rock climbing
Latest
Discover new adventures with Adidas Outdoor Magazine
If your idea of an outdoor adventure is riding your bike through the park, or taking a long leisurely walk then Adidas Outdoor Magazine app is not for you. This free iPad only app appears in your Newsstand and presents you with real adventures in paragliding, mountain climbing, slack lining, kayaking, and loads of other adrenaline rushing activities made for the true extreme outdoors enthusiast. Adidas Outdoor Magazine is published four or five times a year. Each issue contains about a half dozen in-depth articles detailing specific adventure activities plus interviews with professionals and other everyday adventure seekers like yourself. Users will find some wonderful photos and thrilling videos with each article. The videos are often worth a look just on their own. Additionally Adidas runs brief articles promoting some of its product line. The current October 2014 issue contains stories about a variety of climbing expeditions. You will find a story about a mountain climbing adventure in Oman and an article revealing the sense of happiness a couple felt after scaling a 2800 foot stone wall that climbs straight up out of the Brazilian jungle into the bright sunlight, plus others and a column by experienced mountaineer Reinhold Messner detailing his attempts over the last four decades to climb some of the world's most difficult and dangerous peaks in the middle of the winter while facing rocks covered in snow and ice, 50 mph winds and temperatures that hovered around forty degrees below zero. The Adidas Outdoor Magazine app also has a library of back issues. Users get free access to all the issue back to early 2012. In these issues you will find even more exciting adventures detailed in words, pictures, and video. So what if you aren't a big time thrill seeker who can't wait to be walking over a single line anchored a thousand feet over a gorge or to be rushing down a raging river with nothing to protect you but a thin shelled kayak and your own skills. I certainly fit into that category but I found the articles and pictures contained in this app to be fascinating. The Adidas Outdoor Magazine app articles are well written and bring an element of the excitement the adventurers feel right to the readers and as I mentioned before the photos and videos are top notch. Adidas Outdoor Magazine app is worth a look so you can live vicariously through the adventures of others. One point to note though. While some of the content downloaded quickly, others were very slow and some stopped during the download. I received a server error message a couple of times so it might have been a server issue the day I checked out the app.
The weirdest booth attractions of Gamescom 2010
While most booths at Gamescom relied on the games themselves to attract visitor attention, there were plenty of booths that went to some ridiculous lengths to stand out from the crowd. Take the above picture, which was set up to promote some sort of tractor simulation that's apparently popular in Germany. And that was actually one of the more game-related booths we captured for the odd gallery below. And you thought Gamescom was all about the games. You're so silly.%Gallery-100139%
HardGrip: Wii game uses MotionPlus for rock climbing, other motion-based platforms on the horizon
Human Soft calls its upcoming MotionPlus-enhanced rock climbing game HardGrip "the first extreme rock climbing game for Wii," but we disagree with that appellation. How could Human Soft (or anyone) forget Rock N' Roll Climber, Nintendo's Balance Board-capable WiiWare game that combined rock climbing with air guitar? We can't imagine a more extreme rock climbing game on Wii. While the Wii version is the only officially announced release, Xbox owners who want to claw at thin air (and PlayStation 3 owners who want to follow the bouncing ball up the side of a mountain) may be in luck. "In addition to the Wii product," the press release notes, "Human Soft is working on versions of HardGrip for other upcoming motion-based game systems."
Capuchin robot climbs its way into your nightmares
As if there weren't enough creepy crawly robots out there already, a team of researchers from Stanford University have now let loose this little number, which they hope will one day be showing off its rock-climbing skills on Mars. Dubbed Capuchin, the bot is a follow-up to the Lemur robot built by the same team, and promises to climb walls some 40 times faster than that earlier model. To do that, the researchers apparently didn't make any major mechanical changes, but rather employed a more advanced computer program that guides the bot's every move. More specifically, as NewScientist reports, the software uses a sophisticated load-balancing system, which distributes the bot's weight equally to its arms and legs and improves its stability when climbing. As you can see for yourself in the video after the break, that appears to work remarkably well, although we still wouldn't trust it to be a partner on your next rock-climbing expedition.
