Hasta La Gadget!

Physically-challenged people don’t need to miss out on all of life’s activities. With a little out-of-the-box thinking and ingenuity, anything is possible. Take Sue Austin for instance. She’s an artist in the UK and she is able to see the wonders of the ocean without ever leaving her wheelchair.

Austin has been wheelchair-bound since 1996 and obviously she has not let it stop her one bit. The underwater wheelchair work has been dubbed “Finding Freedom,” and is part of a larger project that she is working on. The wheelchair uses a propeller and fins positioned at the back of her legs that allow her to steer using an acrylic strip attached to her feet.

The design was challenging at first, since most propeller models use hand movements and she lacks the strength to use them. The answer was to make her wheelchair more buoyant by modifying the heel plates into fins and tweaking the seat. The video is pretty amazing and she is a true inspiration.

[via Neatorama]

Another set of photos appears to have been leaked of the iPhone 5, the next generation Apple smartphone set to be revealed – or so we’ve heard – some time next month. What these photos reveal is some high definition angles on the front panel of the phone showing how it will compare to the iPhone that’s currently on the market as Apple’s hero device. This next-generation iPhone continues to appear to have a 4-inch display with essentially the same wideness of body that the previous generation has right this minute.

The new iPhone also appears to have an ever-so-slightly taller body (considering the panel) and essentially the same thickness as the iPhone 4S. The photos you’re seeing here come from SinoCet where they’ve got no qualm with letting their lot be seen. They note that the iPhone 5 front panel includes “lcd, touch screen digitizer, front panel frame, and home button.” This same group has released a video of them messing around with the panel with some lovely piano music to show you how serious they are about making a good presentation.

It would appear that there are a few different possibilities here in this wave of leaked parts for the supposed new iPhone. One possibility is that there’s someone – or a set of people – conspiring to sell pieces of the new smartphone straight from the factory in China. Another possibility is that this set of leaks was carefully constructed by Apple themselves to lead everyone in the tech new industry off the scent of the real deal iPhone 5. One more possibility is that these parts were sent out to 3rd party case makers who, rather foolishly, decided to take photos and video of them many, many times over.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see more important moments in this supposed river of pre-release photos and videos of the new iPhone. Note also that we’ll be waiting with our fingernails in our kneecaps for an announcement of the new device next month, and will be reporting to you anything that happens via Apple as it goes down – don’t miss it!

[via NWE]

iPhone 5 gets hd photo leak and video fondle is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Well here’s a strange little feature that has popped up as a result of Microsoft and Facebook’s alliance: the ability to search through the photos of you and your friends. If you ever wanted to find that one photo a friend posted, but can’t remember what album it was in, but can remember what the caption said, you might find this useful. Plus, it looks nice. [Bing via TechCrunch] More »

As many of you already know, the Metal Gear franchise is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. What better way to celebrate than with a new game in the series? At the Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event in Tokyo, Konami and Kojima Productions announced the latest installment in the series, and they’re calling it Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.

Not too much is known about this new game at the moment, and above you see the only screenshot that has been shared by Konami. GameSpot was there to see the game in action, and it’s reporting that Ground Zeroes brings a number of a changes to the famous stealth series. It would appear that Ground Zeroes is an open-world game, but it’s difficult to make that call with only one live demo on the books.

GameSpot also seems to think that Solid Snake is making a return in Ground Zeroes, but that’s also difficult to call as the character was only called “Snake.” Since there wasn’t any prefix mentioned, it could definitely be someone other than Solid Snake, so we’ll have to wait until Konami dishes new details to find out more about the game’s main character.

Whoever he is, he was shown summoning a helicopter for transportation and can drive a Jeep to his next objective, which lends to the belief that this will be an open-world title. It’s also worth noting that the game won’t end when you’re discovered. If such a thing happens, Snake will be able to use all of his equipment to attempt an escape, which is another new feature Ground Zeroes is bringing to the franchise.

One thing that was there in force was the Fox engine. The game apparently looks great with the Fox engine backing it up, but then it would have to be a solid engine as Kojima says that the possibility of next generation consoles was considered while building it. Speaking of gaming platforms – we don’t know which platforms Ground Zeroes will be gracing. Kojima played through the demo using an Xbox 360 controller on a PC, so it could be that PS3, Xbox 360, and PC will all be getting it. There hasn’t been any release date announced either, so it seems that we’ll be left waiting for a lot of new information. Still, for now at least, we imagine that Metal Gear Solid fans are happy with the knowledge that a new game is on the way. Click the thumbnail below to see the full first image for Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes revealed, hints at open-world elements is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Atari is big on nostalgia this year, but it hasn’t had much in the way of software to reflect the trip down memory lane beyond the existing mobile apps. Its remedy to that shortfall is full of 2012 buzzwords. The new Atari Arcade includes modern takes on eight classic Atari 2600 games, all built entirely with HTML5 and free to play. As fun as that promises to be, our interest is most piqued by the game library’s open-ended nature; this isn’t just an alternative to firing up a smartphone. A new Javascript kit lets developers not only build their own games but make money as they see fit, whether it’s through ads or in-app purchases. Whether they’re new or old, titles work in multiple contemporary browsers, although Microsoft would really, really like you to know that the games are ad-free and touch-optimized for both Windows 8 tablets as well as Internet Explorer 10. We’ll try to remember that when we look to relive our Combat memories on a Surface.

Continue reading Atari ports classic games to HTML5 for web and Windows 8, lets developers craft their own (video)

Filed under: Gaming, Tablets, Internet

Atari ports classic games to HTML5 for web and Windows 8, lets developers craft their own (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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