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Boston Dynamic's new 'Stretch' robot is designed for boxes, not backflips
Boston Dynamics has revealed its latest robot, Stretch, designed for far less glamorous purposes than its other creations.
Amazon's new eco-friendly boxes can be turned into forts and 'cat condos'
An Amazon delivery might not be that exciting for you, but your cat is probably thrilled to be getting a new cardboard home. Amazon has made that sentiment official with new eco-friendly boxes that can be recycled into cat condos, forts and even a putt-putt golf windmill.
iOS-only Boxes app adds eBay support, private and public boxes, and barcode scanner
If you're a collector, there comes a time when you have to face the sad reality that part of collecting is keeping track of your collection, and selling off the excess. Boxes is an iOS-exclusive app that does just that, offering a powerful cataloging tool with photos that allows you to document and organize your collection. It even allows you to make wish lists so you can find things other users are selling. Now the app has been updated to include integration with eBay so you can quickly and easily sell your goods on one of the web's most popular marketplaces. It's a wise move for the cataloging tool. Imagine browsing through a list of your Beanie Baby collection one day only to realize you've got three of the legendary "Millenium" (sic) bears. Now with a simple swipe of your finger, that bear is a part of the marketplace, putting money back in your pocket. The updated app also introduces a new Private Info Area so users can keep track of important details about their collections like receipts, warranty information, place of purchase or any other detail that might come in handy. As someone who has kept track of where exactly he bought specific pieces in his vinyl collection, this sort of fine-tooth nitpicking is a welcome feature. In a move that's sure to end up being useful following a natural disaster or house fire, the app has introduced a barcode scanner that allows you to track each objects UPC code, serial number, model number, SKU, etc. Finally Version 1.2 adds Public Boxes, allowing you to explore what other Boxes users have in their collections. You can find the update in the App Store for free.
The Daily Grind: Do you still like buying retail copies?
We live in a world where most games can be downloaded directly to our computers or consoles without a need for physical copies. Free-to-play games don't need game disks, and buy-to-play games like Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World mostly use them as novelties once the games are installed. Even some subscription games aren't going to ask you to hunt down a boxed copy -- you can install, buy, and play EVE Online all from your desktop. On the one hand, this means fewer packages cluttering up the house, which is pretty universally a good thing. On the other hand, some of us have a certain affection for the old boxed game, even if that model is looking increasingly out of date. So, do you still like buying boxed copies of games? Or are you happy to move on to just downloading things directly instead of dealing with the hassle of packaging? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Daily iPhone App: Chip Chain is a great, free matching game
Chip Chain is a great game, and considering that it's free (there are in-app purchases, but I didn't find them overly invasive at all), it's probably well worth a download no matter what. As much as the game is polished and professional, it hasn't yet caught me up in its mechanics, and I'm not really sure why. On its surface, Chip Chain is very appealing. It's a puzzle game at its core: You have a grid of boxes and into each of those boxes, you can put a numbered poker chip. Once a few chips of the same number touch each other, you can then link those up and form a chip one number higher. You can then link those chips up (if you have enough in the right places), and so on, scoring more points and clearing chips off of the board. You can see the game in action below -- it's simple to play, but a little tougher to master. And I think it's that "mastery" part that's tripped me up a bit. The mechanics are very interesting indeed, and it's possible to play and set up big combos and chains with a little bit of thought. But the core mechanics of the game aren't that clear to me, and when you add in a somewhat confusing card mechanic (that lets you tweak the game board in various ways), the game moves from a clear simplicity to something that seems a little too complicated. That's not necessarily bad, but it has kept me from really getting invested in Chip Chain so far. All of those concerns aside, however, Chip Chain is a great app with plenty of content, and it's available for the low price of free. Puzzle fans should not pass this one up -- just because I haven't completely figured it out yet doesn't mean there's not plenty of fun to be had.
GNOME 3.6 arrives with new notifications and improved accessibility support
The third update to the third version of Gnome may send numerologists to their calendars, but we're not that way inclined. Instead, the latest bump to the software adds a new Boxes application, a new notification system and an activities overview. It's also chucking in improved accessibility support in addition to the usual raft of tweaks and bug fixes you'd expect from an update like this. It'll be available from your own vendor (or distribution) soon, or you can pick up a live image from the official site straight away.
How Blizzard makes the StarCraft 2 races so iconic
The StarCraft 2 preview for Heart of the Swarm on display at BlizzCon 2011 last week was pretty much the same thing we saw a few months ago on the Blizzard campus. Fun as it was, we instead used our short time talking with with Blizzard's lead art director Samwise Dider to have him let us in on just how Blizzard is able to make StarCraft's three races so darn iconic. His answer was pretty simple. "Protoss," he says, "they're basically elliptical and circular. Terran are basically angular and square, and Zerg are very erratic and organic and spiky." Sounds plain enough. But when one of the game's new units (specifically the Protoss' Tempest, a strong capital ship with some heavy anti-zerg ability) showed up on the screen during the Opening Ceremony, players immediately knew the 'toss were getting a new toy. Is it as easy as shapes? "With Protoss," says Didier, "as long as you have a few of the basic things; big golden arcs and sweeping sort of angelic-looking wings and surfaces, you can make almost anything into Protoss. With Terran, they're all about the clunkiness, boxes, utilitarian. You take em out of the box, they're ready to go." And the Zerg? They're "just a gumbo of teeth and snot and bile," according to Didier. "We wrap them in the movement of a snake or a spider or a roach, there's your Zerg stuff." Boiling these races down into their elements like that is just another reason why this company, and its games, are so incredibly popular. "It's very easy to tell these races apart, because they are so diametrically opposed," Didier concludes, before deconstructing the series completely: "Gold, gray, brown." %Gallery-137265%
Apple gets its white iPhone 4 ducks in a row ahead of launch
Look, we all kinda, sorta know that Apple will finally admit it's springtime tomorrow and let the white iPhone 4 fly the nest. But in order to sell white iPhone 4s, you've got to ship them first, and one small Belgian retailer has just received its first batch of the mythical pale device and lined them up for some loving photography. Not only that, but they're even offering to sell you either the 16GB or 32GB over on their site (which, mind you, we can't vouch for!), though they can only ship within the Benelux region. One more pic after the break.
DS Daily: What remains
DS cartridges are tiny. Really effing tiny. So small, in fact, that with but a matchbox, one can generally hold as many games as he or she could possibly need in a single trip out.The games, of course, aren't sold as such. They come in boxes, proprietary boxes. There are very few, if any, specially made racks and stands for these cases, and many find them to be nothing more than a hindrance. Our question to you: do you keep the boxes and instruction manuals for DS games, and if you do, do you actually store each game inside its respective box? They quite literally inflate the size of the game by a factor of a hundred ... do you stand for it?
WoW Moviewatch: What to do with 60 boxes...
No, I don't know why anyone would have 60 World of Warcraft boxes in their house. (Perhaps entirely for this purpose?) And call me crazy, but somehow lining them up in my living room and knocking them over doesn't come to mind as something to do with them. But then again, that's probably why I don't make the videos, I just post 'em.
