May 30
May 30
Man of Steel: Minecraft Style
Posted in: Today's ChiliPeople can do some amazing things with Minecraft. What if you could re-create a movie in Minecraft right down to the expressions on the faces of the actors? Well, it would look a lot like this.
Creative studio Steelehouse has taken the “Ideal of Hope” trailer for the new Man of Steel movie and reproduced it frame by frame as if Superman and all of Metropolis existed in Minecraft. The results are geek gold. The audio from the actual trailer is reproduced here to complete the experience.
It’s well worth a watch, especially if you are a Superman fan. Though it would have been even better if they really created it with the Minecraft engine.
[via Geek]
May 30
Razer reveals the Blade Pro and 14-inch Blade gaming laptops (update: $999 Pro for indie game devs)
Posted in: Today's Chili
Razer promised it was aiming to iterate its Blade gaming laptop on a yearly basis, and despite the company’s recent focus on tablets, it appears to be keeping its word. Today, a mere eight months after releasing the second-gen Blade, Razer unveiled two new members of the Blade family: the 17-inch Blade Pro and its 14-inch sibling. As you might expect, the Pro tops its elders with new silicon and storage options. It’s exchanging third-gen Intel Ivy Bridge silicon for a fourth-gen Haswell chip and upgrading from an NVIDIA GTX 660M to a GTX 765M GPU. Oh, and Razer’s nixed the HDD options from the big Blade’s menu — the Pro packs a 128GB SSD standard, with optional upgrades to 256 or 512GB. That new hardware is evidently smaller than what it’s replacing: though the Pro shares the same size chassis as its predecessor, it packs a 74Wh battery (the older Blade has a 60Wh cell). Other than that, the Blade Pro comes with Razer’s Switchblade interface, a trio of USB 3.0 ports, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a 1920 x 1080 display, just like the prior Blade.
Meanwhile, the new 14-inch Blade will come with mostly the same hardware as the Pro, meaning it’s got a Haswell chip and GTX 765M graphics along with a buffet of SSD choices. Those components are stuffed inside a chassis that measures 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.66 inches, and weighs 4.13 pounds. Naturally, given its smaller size, it lacks the Switchblade LCD and buttons, has a 1.3 megapixel webcam (as opposed to the Pro’s 2 megapixel unit) and a 14-inch 1600 x 900 display. And, despite its relatively svelte dimensions (for a portable gaming rig), the baby Blade still has a 70Wh battery inside. The Pro starts at $2,299, or $200 less than prior Blades and the 14-inch model will set you back a minimum of $1,799. Each will be available in North America in Q2, with a worldwide rollout of the Pro coming sometime later this year.
Update: Good news, Indie game developers! Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan just announced that those devs with a successfully funded Kickstarter can get a new Blade Pro for just $999.
May 30
We’ve already seen a couple of new desktop GTX cards from NVIDIA this month, and if the mysterious spec sheet for MSI’s GT70 Dragon Edition 2 laptop wasn’t enough of a hint, the company’s got some notebook variants to let loose, too. The GeForce GTX 700M series, officially announced today, is a quartet of chips built on the Kepler architecture. At the top of the stack is the GTX 780M, which NVIDIA claims is the “world’s fastest notebook GPU,” taking the title from AMD’s Radeon HD 8970M. For fans of the hard numbers, the 780M has 1,536 CUDA cores, an 823MHz base clock speed and memory configs of up to 4GB of 256-bit GDDR5 — in other words, not a world apart from a desktop card. Whereas the 780M’s clear focus is performance, trade-offs for portability and affordability are made as you go down through the 770M, 765M and 760M. Nevertheless, the 760M is said to be 30 percent faster than its predecessor, and the 770M 55 percent faster.
All of the chips feature NVIDIA’s GPU Boost 2.0 and Optimus technologies, and work with the GeForce Experience game auto-settings utility. The 700M series should start showing up in a host of laptops soon, and a bunch of OEMs have already pledged their allegiance. Check out a video with NVIDIA’s Mark Avermann after the break, where he shows off a range of laptops packing 700M GPUs, and helps us answer the most important question of all: can it run Crysis? (Or, in this case, Crysis 3.)
Gallery: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 700M slide deck
Filed under: Gaming, Laptops, Peripherals, NVIDIA
May 30
Every kid needs his or her own special space to let their imaginations run wild. The dream of having their own playhouse, clubhouse, or treehouse. You may not have the right outdoor space to provide any of these for your child, but you can turn a portion of their bedroom into the house of their dreams with a Treehouse Bed from Pottery Barn.
May 30
Given how simple and common it is to do it on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you’d think being able to share images as part of a status update wouldn’t be anything novel at this point. But for those inhabiting the popular (and inspiring) social networking site LinkedIn, this hasn’t exactly been the case — and that’s about to change. As of today, users are able to add a little more flavor to things shared on the site, with LinkedIn letting it be known that they can now easily enclose more than just text when using the share box. And while picture uploads are certainly all the buzz, LinkedIn’s also making it possible to include other file types, such as documents and presentations. Currently, the new feature only allows uploads to be done via the desktop version of the website, however LinkedIn did tell CNET that the content “will be viewable inside the mobile apps.”
Filed under: Internet
Via: CNET
Source: LinkedIn
May 30
Oh noes! Dots high scores disappear
Posted in: Today's Chili
A screenshot showing that CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman's Dots high score list has disappeared.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
If you know anything about the new hit iOS game Dots, which has already logged 3 million players and more than 250 million total plays, you know that for any serious player, it’s all about high scores.
So I’ve been a bit upset over the last 24 hours after noticing that the Dots high score system had gone awry. On the one hand, my entire personal high score list had disappeared. But perhaps more troubling, the all-time high score list had regressed, with someone’s world-beating score of 800 simply having vanished.
If this is all Latin to you, then take a trip over to the iOS App Store (Android users, help is reportedly on the way) and download Dots. Before you do that, though, clear your schedule for the next week so that your inevitable new obsession doesn’t interfere with important meetings, dates, dinners, or even sleep. Now you’re ready.
Once you start playing, you’ll quickly discover that you’re basically competing with yourself. You feverishly try to make dots disappear, and once you realize that the … [Read more]
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May 30
Pioneer announces XDJ-R1 all-in-one digital DJ deck with MIDI, iOS control features (video)
Posted in: Today's Chili
Sure, DJ controllers might be the emerging force in spinning, but CDJs are still largely the club standard. Pioneer has always had thumbs in both of these pies, of course, but the new XDJ-R1 sees the brand uniting them for the first time. The all-in-one unit offers two CD players, USB media playback and MIDI controller functionality. Additionally, you can keep things moving wirelessly via an iOS device thanks to a new dedicated “remotebox” app. Wireless direct means that you won’t need to worry too much about flaky connections while you wander into the crowd with your iPhone. You’ll still be able to control almost everything directly in the app. Back on the physical (and built-in) two-channel mixer you can spice things up with the usual loop, sync, hot cue and sampling features, plus a choice of color effects. The inclusion of XLR outputs and booth out shows that Pioneer wants to see this in the DJ box, and at $1,099, it should appeal to anyone who’d been eyeing up the component parts. It’s available in June, but in the meantime there’s a video tour cued up past the break.
Filed under: Misc
May 30
The Raspberry Pi has seen a lot of different uses, and it’s one of the most popular DIY toys for electronic hobbyists. In a Reddit thread where users post about all of their different uses for the credit card-sized circuit board, one user in particular has an interesting use: circumventing China’s internet firewall to get censor-less WiFi.
Essentially, he connects his Raspberry Pi board to a WiFi dongle and connects that to his own VPN server running OpenVPN. Once he plugs the Raspberry Pi module into ethernet and into a USB port, he instantly has censor-free WiFi internet access. And the best part is, he doesn’t need to configure anything on his devices, as built-in VPN offerings on iOS and Android are quite poor.
Of course, though, VPNs are common in China, as they give users access to blocked websites in the country, but if you’re not at home, you always need to install and open a VPN client eveytime you use a new device, which isn’t a huge problem, but it’s inconvenient. This Redditor, however, made things quite simple.
However, he says that connecting to his VPN server that’s located in France takes a while, but once it’s up and running, it can remain stable for a long time, getting speeds up to 4Mbps, although he says it’s generally a lot slower than that most of the time, but we wouldn’t be complaining if that meant we could access blocked websites.
The Redditor says that it’s a “fight against censorship everyday,” and the government is always finding new ways to crack down on VPNs, including shutting down UDP connections and throttling TCP connections. Plus, he says that China purposely slows down websites that use any kind of Google product such as Adwords or Analytics.
VIA: The Register
SOURCE: Reddit
Raspberry Pi used to circumvent China’s internet firewall is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
May 30
The company that’s bringing Fan TV to the market is not a new one. It’s not necessarily an old one, either: still considered a “startup” as they released their “Fanhattan” app back in 2011, they’ve since moved this streaming video environment to the web and now – surprise – to the television as well. While the machine itself does not yet have a price point or a release date as such, co-founder of Fanhattan Gilles BianRosa spoke up this afternoon: they mean to take over.
The device known as Fan TV, developed and manufactured by Fanhattan, builds on the success of the web and iOS-based Fanhattan collections of video sources. Inside users will also find live TV, on-demand TV, a “cloud-based DVR”, and streaming services galore. Then there’s the remote.
While the rest of the world – for the most part – still works with keyboards and multiple physical buttons to control any display, Fan TV uses a single palm-resting touchpad. Designed to work without having to see anything but the display it’s controlling, this pad is also designed with its physical aesthetic in mind – it looks like an upside-down version of the Fan TV main unit.
This system works with multiple services, and will work with more by the time it launches. Though the actual device has not yet been tied to any services, but having a peek at those connected with the iOS and Web Fanhattan user interfaces should give some rather healthy clues. It’s expected that RedBox Instant, Netflix, and Hulu Plus will continue to be partners with the effort when this device launches – whenever that ends up being.
BONUS: Fan TV works with Kabletown! According to Fan TV: “Yes, we know Kabletown isn’t real, but we love Liz Lemon. Product images represent the vision of where we’re headed and are not indicative of final partnerships.”
Fan TV aims for set-top future with all-touch interface is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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