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Astronomers believe the young Milky Way once swallowed a dwarf galaxy
Astronomers believe they've mapped an important sequence of events that shaped our galaxy 10 billion years ago. In a paper published in Nature Astronomy today, researchers from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) share their findings that a dwarf galaxy, Gaia-Enceladus, once collided and merged with the early Milky Way. Their discovery offers a new understanding of how the Milky Way formed.
Firefly 2+ is a smart and stylish vape for cannabis connoisseurs
The Firefly 2 turned more than a few heads when it was released back in 2016. Lighter, sleeker and smarter than its clunky and cumbersome predecessor, it felt like the future of cannabis consumption. But in the following three years, the world turned. Today, pre-packaged concentrates and edibles are all the rage. Do dry herb vapes still have a place in today's cannabis market? The Firefly 2+ makes a compelling argument that yes, they do.
ESA releases the most detailed star map yet
The European Space Agency has updated Gaia's 3D star map, making it much richer and more likely to make you feel like a tiny speck of dust in an incredibly vast universe. This updated map includes stellar objects up to 8,000 light-years away, whereas the first one only covered an area within 500 light-years of where we are. It shows the location and brightness of 1.7 billion stars in our galaxy and beyond, over half a billion more than the first set of data the ESA released back in 2016. Even more impressive is that it also includes the distances and motions of a whopping 1.3 billion stars -- the previous map only contained those values for 2 million.
Watch the ESA trace 2 million stars' journey across the skies
Carl Sagan showed how some constellations would change over time as stars move through the universe in his TV series Cosmos. Now the European Space Agency has done something similar, but in a much bigger scale: it has released a video showing 2 million stars' journey across the skies from today until 5 million years into the future. The ESA used data provided by the the Gaia satellite and its one-billion-pixel camera, as well as data from the Hipparcos satellite that measured the positions of celestial objects back in the 1990s.
PiQ puts AI to work in the 'world's first' smart ski
Baseball bats and tennis rackets aren't the only pieces of sports equipment that are getting smarter these days. Ski maker Rossignol and consumer electronics company PIQ announced on Monday that they have created the world's first "connected" ski. Behold, the Hero Master.
After Math: The final frontier
We saw some significant developments in the field of space exploration this week. Jeff Bezos unveiled his latest heavy lift rocket. The Gaia satellite has mapped its billionth Milky Way star. China launched another piece of its Heavenly Palace into orbit. And Galaxies just can't seem to stop exploding. Numbers, because how else are you going to accurately measure your insignificance against the infinite voids of space?
ESA's Gaia satellite mapped a billion stars in the Milky Way
The European Space Agency launched the Gaia satellite and its one-billion-pixel camera to space back in 2013. Gaia has been mapping the Milky Way ever since, and now the ESA has released a 3D map featuring over a billion stars -- we've never seen 400 million of those before -- based on the data it collected from July 2014 to September 2015. As you can see above, it shows how dense a billion stars look. Don't dwell on those weird lines cocooning the structure too much: they're merely artefacts from the way the satellite scans the galaxy.
Samsung says its new Tizen TVs will be harder to hack
Samsung has announced that its next generation of Tizen smart TVs will be a lot harder to crack than before. The firm has created Gaia, a security product for its 2016 range that promises to do for TV what Knox did for its smartphones. Some of the features promised include locking your credit card information with a smartphone-style pin, encrypting the data it sends out and a built-in anti-malware system. In addition, the TVs will ship with physical encryption chips to make it that much harder for others to access your microphone or, in some models, webcam.
Europe's billion-pixel camera blasts into space to snap the galaxy
When thinking about powerful cameras, most gadget nuts would be happy with a Lumia 1020 or a 5D Mark III, but neither of those can match what's just left the planet. The European Space Agency has launched the Gaia satellite with a mission to photograph and map the galaxy surrounding us with an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy. Armed with a one billion pixel camera, the lens can pinpoint a far-away star with an error margin of seven micro-arcseconds, or measure a person's thumbnail on the moon -- from Earth. The satellite will now travel 1.5 million kilometers away from our home, a which point it'll begin a five year mission to, you know, explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly photograph where no one has photographed before.
Mozilla offers Gaia UI first look, will reveal Boot to Gecko partners at MWC
Mozilla surprised us last summer when it announced plans for its Boot to Gecko mobile OS. Now, it looks like the project has some industry support, with CTO Brenden Eich tweeting that the company will make a partner announcement at MWC this month. There are no details right now as to who might be involved, but given that developer support is already there (the operating system is based on existing web standards, after all), the hopes are that this could indicate vital operator, or even hardware manufacturer backing. Another encouraging development is the first sighting of the platform's Gaia UI, further suggesting the project might well meet its planned Q2 release target. It doesn't stray too far from the Android / iOS model that we're already familiar with, but give the source link a swipe if you want to see more.Update: The image has been updated to reflect the latest to screens from the final product. The initial shots were from a proof of concept.
Monster Galaxy Facebook game coming to the big screen
The list of films based on video games is long, if not particularly distinguished. The list is about to get a bit lengthier thanks to an upcoming collaboration between Gaia Interactive and Radar Pictures. The two firms have just released a new press blurb trumpeting the fact that they've formed an alliance to bring Monster Galaxy to the big screen. What the heck is Monster Galaxy, you say? Well, it's a Facebook title that "has reigned as a top 10 game on the platform for six consecutive months," according to the release. The film version of Monster Galaxy will feature its unique "Moga" characters as well as "rich story and charming artwork." Gaia Interactive was founded in 2003 and claims to be one of the world's most active social gaming communities. Radar Pictures is owned by Ted Field, an entertainment executive with producer credits on films including Pitch Black, The Last Samurai, and Jumanji. [Source: Gaia press release]
European Space Agency creates one billion pixel camera, calls her GAIA
When we hear the name GAIA, our memory automatically zooms back to the Whoopi Goldberg-voiced Mother Earth from Captain Planet. This isn't that GAIA, but it does have to do with planets. Back at the turn of the millennium, the European Space Agency devised an ambitious mission to map one billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy -- in 3D (insert Joey Lawrence 'whoa!'). To do this, it enlisted UK-based e2v Technologies and built an immense digital camera comprised of 106 snugly-fit charge coupled devices -- the largest ever for a space program. These credit card-shaped, human hair-thick slabs of silicon carbide act like tiny galactic eyes, each storing incoming light as a single pixel. Not sufficiently impressed? Then consider this: the stellar cam is so all-seeing, "it could measure the thumbnails of a person on the Moon" -- from Earth. Yeah. Set to launch on the Soyuz-Fregat sometime this year, the celestial surveyor will make its five-year home in the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, beaming its outerspace discoveries to radio dishes in Spain and Australia -- and occasionally peeping in your neighbor's window.
OGPlanet announces N.E.O. Online
OGPlanet has announced the release of its latest free-to-play MMORPG, a fantasy title called N.E.O. Online. Set in the monster-infested world of Gaia, N.E.O. allows players the freedom to upgrade abilities and statistics at will, rather than being restricted to a traditional class/level system. While at first blush N.E.O. may sound like yet another entry into the increasingly overcrowded free-to-play fantasy market, the title boasts at least one unique feature that bears watching. Player actions are the centerpiece of the Chaos Meter system, in which user decisions determine how dangerous particular sections of the game world are at a given time. If players fight evil, the Chaos Meter will empty and the world will reflect peace. If players disrupt the peace or engage in evil acts, the Chaos Meter will fill, and Gaia will become populated with powerful creatures. PvP also becomes available as the Chaos Meter increases, and player conflict comes in mano-a-mano, group, and guild flavors. Spoils of victory include fame, money, and stat-boosting titles, many of which can only be worn by a single player in the game at any given time. N.E.O. Online also features crafting, a pet and mount system, and a marriage mechanic. Check out the official website for all the details.
Chris Davis of Gaia Online talks MMO marketing
The MMO industry is an ever-changing, totally unpredictable universe of online games, from hot, massive fully-realized worlds like World of Warcraft or EVE to fun casual games like Farmville or the Agency: Covert Ops. Gaia Online takes a bit of a different approach by mixing a casual gaming and social worlds. We caught up with Chris Davis, a marketer for Gaia who handles sponsorship accounts, at E3 to discuss his game. He has his own unique take on MMOs and brand marketing, and how companies should interact with their potential customers. Chris describes why he believes mixing marketing and gaming is good for both the user and the brand.
Gaia Online makes modest staff cuts
Here's yet another news post on companies cutting back on their staff, oh boy. At least with Gaia Online it's a paltry 36 employees, 16 full-time staff and 20 contractors. That happens to be about 13% of the staff and is attributed to the less-than expected performance of zOMG!, which had around 500k players in November and just hit one million. As large as that number sounds, it's being drawn from the 11 million base of Gaia Online, so, it's all relative.There doesn't seem to be much worrying though, as the company has said they're merely preparing for a downturn in the coming year. We get the feeling that news like this is going to keep coming over the next 12-18 months, if not a little longer. Hopefully though, it's only small cuts like this and not the sort of job loss that's starting to become expected at other well-known developers.For those of you scratching your heads over this whole "zOMG!" game, check out Massively's first impressions for a glimpse into the beast, as they say.
zOMG! beta reaches half a million players
Gaia Online's latest title, zOMG!, has attracted over half a million beta users, according to Worlds in Motion. This cutesy, anime-looking game was named by the players back in July of this year and has enjoyed tremendous success even this early in its life cycle.zOMG! is a Flash-based browser game marketed primarily to children and teens. Players earn Gaia Gold by interacting with the Gaia website and can then spend said gold to customize their avatar. If you're interested in trying the beta or just looking for more information on what it's all about, check out our First Impression of zOMG!.%Gallery-38996%
Gaia Online costs $25 million a year to run
When you take a look at the casual-focused Gaia Online, you probably don't think that the community-central site has been costing around 25 million each year -- well, according to company CEO Craig Sherman. It's kind of surprising to hear, since Gaia was a small start-up and has only been asking for around 100k to 500k for brands that want entry into the world of Gaia. We guess you have to spend money to make money, but that's a whole boatload of cash to throw at such a small start-up. It seems to have paid off for the creators of Gaia Online, at least. They're reportedly starting to see deals in the higher six figures range. We're happy it worked out for them, but this is definitely a good example of how risky the MMO market can be even for any sort of game a developer might want to put out there. We shudder at the thought of how much cash has been dropped on some of the upcoming mainstream titles this year.
GDC08: Gaia Online launching casual MMO
At GDC this afternoon Gaia Online's Craig Sherman announced that Gaia is developing a free, flash-based to play casual MMO. Though you may presume this is just another web-based casual game, Sherman says it will be a "real MMO." It will be launching this summer and Gaia expects it to become one of the top MMOs in the world within the first few months -- after all, they already have a user-base of 5 million players who want this kind of game play, so they aren't starting from scratch. Sherman wouldn't give us a name for the game (saying that they'd solicited names from current Gaia users and received around 20,000 responses), but ensured us that it would be a full-scale MMO (with combat, etc) with a heavy social aspect. Though we're hungry for more details, summer is only a few months away!
Marketing in virtual worlds: which company gets around the most?
These days we're becoming used to seeing advertising pop up in all aspects of daily life. A lot of the free games out there are only free because of the deals that have been made with various marketing companies. To get a good overview of the advertising in virtual worlds, Kzero created a table that shows companies and the games they are represented in, with an accompanying write-up.The study shows that Toyota is the most "adventurous" marketer, shopping themselves out in five different MMOs. I recall that they also had a game available on Xbox Live Arcade until the end of 2007 called Yaris, which was free to download, and thankfully free to delete, as it was nothing more than a giant ad for the launch of the car by the same name. It looks like Toyota is definitely switched on to marketing to the gaming audience. On the games side of things, Second Life and Gaia have the dubious honor of being the home to the most advertising. Clicking on the table above will take you through to the bigger version at Kzero.[Via Virtual Worlds News]
New Coded Soul details arise
The upcoming Coded Soul has us intrigued. We enjoyed both Monster Summoner and Folklore, and we can't wait to see what this original PSP adventure has in store. IGN has unearthed a few more details. The story: "In Coded Soul, you play as Jay, a soldier who travels to the world of Idea to save his girlfriend, May. The army has been conducting research into Monolith Gate, the door to the world of Idea. That door is controlled by Gale, a young boy who gives Jay a special power as he travels to the other side."Randomly generated dungeons hold a hundred monsters to capture and use. Players can't stay in dungeons forever, given a time limit that restricts their stay. By sending items back and forth from Folklore on PS3, players will unlock new quests.Sony will publish the game in February in Japan.
