Microsoft IllumiRoom will Blow your Mind (and Room)

I was hoping for Microsoft to support virtual reality goggles (like the Oculus Rift) on the next Xbox, but it seems they have another thing in mind - and that, truth be told, should be less "nauseating" to those prone to motion sickness; as well as providing a more social experience, as everyone will be able to enjoy the effect and not only the one wearing the VR set.

Microsoft's IllumiRoom can almost be compared to a "Holodeck", as it transforms your room into a virtual landscape in sync with your Xbox games (and movies). No, it's not the same as simply projecting a large image over your furniture. The system is capable of detecting and recognizing the objects in there, and calibrate itself accordingly. It even allows you to change your furniture color, or make it "invisible", or even make it "wobble" when an explosion occurs in a game.

It is truly game changing... and it opens up the possibilities for lots more. For instance, when you're watching a movie, a video of someone ringing your doorbell might popup out of the screen, over the wall, without interrupting your movie. Or how about notifications of friends getting online slowly creeping up from the floor up to the screen, and then fading away somewhere out of sight?

Let's hope this thing is ready in time for the Xbox 720 launch when it reaches the stores later this year.


[via the verge]

Self-Destructing Tweets with Efemr

Tired of sharing time limited promotions on Twitter, and having your followers "complaining" hours (or even days) later because they can no longer find what you referred to? Well... there's a solution for that, and it's called efemr.

Using this service, you can specify a time limit for your tweets via hashtag. #5m means your tweet will only last for 5 minutes; #1h for one hour; ... you get the idea. Keep in mind this service doesn't mean you can say anything you wish, hoping it will be erased and stay forgotten. Anyone can simply retweet it via "RT" style and make it last forever... So, you'll still have to deal with that.

In any case, I think it's still quite useful just to get rid of promotional tweets you want to share with your friends, but you don't really want to keep around in your timeline after it expires. Now, if only they could add a scheduled tweets feature, we'd have both scenarios covered: tweeting in preset future events, and also have self-destroying tweets after the ellapsed period of time.

Google Shuts Down "Out of Play" Updates

Android and its Google Play Store might be "open" and welcoming, but there are times when one must remind guests enough is enough, and that there are things one would expect to be common sense and/or decent behavior that should go without notice. It seems that precisely what is now happening with Google explicitly forbidding Apps in Google Play to bypass it for updates... like Facebook has done with its own app.

I did find it very odd for Facebook to go that route, considering Google Play updates work perfectly fine, and you can even allow for automatic updates should you so desire (making Facebooks excuse of "better enforcing up-to-date updates meaningless). And, one can also imagine if every other app decided to do the same, transforming our Androids in a random mess of Apps doing their own updates as they wished, forcing us to handle one by one with its specific settings and whatever...

Google Play Store updates work fine... It's only natural for Google to remind everyone that they should play according to its rules. If not, that can do whatever they want... just don't expect those apps to be available via Google Play.

Galaxy S4 Screen vs HTC One

First of all, keep in mind that any of the most recent series of high-end smartphones with FullHD screens is... absolutely amazing and mesmerizing. But even so, someone had to go and put the pentile SuperAMOLED screen of the Galaxy S4 next to a FullHD screen like the one found on the new HTC One.

The key is that Samsung didn't (couldn't?) use the SuperAMOLED Plus technology with RGB subpixels, and instead shaved off a few of them using a pentile pattern instead. Sure, at these high PPI (pixels per inch) you won't really notice it... unless you really "picky" about it. And you can't forget to consider that AMOLED screens do hold some advantages in power efficiency (in black background images), contrast, and color.

But even so, let's hope Samsung figures out a way to make FullHD superAMOLED "Plus" screens for smartphones and tablets, with all the subpixels, and make these discussions go away.

Swype for Android on Google Play Store

It took them long enough, but finally Swype - one of the most amazing soft keyboards in existence today - has taken the last step and gone from beta version to an official, paid app available in Google's Play Store.

Yes, you can now get Swype for just $0.99, and enjoy the art of typing as you glide your finger over the keyboard. Yes, Google's latest Android keyboard also has a swype mode, and SwiftKey - regarded as the best soft keyboard ever by many - also joined the swype technique a while back. But, Swype is the one that invented the concept, and in the hands of Nuance... we can expect it to still hold its ground.

Even if you're not fond of swiping to write it also easily catters for regular typing modes, as well as integration Dragon Dictation - probably the best voice recognition engine on the market today.

Swype supports dozens of local dialects, adjusts to the typing of each user, does word prediction, has word selection gestures for quick and easy editing, and also integrates with Dragon Mobile Assistant.


For a limited time, Swype is available in the Google Play store for just $0.99. Get it while it lasts.

Put Your Raspberry Pi on a Datacenter for Free

If you're already a fan of the small, inexpensive, but quite capable Raspberry Pi, you'll certainly like to know you can now have your tiny computer placed on a datacenter... for free! You can thank PCextreme for it, as the Dutch company has decided to host them in their Amsterdam data center via their Raspeberry Colocation program.

You can send you ready to work Raspberry Pis to then - or, you can also buy one from them (in which case you'll save the shipping costs, don't forget to factor that in as well). It's the perfect opportunity for every project that can benefit from a high speed internet access (you get up to 500GB bandwidth per month) without depending on your home connection. They even suggest some possible uses: like email and chat server, web server, VPN tunneling, etc.

The Raspberry Pi colocation product will exist for an indefinite period of time, but they guarantee at least 12 months of "active time" to reassure all those interested in this.

Should this end - or you decide you've had enough fun - you can get your Raspberry Pi back supporting the shipping cost back home.

Osito is a Google Now for iPhone

It's hard not to be amazed by Google Now. Without any intervention Google Now keeps you up to date on the latest news, weather conditions, your friends birthdays, alerts you to traffic conditions on your daily commute, and even reminds you when it's time to leave so you get to your appointments on time - all this only when you need it. But... if that's the case for Android users, iPhone user have been left out in the cold until now. Google may not yet have launched a Google Now for iOS, but you get most of it by using this Osito.

This free App does most of what Google Now does, and... well... it's free - so give it a try. It has very clean-looking info panels, and its developers aim to go even further, opening up an API so it can interact with other services. For instance, in the future you might be able to to what its creators already did: turning up the lights whenever they get to the office.

Beat that Google Now...

[via Verge]

Hangouts get Auto-Mute to Silence Noisy Keyboards

If you're an avid Hangout user on Google+, you'll certainly know just how loud some keyboards (and typists) are. While you're happily chatting away with your friends, inevitably, someone (or yourself) will start typing and "spam" the conversation with the clickety-clack of their keyboard. Sometimes you won't mind it all, other times it really becomes a nuisance, or at the very least, a distraction.

Things are about to get quieter though, as hangouts will now have an auto-mute feature to silence noisy typing. This will happen only on larger hangouts, of 4 people and more, and when it does kick into action you'll see a message on your screen stating you've been auto-muted due to typing.

I think it's a nice addition, although we'll have to see how heavy multitaskers, used to typing while hanging out, will react.

On the other hand, you can always get a Chromebook Pixel, which has an extra noise canceling microphone just to muffle the keyboard sound while videochating. :)

Gmail, Gdocs and Gdrive are Down

Proving that even the mightiest clouds around can leave you "hanging", don't panic when you find you are unable to check your email on Gmail, or access your files and documents on Google Drive and Google Docs.

The only thing you can do is to take a deep breath, do something else (hopefully something productive) and check Google's stauts page to see when things get back to working order. Try to face this as being yet another drill that will prepare us for the inevitable "collapse" that will surely happen someday, when someone finds out a major vulnerability that might compromise and entire system like Google, Faceboor, or others of its kind.

Truth be told, I do depend on Google's service to "work" online (Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, and so on)... But the prospect of all those coming tumbling down is just so horrific that I don't even want to consider what I should should that day happen anytime soon. As they say: we should hope for the best but prepare for the worst. But in such a scenario... I don't think there are really ways to prepare for such eventuality.

... Maybe... turning off all electronic devices and read a good (paper) book?

How to Revert to Chrome Old Compact Menus

Google keeps wasting more and more space. In Gmail and Reader they at least reconsidered and added a "compact view" mode; but now it's white spacious new trends had made its way to Chrome's menus. Although it's something most people won't even notice or care, it is sure to annoy all those that had their favorites folders precisely organized in order to fit the screen perfectly, which will now no longer be the case.

However, there's still a chance to revert to the previous old-style compact menus (at least for now):

You just need to right click your Chrome icon, head to properties, and then edit the "target" to be like this:

•  "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-new-menu-style

When you relaunch your Chrome (using the icon), you'll have the old menus.
Keep in mind that if it restarts automatically, or is launched by clicking a link in something like a PDF file, you'll get the new menus. For this trick to work you have to manually launch it through the specific icon you changed.

Maybe Google will soon add a more accessible way to compact the menu options - as I can only imagine this sort of tweak would only make sense for people using the desktop Chrome in touchscreens... which is still a small percentage of cases.

Digital Mutations Learn to Walk

If you ever wonder how life evolved (and keeps evolving) and made us what we are today, you'll certainly understand why so manu people enjoy playing with evolution rules in digital playgrounds, like the classic and simple "life", where bases on simple rules we can leave the computer evolve our digital guinea pigs.

Life is a simple, pixelized, project that may not show much, but when you use a 3D simulation package like Voxcad (its free and open-source, allowing you to do basically anything) things quickly get more interesting, Researchers decided to see how evolution would work by defining a set of different elements (acting as muscle, bone, etc.) and let it mutate over time. The winners would be the ones that could move fastest and further; and mutation would more likely be based on them than the others.

In the end, you get to see "walking" and "crawling" creatures not unlike some we have in nature.



[Evolving Soft Robots (PDF)]

The Scale of the Universe

The other day we were checking the distance to Mars and I said it was just a small step in the huge cosmic scale of things. Today, we're going to put that into perspective, by checking the scale of the Universe from the infinitesimal tiniest things to that absolutely gigantic ones.

I can't stop being amazed by seeing that, whenever we think things are getting impossibly big... there's still a lot of bigger things to come.

It does serve to reminds us of our infinitesimal tiny scale in the Universe - and somehow it also reminds us that most of our "big problems" are only that being because we allow it to be. Do we really need to kill others and destroy our planet, when we all have to share this tiny speck of cosmic dust we call Earth?

Dear leaders of the world (and everyone else who may think they're "more" than everyone else), do watch this Universe scale at least once per week to remind yourselves of the true scale of your so-called "dominion".

Facebook Wants to know your Mood

Besides wanting to know what's on your mind, Facebook now also wants to know how you're feeling - and is  putting emoticons to use.

Emoticon fans will love the new "quick and easy" way to let their friends know how they're feeling, adding an extra layer of connection between people. Especially when words aren't enough or might be misinterpreted by others.

For now, this feature is being rolled out in the US alone... so, the rest of us will need to wait a bit longer. Which is kind of lame, considering emoticons are one of the ways we can express feelings without having to understand other people's native language. If there is a feature that would be well suited for a global roll-out, this would be it.

Hyperlapse on Google Street View

Ever wished to record some of your driving and assemble a mesmerizing, time bending, time lapse video? Well, now you can do it in a much simpler way thanks to this Hyperlapse. This service uses Google's own Street View data to assemble a time-lapse video - freeing you from troublesome in-car camera setups, batteries that run out on the worst possible moment, memory cards that fill up and prevent you from recording what you wanted to record, and video editing software that sometime wants to drive you mad.

Just check the following video to see what you can do with Hyperlapse, and I'm sure you'll want to give it a try on a route of your own.

Guess a coast-to-coast time lapse trip is now up for grabs for anyone with an internet access and a bit of imagination. :)

iPad Status Board App

Ever wished to turn your iPad into a fully customized status board showing all kinds of info? Now you can, thanks to the Status Board App. Sure you could try and code yourself some fancy dynamic HTML5 web page, host it somewhere, and use you iPad browser to display it. But why go through all that trouble (in case you do know what you're doing) when you can do it in a much simpler drag-and-drop fashion - but still retaining full control of advanced customizations should you chose to do so?

Using this app you can easily chose the built-in panels to show data from your calendar, tweets, e-mail, weather, news, and more. You can also use the pro panels, where you have components like Graph and Table, which you can customize and display data from JSON, CSV, and HTML data - or even design your own components in HTML

When you have everything in place, you can easily share your dashboard with others, or display it in an external display via HDMI or AirPlay ( formatted specifically for HDTV's so you don't get letterboxing).

[Status Board at the App Store]

Nokia Music for WP8 gets Live Tile Support

Just the other day I was talking about how some developers seem to forget (or not care) about each mobile platform strengths and differences, merely porting their apps from one to the other, not really taking advantage of each platform specific features. Well, Nokia Music wasn't bad on Windows Phone, but now it got a lot better.

The app finally puts your Windows Phone Live Tiles to good use, showing music info directly in front of you (album artwork, artist and song names, etc.) which is a great thing, considering just how much Live Tiles are responsible for making Windows Phone "different" from the other mobile platforms (iOS and Android).

Besides that, you also get:

• Rewind and fast forward your MP3s
• Download mixes without being interrupted by the screenlock
• As well as generic "Performance improvements"

All in all... if you have a Windows Phone, you'll want to update your Nokia Music app as soon as you get the chance.

Animal Mind Control gets Closer to Reality

In James Cameron's Avatar, we see humans taking control of other biological specimens - and that is something that can only belong to the realm of science fiction, right? Well... not so fast. We're still a long way from that, but researchers have been able to mind-control a rat wagging its tail.

Yes, it's still a very modest achievement, but the key point is that it proves that it's possible. With a few more decades of development, who's to say what this methods will allow us to do? Can you imagine being able to dive deep into the ocean controlling a fish, or maybe even experience the world through the eyes of a tiny insect?

Of course, this same technology also opens up a lot of room for complicated scenarios... like mind-controlling another people's bodies; or even being used in reverse, giving an animal control of a human body. ... I can sense a flurry of hollywood writers going into overdrive writing scripts based on the implications of this technology. :)

StorEbook to Read Aloud eBooks with "Funny Voices"

We've come a long way since the first text-to-speech began reading out aloud. Today, voice synthesis is capable of reading text with a surprisingly natural feel... but things are about to be pushed to the next level. AT&T is researching a system that will be able to read eBooks using diferent voices for each character and even making "funny voices" is kid's books - just like a normal person would do when reading to their kids.

In the future, AT&T hopes to be able to automatically assign specific voice types to characters automatically (funny mellow voices, more scary ones, etc.) and even use parent's voices so kids can hear their parents reading to them... even when they're not around. (That should make things interesting... as the potential for misuse and abuse is... well... staggering!)

Just like anyone can easily tweak their photos these days, using software like photoshop; it seems that soon we won't be able to trust anything we hear. (Well... in reality we already can't, but with more powerful tools becoming more accessible to "regular people", I suspect we'll see a boom in "abuse" scenarios.)

Sony Xperia ZL gets Guinness World Record for Largest Screen Mosaic

What do you do with nearly 200 high-end smartphones? For Sony the answer was simples: to mash them up into a giant mosaic screen and grab the Guinness World Record for the largest animated smartphone mosaic. It happened  during the last MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, where they put 196 Xperia ZL in a 14 x14 matrix for the world to see.

... I think this record won't stand for long, as I imagine other manufacturers will quickly jump in to beat it and show off their own brand (20x20 seems like a nice round number... should you happen to have 400 smartphones around somewhere).

In case you were impressed by its size alone, I should also remind you that, having a 5" Full HD screen, this mosaic also is sure to have one of the highest pixel resolution in the world: 26880 x 15120 pixels - enough to put to shame even the Ultra HD 4K and 8K!

To put things into perspective, a single uncompressed frame at this resolution takes about 1.13GB! That translates into roughly 34GB per second should you want to display a video at 30fps (meaning 1TB would only be able to hold about 30s of video).Of course, that's exactly why codecs and compression were invented for, and the real values would be a lot less intimidating... but it's still incredible to think at this scale of things.

Cellphone is 40 years Old

Today we take for granted being able to pull a cellphone out of the pocket and making a call to anyone else in the world, but there was a time when that seemed like science fiction. In fact our trusted cell phone is "only" 40 years old, although I doubt many youngsters would still be able to even pick up that "brick" they called cellphone back then.

The first phone call using a cell phone was made by Marty Cooper, working at Motorola, that decided to ring a friend working at the competing Bell Labs, asking him "I'm ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end."


If you think current smartphones are heavy and have lousy battery life, you'll like to know that back then, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x (the first commercially available mobile phone) weighed 2.5 pounds and it lasted for about one hour of talk time. And let's not forget about price: at $3,995 it would be enough for you to buy nearly every single high-end smartphone today, and still enough to spare for next year's models.

New Nexus 7 coming in July?

The popular Nexus 7 mini-tablet is nearing its first anniversary next July, and that makes for the perfect time to announce it's successor. According to Reuters, there's a new Nexus 7 generation coming... and it will keep on pushing the price barriers even lower.

It might be hard to remember how things were a year ago. The iPad dominated the tablet market, and Google desperately needed to attract customers to Android tablet's segment. There were low cost tablets out there, but suffering from lousy construction quality and severely under-powered. The Nexus 7 changed all that, and marked the beginning of a new Nexus era, where Google devices were priced at nearly "manufacturing cost value". The strategy worked, and has been working ever since (just look at the Nexus 10 and Nexus 4).

With the new Nexus 7, some say Google will push the low-cost point even lower, offering it for just $149 (with the $199 price point probably becoming the most attractive model, with more capacity as usual).

We still no nothing about what it will have, but the rumors point to the use of Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs instead of Nvidia's Tegra. Even with a lower price point, I also suspect Google will update the screen to a FullHD screen (just like they went overboard on the Nexus 10 and it's high-density screen, while still keeping its cost down). I also hope this time the Nexus 7 will finally get to have a main back-facing camera.

... What about you? What would you like to see on the new Nexus 7?

Zooming on Google Maps with One Finger

Touch interfaces are cool and easy to use, but we don't really notice just how much of these gestures are often "two-hand-centric" until the time comes when you're forced to use it single handed. Maybe you're walking down the street, keeping your smartphone on one hand, and a bag of groceries on the other, and you decide you want to find out where that spot was on Google Map. Zooming in and out using the pinch to zoom suddenly doesn't sound as friendly when you have just one hand to hold the smartphone and do it.

But actually... you don't need to. You can zoom in/out in Google Maps using a single finger. You just need to double tap the screen and keep your finger (most likely your thumb) pressed against the screen on the second tap. Then, you can easily zoom in/out by simply moving your finger up or down.

Quite a clever way to do it single-handed, and that will surely come in handy next time you're out on the street holding an umbrella on a rainy day, and your smartphone/maps on the other.

Facebook to Block Access to People over 25

Social networks seem to be going crazy these days. Twitter is closing the doors to third-party Twitter clients; Google has been shutting down services hoping user will move onto Google+; and now Facebook does something that may be just the tip of the iceberg of things to come: Facebook is about to become the fist age restricted social network.

Starting today, Facebook users over 25 years old will be unable to login into their accounts. Mark Zuckerberg says it's time for old people to ruin the experience for younger people; and that when a teenager uploads a sexy photo of her, it's not her intention to be poked around by "dirty old men". So, enough is enough, and according to the Facebook Founder, when people  grow old, it's time for them to move out of Facebook, and to more mature social networks, like LinkedIn.

If you're thinking of trying to fool Facebook by simply entering a valid birthdate, don't bother. From now on, new Facebook users will need to be vouched for by three existing users. If FB finds out you're not really under 25 (like being reported by someone else), then you'll be kicked out as well as all of them! So, it's not hard to imagine no one will want to risk vouching for any "fakes".

Will this be the beginning of age restricted and age tiered social networks? We'll see how other networks react to this unexpected Facebook announcement... and if they'll follow with similar tactics.