Hasta La Gadget!

Shopping can turn into such a chore sometimes. It’s great and all if you have unlimited funds to spend, but shopping turns into an unending quest of deals, sales, and coupons if you’re working on a tight budget.

Augmented Pixels wanted to give shopping and bargain hunting a more enjoyable spin, though, so they came up with WarBot, which is an app that turns shopping into an action-packed first-person shooter.

What you’re supposed to do is fire up the app and point it towards an item that you’re interested in. Once the tablet recognizes the packaging, it launches an augmented reality first-person shooter game. If you win, then you get a discount on that item. If you lose, well, you’re free to try again.

Vitaliy Goncharuk, CEO of Augmented Pixels, explains: “It’s getting more and more challenging for brands to stand out from the competition to attract and keep customers’ attention and love. Augmented reality has proved to be one of the most effective ways to engage customers at the point of sale.”

It’s mighty clever of them to try to do this through a game. What do you think?

[via Dvice]

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BEIJING, Oct 28 (Reuters) – China’s Health Ministry will set up a national network within five years to provide a way of monitoring the long-term impact of chronic air pollution on human health, state media said on Monday.

The network will gather data on PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers, in different locations around the country, the report said, citing a ministry statement.

“The document noted that the absence of a long-term, systematic monitoring system has prevented the country from uncovering the link between air pollution and human health,” the report said.

The network will first cover cities where smog is most prevalent, it added.

“The evaluation will be based on the integrated and long-term analysis of PM2.5 data, weather information and cases of local residents’ diseases and deaths,” Xinhua said.

An international study published in July showed that air pollution is shortening the lives of people in northern China by about 5.5 years compared to the south, a legacy of a policy that provided free coal for heating in the north.

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