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ASUS gets in on the touch mouse craze with the puck-shaped WX-DL
Pity the poor fools who show up to the next LAN party with a mouse that doesn't have a capacitive top. These days it's touch-sensitivity or bust, and ASUS is latest in line, launching its WX-DL. This one takes its buttonless inspiration from the Magic Mouse but its design from another Cupertino creation: the puck-shape Apple USB Mouse. That rodent came with the 1998 iMac and was basically hated by everyone who placed a hand on it. It remains to be seen whether the slight tilt of this one (shown after the break) will make it more palatable to the digits of computer users everywhere, but it is at least suitably equipped with a 1200dpi laser sensor, 2.4GHz wireless connection, and a suite of media controls baked with care into the top of this aluminum cookie. Its yours for $80, so who wants to take a bite?
Clearwire's Rover service goes live, offers $5/day 4G service
Looks like the prepaid wireless data market is starting to heat up: Clearwire just launched its Rover service, which offers 4G wireless data for as little as $5 a day -- with two free days included when you first sign up. That's not bad if you just need a quick hit here or there, although you need to pony up $150 for that Rover Puck WiFi hotspot we saw at the FCC last month or $100 for a USB stick, and anything more than a day quickly becomes less of a deal at $20/week and $50/month. Oh, and it's 4G-only, so if you're not living or working in a WiMAX city you're out of luck. Still, those prices aren't terribly out of line with the competition, although we might be more inclined to choose Virgin's $40/mo prepaid MiFi and settle for 3G speeds while getting more coverage. Decisions, decisions -- what a wonderful problem to have. PR after the break.
Rover Puck WiMAX hotspot gets FCC'd, traction on ice subject of fierce debate
The pool of choices for WiMAX hotspots continues to expand, and thanks to the FCC, we now know of another up-and-comer. The Rover Puck -- trademarked by Clearwire and previously unheard of -- joins the ranks Sprint's Overdrive and its various rebrandings by providing pocketable 4G WiFi service. Unlike its predecessors, however, we finally have a new, more aerodynamic form factor. There isn't much to the glean from the user manual at this point, and the oft-referenced Rover website still isn't live -- a WHOIS lookup reveals it was last updated via GoDaddy on July 2008 with no other details disclosed. So, until we get some word from the official news pipelines, a plethora of external / internal photos and user manual screenshots are only a mouseclick away. %Gallery-98561% %Gallery-98562%
TUAW's Daily App: Strike Knight
I saw Backflip Studios' Julian Farrior speak at GDC earlier this year, and while there, he showed a few upcoming App Store games of his in a quick slide. Strike Knight was one of those, and it's now out in the App Store in all of its glory. It's a simple shuffleboard bowler game -- you grab a puck at the bottom of the screen, and flick it up towards the pins at the top, hoping to hit at just the right angle and knock them all down. Presentation is solid -- a bar crowd in the background cheers or boos you appropriately, and the titular Knight reacts to all of your shots while an arcade board flashes your high score as you play. The game is free-to-play, so it's definitely worth a try. The ads are slightly distracting (aside from the banner ads, currently all advertising the rest of Backflip's other titles, there are interstitials as well), but for a 99 cent in-app purchase, you can get rid of them, so if you like the game, you might as well make the buy. Aside from the regular singleplayer action, the app allows pass and play multiplayer for up to four people, and the gameplay's quite addictive -- that knight really pushes you to do better and better each time you play. Plus+ integration rounds out the experience, and there are awards to earn and leaderboards to top. Farrior and his team at Backflip are doing a great job pinning down some solid, quick experiences on the iPhone, and Strike Knight is nice addition to the company's lineup. If all of the apps he promised this year are as worthy as this one, they'll have an impressive stable of apps in the store.
Puck makes any surface interactive, probably even Surface (video)
Ask any home audio enthusiast and they'll tell you: there's nothing quite like precisely adjusting settings via a giant knob. However, they can't all be huge or our living rooms would be covered by the things. Enter the Puck: a wireless RFID reader that also contains an accelerometer, controlled by an Arduino Mini and created by Eric Gradman along with Tyler and Brent Bushnell. RFIDs mounted to walls or other surfaces tell the PUCK what function to control, and then the accelerometer serves to increase or decrease the value as it's turned, truly turning it into a virtual knob. If you're done snickering, there's a video after the break showing one Puck controlling three separate light colors individually, perfect for dialing in the perfect mood or concert lighting -- if only it could dial down the amplitude of dude's fauxhawk. Update: We received a note indicating a grave factual inaccuracy in this post. We've been told that the hair depicted in the video below is, indeed, a genuine mohawk. We've yet to receive photo confirmation of this fact (the mood lighting in the demo is a bit too dark to tell), but in the interest of accuracy we're providing this update just the same. Update 2: Photo proof received; mohawk confirmed. And a quite impressive one, too.
Remember Pokemon? They're back ... in pog form!
Well, not pogs exactly, but somewhat less-exciting pog-like pucks that are still a lot more fun-looking than the usual cards used in Japanese arcade games. Pokemon Battrio is a new arcade game created by Tomy that allows 3-on-3 Pokemon Battle Revolution-style battling against random arcadegoers! In Japan, obviously, since there are no arcades in the US.Here's how (it looks like) it works: you buy random packs of coins, each one corresponding to a Pokemon. Then you set them down on the machine, the machine "senses" your coins, and then they appear, ready for battling! Then some older kids run by and steal your coins.
