Flickr’s one of the elder statesmen of the online photo sharing world, but in recent years its UI has grown a bit long in the tooth when compared to the eye candy provided by otherkids on the social sharing block. That’s all changed as of today, as Marissa Mayer’s team has overhauled Flickr’s look on the web and in its Android app. Out goes the old layout, where text and white space commanded almost as much real estate as your photos, and in comes a tiled layout that’s nothing but images.
Technologically bent cyclists have their choice of advancedbicycles these days, but it’s a little hard to justify getting a specialized vehicle if your existing two-wheeler still functions just fine. However, swap your bike’s handlebars with one of these handsome aluminum ones from Helios and all of a sudden your beloved ride is equipped with a 500-lumen headlight, a pair of rear-facing RGB LED indicators, Bluetooth 4.0 for smartphone communications and, yes, even a built-in GPS. Join us after the break as we give you a brief tour of the Helios Bars and how it’s well worth its $200 price point.
There’s a new kid on the Arduino block, and it’s called the Arduino Robot. Launched yesterday at Maker Faire Bay Area, it’s the company’s first product that extends beyond single microcontroller boards. The Roomba-like design, which we first saw in November 2011, is the result of a collaboration with Complubot. It consists of two circular boards, each equipped with Atmel‘s ubiquitous ATmega32u4 and connected via ribbon cable.
The bottom board is home to four AA batteries (NiMH), a pair of motors and wheels, a power connector and switch plus some infrared sensors. By default it’s programmed to drive the motors and manage power. The top board features a color LCD, a microSD card slot, an EEPROM, a speaker, a compass, a knob plus some buttons and LEDs. It’s programmed to control the display and handle I/O. Everything fits inside a space that’s about 10cm high and 19cm in diameter.
Pre-soldered connectors and prototyping areas on each board make it easier to customize the robot platform with additional sensors and electronics. It even comes with eleven step-by-step projects and a helpful GUI right out of the box. The Arduino Robot is now on sale at the Maker Faire for $275 and will be available online in July. Take a look at our gallery below and watch our video interview with Arduino founder Massimo Banzi after the break.
When Valve‘s first hardware hire, Jeri Ellsworth, tweeted back in February that she was fired from the company, we were disappointed but also intrigued by what she meant by “time for new exciting projects.” Well we finally saw what she’s been up to here at at Maker Faire 2013. It’s called Cast AR, and it’s a pair of 3D augmented-reality glasses that she and former Valve programmer Rick Johnson were working on at Valve before they left.
The model we saw is still in the early prototype stages, but the concepts are already in place. Perched atop a pair of active shutter glasses are a couple of miniature LCD projectors, which bounce images from a connected computer onto a special reflective surface at a 120Hz refresh rate. A camera module sits on the eyewear’s bridge and monitors an array of infrared LEDs embedded in the reflective surface. This allows for quick and accurate head tracking. Join us after the break for our impressions and our video interview with Jeri Ellsworth.
A checkerboard-style glitter pattern with a white background? Yes, please. We’ve always been impressed by the elegant look and feel of LG’s Nexus 4, announced alongside Android 4.2 last October, and now Google is making an ivory version of the device available to (hopefully) the masses. The twist: it still hasn’t been officially announced, despite the fact that a conference like I/O would be the perfect time and place to do so. While Google chose not to take advantage of the situation to show the unicorn Nexus to the world, real-life units have been discovered floating around Moscone West. Androidandme‘s Taylor Wimberly happened upon one of them at the show and was gracious enough to give us a brief moment or two with the device.
There isn’t any surprise associated with this particular beaut, as it’s packing the same design and specs as we’ve already seen in the original black model (sorry, LTE hopefuls). The pattern on the back actually doesn’t stand out as much as it does on the black version, as it happens to blend in with the white a little more. We also noticed the same set of tiny nubs on the bottom that mysteriously appeared on the black version a few months ago. Lastly, the white Nexus is rumored to be the first device with Android 4.3 when it officially launches, but this particular version we saw only sports 4.2.1. There’s not much else for us to write about the new color, but let’s face it — you’re here for the pictures, which you can gaze upon below.
This week the folks at the development studio known as Instrument have brought a virtual reality demonstration to Google I/O 2013, complete with a multi-display drop from the upper atmosphere down toward the earth in freefall. What this demonstration consisted of was seven 1080p displays, each of them run by their own Ubuntu PC working with a full-screen version of Chrome version 25. A motion tracker works to track the user, their arms, and the angle at which they’re standing – or leaning and falling, as it were.
This system was developed by Instrument to track user input and motion tracking with a custom C++ app built with openNI as well as an ASUS Xtion Pro 3D motion tracking sensor camera. As the motion tracker sees and understands the angle of the human playing the game’s torso and location of each arm, so too will their avatar on the display array move as they fall.
The 3D game content is rendered with WebGL using THREE.js, the WebGL layer being rendered with a totally transparent background. This setup allows the map layer underneath to show through, this map layer being generated by Google Maps.
What the user sees below – the earth they’re plummeting toward – is a completely live HTML Google Map instance. It’s accurate – meaning you could potentially be diving toward your house, a national landmark, or perhaps somewhere that’d be useful for real-world training.
In addition to this setup being live and ready to roll here at Google I/O 2013 as a playable demo, Instrument has created a Dive editor. With this Dive editor, an editor is able to build directly into the control node administrative console, each of these changes reflected instantly – live in the scene.
The editor user interface exists as a Google Map, the person editing it able to use draggable markers that act as game objects. With this interface, developers and savvy users will be able to utilize geocoding to center the map view on locations of their choice – anywhere Google Maps can see. Think of the possibilities!
What you’re looking at above is a demo board carrying a next-gen Wolfson WM5110 audio chip for smartphones. This bit of silicon isn’t in any market-ready handsets just yet, hence the DIY setup, but given Wolfson’s well-cemented partnership with Samsung there’s every chance this’ll be the audio hub in the next Galaxy S, as well as potentially in other manufacturers’ phones coming out in 2014.
One of the WM5110’s headline features is the ability to handle high sample rate music tracks at 24-bit and 192KHz, aka “studio master” or “better than CD quality” sound. Such skills are generally reserved for pricey standalone DACs like iRiver’s AK100, which allows Wolfson to claim that this is the first implementation for inside a smartphone. We have an ears-on video for you after the break, but it’s not much use for judging audio quality — the event was too noisy even for us to attempt that, so we’ll just wait to do another audio round-up in more controlled conditions — but at least there’s some proof of principle. On the other hand, if you’re unconvinced as to whether 192KHz is even a worthwhile spec to have in smartphones, then read on to learn about some of the WM5110’s other abilities, which have a more practical bent.
One of the most interesting technologies we could try out at Fujitsu Forum 2013 was a device that can virtualize a production line and its process by combining Fujitsu’s “GP4 (Production line simulator)” and Canon’s “MR (Mixed Reality)” technology. MR is an advanced image technology made by Canon that fuses “reality” and “virtual”.
The person wearing the head mount display on his head is able to see a virtual production line of a CG video. When you reach your hands to the moving conveyer, you can grab parts and pull them closer. Even when you turn sideways, you can see things like people working next to you. Because it enables you to look not only at a front view but also any directions, we felt like we were really in the production line.
An advantage of adopt this technology before a real production line is built is that you can imagining the work or adjust distances between people or functions.
“It’s more like Tumblr.” That’s how one BlackBerry rep described BBM Channels to us, the company’s new social networking service announced this past week at BlackBerry Live in Orlando. While Channels, alone, may initially seem like nothing new — it’s an iteration of a social communication model we’ve seem countless times before — the service actually speaks more to BlackBerry’s forward-facing strategy for BBM as a device-agnostic mobile solution. And, certainly, with the BBM messaging service heading to Android and iOS later this summer, BlackBerry only stands to gain from making its platform more robust, more engaging and more attractive to the big name brands, personalities and publications that draw followers.
Despite being officially unveiled at Google I/O, the stock Android version of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 has remained the unicorn of the show, seldom seen by anyone not closely associated with the company’s top brass. We ran into Android VP Hugo Barra at the show, who was happy to give us a few brief moments with the upcoming device. There is still a lot of mystery around the $649 phone ahead of its June 26th launch, but we’ve been able to glean a few additional details nonetheless.
While the model in Hugo’s hand was a pre-release model and therefore subject to change between now and the official release, the hardware and overall design are identical to what we’d find on AT&T or T-Mobile’s model: it sports a Snapdragon 600 chipset, 13MP camera, 16GB of internal storage, a 1080p display and LTE support (a perk for stock fans who were disappointed that the Nexus 4 came without it). Google isn’t officially declaring this a Nexus device (not yet, at least), but the GS4 at least exhibits many of the same qualities, including an unlocked bootloader and the promise of prompt system updates.
The firmware is pristine as well: it’s Android 4.2.2 in exactly the same form it would take on a run-of-the-mill Nexus. Samsung’s onslaught of smart features — the S-branding, Air Gestures, special camera modes and the like — are all absent here, leaving the user with an experience completely untouched by the manufacturer. The phone appears to respond a tad faster without the TouchWiz experience, but we’ll need to spend more time with it before coming to any solid conclusions. Sound like the perfect phone for you? Make sure you’re in the Google Play Store on June 26th so you can grab one for yourself. In the meantime, enjoy our gallery of images below!
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