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Your next White Castle slider could be cooked by a robot
The two companies have been collaborating for about a year to integrate Flippy’s ROAR (Robot on a Rail) system into White Castle’s existing kitchen layouts and workflows.
MSI Slidebook S20 review: MSI's flagship Windows 8 Ultrabook has a flawed design
If you've been following our reviews of Windows 8 laptops, you know we haven't been too kind to the slider form factor. It's not like we set out to pan these machines, but time and again we've found that the propped-up display ruins the typing experience. Keep that in mind as we begin our review of the Slidebook S20, MSI's flagship Win 8 device, priced at $1,200 in the US. It's a bold move from a company whose bread and butter is not ultraportables, but gaming systems. In fact, the 11.6-inch S20 is the outfit's only high-end Windows 8 Ultrabook. So the company must have quite a bit of confidence in that form factor, then, if it didn't bother with dockable tablets or some other kind of convertible design. Could that mean the S20 has something all the others don't?%Gallery-184277%
The Perfect Ten: Character creation options nobody uses
There are two types of people in the world: those who can't get through the character creation menu fast enough to start playing "LordBladezz" and those who spend hours crafting the perfect face that will be seen by the player only 0.03% of the time. I've heard rumors of a species of middle-ground player, but I've yet to see one. I think there could be a doctoral thesis for someone willing to investigate which visual character creation options most of us use and which ones we ignore. My hunch is that most of us are looking to recreate an impeccable standard of beauty or handsomeness, resulting in game worlds exploding with Abercrombie & Fitch models. Because exploring the "most-used character creation options" isn't as much fun, today we're going to examine the 10 options that pretty much nobody uses. And yes, you'll feel compelled to comment that you do indeed use one of these and prove me wrong, so let me give you a gold star in advance for doing so. You're awesome.
Toshiba unveils U925t Ultrabook with slide-out touchscreen, keeps the price a secret for now
If Computex was a coming out party for Windows 8 Ultrabooks, Toshiba was one of the wallflowers: though the company teased some concept devices, it only let journalists photograph them from certain angles, and with their screens turned off. Now, though, we're closing the summer with yet another tradeshow, and Toshiba is using the occasion to demo its wares in more detail. The company just announced the Satellite U925t, that Windows 8 slider we showed you earlier in the summer. No word on price, except that it's expected to be "slightly north" of the Satellite U845W, which starts at $1,000. We do know that it will ship on October 26th, the day Win 8 formally launches. In the meantime, Toshiba hasn't left any specs to the imagination. What we have here is a 12.5-inch Ultrabook with a slide-out, Gorilla Glass touchscreen. Pushing the screen up reveals a built-in keyboard, and we were pleasantly surprised in our hands-on to find that it's actually quite spacious. (With this form factor, the propped up display usually cuts into the usable keyboard space.) The keys are also backlit, and have the same feel as what you'll find on Toshiba's U845 and U845W Ultrabooks. That is to say they're shallow, and very, very quiet. The whole package weighs "just over three pounds" and measures about 0.8 inches thick, making it easy enough to stuff in a carry-on. When you push up the display you'll also find another surprise: an autofocusing 3-megapixel camera on the back side. For good measure, there's also a lower-res shooter up front. On the inside, it packs a Core i5 processor, Intel HD 4000 graphics and a 128GB SSD. Like many other Ultrabooks, it also has Intel's Wireless Display tech on board, though you'll of course have to buy the requisite set-top box separately. Taking a tour around the device, you'll find a mix of tablet- and laptop-style trappings: two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, vents, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a volume rocker and a button for turning off screen auto-rotation. Software-wise, Toshiba is bundling Desktop Assist, a utility designed to give Windows 8 newbies quick access to files, programs and the like. You'll also see Live Tiles for things like Toshiba Central (a support hub), Book Place and Toshiba App Place. That's all she wrote for now, but expect us to follow up closer to October 26th with a more specific price. Until then, we've got hands-on photos below, along with a short walk-through video.%Gallery-163534%
Microsoft patents new type of mobile slider, puts keyboards and screens on equal footing
Patents are the currency of the realm these days, and companies accrue them however they can -- whether filing for their own or buying someone else's. Microsoft's no stranger to the patent game, and it's added one more piece to its IP stockpile in the form of a "moveable housing of a mobile communications device." A broad title, to be sure, but the patent essentially covers sliders where the keyboard ends up flush with the screen after it's moved. In existing designs, the sliding display gets in the way of pressing the top row of keys, and squishing the grid's size or fattening up the phone are the only ways to make space for fingers to press them. This new design frees phalanges and keys from such constraints, and adds a little something to the phone's aesthetics as well. Sounds great Microsoft, now put this patent in the capable hands of Nokia's hardware engineers and get to work making a sleek new WP7 slider, stat!
White Castle offers online ordering but makes you leave couch for pick-up
Do you crave hamburgers but also want to minimize your interaction with fellow human beings? Then your unicorn-riding white knight has arrived, in the form of White Castle's new online ordering service. Thought not quite as handy as Domino's UK-only SMS ordering, the feature is rolling out to all 400 US locations. The website lets you "customize your sack" however you please; it also has a pretty high (or non-existent?) limit on quantities, meaning 1,000,000 Bacon and Cheddar Sliders will set you back $1,190,000. That could be a bug or a feature, depending on how hungry you are. Sadly, no matter how large your order you'll still have to go to the burger joint to pick it up -- delivery is still just a beautiful, beautiful dream. Maybe they can partner with MIT for a print-on-demand service.
TERA community play diaries detail character creation
We talked briefly last week about TERA's upcoming community play test, an event designed to give TERA fans the opportunity to see and discuss the game's latest build prior to the start of North American beta activities. As a prelude, En Masse Entertainment community team members Jason "BrotherMagneto" Mical and Evan "Scapes" Berman have penned a couple of Community Play Diary blog entries to whet our collective appetite. Mical's In the Beginning piece focuses on character creation and offers a bit of commentary on the new build, new character options, and the author's roleplaying background. There's also a couple of nifty screenshots including one from the new introduction cinematic that shows a freshly created character flying to the Isle of Dawn. Berman's A Labor of Love entry gives us the low-down on the En Masse employee guild as well as a few anecdotes from staffers who spent time grouping and questing together in the new build. Scapes goes into a good bit of detail regarding customization sliders and also notes that he spent 54 minutes perfecting his character's look. You can read both play diaries in full at the official TERA website.
SenseSurface sticks knobs onto screens, turns virtual controls physical
Imagine if you could attach a physical knob, slider, or switch to any application which called for some tactile interaction (say a music app like Live or Logic). That concept is exactly what led Lyndsay Williams to create the SenseSurface -- a modular system that allows you to literally stick a controller onto a display when you need it. The devices use an X/Y matrix on the backside of a typical laptop display coupled with custom designed movement sensors. Lyndsay claims that the apparatus is multitouch and low friction, leaves no marks, is programmable, scaleable, and limited only by the size of the screen. The cost? Less than $100 in production. Take a look at a prototype of the system on video after the break, and hit the read link for more detail.[Via Boing Boing Gadgets]
