Hasta La Gadget!

If there’s a common barrier to playing with a Kinect controller, it’s free space. The sheer amount of necessary distance between sensor and player is fine for suburbanites with expansive living rooms, but not so hot for apartment dwellers. Thankfully, BitGym is doing its best to bring hands-free gaming to small spaces with a new Motion SDK for Android and iOS developers. The kit takes advantage of the front cameras on phones and tablets to track three-axis movement, leans and multiple players without any special hardware — and without necessarily rearranging the furniture. It’s built to work with Unity 3D and most common app code on both platforms, all with a reportedly low overhead for mobile processors. Just don’t anticipate any leaps and sidesteps in your loft for the next little while. Although the SDK is ready today, we won’t see shipping games built on the motion-friendly framework until early 2013.

Continue reading BitGym Motion SDK brings Kinect-style games to Android and iOS, no huge living room required (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Mobile

BitGym Motion SDK brings Kinect-style games to Android and iOS, no huge living room required (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 03:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mark down September 30th on your calendars, boys and girls, as the music social network from Apple will arrive at the end of the proverbial road then. This is in line with rumors that made its rounds earlier this May that Apple is looking to kill of Ping, and considering the lack of updates since Ping was announced a couple of years ago, it makes perfect sense not to flog a dead horse any longer.

Those who paid a visit to Ping’s home in iTunes will realize that from September 30th onwards, no more new members will be accepted no matter how much you beg, cry or wail. I guess there might be just some third party developers out there who could come up with an app of sorts to help you know what you are playing as well as what your mates are enjoying on their playlist. Are you happy or sad that Ping has reached the end of the road, or do you remain indifferent?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Verizon enables cellular FaceTime use regardless of data plan, AT&T outs iPhone 5 this September 21st,

Going paperless has been touted by some quarters to be part of an effort to go green. After all, since there is no printed media and eliminates the need for a truck to deliver your daily newspaper or monthly magazine to your area from the printing press, surely the amount of carbon footprint would be reduced? Not really, according to a rather fascinating MusicTank report concerning the “hidden cost of digital music consumption”, where it looks into the amount of energy required to power the cloud media access model.

MusicTank reports, “Streaming or downloading 12 tracks, without compression, just 27 times by one user would, in energy terms, equate to the production and shipping of one physical 12-track CD album. Repeated streaming of individual tracks may not necessarily be a desirable long-term solution with respect to energy consumption for the life cycle of a sound recording.”

Should forecasts of global data traffic arriving the 1 yottabyte mark by the time 2027 rolls around be accurate, that would be the equivalent of over 20% of the planet’s 2010 electricity consumption, which is something that “depends on sprawling server farms and a complex, energy-sapping network infrastructure”. In plain English, this is not the greenest solution possible and perhaps could end up being more detrimental than purchasing a CD off the shelf. What do you think of MusicTank’s report? Does it hold any water in your sight?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: YouTube Live Adds Pay-Per-View to Live Streaming, Kivic ONE gives your car stereo AirPlay,

Chrome for Android has just received an update which makes it the “safest version” yet, although this does not mean it is 100% immune to hacks and security compromises. Still, security remains one of the core principles of Chrome, and as the number of mobile usage increases, Google’s Chrome team intends to deliver the safest browsing experience possible without paying attention to the kind of device Chrome runs on. The latest Chrome for Android update can be found on Google Play (weighing in at 19MB), where it boasts of a strengthened sandbox technology to make sure that malicious mobile websites are contained without impacting the entire browser.

This has become a reality courtesy of the innovative multi-process architecture in Chrome for Android, which works in tandem with Android’s User ID (UID) isolation technology. Such an extended in-depth sandboxing capability will be automatically used for devices that run on Android 4.1 Jellybean right out of the box. Apart from that, the latest Chrome for Android update will do away with a bunch of bugs, and will work with devices running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above. This is definitely part of Google’s commitment to have Chrome for Android improve by “leaps and bounds“, we presume.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Android and Chrome to feature radial-style menus?, Chrome for Android leaves beta, now available on Google Play,

Just like Sprint, AT&T, too, will be offering the newly announced iPhone 5 this coming September 21st, although AT&T subscribers (or would be subscribers) will be able to place your pre-orders from September 14th onwards for the latest iPhone, with a slew of flexible data plan options to choose from. As expected, iPhone 5 on AT&T will come in three flavors (capacities, actually), 16GB, 32GB and 64GB which will cost you $199.99, $299.99 and $399.99, respectively. for the 64GB model. While Sprint might come from its position of strength as “Truly Unlimited”, AT&T will bank on their status as the “nation’s largest 4G network” to help it sell the iPhone 5 and perhaps, along the way, poach customers from other carriers.

Ralph de la Vega, president & CEO, AT&T Mobility, said, “We are thrilled to offer iPhone 5 on the nation’s largest 4G network. We’ve worked with Apple since the original in 2007 and this is hands-down their best phone yet. We offer customers the flexibility to keep the iPhone data plans they already have or choose any of our individual or new Mobile Share plans. We’re proud that more customers choose AT&T for iPhone than any other U.S. carrier and look forward to making iPhone 5 the newest addition to our lineup.”

Will it be Sprint or AT&T (or other carriers) for you when it comes to the iPhone 5, or would you want an unlocked model instead? [Press Release]

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Verizon enables cellular FaceTime use regardless of data plan, iPhone 5 on Sprint this September 21st,