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Acoustic tractor beams could lead to levitating humans
LG wants levitating speakers in every home, but what about gravity-defying humans? Well, science could well be on its way to making us float too, thanks to a breakthrough in sonic levitation. Engineers from the University of Bristol have demonstrated that it's possible to trap (essentially levitate) objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam -- a tricky feat due to rotating sound field transfers causing objects to spin uncontrollably.
OM Audio's levitating Bluetooth speaker can be yours for $179
We've seen levitating pens, levitating lamps, levitating loungers and even levitating fish -- now there's a Bluetooth speaker to add to the mix. OM Audio, maker of such respectable audio accessories as the Inearpeace earphones and Mantra speakers, has taken a bold leap into the world of novelty products with the OM/One. The compact sphere can be used with or without its magnetic base (which requires an AC adapter), and includes an integrated battery with up to 15 hours of continuous play. There's also a microphone on board, so you can use the OM/One as a speakerphone as well. We had a chance to check out an early prototype, which you can see in action after the break. Sound quality was fine -- not fantastic, but on par with other compact Bluetooth speakers. You can improve the experience by adding a second OM/One, which pairs with the first to produce stereo audio. The levitating effect is interesting to look at, but it also reportedly helps produce better audio with a lower-power driver, since nearby objects won't absorb sound. You can pre-order it today in black, white or "disco ball" on OM's site for $179. OM reps expect to ship the first batch in December.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadowfiends retire, more priest talent news from Mists beta
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Do you want to know the greatest and most amazing new thing priests are getting in Mists of Pandaria? It's a squid. Well, it could be an octopus, but I think it's a squid. It's called a Mindbender, and it's our new level 45 talent. The Mindbender is a flying, shadowy squid that serves as an improved version of (read: replacement for) our old pal, Shadowfiend. Our new squid friend does double the damage of Shadowfiend and thus returns twice as much mana. I can only assume the reason he can do this is because he latches onto the heads of our enemies and sucks out their brains, sort of like a Mind Flayer, the squid-faced monsters from Dungeons and Dragons with telekinetic powers. Mindbender, Mind Flayer ... That's right, Blizzard, I'm on to you. Anyway, I imagine Squiddy will become the prime choice for healing priests in MoP because 1.) mana is mana, and 2.) the other level 45 talents are a bit lackluster. That will unfortunately mean leaving Shadowfiend at home, which is awfully sad, but I've painted up a scenario in my head where Shadowfiend tells me, "Look, Dawn, we've been raiding together for a few years now, and it's about time that I caught up on all the prime time television I've missed. There's Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and I've still only seen one episode of Game of Thrones. I need a break." "OK, Shadowfiend," I say to it, "you can stay home this expansion." "Thanks, dollface," it responds with Don Draper-esque charm and winks an eye at me I never knew it had.
Spiritual Guidance: Spells we forget
This Sunday, Dawn Moore has called a temporary truce with Fox Van Allen so the two of them can take Spiritual Guidance on a group trip to Disneyland. They almost made it through the entire Space Mountain line without a fight on what was better, healing or damage. Later, Fox got a stomach ache and dispersed while riding the tea cups, and Dawn had to go back to the hotel to lie down before the Hannah Montana concert. Once upon a time, an off-tank coughed. At the time, the off-tank was zoned into Trial of the Crusader and thoroughly engaged in a battle against Anub'arak. His raid was just transitioning out of the first phase 2, and he was moving to his position to pick up adds. Unfortunately, as the off-tank coughed, he shifted ever so slightly, causing a poorly placed cup of cherry Kool Aid to upturn. Not a second later, the off-tank's raid was audience to a colorful soliloquy about a different type of penetrating cold. As the above events transpired, a disco priestess noticed that she had suddenly acquired threat from a newly spawned bug add. She strafed momentarily before hitting the key for her Fade spell and in doing so, saved herself from unknown peril. The bug, having lost its focus, immediately turned its attention to another priest in the raid named Calvin. Calvin, it turned out, was specced holy. Before things could get worse, the off-tank managed to pull himself together and resumed his tanking duties; he taunted the large bug and the panic in the raid subsided. Surprisingly, the battle continued without incident, and in the end the nerubian king was slain.
Artist creates Back to the Future hoverboard -- that actually hovers (video)
Don't expect to ride it on solid ground -- much less water -- but what you see above is indeed a hoverboard that floats. Using electromagnets embedded in the podium and a laser system to measure its position, artist Nils Guadagnin has managed to keep a familiar-looking pink plank aloft, a full five years and five months before the real deal supposedly sees common use. Give the man a pair of kicks, a car and a flux capacitor, and he'll be all set. Video after the break.
Patch 3.2.2: The clucking draenei (and the levitating tree)
I've talked here before about just how wacky Blizzard's coding is -- they are obviously great programmers (even with all of the 180,000 bugs), but man, when things go wrong in this game, they go wrong in the weirdest, strangest ways. Take the bug above, spotted in patch 3.2.2 by xella over on Livejournal: the female dreanei /train emote is bugged like crazy, but instead of not playing or playing a random sound like you might expect it to do as a software bug, it instead plays a cacophony of the strangest sounds, including a slice of the original sound and then a female blood elf /chicken noise instead. This will surely be fixed soon (and as a few people in the comments over there say, it's probably a bit of file corruption on Blizzard's part), but what a weird bug.Fortunately, as granular and strange as Blizzard's bugs are, their fixes are just as minute: tree druids will be happy to see that, since patch 3.2, their treeform now actually moves correctly after Levitate is cast on it. It's a small change, sure, but every little bit helps with immersion. Maybe someday we'll see mounts do it, too.
Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx. We're getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader's Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I'm assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.
The Queue: Eight
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.In yesterday's edition of The Queue, my partner in crime Adam Holisky did some speculation about Battlestar Galactica that was taken as a huge, massive spoiler. As far as I know, it wasn't actually a spoiler. I'm here to fix that. I'm here to give you a real, true spoiler. Are you ready for it?They shoot Old Yeller.hold up asked...Is the Realm First Ulduar Achievement based on completing Ulduar on Easy Mode or is it based on clearing the entire place including the optional Algalon "the Raid Destroyer"?
Priest glyphs from Beta build 8885
A new batch of glyphs has come with the latest Beta push, and I can't really say the Priest ones are impressive. They're pretty boring, but not every batch of glyphs can be mind-blowing. They're not even implemented yet. Still, they're there, and it's usually some indicator of things to come so let's take a look, shall we?Glyph of Fading - Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 50%.Well, I'm willing to guess this is a Minor Glyph. It's not that great and Fade isn't something you spam, though you'll be using it a lot more in PvP than PvE for sure. In the Wrath beta, Fade currently costs 13% of your base mana, according to Wowhead. At level 80, Fade will cost you around 470 mana, give or take a couple of points. With this glyph, it will cost 235 mana. If you're using a talented Fade every 24 seconds it will be equivalent to roughly an extra 50 mana per 5 seconds. According to a friend of mine, 48.95 mp5 is the exact amount. I didn't really feel like getting that crunchy about it, so I'll take his word for it. You probably won't use it immediately every cooldown, but eh. As a minor glyph, that's fairly decent, really. It sounds underwhelming, but assuming it is a minor glyph, it's likely not a terrible choice for a PvP Shadow Priest. It'll come down to whether or not vastly better glyphs are available.
Secrets of levitation cracked by Scottish researchers?
Try not to get too frenetic here, but a couple of gurus at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have reportedly created an "incredible levitation effect by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together." In layman's terms, the scientists have devised a way to reverse the phenomenon known as the Casimir force so that it "repels instead of attracts." Ultimately, the discovery could lead to "frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate," and in theory, devices could be created to transport humans. Do realize, however, that individuals in this team have also "showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible," so we're not counting ourselves amongst the faithful just yet.[Thanks, James][Our readers have let us know that this article's headline bore some similarities to other articles on the same topic -- though purely coincidental, in the interest of further differentiating the post we've edited it to a small degree. -Ed.]
