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Smellable VR is coming whether you want it or not
Modern virtual reality is a treat for the senses. Well, two of them at least. "Sight and sound have been the staple of VR environments," Benjy Li, a postdoctoral researcher with Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, told Engadget. Haptic feedback is starting to allow for basic touch, but the next radical evolution in VR could actually come via your nose (and/or mouth).
Facebook wants to save you a click by hosting other sites' content
As if Facebook couldn't get any bigger, it's looking like The Social Network wants to start natively hosting content from news organizations. As The New York Times' sources tell it, Zuckerberg and Co. have been in talks with at least six media companies about publishing their content directly on the site -- no link-clicking required. The initial round of publications apparently includes The New York Times, Buzzfeed, National Geographic and our sister publication The Huffington Post. The reason? Websites take too long to load, and Facebook says that on mobile, the average eight-second page-load is too much. Of course, the outfit has a vested interest in mobile, hence it stepping in.
AOL for iPad now in the App Store
AOL, the parent company of TUAW, Engadget, TechCrunch and Huffington Post, today announced the availability of AOL for iPad (free). While for many longtime internet users the AOL acronym may bring back nightmares of receiving daily CD-ROMs in the mail, the company is quickly turning into a very nimble content provider around the world. The app was designed from the ground up for the iPad, featuring a tiled UI with stories that can be tapped to dive in deeper. While the app opens with a window onto general featured news, users can select their area of interest to focus only on stories in that area: entertainment, food, health, money, sports, style, tech, travel and world. %Gallery-192537% For those who use AOL for free email, there's a small envelope button on the top toolbar that provides access to your inbox. Another button provides a list of AOL On Network top videos -- a tap on a video icon expands the thumbnail to a fullscreen player for a quick view of the short blurbs. Want to save content for later reading or viewing? Every story sports a pair of buttons that provide instant access to sharing (via Facebook, Twitter and email), as well as giving readers a way to mark that content as a favorite. A tap on the "heart" button starts a cute animation in which a red heart flies up to the favorites list. It's an amusing way to reinforce the message that the article has been saved for future use. If you're looking for an all-in-one source for more than just tech news, the new AOL for iPad app is definitely worth a look. And hey, it's free (ad-supported).
Huffpost Live tackles Xbox One with our reviews editor, Richard Mitchell [Update: watch the replay]
Update: The live segment is over, but you can watch the recording right here. Huffpost Live is diving into today's Xbox One announcement at 6:20 ET tonight – right now, even – for Tech Tuesday. Of course the Huffpost team needs an expert on the matter, so it brought in Joystiq Reviews Editor Richard Mitchell – after all, he spent the day immersed in Xbox One news. Watch Huffpost Live's "Tech Tuesday Talks Xbox, Apple & Microsoft!" right here, right now.
Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Arianna Huffington (update: video embedded)
Huffington Post president, editor-in-chief and namesake Arianna Huffington will be joining us to discuss the site's new GPS for the Soul app, along with Verizon's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Peter Tippett. January 5, 2013 2:00 PM EST Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here! Update: video embedded
AOL strikes deal with YouTube to start streaming content from various brands
AOL's continuing push to boost its video presence on as many internet places as possible has just secured many of the company's brands a spotlight inside one of the world's biggest sites. According to AllThingsD, AOL and YouTube have inked a deal that will bring "branded channels" with content from sites such as Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Moviefone and even clips from the recently launched HuffPost Live over to the video streaming platform. And while AOL did previously offer some tidbits on YouTube, this move is expected to better solidify and highlight the vid work from properties like the ones mentioned above -- which, of course, could only be accomplished by reaching a new "everyone wins" type of revenue sharing agreement. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the AOL family]
Spotify launches Play Button in bid to become the web's default music player
The music streaming wars have been heating up a good deal, as of late, thanks in no small part Spotify's long-awaited US launch. Since then, Rhapsody bought its one-time chief competitor Napster, both Pandora and Rdio underwent major redesigns and Mog finally launched a Windows client. Naturally, all of this has proven good news for the consumer, as services have a features arms race of sorts, gunning for the top spot. None of the contenders are quite perfect, of course -- when Spotify launched, for example, we couldn't help but note the absence of a browser-based option of the sort employed by Rdio and Pandora. Today's announcement still leaves open that possibility, but it does mark a new web-focused strategy for the company -- on that could arguably have a much larger impact on Spotify's fortunes than a simple browser-based UI.Today marks the launch of the Spotify Play Button -- a name we assume the Swedish company settled on before Google announced the whole Android Market rebranding thing. The button is, essentially, a widget that allows site owners to embed songs and playlists directly from Spotify's massive catalog of songs. It's a simple idea, sure, but well executed, it could prove a major win in the service's attempt to stand out in the ever-more competitive world of music streaming. After all, embedding music on sites has long been a fairly haphazard deal -- unless you happen to have a deal with a proprietary player, it means snapping up something like a YouTube video, which often live in, at best, a legal gray area.
Huffington Post adds 'Classic Edition' to iPad app
I'm happy to report that The Huffington Post has updated their iPad app to version 3.0 today and has added a "Classic Edition" layout option to the app. Back in December, The Huffington Post released version 2.0 of their iPad app. While in some ways it was an improvement over version 1.0. The developers went a little interactive-menu crazy and unveiled this new thing called newsglide. The intention of newsglide was to enhance navigation, but one also got the feeling that the company wanted to add eye-candy to their app just because it looked cool while using it. I wrote: "The old app had a very newspaper-like feel to it as far as navigation goes. The new app seems to be the love child that would result if the BBC for iPad and Twitter apps hooked up. Personally, I like my newspaper apps to have the layout of newspapers." With today's version 3.0 release, newsglide is still there, but users can select between reading the app in newsglide view or classic view. Classic view is just that -- it retains the look and layout of a classic newspaper. In my opinion, that's all an iPad newspaper app has to do to be a good app. After all, a newspaper (even an Internet-only one) is meant to be read. It's not important for me to feel like I'm Tom Cruise in Minority Report while reading about the latest economic troubles. I want the text, the information, and all new apps should focus on providing that over any eye-candy interactivity. Pamela Maffei McCarthy, The New Yorker's deputy editor, said it best when she told The New York Times shortly after it was announce that The New Yorker's iPad edition was outselling other iPad magazines that had more eye-candy interactivity. "That was really important to us: to create an app all about reading," she said. "There are some bells and whistles, but we're very careful about that. We think about whether or not they add any value. And if they don't, out the window they go." I'm glad The Huffington Post seems to now agree and hopefully other newspapers will too. The Huffington Post for iPad is a free download.
Huffington Post overhauls iPad app with 2.0 release
The Huffington Post has just released version 2.0 of its popular iPad app. The release is a complete overhaul and revamp of the previous app. Gone is the huge drop-down menu that you used to navigate through the Post's various sections. It has now been replaced by an always-there Huff Post NewsGlide menu that allows you to quickly switch between sections with the tap of your finger. Each NewsGlide section is divided into ordered news, blogs, slideshows and popular sub-sections. The slideshow sub-sections are particularly well laid out to take advantage of the iPad's "flick through your photos" navigation. Tap on an article and a window slides onto the screen containing the exact page you would view if you were browsing the Huffington Post through Safari or Chrome. That means the articles window contains all the comments -- and the ability to comment -- directly in the app. Overall, the new app is an improvement upon the old one. However, I think the new menu navigation takes some getting used to. The old app had a very newspaper-like feel to it as far as navigation goes. The new app seems to be the love child that would result if the BBC for iPad and Twitter apps hooked up. Personally, I like my newspaper apps to have the layout of newspapers. If you feel the same way, you'll be consoled to know that the Huffington Post team has placed a "feedback" button on the top of the new menu. The Huffington Post for iPad is a free download.
Chrome Web Store, HTML5 and the iPad: symbiosis at its best
It's all coming together, folks. It doesn't take much of a gander at the Chrome Web Store to notice a trend: some of the flashiest, most mature "apps" are actually just in-browser versions of iPad apps. And you know what else? Most of these "apps" actually run fine in Safari on the iPad. We're not sure how long Google gave developers to port their experiences over, but it seems like most of the best work had already been done in the form of HTML5 apps that were merely wrapped in app form for App Store delivery. Google's just taking things to the next logical step. Continue after the break as we expand this thesis paragraph into a number of supporting blocks of text, a few jazzy pictorial examples, and a stunning closer.
News apps for the iPhone span the political spectrum
Building a native app that aggregates and spruces up the content of a single news organ's website is all the rage, although it seems like overkill in some cases -- personally, I enjoy curating my own reading list with good old Instapaper, which also offers the advantage of clearing out most of the graphical cruft and leaving nothing but yummy text. Still, if you like having all the news that's fit to print in the palm of your hand (yes, the 2.0 version of the NY Times app is quite nice), there are two new choices of single-site apps (SSA) for your reading pleasure. In the right corner, weighing in at four sections, it's the Wall Street Journal! Yes, the official newspaper of American business (whatever's left of it) has an iPhone app, and according to Silicon Alley Insider it's pretty good; the app lets you cache content for offline reading (similar to the NYT app), and offers audio and video content from the paper, along with stories and rich media from sister sites like Uncle Walt's hangout AllThingsD. Most notably, using the iPhone version of the WSJ -- which is free -- you can read most or all the content from the daily paper... which, via the WSJ.com website, is not free (most full stories require a subscription). There's no way to know how long this workaround will be in place, but for now it's a great way to get access to the paper's stories. And, in the opposite corner, weighing in at one home page and sporting a killer left hook, it's the Huffington Post! The HuffPo iPhone app has been in soft-launch mode for the past month and was just updated to version 1.1, quashing bugs and improving performance. It's not as polished as some of the other SSAs yet, but it gets the job done. The app is free. If you have a preferred single-site app for news, let us know below.
FCC commissioner Deborah Tate resigns
The Huffington Post (among other sources) is reporting that FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate has resigned. This is the woman who, less than a month ago, said that World of Warcraft was one of the top reasons for college drop-outs. Now, I can't entirely blame someone for seeing MMOs as a bad thing, there are certainly a lot of people who don't seem to have the ability to throttle their playtime, but that really wasn't her first silly act or statement while she held her position (taking advice from corporations is bad, mmkay). A lot of people will take this news as a godsend.Of course, that doesn't mean she didn't do any good at all. Your personal views may differ from hers depending on the topic, but she's generally pretty well regarded for her efforts when it comes to issues regarding children and their protection. Personally, I don't agree with the extreme 'think of the children!' mentality (or Tate's approach to it) that's become increasingly common, but again, my opinion doesn't represent a nation. A few out of line comments don't negate her efforts entirely.
WoW Insider is taking over the world
Reader Andy wrote in this morning to tell us about what he read while having his morning cup of joe. From the The Guardian's article on The world's 50 most powerful blogs: "46. WoW Insider"Ummm... really? Cool!While I consider us to be a major source of news, information, and QQness about World of Warcraft related things, I never really thought that we'd ever be included on a list like this. It's kind of nice. So who did we beat? And who beat us?
On the Inside, Episode 20: Eureka Dejavu and Schmilsson Nilsson
Welcome to the twentieth episode of On the Inside, the podcast that lets you take a peek at the virtual world of Second Life! This episode features Eureka Dejavu, real life name Rita J. King, investigative reporter, blogger for the Huffington Post, and founder of Dancing Ink Productions; and Schmilsson Nilsson, real life name Joshua Fouts, Director of the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. In this episode, we discuss the Macarthur Foundation and their ongoing research into virtual worlds, the positive power of transformation, and Star Wars Galaxies. (Note: This interview was conducted on October 30th.)As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics/interviewees. Drop me a line!To hear all eighteen previous episodes, click here to access the Second Life Insider podcast archives.[Mp3] Download the MP3 directly
