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MIT's autonomous drone is equal parts albatross and sailboat
"The oceans remain vastly under-monitored," said Gabriel Bousquet, an MIT postdoc who led the design of a unique robot as part of his graduate thesis. "In particular, it's very important to understand the Southern Ocean and how it is interacting with climate change. But it's very hard to get there." Bousquet and his team designed a hybrid vehicle that can both fly above tumultuous seas and sail on them when things are calmer. The vehicle uses one-third as much wind as an albatross would and travels ten times faster than a typical sailboat, making for a very efficient way to survey the vast areas of the planet's seas.
Waterproof Bluetooth speaker blasts tunes without your phone
If you want a vacation from your smartphone but still need tunes, a Bluetooth speaker called Drifter may be just the gadget. Yes, the rugged, waterproof and buoyant model is aimed at the boating and beach crowd, but there are already plenty of wireless speakers with those qualities. What makes it unique is the customized Android OS, touchscreen and 16GB of storage, which lets you leave your fragile smartphone in a drawer. At the same time, when you're at home or within range of a WiFi or Bluetooth network, it'll stream music like a regular Bluetooth speaker.
Game to complete a remarkable two-year turnaround by going public (again)
Two years after it went into administration, UK video game retailer Game could complete a stunning comeback by floating on the London Stock Exchange for a second time. The company, which was forced to close 300 stores, abandon its European expansion and kill the Gamestation brand in 2012, has surged following last year's console launches and is looking to put the worst behind it by selling a 35 percent stake to investors. Led by investment firm OpCapita, the group will rename itself to Game Digital and is expected to hit London's financial markets within the next four weeks. With 560 stores, a 33 percent share of the new game and hardware market in the UK and over 16 million combined Reward Card members, Game is expected to earn a £400 million valuation -- not bad for a company that was all but dead 26 months ago.
Microsoft brings Kinect float to Rose Bowl Parade: a making-of video
Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade? Pish posh. As any red-blooded American will likely confess, it's the parade preceding the annual Rose Bowl that really gets one's attention, and this year's edition featured a float from none other than Microsoft itself. As Russell Wilson and co. were gearing up to take the field in Pasadena, a smattering of folks were strapping on their winter gear and heading atop an admittedly eye-catching Kinect float. No, there's no way to actually dictate the rest of bowl season through your motion-sensing peripheral, but there is a making-of video just after the break for the handicraft sect.
Developer Float Hybrid mixes Academy Awards with motion-control innovation
John Gaeta, the Academy-Award-winning visual effects supervisor behind the Matrix trilogy, founded entertainment-development company Float Hybrid in 2009, and now he's ready to plug us in. Float is working on a series of Kinect- and mobile-controlled sandbox games, many of which can now be previewed on its YouTube channel. Float is experimenting with real-time, 3D video capture, Kinect-powered sound games and mobile-device-controlled console games. One title, Infiltrator, uses both -- one person on iPad and one on Kinect -- to play a versus round. Float's projects are in the pre-alpha stage, but their potential for innovation already looks intense. Intense. Whoa, did anyone else just get deja-vu? Oh, no...
Scribd introduces Float, new iPhone app for reading online content
Online document publishing platform Scribd introduced a new mobile application for the iPhone called Float Reader. The app is a reading tool that lies somewhere in between Flipboard and Instapaper As expected, the Float Reader app lets you read documents from your online Scribd account. Scribd has also partnered with 150 publishers like Tech Crunch, Engadget, AP and Fox Sports to reformat their content for the application. Publishers are organized into categories such as entertainment, technology, sports and politics. The application has several options to make reading easy on your eyes including a night mode, battery saver mode, sunlight mode and more. Float Reader also lets you adjust the font size using the pinch to zoom gesture and navigate page to page by swiping. The app is a standard reader with some social features, but there are plans to expand the service beyond this early iteration. Scribd hopes to use this app to launch a mobile reading platform it claims will be the Netflix for written content. The company wants to ink deals with premium content providers and offer this exclusive material to Float subscribers for a basic monthly fee. Advertisements will be used to monetize the app and content providers can share in this incoming revenue. For now, you can check out Float Reader application yourself. It's available for free from the App Store. [Via AllThingsD]
Sony makes floating-head telepresence avatars a reality, Sean Connery digs out gun and red speedos
The real world just got a little more Zardoz thanks to Tobita Hiroaki and his colleagues at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, who've built a telepresence blimp that projects the operator's face across its meter-wide surface. The looming, translucent face can float about like any other blimp; an interior camera allows the user to see where it's going. The whole thing is ominous in a completely different way from, say, a tiny googly-eyed robot perched on your shoulder, but something about its nearly silent movements still gives us the creeps – and unlike the Anybots QB, it's not going to pick up your scone from the café. But if your dreams include having others bow before your god-like visage, you'll have to wait awhile, as the technology's still in its early stages. In the meantime, you can practice intoning "Zardoz is pleased!" while watching the video above.
TUAW's Daily App: Float
The iPhone is known for casual games, but Float might be a little too simple even for most casual gamers. That said, children and those just looking for a super simple experience may find it interesting. It's a game we've all played before -- you get a balloon and try to keep it in the air for as long as possible. In Float, you get a few balloons that fall down the screen towards a row of spikes at the bottom, and it's your job to tap them up and away from the danger below. It does get a little more frenzied, and there's a bonus area to play with on the lower half, so there is a little strategy in how far you let them drop before batting them back up. But what's really intriguing about this one isn't in the gameplay, it's more in the presentation. The balloons are colorfully rendered, and the UI is very clean and well-designed. There are quite a few game modes, which originally needed to be unlocked via in-app purchase, but are now available for free. There's no Game Center, unfortunately, but OpenFeint is included, as well as a connection to Facebook if you want to share some scores. Float is available as a universal app for US$0.99, and there's a free version of the app to check out as well. Again, if you're looking for more complicated fare look elsewhere, but who doesn't love batting around balloons anyway?
Caption Contest: Waterproof BlackBerry Storm doubles as flotation device
Following hot on the heels of a similar outing from Samsung, it seems that RIM's finally wading into the oversized novelty smart phone market.Josh T: "Even at that size, the Storm was still difficult to type on."Tim: "HELLO? WHAT? NO I'M IN A SWIMMING POOL. YEAH, IT'S RUBBISH."Darren: "Clickable touchscreen, huh? Riiiiiight."Jacob: "I never thought the Storm could've been such a lifesaver."Laura: "I'm not sure this is what people meant when they said RIM should try to make a BlackBerry that appeals to younger people."Joe: "Looks like it's time to try out that 'rice bowl' trick."Ross: "It's pretty rude of him to sit on those text messages all day." Don: "Gotta watch out for those deep end roaming charges."Nilay: "A U2 backstage pass is not what it used to be."Chris: "Analysts say that the Storm's price is inflated and RIM's touchscreen support is still in its infancy."
Hydrogen-powered Honda FCX Clarity, giant ASIMO to lead Rose Parade
For the first time ever (yes, ever!), this year's Rose Parade in Pasadena, California will be headed up by a hydrogen-powered vehicle. Honda's fuel cell-equipped FCX Clarity will lead the 120th parade, and the pace car will be followed by the Super Cub motorcycle -- the first model sold in the United States. As fancy as these two are, it's the ASIMO that'll undoubtedly steal the show, and yes, we're talking about the 49-foot iteration we spotted a few days back. Catch Honda's trio riding high on January 1 at 8:00AM PST; after that, it's time to place your bets between USC and Penn State.
Are iPhone app devs getting a raw deal?
We mentioned yesterday a rumor that Apple won't cut a check for iPhone application developers until the dev's share of the sales tops $250. A lot of commenters were upset about this, if it's true: TomWBrowning said "So if you make an app that costs $1 you won't see a penny even if 359 people buy it?" From the (indie) developer's perspective, this stinks. They've already paid at least $99 just to participate, and now they have to wait until they make (potentially) hundreds of sales before they see a dime from Apple. Will the high barrier for entry discourage truly good app development? Or will it act like a cover charge to keep out the riffraff? From Apple's perspective, this is just good business sense. It costs money to cut checks and make electronic transfers in quantity. Plus, Apple can aggregate a great deal of interest on all those little sums they have tucked away. Their cut -- effectively -- is probably far more than the advertised 30 percent, depending on how smartly they invest their savings. The model isn't exactly foreign: Google AdSense makes a great deal of money (on paper, at least) on the backs of smaller sites that don't earn the $100 minimum for Google to cut a check. Some commenters were suggesting that a $50 threshold for iPhone apps would be more reasonable. In any event, it certainly makes ad hoc distribution look more and more attractive.
HTC patent guarantees there'll be no way to "close" your phone
There was a time when data was slow, screens where monochrome, and keypads were simple -- and that's the way we liked it. Now you've got QWERTY clamshells, virtual keyboards, e-ink, and everything in between, yet somehow, that's just not enough for HTC's wild tastes. The Windows Mobile champion (and Android champion-in-waiting) has recently filed a patent application for a screen attached to a keypad by a set of diagonal tracks, which allow it to move between a full QWERTY form factor and... shall we call it a "permanently-deployed slider." Interesting, we suppose, but probably a little awkward in the pocket and in the hand.[Via Unwired View]
Secrets of levitation cracked by Scottish researchers?
Try not to get too frenetic here, but a couple of gurus at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have reportedly created an "incredible levitation effect by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together." In layman's terms, the scientists have devised a way to reverse the phenomenon known as the Casimir force so that it "repels instead of attracts." Ultimately, the discovery could lead to "frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate," and in theory, devices could be created to transport humans. Do realize, however, that individuals in this team have also "showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible," so we're not counting ourselves amongst the faithful just yet.[Thanks, James][Our readers have let us know that this article's headline bore some similarities to other articles on the same topic -- though purely coincidental, in the interest of further differentiating the post we've edited it to a small degree. -Ed.]
Cellphone float keeps your mobile's head above water
Inflatable gizmos meant to save your dog's life and wake you from your bubble bath slumber have been around for some time, but this creation has probably been avoided due to the intrinsic probability of failure. Granted, the inflatable cellphone float would make for a great gift, but in reality, even the most diminutive of cannonballs will have this thing inverted in no time. Of course, for those just looking to float down the lazy river (yet still be attached to world), we could see it coming in handy, but there's no bundled guarantee that it's flip-proof. Still, this thing might not be a bad pickup for just R6.08 ($0.86), but we'll be sticking with the waterproof handset when it counts.[Via Textually]
JVC's XA-AW33 floating audio system
We've seen floating audio toys before. But this a first to feature a "dying/fleeing coming king woman" jazz setting. Janky machine translation aside, the XA-AW33 floating mono speaker from JVC features an NXT flat panel speaker surface with an IPX7 waterproofing to keep up to 256MB of your MP3 and WM DRM'd audio files toasty dry. It even features a downward firing pale-blue lamp sure to make your jumbley bits appear even more borg-like. Hot. Yours now for ¥19,800 ($169) in Japan. [Via Impress]
Afloat - window floating and transparency at the stroke of a key
Afloat is a killer System Preferences utility that adds a 'float on top' option and customizable transparency settings to virtually any Cocoa app in Mac OS X. Once installed (and you restart any Cocoa apps that were running), new keyboard shortcuts and a couple of options under the Window menu will offer all sorts of handy wndow management and see-through goodness. Great for those times when you have windows layered on top of each other and just need to glance at something underneath, and when you're using a bittorrnet client to download a Quake 4 demo and you're sick of it falling underneath Adium every time you switch to chat - or just for those times when you want to show off with some sexy transparency. Check out Afloat's ReadMe (PDF link) for more details. Afloat is freeware, a Universal Binary, and available from Emanuele Vulcano's site.
