Don’t purchase the Kindle Fire HDX 7 expecting to be able to repair its inner bits on your own – that’s what iFixit is suggesting this morning as they make with the relatively low 3 of 10 score for repairability on this machine. The Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch display up front, it was discovered, was […]
Ubisoft’s major next-gen launch game Watch Dogs is now set to release in Spring 2014. The French game publisher announced as much this afternoon, also noting that The Crew is being pushed to the same window. That means that neither game will arrive until at least April 1, 2014.
Though Watch Dogs is …
The Sims FreePlay would be the latest title from Electronic Arts that would make its way to the Nokia Lumia platform, and if you happen to own just such a smartphone from that particular company, perhaps you might want to consider giving The Sims FreePlay a go. After all, have this particular mindset that not all free things in this world are bad, and you might be pleasantly surprised. When The Sims was first released, it certainly captured the imagination of many, as we invest real world hours into the life of a virtual character. Kinda twisted, but the idea caught on. Well, The Sims FreePlay offers you yet another chance to control an entire town of virtual people right on the comfort of your Nokia Lumia handset.
In The Sims FreePlay, you are able to follow the lives of all your Sims in a newly established town, checking out one after another as they go about their own daily business. As to what they are up to, that onus falls back upon you. You will be presented with numerous plots of empty residential land at first which needs to be purchased, where some construction work will be carried out so that future homes can be filled with Sims whom you will direct their life. The Sims FreePlay will be made available for Windows Phone 8 smartphones that have a minimu of 1GB RAM, including the Nokia Lumia 1020, Lumia 925 and Lumia 920.
The Sims FreePlay Arrives On The Nokia Lumia original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Apple has sent out invites for an October 22nd event, where we’re expecting to see the Cupertino company reveal the new iPad mini 2 and iPad 5. The event, which has the tagline “We still have a lot to cover”, will be held in San Francisco, and has been widely predicted for some time now, […]
(Credit: CNET)
Apple’s “very busy” fall season of product launches is in full swing. The company just sent out invites for a news event next week, where new iPads and Macs are expected.
The invite says only, “We still have a lot to cover,” and has colorful leaves from the Apple logo.
The press conference will take place at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, and begins at 10 a.m. Pacific. CNET will be there to bring you all the news, live. Stay tuned for more details on how to watch.
Apple’s last event was in September, where the company debuted the iPhone 5S and 5C, which went on sale a week later. This time around we’re expecting new models of the iPad and iPad Mini, which have been chronicled in a series of leaks. Apple is also expected to update some of its Macs — particularly its MacBook Pros — and offer a price and release date for OS X Mavericks, which was first shown off in June and finalized earlier this month.
Related Links:
Apple’s iPad event reportedly set for October 22
Apple’s online store down for mystery update
Possible iPad 5 Smart Covers shown off in video
Leaked photos show ‘space gray’ iPad Mini model
What the latest iPhones tell us about the next iPads
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As was foretold by the ancients
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Apple has announced a special event to be held next week on October 22, after that date was leaked first by AllThingsD and then later confirmed by The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple. If rumors prove correct, the event will most likely feature the reveal of a fifth generation iPad, a Retina iPad mini, new Haswell-powered Retina MacBook Pros with better battery life, and potentially a ship date for the already-announced new Mac Pro.
The event will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, with a 10 AM PDT kick-off time, and as you can see from the graphic, Apple’s only hint as to what’s on tap is the tagline “We still have a lot to cover,” which does imply a variety of things will be shown off at once.
New MacBook Pros with Retina will probably see the most benefit in terms of battery life, as the Haswell-powered MacBook Air variants revealed earlier this year have extended life that hits the 12-hour mark. As for the iPad, the 5th generation is rumored to be getting a makeover that will include a smaller bezel and a thinner and lighter case, to match the iPad mini’s current design. The iPad mini, however, may gain slightly in terms of profile and weight, in order to provide additional power for similar long-lasting battery life despite the better, double resolution display. We could also see fresh Apple TV hardware, though probably just a new version of the settop streaming box, rather than the mythical television set sometimes floated by analysts over the years.
A rumor from earlier today on French website MacG claims that the new hardware starring at this event will go on sale shortly after, with the MacBook Pro available on the 24th or 25th of October, and the new iPads coming just under a week after that on October 30 or 31. The Mac Pro, they claim, will arrive on November 15, which is still within the loose “fall” timeline previously stated by Apple. Apple’s new Mac Pro design is a much different affair than the existing silver rectangle, and is made up of a svelte black cylinder that depends on high-speed external ports for expandability. It’ll be assembled in the U.S., which is likely why Apple partners Flextronics has just revealed an ongoing major hiring surge.
One final announcement likely for the event is the availability of OS X Mavericks, Apple’s next-gen desktop operating system. Expect it to ship in time for new MacBook Pros to hit store shelves. Mavericks includes a number of improvements, including tabbed Finder browsing and much-improved multi-screen monitor support.
We’ll be there live to bring you all the news from the Apple event as it happens, so tune in right here for coverage next week.
The rumors, they are true. Apple’s ready to take the wraps off of something big next week, just in time to seriously impact our collective holiday spending — and just a little more than a month after that big iPhone event. In fact, the invite alludes to that recent event by noting that the company …
With gadgets like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass, it’s looking like the future of displays is going to be a war for space on our faces. Here’s one more promising invention that may make you wish you had several pairs of eyes and foreheads. castAR glasses can not only beam stereographic 3D to your eyes a la Oculus Rift, they can also project 3D video to the real world.
castAR is the invention of Technical Illusions, a company setup by former Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson. The two are videogame industry veterans with decades of software and hardware expertise between them. Their device can display hologram-like videos and images in 3D using two micro-projectors and a retro-reflective sheet.
Aside from acting as a display, the sheet is also required for motion tracking. A camera in the middle of the glasses tracks infrared markers on the sheet to deduce the wearer’s head position and orientation. The wearer’s perspective is properly adjusted as he moves around the sheet, as if you were looking at a physical object from different angles.
The wand shown several times in the video is a controller designed to work with the glasses. It has buttons, a trigger and a joystick, and it can also track its own position. As you saw in the video the controller is used to interact with the projected images, increasing the illusion that there really is something in front of you.
What I find most exciting are the RFID add-ons. You can get an RFID tracking grid that can track RFID tags. The tags can do anything from summoning a figurine into the game – similar to Skylanders – or displaying stats. But there’s also an add-on with called an RFID Base. The base is essentially a tiny computer that can control other hardware. For example, as Technical Illusions mentions in its Kickstarter page, you could have an RFID Base with red LEDs and a tiny smoke machine. Stick a dragon figurine on top of that base and your game can trigger the base to become a glowing, smoke-belching monster. If that doesn’t make you support castAR I don’t know what will.
Pledge at least $189 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the castAR glasses plus the retro-reflective sheet.
[via Reddit]
Tao Xiangli – the same inventor that built his own homemade submarine back in 2008 – just recently came forward with something even cooler: where most of us would be lucky just cobbling together a few tools; he’s constructed his own working robot entirely out of spare parts.
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