You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought news of a new direction for Muve Music, the arrival of a budget smartphone at Sprint and a whole lotta LTE expansion. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the “best of the rest” for this week of February 25th, 2013.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
As Leap Motion dev units have begun shipping out, developers have been toying with the motion-tracking device to find unique uses for it. One developer in particular ended up using his unit to help him out with his music recording. Stephane Bersot used the Leap Motion to play air drums, change the pitch of his guitar, and even control the EQ on his piano keyboard.
Essentially, the Leap Motion is able to change the pitch of the guitar chords based on the position of the guitar’s headstock, meaning that there’s no need for players to use a tremolo bar or bend the strings while playing. The device can also track specially-made drum sticks that allow the Leap to track the end points of the sticks to play the beats.
However, that seemed to be Bersot’s most difficult challenge. He says “it wasn’t easy to play drums with it,” and it actually needs more work to make it more stable. Essentially, Bersot used the velocities and positions of the drum sticks on the X axis, and had it play the note at just the right time during the down motion.
We’re assuming Bersot’s project is just for fun, since it doesn’t seem like he plans to release something like it anytime soon, but it goes to show the potential of the Leap Motion device. While it can be used to track your hands to move objects on a screen, the implications of such a device go way beyond what one might think.
[via MAKE]
Leap Motion sees its potential as a possible musical device is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Hacking Kinect might get you access to an audible air guitar, but Stephane Berscot can do you one better — tweaking the pitch of a tangible axe via Leap Motion’s virtual work space. Berscot configured a Leap tweak his guitar’s pitch based on the instrument’s position over the device. That’s not all, either, the makeshift MIDI controller also functions as a keyboard equalizer and a set of functional air drums. Combining all three tricks together scored Berscot a pretty mean demo track, but it’s apparently a lot harder than it looks. “It wasn’t easy to play drums with it,” he said, explaining how he had to detect beats based tracking the upward and downward velocity of the drumstick. “My method is pretty basic and still needs some work.” Even so, the demo definitely shows the device’s potential. Skip on past the break to see Berscot kick out the jams.
Filed under: Misc
Via: Make
Source: Gratoo (YouTube)
Ever since we first saw Leap Motion’s hyper-accurate gesture control system in person, we’ve been waiting for the time when we can walk into a store and buy one. Sure, devs have been able to buy Leap controllers for some time and it won’t be long before Leap’s tech is baked into retail laptops, but now the general public’s going to get the chance to grab the standalone controller, too. That’s right, folks, this spring, the Leap Motion Controller will be available nationwide at any Best Buy store, with pre-orders starting in February. So, it won’t be long before you can stroll on down to the nearest big blue box and pick one up — assuming there’s still one within strolling (or driving) distance.
Continue reading Leap Motion goes retail: motion controller to be sold exclusively at Best Buy
Leap Motion has been working hard the past several months to get its gesture control technology in the hands of developers. It’s doing a great job so far, and it looks like all that hard work will pay off, because the company just partnered up with ASUS to bring the Kinect-like technology to the desktop.
ASUS will be bundling Leap’s motion control technology with select notebooks and desktops that will ship later this year, including the company’s all-in-one PCs and high-end notebooks. The Leap Motion app store will also come pre-installed on all of the qualified computers, and since ASUS will be shipping the products internationally, it will mark Leap’s international debut.
If you’re not sure what the heck Leap Motion does exactly, we’ll give you a quick refresher. The company’s motion-tracking technology has a 150-degree field of view that tracks individual hands and all 10 fingers at 290 frames per second in order to provide ultra precise motion controls. It also offers 200x more accuracy than Microsoft’s Kinect, which already has its many drawbacks anyway.
Obviously, this new tech will encourage users to ditch the traditional keyboard and mouse interface in favor of a Minority Report-esque interface, but depending on how well ASUS implements the technology, we can’t imagine that it’d be hard to pry keyboards and mice out of diehard fans. Prices for the motion-control-equipped computers haven’t yet been discussed, but ASUS promises the new PC’s will be available around the world later this year.
ASUS partners with Leap Motion to bring gesture control to PCs is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Cricket’s parent company, Leap Wireless, announced earlier last week its intentions to start blanketing more customers with LTE service, though it didn’t say which markets would be the ones to get the same experience as folks in Tucson, Arizona. Today, however, Cricket’s claiming that subscribers in the Las Vegas area can finally get a taste of savory Long Term Evolution, making this the second market where the newfangled network’s now present. To go along with this, Cricket has said a revamped, LTE-ready version of that $150 Huawei Boltz modem will be available online and at retail stores around Sin City (and Tucson) for customers eager to try out the new service. No word on when the carrier plans to bring its “true 4G” network elsewhere, but, according to Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson, the idea is to have “approximately 21 million covered POPs by the end of the year.”
[Image credit: Cricket Wireless Premier Dealer]
Continue reading Cricket brings 4G LTE to Las Vegas, outs new Huawei Boltz modem in celebration
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Wireless, Mobile
Cricket brings 4G LTE to Las Vegas, outs new Huawei Boltz modem in celebration originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | 
Cricket | Email this | Comments
Leap customers, go ahead and jump for joy. The CDMA-based carrier is finally rolling out its first LTE market next week after about a year of testing it in Tucson, Arizona. (The first official market has yet to be named, however.) With its spectrum swaps finally complete, Leap hopes to spread LTE to around 21 million POPs by the end of this year and to around two-thirds of its current network by the end of 2015. Its only LTE offering is a Huawei Boltz mobile hotspot, but it promises LTE-capable smartphones soon. Curiously, the carrier does offer the LTE-capable iPhone 5, but there’s no word if Leap’s LTE network will support it. The only nationwide carrier without LTE at this point is T-Mobile, though it has promised rollouts starting next year; here’s hoping that merger with MetroPCS (which already has LTE) will hurry that along.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
Leap finally gets LTE, rollout starts next week originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
PhoneScoop | Fierce Wireless | Email this | Comments
Leap Wireless can go ahead and pop the champagne, as it has just completed the spectrum transactions announced earlier this year that will hopefully lead to larger LTE growth. Leap’s own Savary Island Wireless exchanged spectrum with T-Mobile USA and Cook Inlet/VS GSM VII PCS LLC (itself a T-Mo business), resulting in Cricket‘s parent company acquiring 10MHz of additional AWS spectrum in Phoenix, AZ and Houston, Galveston and Bryan-College Station, TX, among others. In return, T-Mobile received spectrum in various markets in Alabama, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota and Wisconsin. There are also several intra-market exchanges in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Atlantic City, New Mexico, and Texas. In addition to the spectrum exchange, Leap also formally acquired the entirety of Savary Island Wireless for around $5.3 million (It previously only owned an 85 percent share) so the company has even more cause for celebration. Just don’t overindulge on the Cristal, okay Leap?
Continue reading Leap Wireless swaps spectrum with T-Mobile, buys all of Savary Island
Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile
Leap Wireless swaps spectrum with T-Mobile, buys all of Savary Island originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We recently caught first sight of the ZTE Engage at a press event in New York, but while Cricket was more than happy to let us play with its latest smartphone, the carrier stopped short of providing us with its pricing or arrival date. All of that changed this afternoon, as we now know that the ZTE Engage will become available on October 2nd with a no-contract price of $250. As a quick refresher, the handset will feature a near-stock Android 4.0 environment and a Snapdragon S2 SoC with a CPU that’s clocked at 1.4GHz. Other relevant specs include a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) TFT-LCD display, an 8-megapixel rear camera with a VGA front-facing counterpart and a 1,900mAh battery. For complete details, you’ll find the full PR right after the break.
Continue reading ZTE Engage cleared to land at Cricket on October 2nd for $250
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
ZTE Engage cleared to land at Cricket on October 2nd for $250 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
