Interactive fiction meets interactive typewriter, pilfers the kingdoms of Zork (video)
October 31, 2010 No Comment
You are standing in an open field as usual, or perhaps you’re in the darkness, likely to be eaten by a grue, but the words aren’t etching their way into your soul from the familiar computer terminal — they’re on freshly printed paper. Like a player piano, the Automatypewriter lets you play games like Zork by automatically keying in letters via a series of solenoids and fishing line to tell you where you are, and it records your input, too; every time you type “XYZZY” in vain, it’s an Arduino board that sends signals to the text parser, which directs a hollow voice to pity your foolish word. Forget the iPad typewriter — this is old-school. See it in action after the break, or hit the source link for the schematics to build one yourself. Just be sure to install Planetfall , too. Continue reading Interactive fiction meets interactive typewriter, pilfers the kingdoms of Zork (video) Interactive fiction meets interactive typewriter, pilfers the kingdoms of Zork (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 18:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …GameString Adrenalin turns your Google TV into a game streamer, will WoW your couch (video)
October 31, 2010 No Comment
We like the Google TV , we really do, we just think it needs another few months in the oven before it’s really going to rock anyone’s world. It won’t just be Google that makes or breaks it, though, and innovative uses like GameString Adrenalin are certainly going to help. That site offers what it calls “Personal Cloud Gaming,” letting you stream the output from seemingly any game on your PC to a browser, where it can be played on a number of devices. Chrome within the Google TV is just one of them, but given how something like a Revue comes with a keyboard and is usually attached to a big display it seems like a good choice. We can’t be sure what the lag is like when playing in this way, but the video embedded below does make it look pretty snappy — though hopefully the service doesn’t force you to listen to the same classic Prodigy that trailer does. Right now the service is in free beta, so have at it at the source link. Continue reading GameString Adrenalin turns your Google TV into a game streamer, will WoW your couch (video) GameString Adrenalin turns your Google TV into a game streamer, will WoW your couch (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 17:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …T-Mobile’s Galaxy Tab available for preorder at Amazon, costs $699 unsubidized
October 31, 2010 No Comment
We played devil’s advocate with Verizon’s $599 Galaxy Tab , but it looks like the T-Mobile version of Samsung’s Android 2.2 tablet is going to cost a Benjamin more — it’s ringing up at $699.99 right now at Amazon unsubsidized. If we were you, we’d wait and see what kind of deals can be had in-store come November 10th , but if you simply must have one immediately you’ll be able to use it with one of Magenta’s standard mobile broadband plans. $25 a month gets you 200MB with 10-cent-per-megabyte overage fees, whereas $40 buys you unlimited use with a 5GB speed cap , and you can purchase blocks of prepaid data an 100MB, 300MB and 1GB increments at the usual rates. It’s a bit of a shame we’re paying the price of a decent laptop for a seven-inch smartphone sans cellular calls … but you didn’t really need that rent money, right? T-Mobile’s Galaxy Tab available for preorder at Amazon, costs $699 unsubidized originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 16:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Sagem reveals Binder white label e-reader, SFR’s version comes with free 3G
October 31, 2010 No Comment
Heard of the FnacBook, Telecom Italia eBook or Thalia Oyo? It’s looking like they’re all one and the same — a Sagem product called the Binder with a six-inch SiPix capacitive e-paper touchscreen. It’s also got the standard accelerometer, 2GB of internal flash, a microSD card slot and support for ePub and PDF, but there’s one feature that sets it apart from the pack: a cellular modem that’ll give FnacBook buyers free 3G service a la the Amazon Kindle’s Whispernet . French carrier SFR is subsidizing that little venture, so it’s not part and parcel of buying into Sagem’s device, but if you find yourself holding onto a different rebrand we suppose you’ll still have 802.11 b/g WiFi for your Steig Larsson downloads. Fnac’s already taking preorders at €199 (about $277); devices ship November 10th. PR after the break. Continue reading Sagem reveals Binder white label e-reader, SFR’s version comes with free 3G Sagem reveals Binder white label e-reader, SFR’s version comes with free 3G originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Better Place’s electric taxis coming to SF Bay Area, thanks to $7 million grant
October 31, 2010 No Comment
San Francisco, San Jose and Palo Alto, California were all too happy to endorse Better Place’s electric vehicle infrastructure two years ago, but now the powers that be have invested some cash to get this show on the road. The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission has dropped $6.9 million to purchase and build 61 electric taxis and four robotic battery swap stations to put freshly juiced cells in place — just like Better Place has been doing with Tokyo taxis since April 26th. Yellow Cab Cooperative and Yellow Checker Cab will operate the zero-emission vehicles, though CNET reports that they’ve yet to choose a particular type — perhaps we’ll finally see Mitsubishi’s i MiEV with a steering wheel on the left-hand side? PR after the break. Continue reading Better Place’s electric taxis coming to SF Bay Area, thanks to $7 million grant Better Place’s electric taxis coming to SF Bay Area, thanks to $7 million grant originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 14:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Perhaps we were being unfair with Oakley’s $150 3D shades — that company, in fact, just didn’t go far enough. Cut to Gucci with “optically correct” Real D frames of its own. No wraparounds, it’s all glass forward, and like we said last time, you’ll be the absolute most fashionable person in a crowded room full of people decidedly not looking in your direction for the entire duration of the glasses’ applicable use. Look for these to hit your local US Gucci boutique — if you have to ask where, it probably wasn’t on your purchase list anyway — for $225. Your move, Louis Vuitton. Gucci’s 3D glasses up the ante with $225 fashion tag originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 12:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Our friends from ZatzNotFunny and Liliputing spotted Roku at a recent event showing off the next version of software for its media streamers: version 2.8, which should add several UI improvements including the updated Channel Store seen above. Also spotted was a special fall-themed skin and placeholder for the soon-to-arrive Hulu Plus access. The DLNA we’ve been expecting since our Roku XDS review still hasn’t made an official appearance but we’ll keep our fingers crossed until the update is offical and we have a changelog in our hands. Roku previews UI tweaks on the way originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …iPod foils potential kidnapping attempt in the hands of quick-thinking child
October 31, 2010 No Comment
Apple’s iPod touch can’t make cellular calls — at least, not without a special case — but it did look enough like the similar iPhone to foil one would-be predator. A Delaware suspect asked a 12-year-old girl to get into his van in front of her middle school, but quickly fled the scene, when the girl reportedly put her iPod against her ear and told him she was dialing police. The local authorities did eventually get called and are still looking for the suspect. If you see a “white male, 35-45 years of age, with a dark crew cut styled hair” suspiciously eying the headphone jack placement on devices in your local Apple Store, perhaps you’d best stay away. iPod foils potential kidnapping attempt in the hands of quick-thinking child originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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MSI stops short of calling the graphics switching technology within the FX600MX ” Optimus ,” but it’s pretty obvious what’s behind the curtain. The outfit’s latest 15.6-incher is equipped with a Core i3 or i5 CPU, Windows 7 Home Premium, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and a 320/500GB hard drive. There’s also a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU, and MSI has thrown in a handy control panel to make switching from discrete to integrated a lesson in simplicity. Moving on, you’ll find a DVD SuperMulti drive, two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, gigabit Ethernet, an HD webcam and a conventional six-cell battery. You’d be wasting your time hoping for a price and release from these guys, but usually a proper announcement means it’ll be on shelves soon. MSI brings graphics switching action to 15.6-inch FX600MX laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Hundred Year Starship Initiative plans to put people on Mars by 2030, bring them back by… well, never (video)
October 31, 2010 No Comment
For a while now, there has been a conversation going on in certain circles (you know, space circles): namely, if the most prohibitive part of a manned flight to Mars would be the return trip, why bother returning at all? And besides the whole “dying alone on a hostile planet 55-million-plus kilometers from your family, friends, and loved ones” thing, we think it’s a pretty solid consideration. This is just one of the topics of discussion at a recent Long Now Foundation event in San Francisco, where NASA Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden discussed the Hundred Year Starship Initiative, a project NASA Ames and DARPA are undertaking to fund a mission to the red planet by 2030. Indeed if the space program “is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” as Worden said, what better way to encourage a permanent settlement than the promise that there will be no coming back — unless, of course, they figure out how to return on their own. Of course, it’s not like they’re being left to die: the astronauts can expect supplies from home while they figure out how to get things up and running. As Arizona State University’s Dr. Paul Davies, author of a recent paper in Journal of Cosmology , writes, “It would really be little different from the first white settlers of the North American continent, who left Europe with little expectation of return.” Except with much less gravity. See Worden spout off in the video after the break. Continue reading Hundred Year Starship Initiative plans to put people on Mars by 2030, bring them back by… well, never (video) Hundred Year Starship Initiative plans to put people on Mars by 2030, bring them back by… well, never (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Oct 2010 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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