Hasta La Gadget!

Girls are gamers, too — and not just the Nintendogs type. Though video games have commonly been ascribed a boys’ club distinction, the Girls Scouts of Greater Los Angeles and Women in Games International are looking to undo that widespread misperception. Working in conjunction with E-line, the publisher behind the government’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) initiative, the two groups are seeking to create a nationally recognized video game badge; a first for the Girl Scouts. Guidelines for the proposed badge are still in process, with WIGI molding requirements to fall neatly in line with the STEM program, even going so far as to use the same development tool, Gamestar Mechanic. If and when the program gets final approval from the Girls Scouts of America, it’d be the third such video game badge available to our nation’s young troopsters, as both the Cub and Boy Scouts currently offer one. So, no Rosa, it would seem the Girl Scouts do need those stinkin’ patches.

Filed under: Gaming, Alt

Comments

Didn’t win a router bundle last week? Guess what — you’ve got another opportunity! Linksys is following up with a fantastic combo of its own: five sets of its Smart WiFi 802.11ac AC1750 router (a $220 value) and Wi-Fi 5GHz Universal Media Connector Bridge (a $160 value). These are some of the best on the market, so we’re a bit jealous that we can’t enter the contest ourselves. So head to the widget below and grab two free entries, as well as a bonus entry if you head to Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite social network to Like Linksys. Best of luck to you all!

Note: Please enter using the widget below, as comments are no longer valid methods of entry. The widget only requires your name and email address so we know how to get in touch with you if you win (your information is not given out to third parties), but you will have an option to receive an additional entry by liking Linksys on Facebook if you so desire.

Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile, Alt

Comments

We’ve already seen the Obama administration announce its latest budget for NASA this week, and now President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia will be spending more than $50 billion on its space-related efforts by 2020. The most immediate result of that will be the completion of the Vostochny Cosmodrome near Russia’s border with China, which Putin says is still on track to see its first rocket launch as soon as 2015 and its first manned launch in 2018. With NASA decommissioning its shuttle program, all manned space launches currently take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (as pictured above), and Putin says the new launch base will also be open for other countries to use.

Beyond that, Putin says that Russia will also have what’s being described as a space weapon deterrent system by the year 2030, although specifics on it unsurprisingly remain a bit light for the time being. Russia says it also remains committed to sending cosmonauts beyond Earth’s orbit in the future, including to a permanent base on the moon that it says could be used as a future launching pad for flights to Mars. Unmanned missions will precede that, though — indeed, a new Moon probe is set to be the first launch from the aforementioned Vostochny Cosmodrome.

[Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls]

Filed under: Science, Alt

Comments

Source: Bloomberg, AFP, Reuters

The past year and a half has been a period of big changes for the Engadget Show, eschewing our longstanding studio format for a new kind of program that’s given us the freedom to travel the world, in search of bigger, deeper stories. We spent the year speaking to some of tech’s top minds — abstract thinkers like Douglas Rushkoff and DJ Spooky, representatives from leading companies like Google and Sony, modders like Ben Heck and researchers at top universities including MIT and Carnegie Mellon. We hung with Wayne Coyne and LeVar Burton, got animated with John Hodgman, flew drones with Chris Anderson, went behind the scenes at Improv Everywhere, rode some crazy hacked bikes in Boston, played classic pinball, spoke to a disembodied robotic head, went ghost hunting, solved a few mysteries and even discovered the true meaning of the holidays (it’s presents, by the way).

All in all, we thought we had a good year — and it’s nice to know the folks at the Webby Awards felt the same. We’re hoping you enjoyed it too (after all, as fun as the past year’s been, we’re not just doing this for ourselves). If so, now’s the time to let us know. The voting for the People’s Voice Award opens today, so we’re asking you, dear viewer, to show us some love with a quick vote over at the Webby site (where you can also catch a quick reel to relive some of 2012’s highlights). Thanks everyone for helping us make the Engadget Show better than ever (and thanks in advance for voting). We’ll see you again soon on the small screen.

Filed under: HD, Mobile, Alt

Comments

Source: Webby Awards

3D scanning at a range of 0.62 miles? It just became possible, thanks to a laser camera developed by physicists at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. You can pretty much see how it works from the images above — laser beams are bounced off the target and the duration of their return journey is measured precisely enough to detect millimeter depth changes even at extreme distances. Speaking of which, the researchers believe they could pump the range up to 10 miles with a bit of extra research, and even shrink the blaster down to make it “fully portable” in less than five years. Who knows, someday it might even work around corners. But there’s a problem: skin doesn’t reflect the beams properly, which means people can’t be accurately scanned unless they also happen to be ringwraiths. As a result, the researchers seem slightly at loss as to what to do with the technology, with their best suggestions so far being watching the growth of foliage or tracking the movement of rocks. We’d try to think up some other ideas, were it not for the distracting and utterly irrelevant Nazgul v Wilhelm video embedded after the break.

Filed under: Science, Alt

Comments

Source: Heriot Watt