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Google offers Floor Plan Marker app to businesses so they can improve indoor mapping
Are folks still getting lost in the faux marble expanse of your airport or shopping mall, even after you've uploaded the floor plan to Google Maps? Then maybe it's time you went the extra mile and improved indoor mapping using the official Floor Plan Marker app. It instructs you to walk around the "entire surface" of your place of interest, while gathering position data from GPS, public WiFi signals and cell towers. Once added to Google's database, this extra info will allow the familiar blue dot to function on your customers' Android phones even when your actually-concrete building gets in the way of their satellite signal. The app's already available at Google Play, so go ahead -- make the schlep now so that others don't have to.
Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted
Lookin' to get your Grown Nerd on? Look no further. We just sat through 1.5 hours of high-brow technobabble here at SIGGRAPH 2011, where a gaggle of gurus with IQs far, far higher than ours explained in detail what the future of 3D face scanning would hold. Scientists from ETH Zürich, Texas A&M, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University as well as a variety of folks from Microsoft Research and Disney Research labs were on hand, with each subset revealing a slightly different technique to solving an all-too-similar problem: painfully accurate 3D face tracking. Haoda Huang et al. revealed a highly technical new method that involved the combination of marker-based motion capture with 3D scanning in an effort to overcome drift, while Thabo Beeler et al. took a drastically different approach. Those folks relied on a markerless system that used a well-lit, multi-camera system to overcome occlusion, with anchor frames acting as staples in the success of its capture abilities. J. Rafael Tena et al. developed "a method that not only translates the motions of actors into a three-dimensional face model, but also subdivides it into facial regions that enable animators to intuitively create the poses they need." Naturally, this one's most useful for animators and designers, but the first system detailed is obviously gunning to work on lower-cost devices -- Microsoft's Kinect was specifically mentioned, and it doesn't take a seasoned imagination to see how in-home facial scanning could lead to far more interactive games and augmented reality sessions. The full shebang can be grokked by diving into the links below, but we'd advise you to set aside a few hours (and rest up beforehand). %Gallery-130390%
Cataclysm beta: New raid markers
I decided to hop in and do some more raiding on the beta. When setting up some marks for pulls, I discovered that they're not flares anymore! I know the current raid markers appear like clouds of smoke. They were originally flares created by engineers. Some people deemed them Lucky Charms. Well, I daresay these are Lucky-er Charms! The icons will bounce up and down and they glow! This will make positioning a little more obvious since they're so bright and hard to miss. Currently, there are only five markers available. No idea if additional symbols will be added in the future. Think five will be enough? What do you think about the new raid markers? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Sharpie Liquid Pencil writes and erases like a pencil, dries like a Sharpie (video hands-on!)
Doesn't look like we've ever covered a pencil on Engadget before, but this is just too nifty to pass up: the Sharpie Liquid Pencil uses liquid graphite to write like a pen, erase like a pencil, and eventually dry like a permanent marker. Sharpie's blog says the Liquid Pencil go on sale in September, but Office Depot has a $5 two-pack with six erasers in stock online now -- and we were charming enough to snag an early review sample. It basically works as described, although the marks don't erase completely clear -- because you're writing with a metal pen tip, there's no way to avoid impressing the paper a little, and the indentations are pretty visible. Still, it's better than any erasable pen we've ever used, and it definitely writes like a decent clicky-pen, so we can't fault it too much. Oddly, Sharpie's blog says it takes three days for the ink to dry to permanence, but the back of the package says 24 hours, so we'll have to see how long our test scribbles last -- we'll let you know. Video after the break. %Gallery-99118%
Where once there was beauty, there now lives despair
No amount of failed modding experiments or roadside accidents could've prepared us for the "personalized" DS Lite we saw in Marion Hemming's deviantART gallery, a homemade project so terrible in its realization, we winced and turned to the side as it loaded on our screens, unable to look at it straight on. To be safe, we've sealed its frightful visage past the post break, away from the casual reader's view. If you believe that Marion's "paint job" is something you'd like to see, then by all means, head past the jump. We stongly advise, however, that you keep your mouse pointer near, if not directly on, your browser's back button; you might find its mutilated face to be much more than what you bargained for.
360 display boxes vandalized, Wii evangelized
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/Xbox_360_display_boxes_vandalized_Wii_evangelized'; If we're to believe Dustin Wilson's assurances, the mischief above wasn't a product of Photoshop or any other methods of internet chicanery. He actually scribbled the Wii endorsement onto the Xbox 360 display boxes with a white paint marker while one of the game shop's employees was distracted. This episode of When Keeping it Wii Goes Wrong was created as an entry for the EvWiiwhere Challenge hosted by N+, a MyOpera community for Nintendo fans. The contest called for readers to take pictures of the word "Wii" spelled out in unconventional ways, but we're sure this wasn't what the site had in mind. We might have our gripes with all the Electronics Boutiques and GameStops out there, but vandalizing other people's property just isn't cool, especially when it's at the expense of a worker who's just doing her job. But who knows, maybe this sort of joke will catch on with other retailers? If you think about it, this would be a great way to promote the Xbox 360 to customers inside the shop, while at the same time catching the interest of people outside who see the storefront's Wii wisecrack. It's genius!
