Hasta La Gadget!

It wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that thieves prefer Apple devices. The company makes some of the most sought after devices in the world, and people are definitely willing to pay money. A number of Apple retail stores have been robbed in the past as well, the latest heist has taken place in Berlin, Germany. Thieves smashed a car into the store’s front door, grabbed whatever they could and sped away in different cars. The car used to break into the store was stolen. The Apple store in Berlin is at Kurfürstendamm and is the company’s only brick and mortar outlet in the city. It was opened in May 2013 after construction took nearly two years and is housed inside a 100 year old renovated theatre, it happens to be the 12th Apple store in all of Germany.

While authorities have declined to say exactly how much the stolen merchandise was worth, it probably wouldn’t have been monumental given the fact that the store’s inventory had been locked away for the night. Some 20 Apple devices, used for demonstration purposes in the store, weren’t locked and the thieves were only able to get their hands on them. This isn’t the first time that thieves have decided to smash into an Apple store, last September a store in Temecula, California had its front windows smashed. [Image via Bild.de]

Thieves Rob Apple Store In Berlin, Crash Car Into Front Door original content from Ubergizmo.

There are some musical instruments that we are acquainted with. The piano, guitar, and bass are some of the most common forms we know of that help the tunes we listen to on the regular take shape. While they may take on the same general physical form, normally you’d need foot pedals to change up the sounds they produce.

The Seaboard is a keyboard unlike anything you’ve seen before. It looks like a piano that has been covered in silicone, and will give you what may seem like super-musician abilities. Instead of having ‘keys’ this has a soft, continuous surface on which you can bend notes, add vibrato, and do a slurring slide up or down. Above and below the area that looks like piano keys, there are glissando ribbons, that will allow you to effortlessly slip from note to note.

There is a sound dial which will let you adjust what preset you’d like to use, meaning you don’t have to sound like any known instrument if you don’t want to. You’ll know which setting you’re on thanks to a subtle LED that will show you a number. While it is plug-and-play, you will need a pair of headphones or an amplifier to hear what you’re playing. For those who are curious, yes, you can control MIDI through this, as well as many other types of musical software instruments. There are three different models to choose from, with prices ranging from $2,000-$9,000.

Available for purchase on weareroli
[ The Seaboard will let you bend notes to your will copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The battle continues between Apple and the rest of the software giants around the world, focusing today on maps and the keeping of notes. Apple has been tipped to acquire … Continue reading

Hardware analysts at IDC are estimating that 3D printer shipments will grow 10 times in the period between now and 2017. Printers, once the provenance of hackers and engineers, will soon be household commodities.

“Print is extending beyond output on media to the creation of an actual object, and that presents incredible opportunity,” quoth Keith Kmetz, VP at IDC. “While traditional print technologies are facing maturity, 3D printers will see worldwide unit shipments grow by 10 times over the forecast period, and worldwide hardware value will more than double in the short term.”

IDC cites the move by HP to enter the 3D printing market in 2014 as well as Konica Minolta’s agreement to distribute higher-end 3D printers. Add in the mid-level players like Makerbot and upstarts like Afinia and Lulzbot and you have a robust market. Furthermore, patents controlling the process of laser sintering are set to expire in 2014, thereby opening up new possibilities for the new home 3D printer. Because patents often discourage the small manufacturer from exploring a particular technology, this patent expiration should improve things considerably in the metal and plastic printing front. O brave new world, That has such printers in’t!

via 3Ders

A couple of years ago we got a peek at what several NES games might look like if they were rendered in voxels instead of pixels, courtesy of deviantART member John Buonvino. Programmer ProcyonSJJ was inspired by John’s renders and decided to take them a step further, making a voxel engine for the NES emulator FCEUX.

According to ProcyonSJJ, “[t]he renderer takes the color in the upper left corner and treats that as the clear color while at the same time ignoring any pixel in the image buffer composed of that color (no voxel).”  In very simple terms, the engine will make voxels out of all the pixels, except for the ones with the same color as the “background”. This makes his engine work best with games that have single color backgrounds, as you’ll see in his demo video:

Sadly, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to toy with NES games using the voxel engine. Zeromus, one of the lead programmers of FCEUX, refused to integrate ProcyonSJJ’s engine into the Windows port of the emulator. Then the two had an argument and I don’t think the engine was incorporated into any version of the emulator. I’m not going to simplify their points here since you can read their messages for yourself on the TASVideos forum. As for the rest of us, we’ll just have to cherish the video.

[TASVideos via Tiny Cartridge]