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Qualcomm made a headset to remind the world it has an AR chip
Last year, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon XR1 chip just for virtual reality devices, but so far, we haven't seen any headsets built to use it. Now, for Augmented World Expo, the company has released its own "Smart Viewer Reference Design" headset in order to reduce AR and VR headset development time. It looks to hold a lot of potential, packing just about every feature you'd want in a VR/AR wearable.
Thesaurus is a simple app for quick reference
Reference apps don't get much simpler than Thesaurus. The app, which requires iOS 7 and is US$0.99 in the App Store, does exactly what it says it does: provide you with synonyms – and nothing else. This minimalist approach definitely has its drawbacks. However, there are still things to like about it. The color scheme is refreshing and bright. As someone who stares at a white screen writing copy for most of my day, I appreciated the pops of color and clean interface. When you search for a synonym, you get a variety of options, some of which are really outside of the box. Unfortunately, there are not always a lot of words from which to choose. It certainly does not offer the broad scope of alternate word choices available in Dictionary.com's Dictionary and Thesaurus combo app. You can click on one of the synonyms to open up more words. But just as above, your choices are extremely limited and sometimes non-existent. For instance, if you click on "gaud," you get the exact same synonyms you get for "novelty." This isn't like Visual Thesaurus, which really digs deep into the English language to find the exact word that you need. The lack of synonyms won't affect most users, but the lack of definitions might be a major hindrance. People often look for synonyms to help them further understand the meaning of a word. If you don't know the exact definition of a synonym, Thesaurus won't help you in that regard. It ditches definitions in favor of its simplistic approach. If the app is going to throw out words like "gewgaw," it really should tell you what they mean. (In case you are wondering, gewgaw means "a showy thing.") Plus, not all synonyms can be used in the same context. You can say "mustaches are a novelty right now," but you wouldn't say "mustaches are a bauble." You need definitions for clarity. Thesaurus also lacks an in-depth look at the word itself. Similar apps have information on the origin of the word. This may seem extraneous to some, but if you are suffering from writer's block, things like this help to spur your creativity. As a writer, I need layers of options. This app looks nice, especially compared to Dictionary.com's cluttered appearance, but it is not robust enough for a serious wordsmith. Of course, not everyone is a writer. Most people do not need or want a complicated reference app with a lot of features. If that's the case for you, then you'll probably love Thesaurus.
Premier Live: Football European Style
American interest in soccer, or football as it is known in the rest of the world, reached an all time high during the recent World Cup in Brazil. More and more Americans are following the top European leagues. Rifra has five apps that will allow you to follow all of the top European leagues. You can choose among the English Premier Live 2014-2015, La Liga Live 2014-2015 for Spanish football, Serie A Live 2014-2015 covers Italy's top division, Ligue 1 Live 2014-2015 handles the top league in France, and for Germany's best Bundesliga Live 2014-2015. All of the apps are free, run on all iOS devices with iOS 5.1.1 or later. The apps offer one in-app purchase. For US$2.99 you can upgrade to an ad free experience. NBC Sports now broadcasts nearly all of the English Premier League matches on a variety of channels. If you find yourself watching those matches more often and want to track the teams more closely Premier League Live 2014-2015 will help you do just that. Premier League Live 2014-2015 provides you with all the information you need before, during, and after the match. You can check out schedules for the week's upcoming matches. Then you can focus on a particular game and get background on the city and stadium where the game will be played. You can also enter a prediction on the final score of the match and check back later to see how you did and how you stacked up with others. Once the game starts you can get live updates with goals scored and any yellow or red cards issued. After the game, you can check the standings to see where your favorite team lands and if you need to worry about being relegated at the end of the season. In the European leagues, the lowest finishers are moved down to a lower division and others move up to the top league. On the standing page, touching a team name will take you to the club's official website for even more information on the club, players, and in most cases where you can buy official club merchandise. A link for game highlights is also offered that takes you to a third party site to see video of the game. The apps all operate the same and use the same navigation. Each app has a "Help" button in the upper right corner to assist you if you are not sure how to get to where you wish to go. So if soccer has become your passion and you want to follow some of the best players in the world more closely these five apps: Premier League Live 2014-2015; Serie A Live 2014-2015; Ligue 1 Live 2014-2015; La Liga Live 2014-2015; and Bundesliga Live 2014-2015 will keep you up to date through the entire season.
Capcom fan service runs thick in Strider
Capcom has always been a slave to self-reference, and the recent Strider reboot drives that point home with remixed tunes, classic costumes and retro collectibles - everything short of dressing the futuristic ninja as a certain plucky blue robot. [Image: Capcom]
Storyboard: Skipping scenes
There are certain bits of roleplaying that I like to think of as mechanical. They're there, they're necessary, but they're not terribly interesting. They're like random battles in Bravely Default: kind of neat the first time, altogether forgettable all subsequent times, and never blessed with an abundance of fascinating stuff. You need to get through them, but you can't really look forward to them any more than you can look forward to the most routine-filled parts of your day. So the best bet is to say they happened without acting them out. Yes, I'm saying there are bits of roleplaying that are best acted out only in reference. And I'm not just talking about your characters' bathroom visits; I'm talking about things like dates and shared experiences. So when is it actually an advantage to roleplay by not actually roleplaying at all? How do you determine the scenes that you know happened and are important but aren't important enough for you to actually play them out?
E Ink reference phone and flexible display hands-ons (video)
Looking for your dream phone? Chances are, this isn't it -- but it could be the precursor to what could eventually be cradled in your pocket, especially if you are a fan of E Ink. The device seen above and in the first gallery below is one of just five prototypes of the E-ink reference phone in existence. The point? The company wants to have a tangible Android-powered (2.3.5 Gingerbread, to be exact) model to give to potential partners, so they can craft something similar down the road. We're told that it will most likely be used on the back of color phones, much like the YotaPhone, but partners are welcome to get crazy on the front screen as well. No official timeframe for availability or seeding has been set, but it is expected to roll out in limited capacity sometime this year. Official specs are few and far between, but what we do know is that this nameless phone is driven by a Cortex-A5 CPU of some kind. Given that this is an extremely early prototype, the E Ink device had a lot of bugs when we played with it: force closes, reboots and slow response are among the things we noticed. However, we imagine this will continue to improve with time, so by the time of seeding it may be a completely different story. The UI reminds us of a simplistic feature phone geared toward the basic user, with six icons on the front screen including an app menu. As we'd expect, the phone is great for reading books, and it comes with the option to install applications (though it's possible most games wouldn't look that great). You can also shake the device to clean the text in case it ends up getting "dirty," or misaligned. %Gallery-180039% %Gallery-180040%
Tegra 4 reference tablets use SanDisk iNAND Extreme, mate a fast CPU with fast storage
It's well established that NVIDIA's Tegra 4 is at least reasonably quick. It's only quick when the storage isn't a bottleneck, however, which is why SanDisk has negotiated a repeat partnership as the official storage supplier for reference Tegra 4 tablets. Pop open one of the designs and you'll find either 16GB or 32GB of SanDisk's iNAND Extreme keeping pace with the quad-core processor. The reference deal may be more than just a publicity grab: it raises the chance that companies will use the speedier flash memory in their own Tegra 4 slates. Whether or not SanDisk makes it to shipping devices, the deal could lead to balanced tablet hardware that seldom leaves us waiting.
Geeksphone Keon hands-on: a small Firefox OS phone that has big dreams (video)
Geeksphone may be an online phone seller based in Spain, but the name of its lower-end Firefox OS reference phone, Keon, appears to be Dutch. Regardless of the title's origin, the part of the phone that's most intriguing is the fact that it's one of the first to bear Mozilla's mobile platform. It isn't much in the way of specs, and that's easy enough to tell from just glancing at it, thanks to a 3.5-inch HVGA display. Still, the Keon's set of specs is actually on par with the Firefox protocol. This means that for roughly around 100 euros, we can expect to see a device with a 3MP camera, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, a 1,580mAh battery and a 1GHz single-core Snapdragon S17225A CPU. Don't expect an earth-shattering experience on this kind of phone, as it's meant to reside strictly on the low end. The Keon will be making its way onto the official company store in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. In the meantime, we've made a lovely video and photo gallery below, so check them out.
NVIDIA Tegra 4i Phoenix reference phone hands-on (video)
NVIDIA's latest venture in the mobile world, called the 4i, was introduced last week ahead of Mobile World Congress, and fortunately the chipset maker brought the product to Barcelona embedded in a reference phone known as "Phoenix." The 8mm-thick handset, which will find a home in the labs of manufacturers and carriers (as well as the desks of many third-party devs), sports a 5-inch 1080p display, 13MP rear-facing camera, PRISM 2, Chimera, DirectTouch and LTE (we're told that most major bands are included for testing purposes). As it's not geared for general consumer use, so it's not the thinnest, sleekest or best-looking device, and the back doesn't even seem to snap completely shut. Units are being sampled as we speak, and we should expect to see devices hit the market in nine to twelve months. Since it's still pretty early in the process, we weren't able to turn on the phone or benchmark the chipset; the only exception to this rule, as you'll see in the video, was when a rep showed a gaming demo on his particular unit. While the 4i is the smaller brother of the Tegra 4 family, it's still expected to be quite powerful. The chip, which is designed specifically for smartphones (tablets will take advantage of Tegra 4 instead), features four 28nm Cortex-A9 r4 (beefed-up from the standard A9) cores that can be clocked up to 2.3GHz, 60 GPU cores (compared to 72 on the T4) and an integrated i500 LTE baseband modem. For additional comparison, NVIDIA showed us the two sibling boards side-by-side. Head below to check out our galleries of Phoenix and the two chipsets, as well as a brief video that shows off the graphics prowess of the 4i.
AMD shows off a reference device with a quad-core, x86-based Temash chip
Earlier today AMD's director of global business units marketing, John Taylor, joined us on our CES stage to talk chips. Specifically, tablet chips, and laptop chips, and chips for products that have elements of both. While he was up there, Mr. Taylor flashed a reference device -- a laptop hybrid with the keyboard and touchpad built into the carrying case. Obviously, we weren't satisfied with just a quick tease, so we caught up with him afterward to learn a bit more. As it turns out, it runs a quad-core version of AMD's new Temash chip, which is being billed as the first quad-core, x86-based SoC. (There's also a dual-core version.) Built into the chip is an HD Radeon 8000 series GPU with AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture, so in theory you should be able to pull off PC-caliber gaming even on a tablet. All told, it promises 50 percent more performance than AMD's Hondo processor, which you can find in Vizio's new Windows 8 tablet. Of course, those are just marketing claims, and besides we haven't had a chance to benchmark either a Hondo or a Temash system yet. So, to put that in better context, it might be helpful to hear AMD talk about its competitors. Obviously, Intel is a biggie, but in particular AMD says Temash should be able to compete with Clover Trail tablet chips, going all the way up to Core i3 on laptops. We're told Temash will ship sometime in the first half of this year, and that AMD will be revealing more details about the platform at Mobile World Congress, which kicks off in late February. Until then, we've got hands-on photos of the unit below, along with some performance impressions after the break.
Izik is a great little internet search app built for your iPad
When I think of search I pretty much think of Google. I have tried Bing, and while it is pretty, a lot of my searches just don't turn out as well as they do on Google. If you'd like to try something completely different, let me suggest you get a look at Izik, which is free. Izik is not a front end for Google or any other search engine, but it has its own search technology and methodology from Blekko, the company that created the Izik app. The searches are very visual, yet powerful. I was getting very good results from some obscure searches. Search results get nicely divided into categories that appear at the bottom of the screen, and those categories are context sensitive. For example, if I'm searching in politics, I can easily pull in conservative or liberal stories, breaking news, etc. It's all very organized, and rich in content. You can also pull in images, something that Google provides as well of course. Izik is very iOS friendly, so the app supports horizontal swipes for more results, vertical swipes for more categories. After a while, it all becomes second nature and it is very fast to target the information you are looking for. One downside is that while the app lets you share your searches via Facebook and Twitter, there is no sharing via email, which seems an odd design choice. The developers say that feature is coming, however. The search engine also links to sites like Wikipedia and Fandango, which provides movie information and show times. I had some initial skepticism about this app, but after using it I like it a lot. It's free, but at some point it will likely have ads. Izik is iPad-only and requires iOS 6 or later. It's a quality app with quality results presented in a pleasing manner. %Gallery-175578%
Meet 'North Cape,' Intel's reference laptop with a detachable 1080p screen, Haswell CPU
If you weren't following along with Intel's CES 2013 keynote, here's a partial summary: among other things, the company debuted its fourth-generation Core processors, which until now have gone by the codename "Haswell." In addition to talking speeds and feeds, though, Intel also showed off a reference laptop with a Haswell chip inside, a notebook called "North Cape." It was a hybrid, essentially -- a 13-inch, 1080p tablet with a keyboard dock. (Intel made it sound more exciting than it was, saying the CPU is behind the display and that there are batteries behind the display and under the keyboard.) In any case, we got to see it up close after the press conference wrapped, though Intel isn't actually letting members of the media touch it yet. So far, we don't know much about the device (Intel won't even disclose battery life estimates) but we can say it looks thin for a 13-inch touchscreen device (the official spec is 10mm thick for just the tablet and 17mm for the tablet and dock). The viewing angles look promising, too, as you can hopefully tell from those odd camera angles. No word yet on which PC maker is going to pick up this design, but an Intel rep staffing the press conference told us it should arrive in time for the back to school shopping season, which usually kicks off in late spring. So when you see something similar to this surface in the May timeframe, just remember: you saw it here first. Myriam Joire contributed to this report.
AMD shows off its first Windows 8 concept tablet, we go hands-on (video)
If Intel and Microsoft have been the royal couple of Computex 2012 (aka the world's biggest Windows 8 Ultrabook tradeshow), AMD has been the third wheel. That doesn't mean it's opted out of the festivities, though. Nope, it's chosen this week to show off its Trinity chips, and it even has its first Windows 8 concept device on display. The reference design, made by Compal, has the same form factor we've seen over and over again this week: an 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 tablet paired with a keyboard dock. The main differences are that it has a kickstand, and packs one of AMD's Trinity A6 APUs. The chassis is on the chunky side, at a shade under 20mm, and the screen's a fingerprint magnet, but then again, we don't put too much stock in prototype designs; such details are subject to change. Performance seemed smooth so far as we could tell, but then again, we haven't had the chance to put it through its paces, streaming HD video or attempting anything of productive value. We wish we could tell you a bit about rated battery life, but alas, AMD isn't ready to make any public claims just yet. As for the accompanying dock, the keyboard is far more spacious than what we're used to. Want to see it in action? We've got a quick walk-through of the design, with photos and video below.%Gallery-157280%
Infant version of Android gets a walkthrough on Google's Sooner development phone
No, that's not a QWERTY feature phone you're looking at -- it's Google's earliest Android development device, the Sooner. While the HTC-sourced phone itself hasn't been a secret, the build of Android on this particular specimen, obtained by Steven Troughton-Smith, is something few eyes outside of Mountain View have seen. As Mr. Smith notes, this isn't the first public build of Android that was detailed in November 2007 (M3), but rather an earlier version from May of that same year. The non-touch UI is almost totally unlike what eventually shipped with the touch-friendly HTC Dream, aside from obviously housing Android's basic framework and apps including G Talk and the like. We won't spoil it for you, though, so hit up the source link below to see Smith's full walkthrough and analysis of the device that once served as the initial development vehicle for Android.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print
It was probably inevitable, but on Tuesday, it became official: the Encyclopaedia Britannica is finally going out of print. The news was confirmed yesterday by Jorge Cauz, president of Chicago-based Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., who told the New York Times that his company has decided to completely abandon print operations, in favor of its online platform. The announcement marks the end of a remarkable 244-year run for Britannica and its leather-bound tomes, which at one point stood as a hallmark of middle class living rooms and libraries. In fact, it's been barely two decades since the company reached its high water mark, when it sold some 120,000 sets back in 1990. Once the internet came into full bloom, however, Britannica's sales soon plummeted. In 2010, the publisher sold just 8,000 sets, leaving an additional 4,000 unsold copies to gather dust in a warehouse.Tuesday's announcement may mark the end of an era, but Cauz seems to have come to terms with Britannica's decision, calling it a "rite of passage." He's also eager to devote more time to his company's website, which will look to chip away at Wikipedia's market hegemony. Cauz, however, believes the two platforms can (and must) co-exist, because they fill two different roles. "We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity," he explained. "But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won't be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct."
Adafruit's Circuit Playground app deciphers resistor codes, helps you remember Ohm's Law
If the names Phillip Torrone, Limor Fried and Collin Cunningham don't ring a bell then you probably need to hand over your geek badge. If, on the other hand, those names immediately make you sit up and pay attention, you maybe excited to hear the trio have just released the first Adafruit-branded app for iOS. Circuit Playground is a reference app for makers, hackers and tinkerers that helps you decipher resistor and capacitor values; calculate resistance, current or voltage; convert decimal, hexadecimal and binary values; and store PDF data sheets for ICs. The app is $2.99, but it comes with a $3 credit at the Adafruit shop, so it's kinda-sorta free. It's available for iPad and iPhone only, but an Android version is in the works. If you're an impatient Google fan, they suggest you check out ElectroDroid which performs many of the same functions and we can confirm is awesome. Check out the video after the break and hit up the source link to get Circuit Playground now.
Texas Instruments demos first OMAP 5, Android 4.0-based reference design, promises it in laptops next year (video)
Texas Instruments promised us a new helping of OMAP right around a year ago, and sure enough, OMAP 5 processors will be sampling to partners as early as next week. Texas Instruments' Remi El-Ouazzane (VP of OMAP) just debuted an OMAP 5-based reference design (or "development platform," if you will) on our CES stage, a solid four years after OMAP 3 debuted on a nondescript Archos tablet. OMAP 5 brings along a pair of cores and plenty of power savings, a dual-GPU architecture and more raw horsepower than the average simpleton is used to handling in a single palm. We saw quite a bit of swiping through Android 4.0.1, and as you'd expect, everything looked decidedly snappy. 720p video at 30 frames per second is no real chore, with the platform capable of pushing 1080p material at 64 frames per second (130 frames per second without screen refresh limitations). Of course, with everything being hardware accelerated, we can't feign surprise about its future on netbooks and laptops. To quote Remi: "This is the greatest platform on Earth right now... way ahead of Apple, and it's the first Cortex-A15 (which runs 2x faster than the Cortex-A9) product on the market. When running two Cortex-A15 chips at 800MHz, it's more or less the same performance as running two Cortex-A9s at 1.5GHz. You'll see [commercially available products] ramping up with this stuff in late 2012 or early 2013. We are also running Windows 8 on the latest OMAP; it runs perfectly well, and we've been working very closely with Microsoft. We're working on multiple form factors -- tablets, thin-and-lights -- and we think ARM is going to bring tablets to the masses."He also made clear that he's hoping to bring more and more Android into the enterprise, therefore accelerating the proliferation of the OS as a whole. Moreover, he told us to "expect" OMAP 5 in laptops and Ultrabooks running Windows 8, and alluded to the possibility of seeing the first ones by CES 2013. Have a peek at the first-ever reference demo in the gallery below, and have a look at the video just past the break.
Intel demos Medfield-based smartphone reference design at CES (video)
There we go! Head past all the months-old Ultrabooks in Intel's CES booth, and you'll stumble across something less pedestrian: a reference smartphone, based on the chipmaker's Medfield platform. How it looks is irrelevant, really -- that chintzy, fingerprint-prone slab of plastic offers no hints as to what the Samsungs and HTCs of the smartphone world are going to create. What matters here is what's inside: this 4-inch handset packs a single-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2460 chip, XXM 6260 modem and Intel GMA graphics, along with your requisite WiFi radio, accelerometer, etc. (Intel had Gingerbread installed, though that'll hardly be current by the time Medfield starts shipping.) Though battery life will naturally vary by manufacturer, this particular device houses a 1,460mAh juicepack promising 45 hours of audio playback, eight hours of 3G voice calls, five hours of 3G browsing or 14 days of standby. At the same time, Intel was demoing Modern Combat 2, as you can see in that lead shot, and playing HD video playing through the phone's micro-HDMI slot. Look closely at those videos below, and you'll see the output is mostly smooth with some slight stuttering, though trust us when we say video playback and gaming were more fluid on the device itself. Have a peek below and judge for yourselves, and hopefully one day in the not-too-distant future we'll be able to size up the battery life situation too.
ZiiLabs demos Ice Cream Sandwich on its Jaguar 7 tablet, looks swift and tasty (video)
It's been few months since ZiiLabs introduced more hardware designs for its Jaguar line of OEM-oriented reference tablets, and now, the company has released a brief demo video of its seven-inch variant tasting Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Up until this point, we'd only seen the devices rocking Honeycomb atop Zii's ZMS-20 dual-core processor, but it appears to handle Google's latest frozen treat -- specifically Android OS version 4.0.1 -- with relative ease. The clip highlights quick transitions through a few menu interfaces, followed by a showcase of the slate's OpenGL graphics and StemCell media acceleration with decidedly smooth looking multitouch interactions. Curious to see for yourself? You'll find the whole 57 seconds of video goodness just past the break. [Thanks, Tim]
5 apps for the lemur owner
Sometimes a wiseacre editor (we have a few) suggests we do a Five Apps post for a particularly offbeat area of interest. And sometimes we actually start brainstorming these. "Five Apps for the Lemur Owner" has been on our "to hit" list for ages now. The problem is we're not entirely sure we can get behind the idea of private lemur ownership. Sure, there are USDA-licensed lemur breeders, so you can buy a lemur legally in the US and feed it with easily-available primate-chow, but there are many good reasons that lemurs top lists of worst-pet-choices. And better ways to spend your money. That being said, TUAW has been promising a 5 Apps for the Lemur Owner write-up for years now. And it all came down to put up or shut up. We decided to put up. We hope you take this post with the lighthearted humor that is intended. On to the Monkey Business. For US$1.99, you can load your iPhone with Monkeys!!, (yes, those two exclamation points are part!! of its name!!), an app that offers over a hundred "fascinating images that [your pet lemur] will love...you'll never find a better selection of gorillas, apes, chimpanzees, lemurs, and other primates!" Perfect for the lemur whose just a wee bit bored with the primate who actually delivers the primate-chow and cleans up after it. If your lemur is something of a speciesist snob, there's an entire app devoted to lemurity. iLemur (free) offers "The first interactive encyclopedia of lemurs." The application helps you discover "lemur species from a dynamic mosaic," encouraging you to "Find the cutest!" Lest you be put off by this title, be assured the app is full of facts, offering physical characteristics, ecology, conservation status, and more. The Primates (also free) provides an all-round guide to all primates including lemurs, orangutans, gorillas, the guy you sit next to at work, and more. The marketing text specifies that "every primate lover should have this application." Moving on... There are primates aplenty to be enjoyed with ZooBorns, a free app that ties into the much-loved baby animal site. If you have not bookmarked ZooBorns in your browser, do so now. I'll wait. It's not a lemur-specific site, but it's one of the best child-friendly web pages around. Finally, we give you Banana Gun. Because someone had to. This free-app lets you roleplay as one of the last surviving bananas in the world, coming under attack by rabid monkeys. Only the elite banana warriors will triumph. And with that, we invite you to go bananas. (Next up? 5 Apps for the Amish. Send in your suggestions.)
