With the 2013 season looming just around the corner, it’s only natural for Major League Baseball to make sure its various applications on different platforms are all ready to go come this weekend. And as it did with MLB.tv on Xbox Live a couple days ago, MLB’s now also updated the At Bat Android and iOS apps, leaving behind the spring training features from last month and making room for ones that are tailored for this year’s Opening Day and forward. For subscribers, this means things such as multi-platform live audio, more video highlights, a virtual archive of classic games and a revamped news section within the apps. What’s more, MLB has kept its promise of bringing At Bat 13 to the BB10 crowd, giving BlackBerry Z10 owners the ability to download the app starting today. Clearly, it’s that time of the year again, that time where your Yankees-cheering friends tell you all about how A-Rod, when fit, is the best player in the game. Or, if they’re Giants fans, how they really, really, hope the tale of Samson’s hair won’t apply to Tim Lincecum.
If you want to drink fresh, limited-release microbrews, then a growler is indispensable. You see, the truly great stuff doesn’t come in bottles: You need to go somewhere that has it on tap get them to sell you a hearty pour. More »
I suppose you could put a Space Invaders mobile in any room you’d like, but if you’ve got a youngling in the nursery, then you’ll want to get them started right away on their path of geeky righteousness from the earliest age possible.
This cool laser-cut bamboo Space Invaders mobile was made by Shawn Hampton of Pixel Party, and is the perfect thing to hang above your baby’s crib, so they can count aliens as they drift off to sleep. I think if I had these above my crib, I might have turned out differently – as in, I might have actually been able to make it past the first couple of waves of the game.
The mobile measures about 36″ (W) x 36″ (H), so you’ll need a good amount of space to display it. Perhaps the invaders can help you secure some. So blast through your bases and head on over to Pixel Party’s Etsy shop to grab the Space Invaders mobile for $75(USD).
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is becoming more of an actual reality now. The company announced today that developer kits of the Oculus Rift are now shipping out to developers. In fact, the company says that units actually started shipping out Wednesday, so some developers may have already gotten theirs.
It feels like yesterday when we were hearing about the prototype of the VR headset, and after an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign back in August, the Oculus Rift has made headlines all other the internet. The company even made an appearance at CES, where it showed off the VR technology to attendees.
The company says they shipped over 10,000 developer kits, so we should be seeing quite a surge in support for the VR headset before it officially ships out to Kickstarter backers and the general public. The first game, however, to receive official support for the VR headset is Valve’s Team Fortress 2.
Furthermore, with dev units shipping out, Oculus has opened up its developer portal on its website. There you’ll find everything you need to get started creating content for the VR headset. In the meantime, if you’re not a developer, you get the honor of waiting it out before the public will have the chance to receive their own units.
Watch the commercials and you’d assume all cars are only designed for long, sweeping roads on scenic mountain routes and by sun-blessed beaches. As plenty of drivers have discovered this winter, however, snow, ice, and similarly treacherous conditions can make getting behind the wheel far more intimidating. SlashGear joined Ford in the cold of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to see what good behavior we could coax from the Ford Escape, Fusion, and Explorer Sport when the conditions get bad.
The core advice for winter driving hasn’t changed much over the years, but more than a few people ignore suggestions to switch regular tires to their deep tread counterparts, and wouldn’t have a clue what to do with snow chains. Thankfully cars themselves have got smarter along the way, with a growing number of electronic driving aids that can work around the limitations of both the road and the driver.
Ford’s chosen test ground would be an icy nightmare for most drivers, a range of different conditions including loose and impacted snow, treacherous ice, and the sort of gritty combinations that make many backroads so dangerous when it gets cold. As for the technology, Ford starts with all-wheel-drive (AWD) on many cars, but its front-driven models also get a boost courtesy of electronic magic like Curve Control and Torque Vectoring Control.
Introduced first on the 2012 Focus, Torque Vectoring Control monitors grip levels on each wheel and can dynamically shift the torque – the rotational force produced by the engine – to whichever side of the car has the best grip. Ford claims it can “virtually eliminate” understeer in regular driving, while in more wintery conditions it can counteract patches of ice or snow which rob the car of grip, without significantly reducing the speed of the vehicle.
There’s dangerous roads, and there’s mis-reading the road conditions and tackling them incorrectly. That’s where Curve Control steps in, a cornering technology Ford debuted back in 2010, and which it intends to have on the majority of its range by 2015. Enter a corner too quickly – Ford’s sensors track that 100 times per second – and Curve Control can shed 10mph from your speed in the space of a single second, by adjusting the four brakes and trimming engine torque.
Curve Control works in the dry, but it’s far more impressive when you’re trying to navigate a car round a suddenly icy corner. Ford’s system works by comparing how much the driver is turning the wheel with how much the car is actually turning, kicking in when the understeer becomes too great.
These are more than just blinking lights in the instrument binnacle, too: you can feel Curve Control and Torque Vectoring Control doing their work. Pushing the Escape SUV too hard through the icy corners of Ford’s test course, for instance, and the power shifting between the wheels to guide it back onto the line was noticeable through the seat and the wheel. You can feel the car correcting itself; when we turned off the traction control altogether, the difference was clear, with corners instantly turning into slides at speeds where, with the electronic brains in place, we’d previously sailed serenely round.
The technology works on Ford’s FWD cars, but it’s even more impressive in the AWD models. In a FWD Fusion, for instance, the car will automatically prioritize two-wheel drive in regular conditions, for the best fuel economy, but instantly switch in the all-wheel drive when grip starts to disappear. Corners on the ice track which we ended up going sideways on with traction control turned off, we were able to comfortably take at 40-50mph with Curve Control and Torque Vectoring Control switched on.
Step into the Explorer, meanwhile, and there’s even more control possible over the safety and stability systems. The seven-seater SUV exclusively gets Ford’s Terrain Management System, a knob in the center console which allows the driver to switch between four road conditions: normal, sand, mud/rut, and snow. The mood of the car changes noticeably when you do, the Explorer feeling calmer and more considered in the snow mode as the electronics ramp up their role. It’s not the mode for eager drivers, certainly, with the safety systems particularly intrusive, but it makes a huge difference in how confidently you can take on treacherous roads.
That’s not to say the Ford technology is anathema to fun. Just as it the various traction systems show their worth in getting you safely round in snow and ice at real-world speeds, at a more eager pace – and on the safety of a closed course rather than public roads, of course – you can start to have some real fun, relying on enough grip to get around corners while also letting the tail of the car swing out. As Ford told us, the electronics mean “you can take an unskilled driver, and turn them into a skilled driver.” When you’re on ice we struggled to walk on, it feels more like magic.
Ford currently offers eight models with AWD, while eleven offer Torque Vectoring Control. So far, the C-MAX Energi and Hybrid variants, the Escape, the Explorer, the Flex, and the Taurus offer Curve Control.
Going to a therapist in itself already makes a many people uncomfortable, but what if their wise and licensed confidant was actually just a fancy, upgraded Sim? Well, we may not have to wait too long to find out—a new computer program is already planning to be your depression-diagnosing assistant shrink. More »
Oculus Rift is in the mail! Development kits began shipping to customers on Wednesday, and even if you have yet to receive a tracking number of your own, a kit may very well be on its way. The Oculus team has been “tied up at GDC” this week, which explains the delay in sending out tracking info, but folks taking care of logistics have apparently been hard at work, prepping some 10,000 development kits for shipment. Of course, not every set will be on its way to a developer right away — it does take time to get that many kits out the door — but if you’re expecting one at your front porch, it’s likely to arrive very soon. In the meantime, the Developer Center has opened up to devs, with access to the SDK, Unity and Unreal Engine integrations, forums, wiki and other documentation. The team also published a video of its SXSW panel in full for your enjoyment — you can catch it just past the break.
When the original Facebook phone was introduced, it was created by HTC, and it certainly didn’t do very well on the market. With both the HTC Salsa and the HTC ChaCha having been released and selling so few units that they didn’t warrant a follow-up in the many, many quarters that followed, it doesn’t seem very logical that the social network and the manufacturer would want to create such an amalgamation again. And it’s not as if HTC is swimming in cash at the moment, either.
But here it is, courtesy of a couple of tipsters speaking with the New York Times about a Facebook phone to be revealed at next weeks’ Facebook event. Here the suggestion is that both a Facebook employee and “another person” who shall remain nameless were briefed on a project coming up – a so-called “special version of Google’s Android software system”. With the wording the NYT uses, it would appear that this software could appear on a new phone OR a phone that’s already coming on quick to the market – perhaps the HTC One?
“The software will debut on a handset made by HTC, according to a Facebook employee and another person who were briefed on the announcement.” – New York Times
Facebook has repeatedly denied that they’d be making a smartphone – but there’s never really been a denial of the possibility of a smartphone with major Facebook integration. Now that Facebook’s level of involvement with the iPhone is so base, might it be time that the social network gets big on Android?
With the launch of the HTC One here in the United States so very close (we hope), we can’t help but wonder if these two events might coincide. Keep your eyes tuned to two tag portals, both Facebook and HTC will be running hot next week – and we’ll more than likely see some manner of leak happening before then. More than we already have, that is.
And don’t miss the big event – 10AM PST on April 4th right here on SlashGear!
With nearly 2,500 exhibitors showcasing the latest innovations in home improvement, lawn & garden, pet care, plumbing, paint and enough helpful gadgets to choke a Home Depot this May 7-9, you bet that we’re excited for the 2013 National Hardware Show in Las Vegas!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
