Google Earth may give us a real, live view of what our blue marble actually looks like, but even reality could stand to be improved a bit now and then. So to make sure you get the beautiful summer you deserve—while you’re sitting inside a dark room hunched over your computer screen—Google has taken steps to give you a new view of the world—totally cloud-free.
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Few would say that consistency is good for its own sake. Microsoft certainly agrees — it just revealed at Build that Internet Explorer 11 will reverse the company’s previously cautious stance on WebGL. The new browser will support the 3D standard from the get-go, joining the likes of Chrome and Firefox. IE11 should improve plain old 2D as well, as there’s hardware acceleration for video streaming through MPEG Dash. All told, Internet Explorer should be a better web citizen — and deliver a speed boost in the process.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: IEBlog
Windows 8.1 isn’t just good news for users, as the new OS version is also bringing the goodies for developers as well, in the form of 5,000 new APIs for devs to play with. Along with 8.1’s arrival is a new version of Visual Studio, to allow devs to write native apps for Windows 8 and optimize them for the platform. The software comes with all the diagnostic tools any good Win8 developer needs, including a way to see an app’s power consumption and network efficiency. Visual Studio 2013 is available for download today, so dev’s anxious to dig in can do so at the source below.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: Visual Studio
Windows 8.1 isn’t just good news for users, as the new OS version is also bringing the goodies for developers as well, in the form of 5,000 new APIs for devs to play with. Along with 8.1’s arrival is a new version of Visual Studio that’ll allow devs to write native apps for Windows 8 and optimize them for the platform. The software comes with all the diagnostic tools any good Win8 developer needs, including a way to see an app’s power consumption and network efficiency. The Visual Studio 2013 preview is available for download today, so devs anxious to dig in can do so at the source below.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: Visual Studio
A fun way to temporarily color your hair is with chalk pastels. You can
buy pastels that are sold specifically for hair, or you can use the
chalk pastels sold in art stores. They are much the same. Just make sure
that you don’t mix them up with oil pastels or your hair color won’t be
so temporary and a whole lot messier.
(Credit: Yuhan Zhang)
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have your very own disco everywhere you go? Forget the shoulder-borne boombox — student Yuhan Zhang from Sweden’s Umea Institute of Design has brought mobile music into the 21st century.
Called the Marshall Dicycle, the concept is designed around amp maker Marshall, although the look of the thing seems to skew more toward “Tron” than Marshall’s rather traditional style.
Slung between two enormous hubless wheels is the body of a motorcycle, with enough seating room for two riders. Storage space for musical instruments sits beneath the seat. The frame itself is rigid, as the wheels turn inside the rims, with a cutout at the base allowing them to come in contact with the road.
The wheels themselves also function as amplifiers, with an array of knobs on each one. All you have to … [Read more]
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This robot ape from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) could be considered a cross between a humanoid and a quadruped. Most of the time it moves around on four limbs, but it can stand up on its hind legs too.
Gentlemen, we now have a fully functional and operational robot ape. This can’t end well. Prepare for Planet of the Robot Apes when they take over.
The robot ape part of a project called iStruct, which is focused on improving robotic mobility. But that doesn’t really matter. ROBOT APE!
Hopefully they can contain this thing before it grabs your Princess and start throwing barrels at you.
[via iEEE Spectrum]
Samsung might have pleasantly surprised us with a Galaxy S 4 running stock Android at Google I/O last month, but it wasn’t long before HTC followed suit with its own announcement regarding the One. Officially known as the HTC One Google Play edition, the phone is now available in the Play store for $599 alongside the aforementioned Galaxy S 4. When it comes to specs, the handset is a dead ringer for AT&T’s 32GB version and incorporates the same radios (with LTE support). It features Qualcomm’s 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 SoC with 2GB of RAM, a 4.7-inch 1080p Super LCD 3 display, an Ultrapixel camera (4MP) with OIS and flash and a sealed 2300mAh Li-polymer battery. We finally played with it yesterday and came away rather smitten. Read on for our first impressions and hands-on video after the break.
Gallery: HTC One Google Play edition hands-on
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC, Google
Source: Play store
It’s probably not a huge stretch to say that Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 running stock Android was the biggest surprise to come out of Google I/O last month. The handset — officially called Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play edition — is now on sale in the Play store for $649 alongside a special version of the HTC One. Spec-wise, the phone is identical to AT&T’s 16GB model and supports the same bands (including LTE). It’s powered by Qualcomm’s 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor with 2GB or RAM and features a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, 13-megapixel camera with flash, removable 2600mAh Li-ion battery and microSD expansion. While we briefly handled the phone at I/O, it wasn’t until yesterday that we got to spend some quality time with it. Hit the break for our first impressions and hands-on video.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, Google
Source: Play store
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