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This colorful cube grounds virtual objects in the real world
You can't usually spin, stretch and otherwise manipulate virtual objects all that easily. You're often relegated to clicking and dragging on a mouse, and even exotic approaches like HoloLens or VR headsets introduce issues like lag. However, North Carolina State University has developed a simple solution that only requires a webcam and a little geometry. Their Captive technology revolves around a color-coded cube that sends visual cues to video recognition software -- all you have to do is rotate the cube to examine a virtual object, resize it or change textures.
Captive Minecraft world puts baby in a corner
YouTube video production team The Farlanders created a special save file for the PC version of Minecraft that offers a new, more claustrophobic spin on the blocky survival game. Called "Captive Minecraft," the modified game spawns players into an enclosed 1x1 block in the game's world, which expands as players earn achievements for activities such as looking at their inventory, gathering wood from trees or building items like workbenches and furnaces. The Farlanders launched beta version 1.3 of Captive Minecraft this morning, which adds more gold ore to the world and relies less on the Nether regions to earn sugar cane and the "Into Fire" achievement. To install Captive Minecraft, players simply need to download the world save from the spin-off's site. It requires version 1.8, snapshot 14w18b or later of Minecraft. [Image: The Farlanders]
The Road to Mordor: A prisoner of Isengard
With Update 5 on the horizon, there's certainly plenty to look forward to in Lord of the Rings Online, especially if you've exhausted all of Rise of Isengard's content to date. Personally, I'm still trucking along: level 73, in the middle of the Gap of Rohan, picking flowers and pontificating on Hobbit meal schedules. As you can tell, I haven't been in any particular rush to get to the end. However, I realized this past week that somewhere along the line I had abandoned my pursuit of Volume III, Book 4, so I went to pick it back up. It turned out that I was on the verge of some of the most interesting and gripping quests in the game, and for the first time since forever, I stayed up really late to see how the questing would pan out. Obviously, there's going to be some serious spoilers in this here column, so if you haven't finished Book 4 of Rise of Isengard, you may wish to just bookmark this for later reading. I'm not typically eager to spoil story points, but this quest line got me so worked up that I simply had to talk about it this week.
Lion: Join captive networks without a web browser
It's a relatively minor feature on Lion's 250+ list, but certainly a helpful one for frequent travelers or coffee shop denizens: browserless login to captive Wi-Fi networks. If you've ever used one of these institutional wireless offerings, you know how they work: first you connect to the Wi-Fi network, then you pop open a browser tab and try to navigate to any external site (Apple, TUAW, CNN -- I know someone who does a Google search for 'hello' as his connectivity probe). If you're not authenticated yet, the service throws up an interrogation page asking for your credentials, or just an acceptance of the terms and conditions -- click through and you're online. Most airport & hotel Wi-Fi networks behave this way, as does AT&T's WLAN in Starbucks stores, and the subscriber networks from Optimum Online, Time Warner Cable, Boingo and others. In Lion, you can skip step two. The OS itself notices that you're not connected all the way to the Internet, and puts up a small Webkit window where you can log in or accept the T&Cs. Handy, and helpful! iOS users will notice that this is yet another 'import' from Apple's mobile system, as the iPhone and iPad already work in exactly the same way.
