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On wants to rent, rather than sell, its recyclable sneakers
It's expensive, but elite runners can get new shoes every six months without any guilt that they're being wasteful.
Rubix's wireless battery sticks to your phone with magnets
When you're spending most part of the day out and about, chances are at some point you'll have to whip out your portable battery to juice up your smartphone. This usually means stacking your phone on top of a cable-wrapped power bank, and then clumsily holding everything together with one hand. Doesn't sound very 2015, does it? It's annoying enough for a startup called Rubix to come up with a solution: slap a magnetized Qi wireless charging case (aka On Case) on your phone, and then let it snap onto a magnetized wireless charging battery (aka On Charger). Look ma, no cable!
iRiver and Valencell team up to produce ON, Bluetooth heart-rate monitoring earphones
iRiver has snagged Valencell's PeformTek bio-sensing technology for its freshly-announced ON active earbuds. Plug them into your head and the built-in hardware can relay vital statistics like your heart rate and fitness level to your smartphone. The company won't be pinned to a price or a release date, as it's still working on the companion app necessary for the gear to run, but expects to have it ready by March. If you'd like to know a little more, you can always peruse the PR, presented on the posterior of this post.
Google's Nexus 7 discovered to have Smart Cover-like magnetic sensor
You won't find this on its official specs list, but Google's Nexus 7 tablet apparently has a magnet-enabled sensor that'll automatically set the display to sleep -- it's hard not to think of the iPad's Smart Cover. YouTube user wwscoggin was able to discover and pin-point the functionality near the bottom left of the device by gliding a magnet along its bezel. As Android Police notes, the feature is seldom found on Android tablets, and there's no word on whether ASUS' decidedly Smart Case-esque cases will make use of it. We've been able to replicate the action on our end, but don't take our word for it, catch the video after the break.
Reader UI of the Week - Special Patch 3.0.2 edition
Welcome to a special edition of Reader UI of the Week – just for patch 3.0.2. We'll take a look at a few complete UIs submitted by WoW Insider readers that are fully compatible with patch 3.0.2 and Wrath of the Lich King.Patch 3.0.2 is bringing a lot of expanded functionality to the underlying API (Application Programming Interface). The changes will not be as drastic as we all experienced when Burning Crusade was released, however there still will be a fair amount of problems that will have to be solved. After the break are a few complete lists of addons that are reported to at least work somewhat well together.For a complete list of functioning addons, along with download sources, check out our list of essential addons for patch 3.0.2. We'll keep that list updated throughout the day. %Gallery-34425%
Essential addons for Patch 3.0.2 [Updated x6]
Let's take a look at what addons are working for patch 3.0.2. First a simple rule taken from the UI forums post done by Kaydeethree: "Any 'Wrath beta' compatible mod will work in 3.0.2." With that said, there is a long and comprehensive listing of 3.0.2 compatible addons over on WoWWiki. But the fun doesn't end there. The next step is obtaining all those new addons. I've compiled a large set of the essential addons and linked to at least one direct download source after the break. Each download source is either trusted beyond doubt – or tested and confirmed to be virus free. Finally, you'll want to combine the addons into a nice looking UI. Check out our special edition of Reader UI of the Week for a look at five complete 3.0.2 compatible UIs. We're posting this list now, and will continue to update it throughout the day. Begin your addon downloads as quickly as possible to avoid hangups later in the day when download servers become overloaded.
Reader UI of the Week: Osullavan of Eldre'Thalas
World of Warcraft allows all of us an unprecedented ability to modify our user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh and detailed look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it, along with your character name and server, to readerui@gmail.com.This week I want to take a break from reader submitted user interfaces and profile my own. Pictured above is a compilation of what I like to call "my baby." It's a UI that's taken me over a year to perfect, and I like it quite a bit. What we'll do is take a look at the philosophy behind the interface and what addons I use.I wear many hats in my guild. I'm the GM, the main tank, and help drive the raids. My UI serves me well in all these roles, and it allows me a plethora of options at my disposal. My multiple duties in my guild means that I not only have to be fully accountable for everything the boss does to me (and for a tank in and end game guild that's a lot), but I also have to keep an eye on everything else that is happening in the raid. The Philosophy Behind My UIInformation and functions need to be easy to access, and be accessed quickly. In addition to the ease of use, it is vital to have a clear view of the play field when engaging in raids and groups. When getting the raid ready and driving the trash pulls, I need to be able to see everything and hear everything. It's unacceptable to have information more than a click away – if that. If someone sends me a tell, I want to know about it right away, and if someone dies I want to see it in bright colors in my chat windows.Since my in-game responsibilities are numerous, I have to be able quickly switch between them. To do this I have to utilize both my keyboard and my mouse. %Gallery-19902%
The gquit macro
Yesterday my guild was getting ready for our nightly foray into the Black Temple (we downed the first five bosses in 3 ½ hours, not too bad). Out of the blue, a member who has been having some "issues" as of late decided it was high time to leave the guild. And he didn't just stealth gquit, he went out in style.Instead of being adult about it, which everyone in my guild is, he posted a long winded and rambling message to the guild and then left. His tantrum was quite good, one of the most epic I've seen. But the epicness of his lack of class wasn't the best part. The best part was that he had enough foresight to do it all with a macro. So after a bunch of us got done laughing about him leaving on ventrilo I thought to myself, "Self, I should post this on WoW Insider tomorrow. After all, a gquit macro sounds like a good idea!"Take a look after the break to see some screenshots of this ex-guildie's gquit macro, and how you too can make your own gquit macro!
Reader UI of the Week: Draxyl of Turalyon
World of Warcraft allows all of us an unprecedented ability to modify our user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh and detailed look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it, along with your character name and server, to readerui@gmail.com.Draxyl from the Turalyon U.S. server submits to us his Warlock UI. It's actually very reminiscent of the UI that I had for quite some time until I upgraded my graphics card and started using a lot of alpha-blending (transparency). He uses Fubar across the top with several key pieces of information and quick to reach options, and then has the bottom of the screen filled with status indicators, chat, and action buttons.I think it's a common theme amongst most UI enthusiasts to focus the information in one or two places. This has several benefits, from limiting eye movement when trying to pickup information, to allowing more space to see what's going on in the rest of the environment.%Gallery-19902%
Get your bare bones raiding addons here
Tonight many people are going to rush into raiding. It's going to be a fun time for many – perhaps you're going to explore the Sunwell Plateau for the first time, or perhaps you'll no longer be stuck at 5/6 and 3/4. Rage Winterchill awaits you and he's a big push over. He goes boom pretty easily.The common component amongst all of us raiders, whether we're in Kara or pushing onto Sunwell, is that we need addons to make our life easier. There are several necessary ones: Deadly Boss Mods, Omen, ora2, Recount, DrDamage, etc... If you don't have these tonight, things can get markedly more complicated and difficult. The big problem with getting these addons is that they can be dreadfully hard to get a hold of. Most sites are bogged down to the point they're not working.So let me make this easier for you. I've provided mirrors of several key updated patch 2.4 mods that I'll be using tonight to raid. Feel free to grab them from the links I've listed after the break. They'll only be up on these links for the next 24 hours or so – after that I'll replace the links with the addon's main site. The traffic should have subsided by then.Read on after the break for addon mirrors!
Breakout in World of Warcraft
One of the things I really don't like about World of Warcraft, or any other MMORPG, is the waiting that is involved in getting a group together. This can be a real problem in raid environments, where it often times can take half an hour or more just to get the group set. I've been a raid leader before, so I know that they are busy and there isn't much they can do about the time we all just sit there on vent chatting with each other.One of things that I've recently came across to help ease the wait is a little in-game game of bricks, a.k.a. breakout. Breakout is the game that I used to play back in elementary and middle school on the old Macs* where you'd bounce a ball around, breaking (you guessed it) bricks. The ball is bounced off a small platform that you move with your mouse. Pretty simple, and mindlessly entertaining. Lately I've been enjoying a version of this game called WoWonid, which is an Ace2 addon I found via my addon updating with the WoWAceUpdater. It's a good enough implementation of the game (and quite impressive when you consider that it's done in LUA and built using an interface that's designed for game addons). The controls are simple enough, and just like the old Mac controls: move the mouse left or right to move the platform, bounce the ball, pwn.
New Tamagotchi Party On screens
If any Wii games have been lacking in vibrant color, it's because Tamagotchi: Party On! took all the color from a year's worth of games. Seriously, this game more than cancels out Sadness in mood and, especially, in color saturation. In these screens, we can see what looks like a game board-- we would guess it connects the minigames, in the style of another well-known minigame collection.This is, at least in terms of visuals, the most charming minigame collection we've seen since Incredible Crisis. Will it be as much fun? At least minigames have the potential to be more interesting with unique control schemes like the Wiimote provides. Check out some screens after the break!
Switched On: Dash puts wireless in the driver's seat
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: No one would ever accuse the Dash team of low self-esteem. "What the TV did for entertainment and the cell phone did for communication, Dash will do for driving." the company's Web site crows, A more accurate analogy for Dash, though, would be what TiVo did for television, that is, give consumers a greater degree of control over the media or information they're trying to manage in a contextually relevant way. Dash plans to achieve its five-star impact rating via a portable GPS device. The portable GPS market shifted into high gear a few years ago when Magellan offered a hard disk inside of its Roadmate 700 units. Consumers no longer had to deal with cumbersome PC downloads; street-level maps of the whole country could be pre-loaded. A year later, a gigabyte or two of flash memory is enough to include street-level maps for the United States. Magellan representatives recently noted that it plans to switch completely from hard drives to flash in the next generation. The TomTom Go 910 can even hold maps of the U.S. and Europe for those leisurely drives across the Atlantic Ocean.
Switched On: Why XM should nab Napster
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
