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Watch code and projections bring a paper sculpture to life
Paper art doesn't have to be flat and lifeless... just ask Aristides Garcia. The artist recently created an interactive sculpture, Tesela, that uses a combination of 3D projection mapping and tesselation algorithms to cast real-time, viewer-influenced patterns over 103 paper pyramids. The effect is a bit hypnotic, as you'll see below -- it's as if the paper has suddenly become a living landscape. You sadly can't see this in person at the moment (Garcia debuted it at a Berlin exhibit in August), but it still shows that the right technology can liven up just about anything, even if it's made from dead trees.
Paper's new iPhone app can replace your Moleskine
Even without an official iPad stylus (until yesterday, that is), FiftyThree's Paper for the iPad was one of the best apps out there for showing just how good Apple's tablet was for creating beautiful artwork, either with your finger or the company's Pencil accessory. The app has changed over the years, but its focus has remained on sketches and drawings collected together in different virtual notebooks, but today FiftyThree is shaking things up significantly with the launch of Paper 3.0. The update features both a change in focus and a change in platform. The latter is easy enough to explain: for the first time, Paper is a universal app that'll work with your iPhone as well as your iPad.
Bacteria-powered folding batteries could power paper biosensors
We've seen flexible displays for some time now, and engineers at Binghamton University developed an origami-inspired foldable battery. The folding part is great, but these batteries are also powered by bacteria and made from paper, providing an low-cost option for remote locales where resources are scarce. That all sounds good, but what are the potential uses? Well, paper-based biosensors have been around for a bit too, but they usually have to be paired with some sort of device to be of any use. The goal is to create tech that allows those sensors to power themselves. Currently, the battery folds down to about the size of a matchbook and costs five cents to make.
Daily Roundup: Microsoft leaks, lens cameras and more!
In today's Daily Roundup, we look at a Microsoft document leaked in 2012 that foreshadowed the Xbox One and HoloLens, take a look at a new lens camera for smartphones from Olympus and discuss the US Navy's new firefighting robot. All that and more can be found past the break.
Paper drops in-app purchases to encourage you to buy a Pencil
Paper, the sketching app that was born from the ashes of Microsoft's Courier project, has become a must-have for all would-be artists. If there was one annoyance, however, it's that you could only use one brush and a limited color set, which you could expand only with paid upgrades. If, however, you bought one of the company's $49.95 Pencil styluses, the tools would become available to you for free. From today, however, Pencil is abandoning the in-app purchase model, enabling every user to sketch, watercolor and write with the software.
Facebook's Paper app updated with improved photo sharing
We're fans of Facebook's Paper here at TUAW. It's a handy alternative to Facebook's main iPhone app, which lets you bypass downloading the Messenger app. Paper has just received a new update which makes finding and sharing your favorite photos easier. Version 1.2.5 introduces an improved camera roll which organizes your photos and videos by the date they were taken, and adds support for iOS 8's Favorites album within Photos. Now you'll be able to search your Favorites folder, which includes the photos you've stored in the camera roll outside the app. In addition, you should find that the entire experience of posting a photo is faster after updating. You can find the newest version of Paper right now in the App Store.
Scientist's new rewriteable 'paper' is actually made of glass or plastic
If you ask us, the idea of rewritable paper seems pretty redundant no matter how high-tech it is. Apparently that didn't cross the mind of scientists at the University of California, Riverside. See, that's where Yadong Yin and his colleagues are using special color-switching dyes (called "redox") and an ultra-violet light to put text on a physical medium. In this case, that's a glass or plastic film like the tile above. The school says that these can be rewritten some 20 times without a significant loss in contrast or resolution, and could presumably replace the dead trees we're used to printing documents on. At this point, you're probably wondering how you erase the old text off, and that's fair -- even your favorite rubber pencil-cap won't do a thing here.
For science! The relationship between shyness and online game friendships
It's a common stereotype that shy people flock to the internet to socialize without fear of rejection. But is it true? German researchers from the University of Münster have tackled that question. In a paper published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking this past summer, the scientists sought to determine the relationship between online video games and friendship. They surveyed German video game enthusiasts to measure their involvement with online games, their web of friendships online and off, and their emotional sensitivity -- a behavioral marker for shyness. After controlling for confounders like age and gender, they found that those subjects with high emotional sensitivity reported more online friends than offline when compared to those with low emotional sensitivity. High emotional sensitivity also correlated with online friendships that transformed into offline friendships. In other words, the shier you are, the more likely you are to make more of your friends in cyberspace than meatspace, at least if you're a self-identified gamer. As Gamasutra put it, "emotionally sensitive users are using the online gaming environment differently from their counterparts. As they are shy in face-to-face interactions which translated to fewer friends, but they were able to make more friends through online videogames which its affordances (i.e., asynchronicity, visual anonymity, etc.) paved a way for them to compensate or overcome their shyness." The full paper is behind an academic paywall, but the Gamasutra summary is worth a read.
FiftyThree's new Mix service invites Paper users to collaborate
Some artists find inspiration in their peers' artworks and even think it boring to draw alone. If you feel that way and you use FiftyThree's Paper app (and maybe its Pencil stylus, as well) religiously, you can take advantage of the startup's new service to collaborate with anyone you want. This new product is called Mix, and it's an open platform where all users can share their work by uploading it straight from the Paper app. The latest version of Paper comes loaded with the Mix sharing option, as you can see in the video below -- after you've uploaded your work, other members can finish it or put their own spin on it.
Hate the changes to the Facebook app? You should give Paper a try.
Facebook's Paper app launched to great fanfare and then quickly dropped on the charts. Many commentators decried the app dead in the water -- we may have been among those commentators. Of course, all of that was before the recent changes to Facebook's native iOS app which removed the ability to reply to or send messages from within the app. Ironically, Facebook's unpopular change in its original app is the saving grace of its lesser-used sibling. Paper allows you to quickly view your timeline and answer messages from within one app, just like in the good old days of Facebook for iOS. You can view your timeline, comment on pictures, answer mail, and get right back into the swing of things without having to waste battery life by running two apps at once. Using Paper does take some getting used to. Your timeline is shown at the bottom of the screen, so get used to scrolling with swipes to the left instead of swiping up. The app is designed to focus on your timeline and work as a newsreader of sorts. When you set up your account, the app will ask you to select a few interest "sections" you'd like to keep up with. To use Paper as an optimal Facebook experience, we'd suggest not adding any sections other than Facebook. Best of all, Paper allows for more optimization than Facebook's native app. Hate autoplaying videos? You can actually turn them off in Paper with a tap in the app settings. The app includes a handy collection of options for sending articles to a reading lists like Instapaper, which again the main Facebook app doesn't have. Paper isn't a perfect app yet, but it has improved considerably since it launched. You can edit your profile picture and cover photos, tag friends in photos, include mentions in your posts, use hashtags just like you would in the normal app, and customize the privacy settings of individual posts. Heck, there is even a noticeable drop in ads! Sadly, all that glitters is not gold. Speed scrolling through your feed is slightly slower than the normal app and interacting with your various groups is more difficult, though responding to threads you're already following is a breeze. To actually access the full pages of your groups you'll have to manually search for them, but this is a minor inconvenience. It's worth it in the battery life you'll save. We get it. Facebook is an addition for many people. It doesn't have to be an unpleasant multi-app battery draining one. If you're annoyed with the recent changes to the main app, give Paper a try. It's easier than quitting Facebook.
Wacom's sketching app finally arrives on Android, Kindle Fire and Windows 8
Wacom loves doodlers almost as much as serious artists, but its Paper-esque sketching app was limited to iOS devices only. That changes from today, now that the company has launched Windows, Android and Kindle Fire versions of Bamboo Paper. Thanks to Wacom's Ink Layer Language, your notes will seamlessly be shared between your devices -- enabling you to sketch out a plan on your leisure tablet before passing it to your work one. The free app is available to download at the links below, and you'll also be able to try out the various premium brushes for a limited time before you're asked to open your wallet to keep them.
FiftyThree's Pencil stylus now on sale in UK, France and Germany
FiftyThree, makers of the amazing Paper app for iPad as well as the accompanying, Bleutooth-enabled Pencil stylus, is now shipping Pencil in the UK, Germany and France. Pencil costs £50 for the Graphite version and £65 for the Walnut variety and are available to order from Amazon UK. Both models are steeper in price compared to purchase within the US (US$59.95 and $74.95 respectively). Pencil was released in the US last year to much hype and anticipation and is largely considered one of the best styli on the market for iPad. Besides its chunky, but attractive design, Pencil has a host of features for designers and artists to take advantage of in conjunction with the Paper app: With a simple press of Pencil to iPad, Bluetooth pairing is complete. Intelligent palm recognition technology prevents any unintended input, and Surface Pressure brings a new level of detail to input strokes this fall with the arrival of iOS 8. Take a look at the video below to see Pencil in action. Pencil / Think With Your Hands from FiftyThree on Vimeo.
Apple settles ebooks price-fixing claim and other news for June 17, 2014
We've got three top stories for you this morning. Apple settles its eBook price-fixing claim out of court, new kids camps are set for Apple Stores this summer and FiftyThree teases a new goodie for Pencil owners. Let's get to it. Apple has settled the eBook price-fixing claim out of court. The details have not been made public, but Attorney Steve Berman, representing the plaintiffs, believed Apple should pay $840 million. Apple announces filmmaking, iBooks Author camps for kids. I'd love to send my kids to one of these camps. Apple has announced that it will host filmmaking and iBooks Author camps for kids ages 8 to 12 in Apple Stores this summer. The 90-minute classes will run for three days. Sessions begin in mid-July and wrap up in August. FiftyThree will add natural 'Pencil' stylus to 'Paper' with iOS 8. FiftyThree has given us another reason to get excited for iOS 8. A new Surface Pressure feature will let those using the FiftyThree Pencil (US$49.99) to angle the tip and the eraser to produce broader strokes.
Facebook Paper adds a trending section, hopes you'll notice it
Remember Paper? That app for reading stuff from Facebook. It sure is pretty, but certainly has some issues in the functionality department. Well, last month it added some seemingly essential features that were missing from version 1.1, like event and birthday notifications. Today, to celebrate version 1.2, Facebook is adding support for hashtags, a trending posts section and photo tagging. Paper still isn't anywhere near ready to replace the standard Facebook app but, now that you edit your profile or cover photo, you could rely on it for slightly longer. (Perhaps even tens of minutes!) There's even autocomplete for friends names when you're trying to tag them in post. Basically, Paper is coming into its awkward teenage phase. We can see the promise and the appeal -- there's glimmers of maturity beneath its awkward veneer. Perhaps most impressive is the fine grained controls that have been added for crafting and sharing updates. Switching between public and friends is just a tap away, even if you've already posted a missive to your wall. Between Home and Paper it's easy to get a picture for how Facebook sees users interacting with its service in the future... unfortunately that future isn't here yet.
Facebook Paper got its first big update today, but is anyone using it?
Here's a shocker: Facebook's first major update to Paper, its socially augmented news-reading app, makes it more social. Specifically, the app's 1.1 update now allows users to comment on posts using photos, as well as added birthday and event notifications and tacked on an unread-message counter to help users keep track of Group activity. Facebook hasn't fiddled with the user interface much, but content from Bloomberg, Mashable, Popular Science and six other news sources has been gussied up with new, custom article covers. Oh, and the company says it's made the app run a little faster, too. It's not a game-changing update, but anything's better than forgetting your spouse's birthday -- assuming Facebook's main app didn't already remind you. Has Paper found its way to your home screen? We're running a quick poll: Skip past the break to drop in a vote or leave us a note.
Is it too early to call Facebook Paper a failure?
When Facebook introduced Paper for iPhone early last month, the app quickly skyrocketed to the top of the App Store social network charts because, well, it was from Facebook. But beyond that, the enticing preview video that showcases what Paper is supposed to be about made the app feel extremely promising. Lots and lots of people downloaded the app on day one (and day two and day three), but it has since fallen off in popularity pretty quickly. It's still in the top 50 of social networking apps, but it's completely fallen out of the top overall charts, where it doesn't even rank in the top 500. That's not good news for a free app that's just over a month old. So what's the problem? Aside from the well documented fact that new social apps have an extremely hard time gaining traction in the post-Twitter, post-Facebook landscape, the app itself is a bit of an unfulfilled promise. Going by the video demo that appears on Facebook's web portal for Paper, you'd expect to log into the new app and see gorgeous photos paired with well-told stories, but the actual results depend on your own Facebook contacts. The truth is, most of us don't go backpacking on Mt. Hood or spend our free time creating professional-quality dioramas which we then document with perfect photos. Facebook is presenting Paper as a companion to the traditional Facebook experience -- one where the most touching, important, or otherwise click-worthy posts are presented in a special way. But the app itself acts more like a replacement of the Facebook app entirely, allowing just about anything on your news feed to populate an area supposedly made to showcase "stories." Instead of seeing story-quality content when you boot up the app, you see the exact same things you'd see on the regular Facebook app: two-word status updates, a funny photo taken from a random website, and a complaint about a local fast food restaurant that once again forgot an item in someone's order. These are not life events worth celebrating in full-screen glory. Paper needs a better way of filtering out the garbage that we all would ignore anyway in favor of personal experiences that actually matter. As it stands now, the app is too dumb to tell the difference between a photo collection of my nephew's first birthday party (which has dozens of comments and likes) and a picture someone took of their burrito (which has zero interaction whatsoever). I'm not sure how that can be accomplished, or if it would be as simple as giving posts with more likes and/or comments a higher priority in the Paper queue, but it might be a good place to start. The idea of Paper is still a good one, and there are definitely stories on just about everyone's social network feed that deserve to be highlighted in a more direct way. It's not like Poke -- an idea that was half-baked from the start -- but it Paper still needs a good deal of work before social network users on the whole will consider it a valuable asset.
The Daily Grind: Does griefing in MMOs reflect a sinister personality?
A recent psychology paper picked up by Slate suggests that maybe there's more to bad behavior on the internet than previously thought. Researchers asked study participants to evaluate what they found most fun about commenting on the internet, then gave those same participants a personality test to determine their levels of sadism, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism -- the "dark tetrad" of antisocial personality traits. (One of the agree/disagree statements on the personality exam? "I enjoy griefing other players in multiplayer games.") The researchers found a significant correlation between those who flagged as sadists and those who claimed to enjoy trolling and expressed "sadistic glee at the distress of others." While the study focused on the 5% of participants who cause comment moderators the most grief on the internet, over here in MMOland I'm wondering whether this study would map equally well to griefers in video games since we might define griefing in a virtual world the same way: causing someone distress because it's pleasurable for the griefer. That guy who ganks your lowbie and corpse camps you for an hour might not be so socially well-adjusted in the real world after all, in spite of what griefer-apologists have been claiming all these years. What do you folks think? Does griefing in MMOs reflect a sinister personality? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
FiftyThree isn't happy with Facebook's Paper and other news from Feb. 3, 2014
There's a new Paper in town, and it's not the iOS drawing app. Facebook has released its iOS-exclusive revamp of its news feed using the name "Paper," and FiftyThree, the maker behind the first iOS app bearing that moniker, is not happy. FiftyThree released a statement on Monday briefly discussing Paper's two years on the App Store and the subsequent confusion from users when Facebook announced its own Paper app. Although Facebook has apologized, FiftyThree's co-founder Georg Petschnigg beseeched the social media behemoth to change the name of its newly launched app. There's a simple fix here. We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn't start with someone else's story. Facebook should stop using our brand name. On a personal level we have many ties to Facebook. Many friends, former students and colleagues are doing good work at Facebook. One of Facebook's board members is an investor in FiftyThree. We're a Facebook developer, and Paper supports sharing to Facebook where close to 500,000 original pages have been shared. Connections run deep. Petschnigg told the New York Times that Facebook informed him that they would continue the launch as planned. Other news from Monday afternoon includes: Pebble has updated its iOS app to include access to its newly launched app store. The store has more than 1,000 watchfaces and apps for the Pebble smartwatch. A newly filed patent lawsuit takes aim at Apple's A7 processor. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation claims that the processor infringes on work done by scientists at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and filed via a 1998 patent. AT&T has announced cheaper monthly plans for families, but as always, there's a catch. To get the best deals, you either have to pay full price for a smartphone or sign up for AT&T Next. Kick back and relax with these features: Here's how to download Facebook Paper even if you don't live in the US Rumor Roundup: Prototypical iPhone 101: How to add Facebook, Twitter and other social network accounts to iOS
Daily Roundup: Google's Chromecast SDK, Facebook Paper hands-on and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Here's how to download Facebook Paper even if you don't live in the US
Last week we told you about Paper, Facebook's standalone newsreader/storytelling app. Today Paper launched as an iOS-exclusive app. But beyond being iOS-exclusive, the app is also apparently US-exclusive. Our sister site TechCrunch has offered up a handy workaround that will allow you to download the app if you're locked out based on something as silly as where you live. This trick only works because it's a free app, so keep your eye on the prize and don't go trying to download paid apps that aren't available in your country. Go to the App Store. Go to "Apple ID:" Log in with your password as you normally would. Once you've logged in, go to your settings, find "country," then "change country or region" and change your country to "United States." Click "none" when it asks you for payment information. Search for Paper, download it, then change your country back to wherever you're from. Voila! You've got Paper, at least until Facebook updates the app with a region lock. We'll have a review of Paper up soon. In the meantime, let us know what you think of the app in the comments below once you've gotten a chance to give it a spin.
