winter
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Sidewalk Labs thinks a reinvented awning will fix Toronto's winter
Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs will showcase more ideas for its Toronto neighborhood this weekend as part of its plan to make outdoor public space enjoyable all-year round -- even in harsh Canadian winters. One of the prototypes is a hexagonal paving system. The slabs are porous and heated, which may keep snow and ice at bay without salting. They're easy to replace, and include LED lights that can, for instance, help direct traffic flow during construction or mark street closures.
Apple Watch Series 3 will track your shredding on the slopes
Fancy yourself a skier or snowboarder? Don't let winter's impending conclusion distract you from news that your Apple Watch Series 3 can now track those snowy workouts and put them toward your daily activity goals. Apps including Snoww, Slopes and Ski Tracks will take advantage of the Watch's built-in GPS and altimeter.
Yandex wants to ensure its self-driving cars can survive the winter
Many self-driving car tests are conveniently run in warm, sunny climates where the road conditions are rarely less than ideal. But what about that significant chunk of the planet that gets snowfall? Yandex is finding out. The Russian internet giant has started testing its autonomous Prius cars in winter conditions around Moscow's suburbs to see how they fare when snow obscures the roads and ice makes traction difficult. The video you see here is highly edited, but it suggests that the driverless machines are up to the job -- they can stay in their lanes, come to smooth stops and brake for pedestrians.
Wear your DNA as a scarf
It's a cliché to say that clothes reflect who you are... but in this case, it's definitely true. Dot One is offering a lambswool scarf (among other products) whose artwork is based on your genetic sequence. All you do is send in a 23andMe-style cheek swab sample that's scanned for pieces of distinctive yet repeatable genetic code. When Dot One matches that code to colors, the result is a scarf pattern that looks reasonably fashionable, but is almost certain to be unique -- unless you're an identical twin, the odds of running into someone else with the same scarf are virtually zero.
Tiny glass fibers are the secret to boots made for walkin' (on ice)
A team of Canadian researchers don't think cleats and studs are the way to go when it comes to winter boots. In fact they've developed what they believe are superior alternatives: ones that use minuscule bits of glass instead. The team has designed boot soles embedded with glass particles than can grip slippery surfaces and yet feel like regular rubber on ordinary flooring. These particles give the soles a sandpaper-like texture, with each one acting as a microscopic stud. To make sure their creation provides enough grip, the researchers test their prototypes in a self-contained room with smooth, tiltable floors.
How much does this game cost? Depends on the temperature
Finally, a game where the pricing structure is as clever as its mechanics. A Good Snowman is Hard to Build is an adorable puzzle game about a monster trying to make snowmen, from established puzzle-game designer Alan Hazelden, co-creator Benjamin Davis and composer Ryan Roth. It's charming, cute and surprisingly complex, and it's available for $8 right now, though that number will probably change tomorrow. You see, the game's price directly reflects the celsius temperature in London, Hazelden's and Davis' home base, from now through March 10. After such a rough winter for many people, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build offers a cool reason to be thankful for chilly temperatures.
Amazon's Prime Now one-hour delivery delayed by winter storms
As a winter storm starts to drop several inches of snow on the northeast United States, Amazon's advising Prime Now customers in New York City not to rely on its one-hour deliveries. The service started dropping off orders around Manhattan in mid-December, and the online retailer is already seeing a rise in demand as weather conditions get worse. "We're watching the storm also, and will be operating on a limited schedule," Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman told Bloomberg. "Customers can get updates through the Prime Now app on delivery availability." So if you're looking to restock a few "everyday essentials," you may want to make other arrangements.
The Snowy Owl arrives with winter
The northern hemisphere observed the winter solstice earlier this week -- which is relevant to World of Warcraft for one reason: the Snowy Owl. The Snowy Owl battle pet can only be caught during the winter season, which officially began on December 21. If you're looking to get your hands on it, head out to Winterspring. The Snowy Owl's summer equivalent, the Qiraji Guardling, will be unavailable until June 20. At that point, the Snowy Owl will go back into hibernation.
Open-world skiing game Snow drifting to PS4, Oculus Rift
Swedish developer Poppermost will bring its open-world skiing game Snow to PlayStation 4 as well as PC, which gets additional Oculus Rift support. Snow arrived on Steam's Early Access service in October and is expected to move into a closed beta phase by the end of the year as a free-to-play game. The game is console-exclusive to the PS4. Those that want to check out the Early Access version on PC can pick up founders packs with alpha passes and in-game items, ranging from $15 to $60. Poppermost crammed eight square kilometers of open space and alpine terrain into its first game, which is powered by Crytek's Cryengine. In Snow, players thumb through hundreds of items in the game's catalog to equip their riders with 11 pieces of gear simultaneously before hitting the slopes to perform tricks. [Image: Poppermost]
Volvo's connected cars could make winter driving safer for everyone
With its latest research project, Volvo is hoping to make driving in inclement weather a bit less dicey. The Swedish automaker is testing a safety system that uses mobile data networks to relay icy road conditions from vehicle to vehicle. Once you hit a slick spot, the location data uploads to Volvo's database and then an instant notification is sent to other cars nearing that area. As the outfit tells it, the in-car app will adjust the warning's intensity based on your speed as well as the road conditions. Meaning that, if you're crawling up the interstate at 5MPH through a whiteout, your dashboard won't light up in the way that, say, someone's would if they were doing 88MPH. What's more, the system will transmit the pavement-friction data to maintenance crews, so more (or less) salt and snowplows can be deployed in a given area, making the roads safer for everyone -- not just Volvo owners. The pilot program is limited to some 50 vehicles for now, but the firm promises that next winter the fleet'll grow "considerably."
Breakfast Topic: What do you want to see under the tree?
Grandfather Winter tends to bring some epic gifts. Whether we're talking about exploding cars or exploding balloons, there's always been something with a little bang and boom under the tree. But that makes me wonder what we should expect this year. In a world thoroughly soaked in pandas, beer, and scions of fallen warlords, what could be under the tree in 2013? Of course, we know that Warlords of Draenor is lurking around the corner. Could there be a TARDIS? Maybe a DeLorean, ready to soak up the gigawatts and launch us into a new adventure? Or perhaps something a little more father afield: is this the year we see an exploding submarine? Regardless of what it ends up being, we can always hope and dream. That's what the season is all about, after all. So, what do you hope to see under the tree this year? Let your imagination run wild and enjoy the wonderful, creative season for everything it's worth.
Engadget's tablet buyer's guide: winter 2013 edition
As we begin 2013, we're stuck in a kind of tablet limbo. Most companies rushed to get devices out for the fall, while the models we saw at CES 2013 aren't yet shipping. As such, it's a mostly familiar deck, with Apple, Google and Microsoft once again striving for the top spot. That said, there are new entries from Amazon and ASUS, and many of us who didn't score some sweet loot this holiday season have a slate-sized pile of cash to spend. If you're in that situation, continue on for our first tablet guide of 2013. Note: If you're looking for tablets with an Atom or Core i5 CPU, you'll find those in our forthcoming laptop buyer's guide, since they have the same guts as notebooks (or netbooks, in some cases). For the purposes of this tablet guide, we define tablets as slate-type devices with low-power ARM processors.
Zombies!!! board game adaptation still in development, coming soon
It turns out a full console version of Zombies!!! is still shambling around, according to a new trailer and dev diary released this week. Developer Barbaroga has been working on a bigger and better video game version of the Twilight Creations board game for over two years now, though the project's been dark since late 2010.A version did get released on Windows Phone last year, but it's finally arriving soon, according to these videos, on Xbox Live, Windows, iOS and Android.The graphics have been updated, the gameplay and controls have been tweaked, and Babaroga has added asynchronous multiplayer features, so players will be able to trade turns back and forth. Babaroga says the full console version of Zombies!!! should be out as soon as "winter" this year.
Recon Instruments defrosts its Android SDK at Google I/O (video)
Ski season (in the northern hemisphere at least) was in full swing when Recon Instruments announced that it'd be providing developers with an Android SDK for its HUD alpine goggles. Now, most of that snow may have melted, but the SDK is finally a cold, hard reality. Made available to the developing masses at Google I/O this week, frosty-fingered devs can use the tool to hook-in to Recon's visual display tools, including its MOD Live series. Given that this opens up the goggles' altimeter, barometer, accelerometer, gyro and magnetometer and temperature reader, that's a lot of detail to tuck into. Itching to get that downhill leaderboard app going? Slide on over to the source for the details.
Recon Instruments touts SDK for GPS-enabled ski goggles, polar heart rate monitor compatibility in tow
Like clockwork, Recon Instruments is choosing CES once again to launch its next functionality improvement for those futuristic GPS-enabled ski goggles that we first saw in 2010. This year's revelation is the impending launch (May 2012, to be precise) of a software development kit for the Android-based MOD Live -- a little diddy we sat down with a few months back. Moreover, there's soon to be support with the Polar WearLink+ transmitter with Bluetooth. The MOD Live near-eye device enables skiers and riders to see a hodgepodge of instant (and useful) information, and with an SDK on the way, the amount of available data is sure to increase. We're told that the outfit's working with "strategic partners" to bring specific apps to the table, where users will see things like 2D graphics at up to 30fps, location / speed / altitude registers, time / jump analytics and free fall detection. Head on past the break for the full PR, and go ahead and book yourself a trip to the arctic in May; something tells us Whitefish, Montana's going to be mostly green by then.
Winter Wake-Up app adjusts your alarms for bad weather
As we settle in for the rest of the long, cold winter, we're just about to hit the time of year where it's most likely you'll hear the two sweetest words in the English language. No, not "cellar door." I'm talking about "snow day." Winter Wake-up is a new app that combines two different usual tasks in a fun way. It's an alarm app that will automatically check the weather for you, and it will wake you up early if there's either snow or frost on the menu for the day. You can set two different settings, put in your zip code, and then get a custom alarm based on what it's doing outside. There's also an option (and here's what you really want) to kill the alarm completely if the weather's really bad outside. Unfortunately, I believe the app just checks the National Weather Service for the conditions, not your actual school or work, so if your boss commonly makes decisions based on something other than the official weather report, you might be out of luck. But I love the idea of combining access to the weather with my alarm, and that delicious feeling that may come about from waking up an hour late and realizing that there wasn't an alarm because you don't have to be up at all that day. That in itself is probably worth the free download, and might make the winter and all its snow and ice that much easier to live with.
Google's Androidify holiday wardrobe update lets your bot ring in the New Year
Ready to celebrate the holidays this year? Google has gone and refreshed its free Androidify app with some season-appropriate gear for your avatar. The new virtual wardrobe selections should certainly please a variety of tastes, whether you're itching to fit your robo with an ugly Christmas sweater or just a pair of New Years party specs. You can catch our bot's new winter threads below, and snag the update for yourself by hitting up the Android Market link below.
EVE Evolved: Returning EVE to the Crucible
When EVE Online launched in 2003, it was a barren game without many of the comforts we enjoy today. The user interface was abysmally worse than today's (if you can imagine such a thing), players with cruisers were top dog, and practically the only activities were mining or blowing up miners. The culmination of years of hard work by a small indie studio, EVE Online sold almost entirely on its future potential. When I was introduced to the game by an excited friend in early 2004 during the Castor expansion, he encouraged me to get in on the ground floor because he believed the game was going to be huge. Years later, I find myself introducing the game to thousands of readers on the same premise. EVE's continual success over the years transformed a fresh-faced CCP Games into a multinational game development giant. And yet, for all that growth and all the updates to EVE over the years, the fact that the game sells largely on future potential is still firmly embedded in both players and developers. Players subscribe not only because they like the game but because they want to support development to reach EVE's true potential. Two years with very little iteration on existing features sent the message that developers weren't trying to reach that potential, but it seems that trend is soon to be completely reversed. With the newly announced Crucible expansion, CCP will be adding countless small features, graphical updates and iterations that put EVE firmly back on the path to reaching its full potential. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at CCP's plans to return EVE to the crucible and reforge it into something awesome. Those waiting for the third part of my look at the new player experience can catch that in next week's column, as Kajatta is enjoying his final week in EVE before delivering his verdict.
Details of EVE's long-awaited hybrid balance patch revealed
Balancing combat in a PvP-centric game like EVE Online is a tricky business. In a sandbox universe that pits fleets of hundreds of ships against each other in a struggle for territorial dominance, balance changes can alter the PvP landscape. Unfortunately, hybrid weapons have always received the short end of the stick in balancing efforts, leaving Gallente turret ships like the Deimos and Megathron behind their Amarr and Minmatar counterparts. In a new devblog, CCP Tallest adds a major Hybrid weapon rework to the growing list of long-awaited features finally making an appearance in EVE's coming winter expansion. Blasters will be receiving some much-needed CPU and powergrid reductions, a 30% reduction on capacitor usage and a huge 20% bonus to tracking speed. Railguns receive the same CPU, powergrid and capacitor reduction as blasters, in addition to a straight 10% damage increase. All ships typically fit with blasters will also be getting speed bonuses to help them get into blaster range, and tech II ammo for all turrets is due for an update.
EVE Evolved: Looking forward to the winter expansion
Since EVE Online's release in 2003, CCP Games has been the center of one of the most interesting success stories in the games industry. Produced by a tiny indie development studio on a frozen volcanic rock, EVE was the perfect example of how to do things right. The game's publishing deal with Simon & Schuster allowed CCP to buy back the rights to the game several months after its initial release. With no publisher taking a cut of the profits, CCP ploughed subscriptions back into the game's development and grew the development team organically. As a one-game company, CCP worked closely with players to make EVE the best game possible for its loyal playerbase. In a recent letter to the players, CCP CEO Hilmar laments that somewhere along the line, things changed for the worse. The CCP of today bears little resemblance to the "little indie studio that could" of 2003, not just housing over 600 employees in offices around the world but also developing upcoming MMOs DUST 514 and World of Darkness. Resources are spread thin, and EVE Online has suffered for it. Last month I looked back at the blockbuster Apocrypha expansion and asked why every expansion since then has cut down on the in-space development players want. Hilmar's letter and its accompanying devblog answered that question this week with a solid plan for iteration on flying in space features during the winter development period. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look forward to the winter expansion and explain why each of the issues being tackled in the coming expansion is a big deal to players.
