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Microsoft now lets you gift PC games from its digital store
Microsoft's Xbox gifting feature was a big hit with players last fall. Now, the company has expanded digital gifting to include PC games and PC downloadable content (so things like map packs and skins). It's also made all Xbox One games eligible for gifting. It's a pretty straightforward process. Head to the Microsoft Store, find your game and select 'buy as gift'. Just enter the recipient's email address -- or choose their Gamertag if you're gifting via Xbox One -- and they'll get a redemption code. Then you can sit back and wait for the gratitude to roll in.
Dubai will begin digital license plate trial next month
Next month, Dubai will begin testing smart license plates, the BBC reports, and they'll be able to contact emergency services in the event of a crash, communicate with other cars about traffic conditions and display an alert if it or the car it's on are stolen. A trial will begin next month to try out the system, test for any technological issues arising because of the city's hot, arid climate and figure out how best to roll out the devices in the future. Along with its communication features, the digital plate will also allow for users' fines, parking fees and plate registration costs to be deducted automatically from their accounts. However, because the plates will be outfitted with a GPS and transmitters, they could trigger concerns over privacy and data security.
Fox Sports expands World Cup coverage to Twitter and Snapchat
Fox Sports is no stranger to leveraging the power of technology alongside its broadcasts. Now, it's expanding its coverage of the forthcoming FIFA World Cup beyond TV, with plans to feature exclusive shows, stories and highlights across Twitter and Snapchat.
Dish customers can no longer access CBS TV channels
If you're looking forward to watching the NFL this Thanksgiving you might find yourself stuck watching holiday reruns instead, as CBS is making good on its threat to black out dozens of channels in response to its ongoing subscription feud with Dish. According to Dish, the network last night barred customer access to 28 local channels in 18 markets across 26 states.
You can get a refund on Oculus Rift and Gear VR games and apps
Buying games and apps digitally is less risky when there's a solid refund policy in place. Apple offers refunds for purchases through its iTunes app store and Microsoft has a self-service system. PC distribution portal Steam allows for refunds within 14 days of purchase if you've played a game for two hours or less. Now virtual reality company Oculus has made it clear that you can get a refund for an app or game purchased digitally for the Rift or Gear VR.
British Library exhibit to highlight the sounds it’s fighting to save
Last year, the British Library began the "Save our Sounds" project, with the aim of accelerating the digitisation of millions upon millions of lost audio recordings held in its vast archive. The collection includes many rare and previously unreleased recordings of everything from speeches and music to wildlife, street sounds and pirate radio broadcasts. In some respects, it's a race against the clock. Time is taking its toll on ancient formats like the wax cylinder, for example, and the equipment needed to play some formats is extremely hard to come by. There's much to be done, but next month the British Library is celebrating achievements thus far with a free exhibition that "will explore how sound has shaped and influenced our lives since the phonograph was invented in 1877."
Microsoft wants OneNote to be the go-to classroom app
Microsoft has been quietly focusing on the education market with its OneNote app for some time now. It's offered free Office 365 subscriptions for students, an integrated math tutor and a classroom-centric add-on called OneNote Class Notebook. The company has just updated OneNote with even more educational extras, including improvements to Notebook, new learning tools and some fun new stickers that teachers and students can use to spice up their collaborations.
UK ebook sales flounder as interest in print copies rebounds
Book sales in the UK are on the rise, but not because of ebooks. Figures for 2016 released by the Publishers Association show a 7 percent rise over 2015, the largest year-over-year growth in a decade. Physical book sales were up 8 percent, however ebook sales fell by 3 percent to £538 million. The biggest contributor to the drop? What the industry calls "consumer ebooks" -- novels, autobiographies and the like -- which slipped 17 percent to £204 million. As The Guardian reports, the numbers suggest a shift back towards printed books. We spend much of our time on smartphones, laptops and tablets, so for many reading is an opportunity to disconnect.
Vudu's mobile app rips digital copies of your Blu-rays
Walmart's Vudu streaming arm has unveiled the "first mobile offering" to convert nearly 8,000 movies on DVD and Blu-ray to digital HD files, it says. It's an expansion of the company's existing desktop conversion service, but lets you convert your physical library using the mobile Vudu app instead. As before, the price to convert files you already own is $2 for either a Blu-ray disc to HDX or a DVD to SD, or $5 to up-res a DVD to HDX (hint: your TV might do the latter already).
Our digital future as a 'Forest of Numbers'
Over the next ten years, we'll see ever-faster chips, artificial intelligence and exponentially more data. Forest of Numbers, an exhibition by architect Emmanuelle Moureaux at the National Art Center of Tokyo (NACT) gives viewers a chance to contemplate that future by gazing into what looks like a never-ending string of digits. Careful observers will also spot two girls and a cat, showing that there's humanity buried somewhere in all the data.
Fotr takes you back to photography's bad old days
Before digital, photographers of all calibers had to be careful, since there were several limits imposed on what they could do. For instance, you only had a limited number of exposures per reel and you had to pay to print all of your images, even the duds that were destined for the trash. It all sounds dreadful, but that doesn't mean that companies like Fotr aren't going to try and recreate it for the smartphone age. The app, very simply, forces would-be snappers to be as careful as they used to, since Fotr will print out every image you snap with it.
Living circuits can handle complex computing
Gene-based circuits are about to get decidedly more sophisticated. MIT scientists have developed a method for integrating both analog and digital computing into those circuits, turning living cells into complex computers. The centerpiece is a threshold sensor whose gene expression flips DNA, converting analog chemical data into binary output -- basically, complex data can trigger simple responses that match the language of regular computers.
British Library digitizes George III's massive map collection
King George III was quite the map collector, and his massive catalog of cartographic relics is being digitized by the British Library. In total, the collection encompasses over 50,000 maps, including the Klencke Atlas which is the second largest atlas in the world. It measures 1.8 x 2.3 meters (about 6 x 7.5 feet) and includes 41 maps bound together in a single book. The library is a quarter of the way through photographing the collection, and once it's finished, the maps will be accessible online through its Transforming Typography website.
3D printed digital sundial is brilliant and insane
People have been using the sun to tell the time since life began, but few ever expected that system to be worthy of an upgrade. Step forward a French engineer, going under the name of Mojoptix, who has created a digital sundial that expresses the time digitally, casting numbers into its own shadow. The principle behind it is rather simple: treating the sun as a backlight for a series of analog pixels that are calibrated to precise angles. As our nearest star passes along the sky, it pours through the holes that correspond to the readout for that time. So, when it's 10:00am, you'll be able to see 10:00am projected onto the table below.
Tarantino explains why he thinks 70mm is better than digital
Famed film director Quentin Tarantino is well-known for his purist cinematic tastes and revelry of antique movie production techniques. His fondness for old-school cinema is on full display in his upcoming release, The Hateful Eight, which is being captured only in 70mm and shown as glamorous "roadshows". While the rest of the industry films almost exclusively in digital these days (not to mention that movie houses have long since mothballed their 70mm projectors) Tarantino has been dead set to make this movie on film. In the Fandango featurette below, he explains his reasoning for this insistence and why it's good for the fans.
BBC Store lets you buy and download classic TV shows
Before iPlayer existed, VHS tapes and DVDs were one of the few ways to rewatch BBC shows. Unless you caught a rerun or had diligently prepared the VCR, that is. These days iPlayer reigns supreme, but catchup is limited to a 30-day window -- so there's still a reason to buy your favourites on DVD, Blu-ray or digitally. Today, the BBC is embracing the latter with BBC Store, a new site that lets you buy, download and stream its best programming. Roughly 7,000 hours of TV is available at launch, including shows that have never been available digitally before, like Dad's Army and Morecambe & Wise.
Shovel Knight's DLC hits consoles and PC on September 17th
Yacht Club Games, developers of the uber-popular platformer, Shovel Knight, has revealed that the game's DLC will be available starting September 17th. Dubbed Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows, the DLC will offer a number of new gameplay styles including Adventure and Challenge Modes. The game is currently available on PC, Wii U, 3DS, PlayStation 3, PS4, PS Vita, and Xbox One. The DLC will be available as digital downloads on all these consoles. A physical disc version including both the original game and the DLC will be ready in October.
The British Library is fighting to save endangered sounds
For most of us, thinking about museums and archives will conjure up images of physical relics; faded books, paintings and trinkets discovered beneath the soil. But now, the British Library is fighting to preserve something more elusive: sound. With £9.5 million in fresh Lottery funding, it hopes to digitise and release 500,000 rare and at-risk recordings over the next five years. The challenge is that some audio snippets are currently held on old formats, such as wax cylinders and magnetic tape. They're slowly decaying to a point of irreparability, and the equipment required to play them is becoming harder to source. The British Library estimates that 1 million UK sound collections could be lost in the next 15 years, so in January it started a "Save our Sounds" campaign to preserve them.
You can (legally) download the 'Star Wars' movies starting Friday
While the world waits for the next entries in the Star Wars saga (Episode VII on December 18th, followed by the Rogue One spinoff next year and Episode VIII in 2017), Disney, Fox and Lucasfilm have finally worked it out so you can buy the movies as digital copies. Sure a Blu-ray set came out a few years ago, but if physical media isn't your thing then Friday is the big day (yes, they're still the "special" editions). The movies will be available globally through retailers like Vudu, Xbox, PlayStation, Google Play, iTunes, Amazon and others. If you need a reason to do the digital double-dip, take a peek at the promised new extras, like "Discoveries from Inside" featurettes for each movie, and "Conversations" between key contributors. Vudu is taking pre-orders on the full set for $90 (US) and Google Play shows the individual movies for $20 each -- in case you're wondering, the Blu-ray set is listed on Amazon for the same price.
AT&T's connected car tech now works with AT&T's connected home
Controlling your home's temperature from your smartphone is cool, but it'd make your neighbors even more jealous if you could do the same thing from your car's dashboard. That's the thinking behind AT&T's latest move, which is to bring its home automation platform in harmony with AT&T Drive, its connected car offering. Such integration means that users can control their security, door locks, thermostat and even garage doors straight from the navigation panel. Perhaps it won't be long before the company starts warning users not to mess with the A/C while riding down the highway in the same way it currently does for text messaging.
