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UVify's Draco drone is fast, furious fun for wannabe racers
I'm flying high above the San Francisco Bay, maybe 150 feet in the air. I look down and start gliding toward a dilapidated skate park. Once I'm near the ground, I pull my nose up and look level with the horizon. Spotting two trees, I race toward them, pass between them, then turn on a dime, skirting some shipping containers on my left. It's like every dream I've ever had about flying, but faster. It's also not a dream. I take off a pair of video goggles, and I see the shipping containers come into focus, this time directly in front of me, as my eyes adjust to the sunlight. This is my third "first-person-view" flight with the Draco drone, and it's more exciting every time.
UVify's Draco drone is a racing quad for everyone
You might be pretty handy with your DJI Phantom, but flying a racing drone is something else. Most consumer drones are programmed to make flying a cinch, but the trade-off is a lack of agility and speed. Racing drones right now are akin to making your own gaming PC: You need to get your hands dirty, know how everything works together and labor over it to get everything optimized. UVify wants to democratize the burgeoning sport with Draco, a ready-to-go speedy drone that can hang with the pros.
The best gaming headset (for most people)
By Dennis BurgerThis post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer's guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.After more than 100 hours spent researching and testing 37 gaming headsets in all, plus more hours of long-term comfort testing than could reasonably be counted, we think the Kingston HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset is the best gaming headset for most people. It's beautifully built, comfortable on a wide variety of heads, and excellent in sound performance, especially for the price. In fact, you won't get find much improvement unless you spend more than double what the HyperX Cloud costs. This model is also incredibly comfortable—you can easily wear it for hours on end without any appreciable cranial distress. It's a clear winner.
Samsung's ARM roadmap lays coordinates through 2013: Aquila, Venus, and Draco (oh my)
Ah, leaked company presentation slides, they have a clarity only Mr. Blurrycam would despise. EETimes got a batch of them from Samsung dated November 2009 making the rounds, but more important than revealing its equal love for both Roman and Greek mythology, we get a glimpse at its then-planned ARM chip roadmap (yeah, another one) through 2013. In a nutshell, for the Cortex A9 crowd we've got the 800MHz dual core "Orion" due for mass production in Q1 2011, a 1GHz single core "Pegasus" for Q4 2011, a 1GHz dual core "Hercules" for Q1 2012, and for sometime in 2012 / 2013, a 1.2GHz dual core "Draco" and quad core "Aquila." Fear not, Cortex A5 fanatics, you've got gifts as well, in the form of 600MHz single core "Mercury" and dual core "Venus" chips, slated for 2010 / 2011 and 2012 / 2013, respectively. We don't expect the nomenclature to extend beyond internal usage, but frankly, who cares -- it's the devices that count, and unfortunately all we can do is doodle our future gadget hopes and dreams onto scraps of paper while we wait.
DISH Network's Draco project brings programming to Windows Media Center
Aw, snap! Just over a month after DirecTV went and killed its totally promising HDPC-20 tuner, in flies this. DISH Network is apparently gearing up to unveil some sort of HD-capable DISH-to-Windows Media Center liaison, with current test setups involving a modified ViP 211K receiver attached via Ethernet to a PC. The initiative is being coined Draco, and we're even told that dual tuner setups (most likely using dual boxes for now) are in action and working beautifully. It's tough to tell if this is the same project that was rumored way back in April of last year, but it's safe to say DISH is hoping to pick up the pieces that DirecTV inexplicably dropped. Windows Media Center, you've just regained our attention.%Gallery-42371%
Zune 2 "source" leaks launch date and specs
Heads up, Zune fans -- some new product is heading your way sooner rather than later, and we suspect there's more than a couple of things to get jazzed about. According to reports from a "source" inside Microsoft, a new batch of Zunes (AKA Zune 2, Draco, Scorpio, etc.) are due out on October 16th (just in time for the holidays), in both flash memory- and hard drive-based forms. The new, smaller, flash Zune (the Draco) will be hitting shelves in pink, red, black, or army green colors, will have a 4GB or 8GB capacity, and will feature a "squircle" (the source's term, not ours) for navigation, which won't have a center button but can be pushed, "From any side." The hard drive-based player (the Scorpio) will be available in 80GB, sports the soon-to-be infamous "squircle," and touts a screen which the source claims is "awesome" for video. We can safely say that there is at least one man out there who is going to be very, very excited about this.[Thanks, Tyler]
Next-gen Zune "Scorpio" rumored to be delayed
While Microsoft has yet to officially announce anything about its next-generation Zunes, we've had no shortage of rumors informing us of the company's supposed plans. Last we heard, Microsoft so-called "Scorpio" and "Draco" Zunes were headed for production in July, with something set to be released before the end of the year. Now, if this latest rumor is to be believed, Microsoft seems to have hit a snag. According to Zune Scene, while the flash-based Draco is reportedly still on track, the hard drive-based Scorpio has been delayed, supposedly due to "continuity problems between the flex cable and pcb." As a result, Zune Scene says the production run will now not be complete until "well into September." As with all of these rumors, however, we wouldn't pin too much hope/disappointment on them pending some further confirmation.
Next-generation Zune "Scorpio" set for July production?
According to a super-secret, top level official inside Microsoft's megaplexing-hyper-bunker in Redmond, the Zuneinites are readying an 80GB Zune 2.0 called the "Scorpio", which will be a companion to the also-rumored 4GB or 8GB flash-based "Draco". The rumor additionally proffers that production on the Scorpio will begin towards the end of July, although we can't recommend any fancy breath holding. The diabolical naming convention apparently stems from the original Zune codename "Argo" and its WiFi component, called "Pyxis." Regardless, if Microsoft was trying to make their products sound less Satanic, it isn't working.
Flash Zune supposedly gets name, capacities
Here's the latest rumor on the flash Zune: once known by some as the Pyxis, it's now supposedly going by the codename of Draco (not to be confused with any Harry Potter or Dolph Lundgren characters), and is supposedly going to be released in 4 and 8GB capacities, and have the usual nigh-unusable WiFi and, thankfully, video playback (unlike l'nano). Zunescene also seems to think it'll be out later this year, and we say bring it on, Microsoft. We know at least one dude who you owe some killer 2nd gen hardware.[Thanks, Nate and Aaron]
