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Amazon brings one-hour Prime Now deliveries to Newcastle
Just a day after it expanded its same-day delivery service to more of the UK, Amazon has added another big city to its list of Prime Now locations: Newcastle. The Northern city joins London and Birmingham in offering Prime customers one-hour deliveries, allowing locals order up to 15,000 products including electronics, food and possible Christmas for £6.99 or for free if they're willing to wait two hours. Amazon says selected postcodes in Gateshead, Durham and Sunderland are now eligible, but you should probably check Amazon's delivery checker first before filling your online basket.
Uber launches in Newcastle, its sixth UK city
Uber is slowly but surely making inroads in Britain. Today, the company is launching its low-cost UberX service in Newcastle, allowing passengers to request a Toyota Prius (or a similarly specced vehicle) to get around town. It's the sixth UK city for Uber, following London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Wakefield. Only a week ago the company launched its premium UberExec service in Manchester and Leeds, but we wouldn't be surprised if a similar expansion was already being prepared for "the Toon." Where will Uber strike next? If its online job listings are anything to go by, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Now that the company has a foothold in England, it seems Scotland is next on its hit-list.
NHS vehicles trial tech that turns traffic lights green on command
Traffic lights are a pet peeve for many city-dwelling drivers. You'll be running late for a meeting, but all of your attempts to make up the time are thwarted by successive red lights. Bad luck on the road can be particularly problematic for ambulances in the UK -- when they're rushing to the scene of an accident, every second counts. To help out, Newcastle University is spearheading a new project that gives NHS vehicles priority at the lights.
UK hotel ditching paper bibles for Kindles, Rocky Raccoon to get acquainted with the benefits of e-ink
Maybe papercuts aren't a part of the creator's master plan, after all -- not at the Hotel Indigo's Newcastle location, at least, which is ditching the standard hardcover bible in favor of a Kindle edition. The hotel's GM says the move, which brings Amazon's e-reader to its 148 rooms, is keeping with the city's rich publishing history. The device will come pre-loaded with the bible, with other religious texts available for the download. Customers can also download non-religious texts, which will be added to their bill. The move is currently being assessed under a trial basis, which will be revisited on July 16th. No word on whether the promotion will be expanded to other hotels in the chain.
Neuroscientists develop game for stroke rehabilitation, give the Wii a run for its money
Think the Wii has the market cornered on gaming rehab? Think again -- neuroscientists at Newcastle University are developing a series of motion controlled video games to make stroke rehab more fun and accessible. The team's first title, dubbed Circus Challenge, lets patients digitally throw pies, tame lions and juggle to help them build strength and regain motor skills. As players progress, the game ratchets up its difficulty, presumably to match pace with their recovery. Although Limbs Alive, the game's publisher, has only described their motion controller as "next-generation," it affirms that the game will be playable on PCs, laptops and tablets later this year. In an effort to lower costs and provide at-home therapy, the team hopes to leverage a £1.5 million award from the UK's Health Innovation Challenge Fund to build a system that will allow therapists to monitor patient progress remotely. The whole enchilada still needs some time to bake, but you can hit the break for a video and the full press release.
Newcastle University preps in-car GPS for the elderly, helps grandmum get home safely
Most Engadget readers will have grown up with GPS, but the UK's Newcastle University has realized that many in the older generation might be first-timers and unfamiliar with all those keep-lefts and turn-rights. Development is underway at the school for a new satellite navigation system that would be easier and more intuitive for your grandfolks, with features that include calling out direction changes by landmark names, limiting turns to the safer variety and keeping the route off of high-speed motorways. When this might come to your local high street shop isn't known, but the university has a £12 million ($19.5 million) research grant to help sort that out.
Microsoft's KinectFusion research project offers real-time 3D reconstruction, wild AR possibilities
It's a little shocking to think about the impact that Microsoft's Kinect camera has had on the gaming industry at large, let alone the 3D modeling industry. Here at SIGGRAPH 2011, we attended a KinectFusion research talk hosted by Microsoft, where a fascinating new look at real-time 3D reconstruction was detailed. To better appreciate what's happening here, we'd actually encourage you to hop back and have a gander at our hands-on with PrimeSense's raw motion sensing hardware from GDC 2010 -- for those who've forgotten, that very hardware was finally outed as the guts behind what consumers simply know as "Kinect." The breakthrough wasn't in how it allowed gamers to control common software titles sans a joystick -- the breakthrough was the price. The Kinect took 3D sensing to the mainstream, and moreover, allowed researchers to pick up a commodity product and go absolutely nuts. Turns out, that's precisely what a smattering of highly intelligent blokes in the UK have done, and they've built a new method for reconstructing 3D scenes (read: real-life) in real-time by using a simple Xbox 360 peripheral. The actual technobabble ran deep -- not shocking given the academic nature of the conference -- but the demos shown were nothing short of jaw-dropping. There's no question that this methodology could be used to spark the next generation of gaming interaction and augmented reality, taking a user's surroundings and making it a live part of the experience. Moreover, game design could be significantly impacted, with live scenes able to be acted out and stored in real-time rather than having to build something frame by frame within an application. According to the presenter, the tech that's been created here can "extract surface geometry in real-time," right down to the millimeter level. Of course, the Kinect's camera and abilities are relatively limited when it comes to resolution; you won't be building 1080p scenes with a $150 camera, but as CPUs and GPUs become more powerful, there's nothing stopping this from scaling with the future. Have a peek at the links below if you're interested in diving deeper -- don't be shocked if you can't find the exit, though. %Gallery-130263%
Silicon carbide sensors developed for transmitting inside volcanos
There's one serious obstacle to volcano research: volcanos, like, shoot lava. Sure, you could aim a thermal camera at one from a safe distance, but where's the fun in that? On the other hand, researchers at Newcastle University are developing silicon carbide-based components for a device that they say will be able to withstand 900° Celsius temperatures -- just the thing to sense what's going on inside a volcano and transmit the info in real-time. Not only will this allow researchers to better understand conditions leading up to an eruption, it might also someday signal an eruption before it occurs. "At the moment we have no way of accurately monitoring the situation inside a volcano," says NU's Dr. Alton Horsfall. "With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal." Since silicon carbide is more resistant to radiation than plain ol' silicon, the tech can also be used inside nuclear power plants or even as radiation sniffers in places that might face a terror attack.
EVE Online devs opening new UK studio
Other than birthing one of our favorite female singers and one of our favorite unicorns, Iceland isn't a country that comes up a lot around Joystiq. Today, however, we've got one such occasion where Iceland-based CCP -- developer of EVE Online and upcoming MMO FPS Dust 514 -- was able to bring our Scandinavian friends to the front page. According to a GamesIndustry.biz report, the developer is expanding, announcing plans to open a new studio in Newcastle, UK. Apparently the studio will be "initially targeting" a 10 - 20 person head count, with a handful of ex-Midway Newcastle employees being picked up in the process. Additionally, the company confirmed that the UK-based offices would be targeting "current and future" console projects, rather than the PC-focused content CCP has been known for in the past. Presumably, this means the aforementioned MMO FPS, said to be headed to current-gen systems. With a mess of trade shows in the not-so-distant future, we'll likely see what CCP has cooking fairly soon.
CCP opens UK office
Growth in the MMO industry hasn't been limited to companies named after weather phenomena. CCP Games, makers of the popular sandbox title EVE Online and its upcoming spinoff DUST 514, have done quite a bit of growing themselves. Their merger with game publisher White Wolf and their office in China are old news, but they've just added a little more space under their control. It's confirmed that CCP has opened a new office in Newcastle, their first branch in the United Kingdom and a new home of development with a slight console focus. Much of the staff in the Newcastle office has been absorbed from the former offices of the recently-defunct Midway Studios branch in Newcastle, including executive Robert Troughton. It's slated to work on "current and future" console products, which no doubt includes DUST 514 as well as future games from the studio. After a number of closures and failures, it's good to see the industry regaining its footing, and expanded studios can only be good for CCP's fans and its games. And if you happen to be a software engineer in the area with some console experience, well, they are hiring...
