existing machine, use a spare you don't mind borking or run it on a virtual machine like VMware. Mac users on OS X (including Yosemite) have a couple of options including Boot Camp, but they now have one more: Parallels 10. Using the latest build, you can download Windows 10 directly from the desktop, then run it in a virtual machine alongside your Mac stuff. That'll let you scope the incoming OS and its resurrected Start menu, Cortana support, new browser and Office Preview for Windows 10. You'll also get direct access to your iCloud and iPhone library and be able to share files, text and pictures from Windows. There is one serious gotcha: you'll have to pay a steep $80 for Parallels 10, or $40 to upgrade.
Watch the ESA launch its reusable spaceplane (update: success!)
The European Space Agency (ESA) does a fine job of launching rockets into orbit (usually), but is more clueless than its US and Russian counterparts about how to bring them back safely. That lack of savoir-faire is the reason the launch of the IXV experimental spaceplane schedule for 8AM ET today. During the one hour, forty minute mission, a Vega rocket will launch the 16-foot long, 2 ton "lifting body" spacecraft to a height of 280 miles. From there, it'll begin a rapid descent with flaps and thrusters controlling its trajectory. It'll have to re-enter at precisely the right angle to avoid burning up or missing its target, a recovery ship some 3,000 km west of the Galapagos islands.
Get an IGF 2015-nominated game for free today only
PRY, a finalist in Excellence in Narrative at the 2015 Independent Games Festival, is free today on the App Store. PRY is a hybrid game, containing elements of film, literature and gaming. It tells the story of a Gulf War demolitions expert, allowing players to dive into his thoughts and explore his past, present and subconscious with the flicking or pinching of fingers. The free day is in celebration of the IGF nod, PRY's feature on FWA as Mobile of the Day, and the game's release on iPhone. PRY is broken into two parts; the first installment was previously out for iPad at $3. Once part two launches in March, the full-game price will go up slightly – but those who buy part one before March will receive the second half as a free update. PRY comes from two-person art collective and development studio Tender Claws, which focuses on the intersection of writing, art and technology. "Nomination by IGF is already an incredible validation," Tender Claws co-founder Samantha Gorman tells Joystiq. "We are a small team of two people who have looked up to and been inspired by current and past IGF nominees. It's so nice to know that our interventions in this space of storytelling are being seen and considered. Of course an IGF award would mean a great deal going forward. It would further give us license to establish our studio and continue to push the bounds of narrative in gameplay." The 2015 IGF awards will be held on Wednesday, March 4, during GDC in San Francisco. [Image: Tender Claws]
Gaming philosopher Pippin Barr takes on the art world
Again. Pippin Barr – game developer, philosopher, artist – has launched a game within a picture frame, complete with the player's own reflection transposed in real-time over the glass. The game is a snippet from one of Barr's earlier works, Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment, and it uses the camera on your computer or mobile device to throw your own image over the top of the action, as if you were staring at the piece of art in a well-lit gallery. Barr's inspiration stems from an exhibition of his work at Australia's Andrew Baker Gallery late last year. He took a photo of a print of his Prometheus scene in Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment and imagined turning the photo itself into a game, he says. "So I made a version of the Prometheus game that runs 'inside' the picture frame," Barr says. "To add to the effect, I also worked on ways to make the digital version of the frame picture reflective in the way it was in the gallery. This extends to (in the best scenario) a live webcam-based reflection that works on desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, a video-based reflection that works in Internet Explorer and Safari, and an animated image-based reflection in mobile browsers. It was quite the technical challenge for me, working with new web technologies I've not encountered before." Play Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: Art Edition Edition right here in your browser, or here on your mobile device. Or, see it in action in the video below. It's a fairly cool experience, even if you'll never win the game. Seriously, you won't.
Google's voice-activated Spell Up game hones your speling skills
We've seen charming and freaky in Google's games, but the search giant has a nobler aim with its latest experiment: improving your English skills. Spell Up is a mishmash of a spelling bee, Wheel of Fortune and Jumble, with voice recognition thrown in for good measure. You can launch it in any Chrome browser on a desktop, Android or iOS device, though you can only use a keyboard on an iPhone or iPad. Once you're in, you'll be able select a difficulty level and build a tower of words, until a wrong move crashes the whole thing down. It worked great for me on Android, but using it on my desktop was a F-A-I-L for some reason, as letters like 'G' and 'S" couldn't be recognized. Perhaps you'll have better luck, though -- you can try it here.
Radiohead launches experimental interactive app PolyFauna
English music group Radiohead launched its own interactive app on iOS and Android today called PolyFauna. The app is an "experimental collaboration" with design studio Universal Everything, and is free to download. While it's not a game in the traditional sense of the word, PolyFauna presents users with an abstract, evolving world viewed from a first-person perspective. Viewers float through the world, turning their devices to view the artistic environment around them and follow a floating red dot to seemingly "warp" to a new area. The app uses imagery and sounds from Radiohead's song "Bloom." The band described its inspiration for PolyFauna as coming from "an interest in early computer life-experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious." [Image: Radiohead]
Be a pixelized performance artist at the Digital Marina Abramovic Institute
Marina Abramovic has spent decades as a professional performance artist. She's tortured herself in front of live audiences, taking pills prescribed for catatonia and schizophrenia (having seizures and blacking out), and allowing the audience to treat her like a doll, standing passively for six hours with an array of objects people could use on her, including honey, oil, a whip, a gun and a bullet. Someone pointed the loaded gun at her head, and she ended that performance topless, crying, with thorns in her skin. Developer and philosopher Pippin Barr is tasked with turning Abramovic's ideas into games, with his most recent project called the Digital Marina Abramovic Institute. It allows players to participate in an hour of experiments set up by Abramovic, or to view pixelated renditions of other artist's performances. It's part of Abramovic's push to open a real-life institute for long-duration art installments, a campaign that raised $660,000 on Kickstarter in August. "Go, check it out," Barr says as an introduction to his game. "It's probably not like many things you've tried before. It may not be to your taste. But it also ... may. Be." After trying it out, we agree that it's definitely not like anything we've tried before – the taste part is up to you. Barr previously turned Abramovic's work at the Museum of Modern Art, The Artist is Present, into an eccentric video game where players wait in line in real time to stare into Abramovic's eyes, and he has a history of crafting odd, tedious and insightful titles. Find out if this is your thing here (heads up for pixelated nudity if you walk to the left).
LA Game Space pack stars things from Pendelton Ward, Cactus, more
Experimental Game Pack 01 from LA Game Space includes 23 new, trippy titles from a lineup of high-profile indie developers and pop-icon game enthusiasts, and it's available for 11 more days. The pack will eventually include more than 30 games, added as they're completed. Grab all of them now for just $15. The cast includes Cactus (AKA Jonatan Soderstrom, creator of Hotline Miami), Santa Ragione (MirrorMoon EP), developers of Kentucky Route Zero, Beau Blyth (Samurai Gunn), Ben Vance (Skulls of the Shogun), Steve Swink (Scale), and tons more. Working together, Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi and Canabalt's Adam Saltsman created Alphabet for the game pack, while Adventure Time mastermind Pendelton Ward and QWOP's Bennett Foddy are collaborating on Cheque Please. See a list of all of the Game Pack developers, their games and their platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) here. Swink developed Inputting, a keyboard-controlled game about getting a ball into a hole (and so much more), while Alphabet uses a similar scheme in a racing capacity. Santa Ragione's VideoHeroeS is a film-based physics game about pleasing picky customers, also to be featured at Fantastic Arcade. LA Game Space is a non-profit organization for video game research and exhibition, funded through Kickstarter in December.
Peter Molyneux's Curiosity cube is now open, contents still a mystery (update: prize revealed!)
After seven months of cooperative tapping, Peter Molyneux's Curiosity experiment is finally over: the cube is open. As Molyneux's studio, 22Cans, teased the game's last layer over Twitter, players descended upon it, chipping away the last million cubelets in a matter of minutes. "We have a winner," the game's creator wrote on the social network. "They should get a message now." 22Cans is currently trying to validate the player who tapped away the final block. After the final block disappeared, so did the cube, presumably to be opened privately by the winner. So, what was inside the box? We may never know -- but if you just happened to win, fill us in, would you? Update: The winner asked Molyneux to share the winner video with the community. Their prize? Godhood, according to 22Cans. The winner will be featured as a deity in the company's next game, Goddus, and will able to "decide on the rules that the game is played by." The winner will get a share of the revenue generated by the title. Check out the full video for yourself after the break.
Half-Life 2 gets official Oculus Rift support
Valve has updated Half-Life 2 with Oculus Rift compatibility, Valve programmer Joe Ludwig announced on the device's developer forums. "We just shipped a beta for Half-Life 2 that includes Oculus Rift support," Ludwig writes. "To get it, open the properties for HL2 in Steam, set your command line to '-vr,' and opt-in to the SteamPipe beta. This should ship to everybody in a few weeks." Ludwig also cautions that Half-Life 2's Oculus Rift support is "a bit more raw" than the implementation found in Valve's other provisionally Rift-supporting game, Team Fortress 2. Specifically, he mentions slight UI issues and acknowledges that the game's HUD is difficult to read, and encourages developers to let Valve know of any issues they encounter while charging around City 17. In other Half-Life 2 news, a Linux version of the game has been released as a beta – the client can be downloaded from your Steam Library like other Steam Play-enabled titles. Well, assuming you own Half-Life 2, of course. It's not that beta. [Thanks, Rasmus!]
Google tests Flight Explorer tool, offers more visual and powerful ticket searches
Google may have updated its flight search tool for tablets just a couple of months back, but it's been a while since its desktop counterpart saw a refresh. Currently being tested under the call sign "Flight Explorer", the outfit has a new offering that provides a more customizable and visual interface to help root out a suitable plane ticket. While the filters are pretty much the same as the existing Google Flights search engine, there's a new slider to choose trip length, an upfront indication of the best available ticket price for the selected timeframe, along with handy graphs that show price over time, and which yield up specifics when you hover over them with your mouse pointer. There's every chance that these new additions will be merged into Google Flights once any crinkles have been ironed out, but in the meantime there's nothing to stop you using it at the link below. And hey, send us a postcard!
