Topic: Alt - Engadget

By Brian Heater posted Apr 10th 2013 12:00PM 0

The Engadget Show is nominated for a Webby Award! Alt

The past year and a half has been a period of big changes for the Engadget Show, eschewing our longstanding studio format for a new kind of program that's given us the freedom to travel the world, in search of bigger, deeper stories. We spent the year speaking to some of tech's top minds -- abstract thinkers like Douglas Rushkoff and DJ Spooky, representatives from leading companies like Google and Sony, modders like Ben Heck and researchers at top universities including MIT and Carnegie Mellon. We hung with Wayne Coyne and LeVar Burton, got animated with John Hodgman, flew drones with Chris Anderson, went behind the scenes at Improv Everywhere, rode some crazy hacked bikes in Boston, played classic pinball, spoke to a disembodied robotic head, went ghost hunting, solved a few mysteries and even discovered the true meaning of the holidays (it's presents, by the way).

All in all, we thought we had a good year -- and it's nice to know the folks at the Webby Awards felt the same. We're hoping you enjoyed it too (after all, as fun as the past year's been, we're not just doing this for ourselves). If so, now's the time to let us know. The voting for the People's Voice Award opens today, so we're asking you, dear viewer, to show us some love with a quick vote over at the Webby site (where you can also catch a quick reel to relive some of 2012's highlights). Thanks everyone for helping us make the Engadget Show better than ever (and thanks in advance for voting). We'll see you again soon on the small screen.

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By Terrence O'Brien posted Apr 9th 2013 11:36AM 0

Genius.box wants to put a different experiment on your doorstep every month Alt

There are a lot of things you can have delivered to your home on a monthly basis: magazines, hot sauces, underwear and beer are just a few. The second place winner at the Husky Startup Challenge, genius.box, takes that basic concept but replaces the Fruit of the Looms with simple to perform science experiments. Aimed at children between the ages of eight and 12, the projects inside each package teach a basic lesson in science, technology, engineering or math through a hands-on experience. All of the materials needed for each experiment are included, along with a lesson plan, instructions and "factoid" cards with tidbits of interesting trivia, such as the number of elements on the periodic scale.

The two boxes trotted out for demo day by creators Kate Pipa and Shivangi Shah covered the science and technology portions of the STEM equation. One was a kitchen chemistry set for growing crystals and the other a simple electronics kit, based partially around parts of a Snap Circuits set, that has kids building an electromagnet and lighting up an LED. This isn't exactly a return to hardcore chemistry sets of the past (you'll find no radioactive materials or poisons in here), but it's certainly a step in the right direction for an America whose love affair with science is on the rocks. Every four weeks a child would get a whole new educational playset for the target price of $20 a month. Which is quite a bit cheaper than your standard chemistry set or electronics kit. To be kept in the loop as genius.box works to get off the ground, sign up at the more coverage link.

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By Brad Molen posted Apr 9th 2013 10:30AM 0

Engadget Giveaway: win one of two Amped Wireless router bundles! Alt

Engadget Giveaway win one of two Amped Wireless router bundles!

Chances are avid readers of our site will recognize the Amped Wireless name, because the company pushes out products like routers and range extenders as if they're candy. We're always big fans of new stuff, and Amped is ready to throw some your way. We have two bundles of prizes to hand out, each one containing a R20000G dual-band WiFi router ($140 value), SR20000G Range Extender ($150 value) and Amped's brand new REC10 Compact Range Extender ($80 value) announced just a week ago. The whole set will likely hook you up with WiFi coverage not only throughout your home but your backyard as well -- heck, you may even be able to enjoy a signal at your neighbor's place. It's definitely worth heading below to submit your entry, and we wish you the best of luck!

Note: Please enter using the widget below, as comments are no longer valid methods of entry. The widget only requires your name and email address so we know how to get in touch with you if you win (your information is not given out to third parties), but you will have an option to receive an additional entry by following us on Twitter if you so desire.

Winners: Congratulations to Deric J. of Harrisonburg, VA and Scott A. of Lincoln, NE for being this week's winners!

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By Brad Molen posted Apr 4th 2013 10:00AM 0

Engadget Giveaway: win one of two iPad minis, courtesy of TurboTax! Alt

Hear the birds singing, smell the roses, behold the beautifully blossoming trees and get stuck inside your abode with the unwelcoming burden of taxes. TurboTax is once again coming to the rescue, offering up two 16GB WiFi-only iPad minis for a pair of lucky winners! As you can imagine, the software company offers easy-to-use software for iOS or Android users who need to file a 1040EZ or 1040A; the apps walk you step-by-step through the process and double checks for every deduction and credit. As usual, head to the widget to enter. Good luck!

Note: Please enter using the widget below, as comments are no longer valid methods of entry. The widget only requires your name and email address so we know how to get in touch with you if you win (your information is not given out to third parties), but you will have an option to receive an additional entry by following us and TurboTax on Twitter if you so desire.

Winners: Congratulations to this week's winners, Daniel G. of Ottawa, ONT and Christopher H. of Kittery, ME!

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By Brian Heater posted Mar 28th 2013 2:00PM 0

The Engadget Show 42: Expand with OUYA, Google, DJ Spooky, robots, space, hardware startups and more! Alt

Listen, we're not going to promise you that watching an hour-long episode is the same as going to Expand. The good news for those of you who were unable to attend due to scheduling or geography, however, is that the ticket price is a bit lower, and many of our favorite moments have been saved for posterity. We've done our best to whittle a weekend at San Francisco's beautiful Fort Mason center into one bite-sized chunk of Engadget Show goodness. We'll take you behind the scenes at the event and show you what it takes to run your very own consumer-facing electronics show.

We've got conversations with Google's Tamar Yehoshua, OUYA's Julie Uhrman, Jason Parrish and Corinna Proctor from Lenovo, Chris Anderson, DJ Spooky, Mark Frauenfelder, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, plus folks from NASA, 3D Robotics, Oculus, Google Lunar X Prize, TechShop, Lunar and IndieGogo. We'll go for a spin on ZBoard's latest electric skateboard and show off the da Vinci surgical robot, the Ekso robotic exoskeleteon and the latest UAV from 3D Robotics -- we'll also be taking you out on the town in a Tesla Model S. And for a little bit of high drama, there's our first-ever Insert Coin: New Challengers competition, including conversations with the semi-finalists and the big moment of truth. All that plus kids, dogs and your favorite Engadget Editors. Join us after the break for a warm and fuzzy Engadget Show, won't you?

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By Joe Pollicino posted Mar 26th 2013 7:00PM 0

Breakfast NY's Mission Control Center merges MLB info with NASA-flair, uses 20 feet of switches and screens Alt

The team at Breakfast NY never leaves us hungry when it merges the digital and physical worlds -- and this time it's created something that hits it out of the park for the start of this year's US baseball season. Here at the Major League Baseball Fan Cave in downtown NYC, the team has just unveiled its space program-inspired Mission Control Center. As creative director and co-founder Andrew Zolty explained, "The idea is try and pull in pretty much everything you can possibly imagine that's going on during the 2013 MLB season, and do it in a way that feels reminiscent of NASA's control room: Mission Control."

The 20-foot-long installation houses 30 screens measuring roughly eight inches each. The displays are grouped into two sets of 15 (one side for American League teams and the other for the National League), separated in the middle by a large LCD and a consumer-grade webcam. Below the screens you'll notice a plethora of switches with LEDs, info lights and a trio of gauges. Both sides feature three rows of five screens, each pertaining to one of the 30 MLB teams and their stadiums. At the flick of a switch, the screens display real-time connected data like recent Foursquare check-ins, weather, Facebook Likes and Instagrams, along with team stats, facts and more for each stadium at once.

Those smaller screens, by the way, are actually physically modded Android-tablets -- unfortunately, Breakfast wasn't at liberty to tell us exactly which kind they are. Essentially, they are all running custom apps, with support from MLB.TV to pull real-time, live streams from each stadium in the league. In total, we're told that 13 APIs and seven software languages work in conjunction to make up the Mission Control Center. The setup will also allow players visiting the Cave to have live chats with roughly 10 fans at a time who participate from MLB's site (sort of like Google+) -- of course, the chats allow an essentially unlimited number of spectators. Curious for more of the nitty gritty? Join us past the break.

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By Christopher Trout posted Mar 17th 2013 11:04AM 0

Scanadu's Walter De Brouwer talks tricorders and time travel backstage at Expand (video) Alt

Walter De Brouwer wants to make the tricorder a reality. The Scanadu founder and CEO took some time away from his Trekkie toiling at NASA's Ames Research Park to join our panel on the future of technology and made his way backstage shortly after to discuss his vision of things to come with Sharif Sakr. For the full interview, covering everything from implantable health sensors to semiotics and the possibility (or not) of time travel, check out our video after the break.

Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here!

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By Mat Smith posted Mar 1st 2013 4:45PM 0

The After Math: Cinder block-chucking robots, Barcelona's mobile bonanza and brain doctors Alt

Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages.

Barcelona's Mobile World Congress may have formed the backbone for this week's news but there was also notable news elsewhere -- like the fact that Boston Dynamics' upgraded quadruped robot can now throw cinder blocks. We'll be sticking closer to the (safer) events in Spain, however, so take a look for yourself after the break.

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By Brian Heater posted Feb 11th 2013 9:00AM 0

Pluto moon names to be selected by public voting, we talk to astronomer Mark Showalter Alt

P4 and P5 aren't the sorts of names that impart the manner of excitement space exploration companies and organizations are looking to inspire in the next generation of enthusiasts (nor the customers, philanthropists and tax payers destined to fund those explorations). The SETI Institute, a private non-profit, best known for its ties to the eponymous search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe, is looking to add a little bit of audience participation to the act of naming Pluto's newly discovered moons, which sport those rather uninspired alphanumeric designations.

Beginning today, SETI will open up an online contest to name the moons, both of which were discovered via the Hubble Telescope fairly recently. As with the rest of the dwarf planet's moons, the organization's asking that the names be associated with Hades (the underworld), with ties to Greek or Roman mythology. SETI will pre-select candidates and is also allowing for write-in candidates (though it's retaining editorial discretion here, so, for better or worse, we're not likely to see a Baba Booey moon in the near future).

On a recent trip to the Bay Area, we had the opportunity to speak to Mark Showalter, the senior research scientist at the organization's Carl Sagan Center, an astronomer who played a key role in the discovery of the celestial bodies. You can check out that interview just after the break, before heading off to vote. Showalter is also co-hosting a Google+ Hangout with astronomer Hal Weaver today at 2PM ET.

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By James Trew posted Feb 1st 2013 11:00AM 0

The Highs and Lows of Human-Powered Flight Alt

On March 19th 2012, YouTube user jarnosmeets80 uploaded the a video to YouTube entitled "Flying like a bird | part 14/14." In it, a man donning a set of homemade wings and a helmet with a GoPro attached achieves what many wishful-thinkers, scientists and millennia of wingless bipeds have long dreamed of doing: flying. Sadly, one month later the video's creator, filmmaker Floris Kaayk, admitted the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Skeptics will have been quick to dismiss the video straight away, and anything more than a cursory Google search might have convinced most of the same. But, with more than 7 million views at time of this writing, it's pretty clear that as a land-based species, it doesn't take much for us to suspend our disbelief at the idea of being able to fly. Even if it is just for one minute and 50 seconds. Head past the break to read more.

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By Daniel Cooper posted Jan 26th 2013 7:30PM 0

Alt-week 1.26.13: quadruple DNA helixes, Byzantine mutants and battling hospital bugs Alt

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

In isolation, this week's stories are all pretty notable, but if you put them together, it begins to sound a lot like the plot of a movie. Four-stranded DNA, a database of alien planets, a new super-chemical to kill hospital bugs and a byzantine gamma-radiation blast. You can almost picture the plucky heroine trying to unpick the galactic conspiracy before someone loses an eye -- and if you've already cast weepy Clare Danes in the role, then you've already passed the entry exam to read Alt-week.

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By Daniel Cooper posted Jan 19th 2013 5:00PM 0

Alt-week 1.19.13: cloudy lasers, GPS drugs and proving George Lucas wrong Alt

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories.

It's 2013 and yet somehow we haven't ascended into a creature made of pure energy, so we'd better put some clothes on and get back to work. We've got lasers that are made from gas, a team of student physicists that are determined to prove George Lucas wrong, the world's oldest underground railway celebrating its sesquicentennial and we'll learn how the NYPD wants to track drug addicts with GPS. If that doesn't sound like the Alt-weekiest Alt-week you ever did see, then we can't be friends.

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By Alexis Santos posted Jan 3rd 2013 3:00PM 0

Inside UPS' Worldport: How a shipping titan moves 2,000 packages every 17 seconds Alt

DNP Inside UPS' Worldport facility how one of the world's shipping titans moves 2,000 packages every 17 seconds

Online shopping seems like a straightforward process: hunt down the perfect item, trudge through the checkout pipeline and await a package's inevitable arrival. The trip between a warehouse and your doorstep, however, involves meticulous organization on a massive scale. In order to pull off such a feat, United Parcel Service (UPS) relies on Worldport in Louisville, Ky.: a 5.2 million-square-foot processing facility that's capable of sorting up to 416,000 packages an hour. Within Worldport, 70 aircraft docks and 155 miles of conveyor belts await the arrival of packages from over 220 countries and territories. So, what happens when UPS gets ahold of those parcels destined for air delivery? The folks clad in brown took us inside their largest sorting hub to find out.

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By Engadget staff posted Dec 28th 2012 2:15PM 0

2012 Year in tech: A timeline Alt

By Billy Steele, Sarah Silbert and Christopher Trout
Illustration By ILoveDust

While planet Earth has yet to meet its demise, the end of 2012 is nigh. It was a year of lengthy legal battles and shifting power dynamics in the tech industry. It brought with it great advancements and great failures -- and, for some, the promise of the end of days. We've combed our archives to bring you just a few of the stories that made the biggest impact on our reporting this year. Herewith, an abridged look back at the year that was.

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By Amol Koldhekar posted Dec 25th 2012 2:00PM 0

Growing Up Geek: Amol Koldhekar Alt

Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a feature where we take a look back at our youth, and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week, we have our very own Amol Koldhekar!

My childhood may have kicked off the 1990s, but I grew up surrounded by remnants of the 80s, like the Apple II that temporarily lived in my dad's home office or the Nintendo Entertainment System that was originally my older sister's console. I think all younger siblings of that era can identify with having to play as Luigi on Super Mario Bros. My sister eventually lost interest in her NES, so I took claim to it. While I had loads of fun playing Excitebike and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, I always spent an inordinate amount of time escaped in Duck Hunt while I was busy peering through the glass end of the NES gun, trying to see how it worked. Ironically, this curiosity may have impeded obtaining better devices early on -- when my NES stopped working, I tinkered with its innards and somehow got it to work, negating the need for my parents to get me a Super Nintendo. As I grew older, I grew wiser, deeming the NES a lost cause in order to convince my parents to let me get a Nintendo 64 with birthday money. How amazing that the NES was soon repaired and still works!

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