resonance
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Sound waves can be used to fool your phone's motion sensors
It's tempting to assume that the sensors on your mobile devices are trustworthy. Surely something that relies on real-world activity can't lie, right? Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. Scientists have discovered that you can fool mobile devices' motion sensors into registering non-existent data by playing the right sounds. The technique involves playing a tone at the resonant frequency for the spring structures inside accelerometer chips, much in the same way as you might shatter a wine glass. It's not strictly hacking (not in the conventional sense, anyway), but it could lead to an outsider taking control of motion-related features in the right circumstances.
With Qi wireless charging, you'll soon be able to charge your device from a short distance
It's becoming more and more common to find mobile devices with wireless charging capability, either as a built-in feature or integrated into third-party cases. Progress has been somewhat hampered, however, by the fact that no universally adopted standard is available. Of the three major groups trying to corner the market, Qi -- a standard created by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) -- has arguably been the most successful at courting manufacturers and carriers (over 200 have signed up so far). The problem is, its abilities have been limited because it only uses a method called inductive charging; in other words, you can power up your smartphone as long as it's sitting on a charging pad. Wireless, sure, but it's still only marginally more convenient than simply plugging the handset in. Fortunately, Qi's adding some crucial functionality later this year that will allow you to charge your device from nearly two inches away.
Steam weekly deals: Mutant Blobs Attack, Resonance, Postal 2
Steam's weekly deals may not have official themes, but they each seem to carry an overall vibe, and this week, that vibe is "dead bodies and scary assaults." Each of the following games is up to 75 percent off on Steam through 10 a.m. PT on April 29: Resonance, Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, Postal 2 Complete, Primal Fears, Still Life, Still Life 2, Post Mortem, Perimeter 2: New Earth, Zombie Pirates and a software title, Construct 2.Mutant Blobs Attack, for example, is half off for $4, and it supports Steam's controller-friendly Big Picture mode. Resonance, a deep and innovative point-and-click adventure, is 75 percent off for $2.50, and Postal 2 Complete is 60 percent off, $6. Check out the lineup right here.
Indie Royale Snow Storm: Resonance, Hinterland, Project Aftermath, robots
The Indie Royale Snow Storm Bundle offers six games for cheap: Resonance, Hinterland, RoboBlitz, StarDrone, Project Aftermath and RobotRiot. Combine them all and you'd get a futuristic, scientific robopocalypse RPG mystery in space, and it's as cheap as $5, if you get in fast.The Snow Storm Bundle comes with the original soundtracks for Hinterland, RoboBlitz, StarDrone and RobotRiot when you pay the minimum, and for $8 or more you get the Planeteri album from Pixeljam. All of the games except for StarDrone and RobotRiot come with Steam PC keys, and none of these games are compatible with Mac. The Pixeljam album, however, comes with an executable for PC and Mac that provides visualizations for any song you hook up to it.
Hands-on with Alliance for Wireless Power's charging pad prototypes
The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), a group created through the joint efforts of Qualcomm and Samsung, is getting ready to tackle the growing wireless charging market by introducing its very own standard to compete against the likes of the WPC. This morning the consortium, which claims TI, Powermat and Deutsche Telekom (among several others) as members, not only went into greater detail on its plans for the future but also brought along some prototype pads and embedded furniture to show us. The A4WP's solution is a "non-radiative magnetic resonance-based wireless power transfer ecosystem" -- in short, it allows your phone, tablet or other A4WP-certified gadget (such as light bulbs, as demonstrated above) to charge from a small distance. What does this mean to you, dear consumer? In short, your device doesn't have to be directly touching the pad in order to receive a charge; instead, you could place your phone on top of a notebook or other obstruction (heck, you could even stack your phone on top of another phone or tablet) and still power up your handset. lt will also allow you to place more than one device on the same pad -- and even more than one device type, so tablets and phones can charge together in harmony despite the fact that they both have different power requirements -- and move them around anywhere on the pad without interrupting the charge. These are key differentiators that make A4WP's option a very tempting one for the general user.
Alliance for Wireless Power approves its specification, edges closer to truly cable-free charging
Design by committee might not be the death knell for technology after all. Over four months after the Alliance for Wireless Power was founded in earnest, the coalition has already greenlit a specification for its partners to work from. The guideline lets device makers start building devices that charge through a magnetic resonance technology more forgiving of distance and material than Qi while simplifying the process through short-range wireless formats like Bluetooth 4.0. While the A4WP group hasn't made all the details public, it's holding meetings this week to speed up the commercialization process -- it's here that we'll learn whether the corporate bureaucracy is just as quick at getting wireless charging hardware into our hands as it is handshaking on standards.
Point and click on these GoG adventure game discounts
Okay let's see, I've got a map of the basement, two spools of thread, a key with a skull on it and four packs of gummi fruit snacks in the inventory. Something in here has to let me turn on the computer so I can write an article about GoG's 50 percent off sale on adventure games. Maybe the fruit snacks?"You can't use that here."Damn it, like there's ever a time when you can't eat fruit snacks. There's got to be something in this room that I haven't clicked on yet; I can't get the codec to decipher the diary unless I write a post about how Resonance, Botanicula, Machinarium, The Whispered World and the Blackwell Bundle are all on sale for the next three days or so. Maybe I can click on the power outlet?Bzzzzt ... thud.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Resonance
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, Vince Wesselmann throws it back to an adventurous era with his point-and-click title, Resonance, which launched today on Steam at 10 percent off. What's your game called and what's it about?My labor of love is called Resonance. It's a point-and-click adventure game where you take control of four characters and their memories to work your way through a complex sci-fi mystery. A scientist has died after creating a terrible new technology and the race is on to secure his secret vault before the technology falls into the wrong hands. The player can use the unique short-term memory system to talk to any character in the game about practically anything you see. So you'll have to do some logical thinking to figure out how to navigate the game's tricky puzzles and twisty plot.What's the coolest aspect of Resonance?One of the unique features to this game is the Short-Term Memory system, which is tightly interwoven with the dialogue system. In most adventure games, when you talk to a character, you choose from a small selection of dialogue options the designer has chosen for you. Resonance has that as well, but it adds on the ability to "remember" any object you see in the game using your Short-Term Memory. You can then use these memories in conversation with any character in the game.Since the correct options are no longer served up on a silver platter, you'll have to think critically about which topics of conversation might help you in each situation. And with hundreds of possible objects to talk about, brute-forcing these solutions is right out the window. The window, by the way, can also be used as a Short-Term Memory in dialogue.
'Free form' lens over mobile display could improve audio and haptics, says Motorola patent filing
It's hard to tell exactly what Motorola is thinking of here, but it probably isn't a billowing sheet of fabric stretched loosely over the face of a smartphone -- even if that's what it looks like. Instead, this appears to be a patent application for a "free floating display lens" that helps the panel of a mobile device to be used as a Beo-style acoustic speaker. The idea is that you can get louder and less resonant sound without having to dedicate more precious real estate to a larger traditional speaker unit. The application also talks about generating haptic feedback on the lens, using the same underlying piezoelectric structures that would power the audio. Creating vibrations this way could require "eight times" less voltage than current methods while also delivering a higher-amplitude sensation. Merge that with KDDI's weird vibrational speaker technology and the results could be deafening.
GOG.com getting Retro City Rampage, Tomb Raider, Colonization
As part of CD Projekt Red's summer conference today, it was revealed that Retro City Rampage will be available on Good Old Games. Retro City Rampage, slated to arrive later this year, hearkens back to the 8-bit days of yore to deliver a parody of modern day open-world games, and it has generally been a topic of gleeful discussion among Joystiq staff.In addition to Retro City Rampage, GOG.com has also acquired the first three games of the Tomb Raider series and Sid Meier's Colonization. Notably, the Tomb Raider collection has actually been "remastered for Windows." The Tomb Raider collection is $10, while Colonization is available for $6. On June 19, indie game Tiny and Big will also come to GOG, for $10 ($9 for pre-orders). Finally, GOG.com is hosting a special pre-order program for the upcoming indie adventure title, Resonance. Those who pre-order will receive a 10 percent discount and access to a 4 hour playable preview of the game prior to its June 19 launch.
Toyota and WiTricity team up for OTA car charging
Some day you'll charge everything wirelessly -- phones, cars, graphing calculators, all using the same basic technology. That's the sort of utopian vision Toyota had in mind when it formed the Wireless Battery-charging Alliance with WiTricity. The young Massachusetts-based company is pushing "resonance" technology, which charges electronics without contact and is supposedly more efficient than induction-based charging -- a category that includes the popular Qi standard. This new partnership ups the ante, adding electric vehicles to the list of chargeable devices, a vision of the future where Prius batteries can be filled wirelessly, while sitting in driveways and parking garages. Exxon's engineers are no doubt working to perfect the hose-free gasoline transfer as we speak. PR after the break. [Thanks, Paul]
