What a fantastic mind trip. This tree appears to be magically hovering over its tree trunk. What kind of sorcery allows this? Art. Daniel Siering and Mario Shu wrapped a tree in a plastic sheet and then painted the sheet to look like the tree’s background. The visual effect makes the background look perfectly seamless.
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You remember Hover, right? If you’re one of our many, many readers born after 1995, you probably don’t. But that’s OK: we’re here to educate you, dear millennials. The game, which came installed on Windows 95 in the “Fun Stuff” folder, is making a comeback: Microsoft just came out with a web version that’s been optimized for IE11, but will work inside any current desktop browser. As ever, it’s a cross between bumper cars and Capture the Flag, with three hovercraft options, and a choice between single- and multi-player modes. What’s especially neat is that Microsoft kept all the same levels; it just brought the graphics into the WebGL era. Naturally, too, you can use either shortcuts or touch gestures. If all this sounds dandy, we suggest you hit up the source link below sometime during your lunch hour. And, not to spoil an easter-egg, but be sure to type in “bambi” when you get to the “single player” / “multi-player” page — someone at Microsoft’s got a sense of humor, we’ll say that much.%Gallery-slideshow99760%
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Microsoft
Source: Hover
It doesn’t come close to the suite of air gestures Samsung’s included in the Galaxy S 4, but Nokia’s pushing out an update to give Lumia owners a limited taste of that hands-free functionality. Bundled into a new version 1.6 bump for display + touch settings released today is a new Peek feature, which gives Lumia owners the ability to wake their phones and glance at notifications with a mere hand wave. Sadly, it’s only compatible with Lumia devices running the latest Amber update — currently set for a vague “summer” rollout — which makes this hover-to-wake function a 925-only affair for the time being.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Microsoft, Nokia
Source: Windows Phone Store
How’d you like to be able to fly over the traffic while riding your bike to work? This flying bike could be just the ticket. This remote-controlled bike actually left the ground for about five minutes. But not with a human onboard. A styrofoam dummy was used instead because it still needs more powerful propellers to carry a real passenger.
The helicopter bike comes from a teamup of three Czech companies. It has four large, battery-powered propellers mounted inside two cages, and weighs a total of 209lbs. It may not do much more than lift off and hover a few feet off the ground, but as they improve things it will get better. Imagine a future full of flying bikes. Of course, if they looked like this, they’d have to fly all of the time, because this thing is too wide and long for the road. It’s also ridiculously loud. Yeah it isn’t very practical. It’s more a proof of concept. But it’s still pretty fun to watch it in flight…
Still, if they can make the engine stronger and have the pilot sitting back more, it could be an economical way to put flying vehicles in the sky.
What is purported to be a dual-SIM equipped engineering sample of Samsung’s Galaxy S IV popped up a few days ago in pictures and video on a Chinese forum, and now it’s back for a better look. The new pictures show off what’s measured as a 1080p 4.99-inch display with an embossed home key and cross-hatch textured plastic back cover (already cracked on this unit). Engadget Chinese came through with a translation, and the specs listed on it168 claim its Exynos 5410 is a 1.8GHz 8-core CPU unit, with PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU. The i9502 weighs in at 138g and measures 7.7mm thick, packs 2GB of RAM and 16GB ROM storage with a microSD expansion slot and has a 2600mAh battery.
Also revealed are a few more software tweaks, with the Smart Stay eye tracking that had previously been outed, plus a feature (pictured after the break) that lets users hover their fingers over the display to produce a Galaxy Note II S-Pen stylus-like effect. Check out another picture after the break or an entire slideshow past the source leak — we’re less than 24 hours away from seeing the real thing unveiled in NYC.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Source: it168, Engadget Chinese
On the eve of its I/O event, Google is continuing to roll out new features, one of which is expanded functionality for its ubiquitous +1 sharing buttons that can be found all over the web (and on this site). For users that are a member of its platform preview test group, other than clicking once to +1 something, or clicking again to share it on Google+, now on mouseover it will display recommended pages as seen above. According to the corresponding blog post, it pulls in related content and stuff shared by friends, and will only display selections from the same domain or subdomain as the page the button is on. Google anticipates this will go live to all users “in the next few weeks”, if you can’t wait until then hit the more coverage link below to join the preview and give feedback on how well it’s working.
Google adds same-site recommendations to +1 buttons, but only for platform preview testers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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