Gravity took nearly four (and a half) years to make. That means for four years, Alfonso Cuarón had to deflect a lot of not-so-great ideas from the studio that had invested millions into his risky endeavor. Thanks to our exclusive interview with the director, we now know what some of those crappy ideas were.
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Amid the release of the newly-minted CyanogeMod-friendly OPPO N1 smartphone reveal just last week, SlashGear took the time to have a chat with none other than the company’s own founder Steve Kondik on the immediate future of the company. While the OPPO N1 isn’t even off the shelves yet internationally, Cyanogen Inc. as a company […]
Three million dollars in the bank, a new name – after a little trademark tussling with Motorola – and less than a month from shipping: things have suddenly become very exciting for Narrative, the freshly rebranded Memoto lifelogging camera project. After raising more than eleven times the target amount in its initial Kickstarter campaign, hardware […]
When the Xi3 Piston modular PC / game console ships this November, it’ll ship like most PCs do: without a gamepad. Sadly, the in-house controller from Piston will be sold separately for a separate, undisclosed price. “There will be a future announcement about our plans for controllers,” was the most that chief marketing officer David Politis would share during a brief interview this morning. We managed to snap the pic you see above before the controller was whisked away; Politis and co. refused any closer snaps, not to mention a opportunity to go hands-on.
The PC-cum-game-console will launch with “some version” of Windows (the console we saw here was running Windows 7), rather than SteamOS. The only look we’ve had at Xi3’s GUI was brief, during SXSW’s gaming expo. And Politis called that brief glimpse “presentation-ware.” He said we’ll see it running “before we officially ship” in video form at the very least, and it’ll run as a Windows-based program on the shipping box. He did speak to how it will work, though. “It’ll be customizable … when [the Piston] is ready to run, you’ll be in our GUI. You won’t be in an OS per se,” Politis told Engadget. “It’s connected to the net, so you should be able to access any type of content you already have ownership of or licensing rights to from inside of the GUI. And you’re gonna be able to do that. You can start thinking through, ‘What do I already own or have license rights to that I can access through the internet?’ These are ticking off the different types of things that you and your readers own or have access to.” When we specifically noted Amazon, Netflix and Hulu, as well as gaming services like Steam and UPlay, Politis confirmed our (obvious) guesses.
Update: Xi3 told us that the custom GUI will ship with the console in November. Please excuse the confusion!
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD
Hilmar Pétursson is convinced virtual reality gaming will be mainstream in 2014. It’s a bold claim to put to people who, by next year, will have been exhausted by next-gen console purchases. But Pétursson has already tasked 20 engineers at his company, CCP, with creating what looks set to be the first major game designed solely for the Oculus Rift VR headset. EVE Valkyrie is a high-profile commitment: a Wing Commander-esque dogfighting title, which will tie into the same universe as CCP’s main PC and console properties, EVE Online and Dust 514. The question is whether significant numbers of gamers will choose to spend an estimated $300 on a pair of Oculus goggles. For a number of reasons — some immediate, some futuristic and others downright outlandish — Pétursson believes they’ll come up with the money. They won’t be able to stop themselves.
On the morning after the Oppo N1 launch, Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik was surrounded by several Oppo ambassadors and tech writers at a hotel lounge in Beijing. It’s a far cry from where he began: toying with Android ROMs out of “boredom” about five years ago.
“When I started this thing, I had, like, no idea that people would actually care,” said Kondik, the creator of CyanogenMod. “I was kind of watching out to see who was going to bring Linux to the first mobile device, in a way that it didn’t absolutely suck.”
In the end, it was Android that stood out with its open-source development, and Kondik saw the potential of adding his own enhancements to devices running on this OS. By day, the Seattle-based developer was a lead engineer at a bioinformatics startup in Pittsburgh; but during his free time, he worked on what later became CyanogenMod for the legendary T-Mobile G1, the world’s first commercial Android device. And of course, he bought it on the day it came out.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire.
In this week’s installment of our regular smattering of questions, tech writer Seth Porges chats up the strut-inducing Walkman and how Kickstarter is ripe for industry idea-picking. As always, the full gamut of answers lies just past the break.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Distro Issue 109
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is probably the defining salesman of our time. But in a sit-down with a small group of journalists yesterday that was ostensibly about new Kindle hardware
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“We get to set the standard in desktop 3D scanning,” Bre Pettis says, beaming. “When we looked out at the world and saw what 3D scanners could do, we wanted to make something that could make really high quality models that you could create on your MakerBot.” The CEO can’t stop smiling at the close of the Digitizer’s official press launch. It’s the smile of a man who has just shown off a major piece of the puzzle — an object that helps answer the question of just how, precisely, average consumers can create products to 3D print.
“We’re really building out an ecosystem,” he says of the scanner, which joins the Replicator 2, MakerWare software and the Thingiverse online database in the MakerBot portfolio. “The game is on, we’re building a nice suite of products that work really well together.” It’s a pricey piece, of course, coming in at $1,400, but Pettis insists that it’ll give users a much fuller experience than hacked Kinect-type solutions, thanks in large part to the Digitizer’s software solution. “There are DIY options out there, but we’ve spent the time and energy on the software to make this a really seamless experience.”
And as for a potential Replicator / Digitizer bundle deal, well, Pettis is only saying, “stay tuned.”
Filed under: Peripherals
Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire.
In a brand new installment of our regular session of queries, Head-Fi.org founder Jude Mansilla discusses the abuse of anonymity and the apotheosis of audio gear. Meet us just past the jump where the full lot of answers awaits.
Filed under: Misc, Portable Audio/Video
Source: Distro Issue 108
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