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Beijing melting snow to solve global warming-related water shortage, likely contributing to global warming
Like water? Sure, we all do, but folks in and around northern China have been suffering from a shortage of late. The blame has been assigned to both global warming-related drought and a population boom, but officials in and around Beijing have a somewhat novel solution: snow melters. Two vehicles with heaters capable of melting 3,500 cubic feet of snow per hour have been deployed ahead of the coming wintery mix. Just how much snow does Beijing get? Well, last January the city had its worst storm in almost 60 years, netting an average of -- wait for it -- 11mm of snow. Yeah, that's less than half an inch, and not nearly enough around these parts for the kids to even bother to check the school delays.
Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 blows our minds with a shockwave of charcoal dust (video)
This is quite possibly the single greatest argument we've heard for owning a 3D graphics workstation. It's hard to believe we're even looking at something generated by a computer. Hit the break for the best three minutes of video you've seen all day.
The Road to Mordor: Frolicking in Forochel
Call me weird, but I am an absolute sucker for winter zones in MMORPGs. For me, the season of winter always evokes a lot of powerful feelings as the landscape is transformed, homes are a sanctuaries for warmth, and hardiness becomes a desirable trait. A zone filled with ice and snow screams to me desolation and death -- more so than a fire or volcano one -- but in a beautiful way. It's no wonder, then, that I've become entranced with Forochel in Lord of the Rings Online. Added to the game in April of 2008, Forochel became a bit of an anomaly in the LotRO experience. It was a (then) max-level area that was off the beaten path, created to cater to solo players seeking adventure. In fact, if the epic story hadn't taken us to Forochel in Volume 1 Book 13, I doubt many players would have sought it out on their own. It's a shame if that's the case, because Forochel offers both breathtaking vistas and a unique questing experience that should be encountered at least once in your LotRO career.
Suspended animation shocker: lack of oxygen could be the key to surviving a deep freeze
Researchers in Seattle are coming closer to discovering the secrets of suspended animation. Experimenting with yeast and worms, Dr. Mark Roth has been able to determine that a significant decrease in oxygen before the deep freeze of an organism makes surviving the thaw much, much easier, and may account for several cases where people have appeared to be frozen to death but were later revived. Dr. Roth's aim, he says, is not to be able to freeze people for long periods (such as is the case in the classic film Encino Man), but to help medical professionals "buy time" and advance their understanding of the effects of freezing on the human body. Sure, but if it means we might get to meet up with Pauly Shore in like, a thousand years, why don't we just shoot for the stars on this one? Video is below.
Hanvon CEO smashes Apple effigy at TouchPad launch (video)
Want to draw attention to an otherwise ordinary piece of consumer electronics? Do something emotive like, say, smash a giant Apple ice sculpture in front of the world's Chinese press. Besides putting the boys in Cupertino on notice, Hanvon's officially launching the company's TouchPad B10 -- a 10.1-inch multitouch capacitive slate that we went hands-on with back in March. A €500ish device that runs Windows 7 on a retired 1.3GHz Celeron M ULV743 processor and Intel GMA 4500 graphics capable of delivering about 3.5 hours of battery life. Other specs include 2GB of memory, a regular ol' 2.5-inch 250GB or 320GB hard disk, HDMI-out, and WiFi. Watch the theatrics after the break while we wait for Hanvon's 1 million units sold announcement.
3D printer creates ice sculptures -- just add water
Paper-mache, candy, and human cells have all been seen flowing through 3D printers for custom fabrication work, but students and faculty at Canada's McGill University have a cheaper prototyping material: plain ol' H2O. They recently modified this Fab@Home Model 1 by replacing the soft goo extruders with a temperature-controlled water delivery system, and set about making decorative ice sculptures and a large beer mug for good measure. While the academic project is officially supposed to explore "economic alternatives to intricate 3D models of architectural objects," we're not sure architects will want much to do with prototypes that drip... but tourism might well get a boost from liquor sold in frosty custom containers. We're thirsty just looking at them.
ICD confirms Vega tablet, includes Android 2.0, Tegra processor, our hearts
The CrunchPad may be dead, but with devices like this on the docket forgive us if we're not shedding any tears. The mystery tablet from earlier this week is the Vega from Innovative Converged Devices, or ICD. Available in 7-, 11-, and 15-inch sizes it's a simple but beautifully svelte design, and with that Tegra processor should have plenty of muscle. The resistive nature of those screens may be a bit of a bummer for some, but naturally it'll do everything Android does -- though without a GPS sensor we're guessing Google Navigation is out. The only questions left left now are when, how much, and who will be pumping the bits to its cellular antennae? Those are answers we hope to bring you from Vegas in two months' time.
Find My iPhone: Questions, answers, and suggestions
Mobile Me's Find My iPhone is a wonderful (relatively) new feature which can help track down your iPhone if it is lost or stolen, but it is not foolproof, and it must be configured before you need it. Q: "Is it true that Find My iPhone does not work if you have 3G turned off or lose your iPhone where there is no 3G service available (EDGE only)?" A: False. Find My iPhone works with the original iPhone, which did not even have 3G or GPS capabilities, so it does work with EDGE. If you have a 3G-capable iPhone and disable the 3G (Settings > General > Enable 3G > OFF) to save battery life, "Find My iPhone" will continue to work. Q: "Will find my iPhone work over WiFi?" A: True... sort of... Maybe... Not really. In my home I have very little or no AT&T service (or Sprint, or Verizon, or any other cell provider). I do have WiFi all over the house, and Find My iPhone has never failed to help me locate my iPhone when it is "lost" in my house. In order to test it purely over Wi-Fi, I put the iPhone into Airplane Mode (meaning that both EDGE and 3G were both disabled) and enabled Wi-Fi. I asked "Find My iPhone" to locate my iPhone and was told that it was near Orlando, Florida. It was, in fact, in Ohio. I repeated the test and it came back with the same information. Later, I tried the "Wi-Fi only" test from my home, and Find My iPhone could not find my location at all. However, even in Airplane + Wi-Fi mode I was able to use the "Display a Message" and "Remote Passcode Lock" features. So you may not be able to locate it on a map, but you still may be able to connect to it. Proper setup is your first crucial step All of this is a moot point if you don't have three crucial settings enabled on your iPhone. Without any one of these, Find My iPhone will not work. Settings > General > Location Services has to be on (this one is obvious, right?) Under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > (Your Mobile Me account), you must set "Find My iPhone" to ON. This is not enabled by default. Under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data, you must either enable Push OR have fetch set to Every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or Hourly. If you disable Push and set Fetch to "Manually" Find My iPhone will not work.
Console hacker arrested, faces up to ten years in jail
Just when you thought it was safe to get out your soldering irons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants you to know that its agents are still out there, on the lookout for for even more mod chip-wielding nogoodniks and their non-DMCA compliant consoles. According to the AP, a 27-year-old CSU student named Matthew Crippen was recently arrested for "modifying Xbox, PlayStation and Wii consoles in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act" and released Monday on $5,000 bond. The dime was dropped on this perp by the Entertainment Software Association, and the raid conducted by Customs agents sometime in May. He will be arraigned on August 10th, and if convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. Let this be a lesson to you: while the ICE may have its hands full with human slavery, drug trafficking, transnational gangs, and stolen artifacts, there is always time to make an example out of a man that knows his way around the inside of a Playstation.
Authentication problems for non-Battle.net users tonight
We've started getting a few emails regarding the authentication servers. Apparently there are issues again tonight! None of us on staff were actually running into any trouble, so we assumed it was just an anomaly until we saw this thread. From reading through it, it appears that the reason none of us on staff had problems was because we had all converted to Battle.net accounts, and this time around only those that haven't converted are running into problems. Fancy that!Blizzard is aware of the problem, and seem to be actively investigating it. Keep an eye on the linked thread for updates, and if you want a quick fix to get on and play the game tonight... just convert to Battle.net and you'll be on in no time.And for the record, when you write in about server outages? If we haven't posted about something yet, it doesn't help you to accuse us of being paid off by Blizzard. We can dream of a bright future where Blizzard showers us with money, but no, that hasn't happened yet. It's much more likely that we just don't know.
Mobinnova Ice given lobotomy, reemerges as Highscreen PP5420 with Android
If you don't remember the Mobinnova Ice, we can't say we blame you -- apart from its unique and mildly amusing (but poorly implemented) secondary display, the Windows Mobile-powered handset really didn't have anything going for it to set it apart from the pack, and our hands-on experience with it left us questioning its build quality, its robustness, and indeed its very reason for being. Anyhow, it seems that a Russian company has taken the Ice's guts and remixed them as the Highscreen PP5420, offering Android atop the 528MHz Qualcomm core with a WQVGA primary display, 3 megapixel camera, GPS, and full HSPA. As other fly-by-night companies have already learned, Android really looks like garbage on anything but half VGA right now -- and who the hell knows what (if anything) that secondary OLED is going to be programmed to do -- so we'd probably stay away from this one. If you're still feeling it, though, it should be available now for 15,990 rubles (about $511).[Via Unwired View]
Baking news: GTA IV meth recipe flawed
From the obscure annals of May 2008 comes the testimony of BBFC head David Cooke, who confirmed that the now irrelevant UK ratings board had investigated the authenticity of "instructional information about how to make the drug crystal meth" in Grand Theft Auto IV. The incident was brought to light today in a Times Online article examining PEGI's recent appointment as the sole UK video games classification authority and allegations that the organization might not be as thorough as the BBFC had been in its review process; for example: testing out GTA IV's so-called meth recipe.We're not certain just how far the BBFC went in its drug trial, but "independent advice" was sought in order to deem that "crucial ingredients and techniques were missing" from the scrutinized game content. What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, one, if you're in the planning stages of a homebrewed meth lab, you should probably look beyond GTA IV's suggestions. And, two, if you've already got your lab up and running, you may want to contact your legal team and tell them that the "GTA made me do it" defense isn't going to work this time. That is, only if the coppers catch you before you blow yourself up.[Via GamePolitics]
E3 2009: Dragonica Online impressions
Continuing the somewhat recurring theme at E3 2009 of "what was old is new again," Dragonica Online has taken the traditional 2D side-scroller format and transitioned it to 3D. The resulting environment will be friendly to any of the Night Elves you see endlessly bouncing around World of Warcraft and fans of nostalgic action RPGs like Secret of Mana.The game sports fast and furious real-time combat, crafting, guilds, dungeon raids, PvP, and a light-hearted atmosphere. It didn't take us long to realize that Dragonica doesn't take itself too seriously. For example, in the demo, we saw an archer battling shark pirates who were wielding swordfish. We're obviously not in Middle Earth here.
Audioholics peels back the lids on the current crop of ICEpower-based amplifiers
Typically devoid of fancy lights, knobs, and switches, amplifiers typically don't get a lot of marketing hype; heck, most people who own a receiver aren't even aware of the amplifier section. Bang & Olfusen's Class D ICEpower switching amplifiers wrinkle that a bit -- the compact footprint, light weight, energy efficiency and impressive specs are enough to make the newer technology marketable as, well, new. Sadly, from Audioholics' examination of many samples, it also looks like the newness stopped there and several manufacturers have slapped crazy price tags on an essentially "reference design" implementation. There's plenty of good technical info about the test bench performance of these amps in the link, but with several happy ICEpower users it's hard to say that the subjective performance is unsatisfactory; the wide price range for essentially the same amp is what's troubling. If nothing else, let it serve as a cautionary tale of not falling for the latest thing just because it's the latest thing -- when you're shopping for an amp, take your ears along with your wallet.
Caption Contest: If BlackBerrys were wooly mammoths
It seems Canadian megacarrier Rogers Wireless is sponsoring Ottawa's Winterlude Festival right now, effectively incorporating the two things that come to mind when we think of Canada -- ice and BlackBerrys -- into a single exhibit. So much for that warranty, eh?Chris: "Shortly before being packaged for sale, RIM attempts to remove bugs from the Storm's firmware using a 20G centrifuge."Thomas: "Camerica explorers surprised to discover cryogenically preserved device with OS superior to Windows Mobile 14."Nilay: "And you thought the browser was glacial."Don: "Miley Cyrus' request for some 'iced-out BlackBerrys' didn't translate so well north of the border."Paul: "The next firmware update is rumored to include a hammer and a chisel."Jacob: "Must've been one heck of a Storm."Darren: "I asked for a chilled blackberry martini, and got this."Ross: "Not to be outdone, Telus has encased a Curve 8350i inside Vanilla Ice. Turn off the lights and his stomach might glow."Sean: "RIM's metaphorical take on the 'new reality' of modern smartphones"Joe: "It's a little too big for curling, but it does do SMS."Josh: "David Blaine: BlackBerry user."[Thanks, Bryan W. F.]
Mobinnova Ice hands-on
On the surface, the Ice from Taiwanese upstart Mobinnova looks like a decent WinMo set, it really does. The spec sheet's solid enough with a wide QVGA display, AGPS, integrated FM radio, HSDPA, and a secondary touch screen for navigation (a la LG Venus) -- but regrettably, the specs only tell half of this tragicomic tale. Up close, questionable engineering decisions start to come out of the woodwork. Take the d-pad, for example: sounds like an awesome idea, but the screen the Ice uses is so dim you can barely make it out under normal lighting. Not that you'd have to make it out, since -- as far as we can tell, anyway -- the only thing it ever shows is the d-pad, which begs the question why they're using a display here in the first place (we'd figured that opening Windows Media would trigger a transition to music controls, but no dice). What's more, Mobinnova's skin to take advantage of the 400 x 240 screen is possibly the worst manufacturer-issued skin we've ever seen on Windows Mobile, with text that looks like it was hastily downscaled to the point of being illegible at the Ice's dot pitch. Now that Sony Ericsson's said to have made the leap to these guys, we're a little worried for the future of XPERIA, honestly.%Gallery-41523%
Mobinnova's ICE suggests Sony Ericsson might know what it's doing
So remember how Mobinnova allegedly has some hot new contract with Sony Ericsson for busting out future XPERIA models? We're still a little bummed considering how good the X1 looks -- and how good HTC is at its trade in general -- but digging into Mobinnova's dealings a bit gives us hope. Turns out the Taiwanese company introduced the "ICE" last month, a reasonably decent-looking Windows Mobile 6.1 slate with a 3-inch WQVGA display, 3-megapixel cam, WiFi, and HSDPA. It doesn't stand out against the myriad offerings on the WinMo front these days, but if nothing else, it shows that Mobinnova might just have the chops to keep pace.[Via pocketnow.com]
World of Warcraft's graphics engine to be upgraded incrementally
In the wake of a series of comments by Blizzard reps hinting at an eventual overhaul of World of Warcraft's graphics engine, Worldofwar.net contacted Lead Producer J. Allen Brack for clarification. Brack responded by describing specific changes to the engine that will be in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and then by making a pretty major revelation about the nature of the overhaul.According to Brack, Blizzard will be making the changes bit-by-bit rather than all at once. "We're taking an iterative, organic approach to graphics upgrades," he said, "going feature by feature as opposed to thinking in terms of an overall new graphics engine."As for the WotLK changes: those will include a new shadow engine, some new shaders for "even better looking terrain, as well as cool ice effects," and an increased view distance to make those expansive Northrend wastelands look, well ... expansive. He also noted that new water effects will be coming in "a future content update or expansion."[Via WoW Insider] One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Oh, Canada Wii's home and native land
Hey, grab a Molson and pull up a comfortable ice block and listen up. The AP is reporting that the Wii has become the first system to reach a million units sold in Canada. That's like one system for every two people or so you've got up there, eh? We're guessing it's because the pearly white exterior of the system matches the decor of your igloos (not to mention the polar bears roaming around outside).According to NPD statistics, the Wii has sold 1,060,000 Candian units through July, meaning the upcoming Wii version of NHL 2K9 can count on at least 1.5 million sales up there in the frozen North (some Canadians will buy an extra copy for their pet moose, you see). Microsoft and Sony are rumored to be planning competing lumberjack simulations and marketing tie-ins with popular maple syrup makers to increase their systems' appeal to the Canadian market, but as the Quebecois say, this might be "trop peu, trop tard."(Apologies to all Canadians, who we're sure are too polite and respectful to get mad about this, right?)
NASA says Phoenix lander is sampling water on Mars
Yep, just like we'd heard, the Phoenix lander has identified water in a soil sample it collected in Mars earlier, and NASA's extended the mission for another 90 days to go look for more. There's no analysis of the ice yet, but it doesn't look like there's any organic materials in the sample, and it'll take another three to four weeks before there's any more data to reveal. Hopefully that means we'll be packing up our silver go-go boots and taking off for our fabulous future lives on Mars in a month, but we'll see how things go.