Hasta La Gadget!

Few of us reading the morning news enjoy putting our greasy hands on a tablet or newspaper just to flip through articles. With the newly unveiled New York Times app for the Leap Motion Controller, we won’t have to. The release lets news hounds navigate stories (and ads) through a unique interface optimized for touch-free gestures. Both Mac and Windows versions of the NYT app will be available in the Airspace store on July 22nd, the same day Leap Motion ships to customers. More importantly, the app will be free — at least at launch, readers won’t run into the usual paywall. If the prospect of contact-free news has you intrigued, there’s a video demo available after the break.

Filed under: Peripherals, Software

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Source: New York Times Idea Lab

We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget inquiry is from Philip, who wants to document his son’s baseball adventures. If you’re looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

I’m looking for a HFR camcorder, as I like to record my son playing baseball and play it back in slow motion. The Kodak PlayFull looked like the solution, offering 120fps at 1,280 x 720 for $200, but then Kodak axed its camera businesses and it never made it to market. What other options, therefore, exist for 120fps video recording around a similar price bracket?

To be honest, slow-motion recording at such a low price is going to mean you’ll only be able to get pictures at dreadful resolutions. If you’re happy with footage at 640 x 480, then you could snag a Canon Powershot S100, but even that comes in at $319 from Amazon right now. It’s a shame your budget couldn’t stretch to $1,000, as we’re desperate to find out if JVC’s Procision is worth the hype. It’s at this point that we should probably turn this over to the Engadget community and get them to share their wisdom — so join in, HFR fans.

Filed under: Cameras

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The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is becoming more of an actual reality now. The company announced today that developer kits of the Oculus Rift are now shipping out to developers. In fact, the company says that units actually started shipping out Wednesday, so some developers may have already gotten theirs.

It feels like yesterday when we were hearing about the prototype of the VR headset, and after an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign back in August, the Oculus Rift has made headlines all other the internet. The company even made an appearance at CES, where it showed off the VR technology to attendees.

The company says they shipped over 10,000 developer kits, so we should be seeing quite a surge in support for the VR headset before it officially ships out to Kickstarter backers and the general public. The first game, however, to receive official support for the VR headset is Valve’s Team Fortress 2.

Furthermore, with dev units shipping out, Oculus has opened up its developer portal on its website. There you’ll find everything you need to get started creating content for the VR headset. In the meantime, if you’re not a developer, you get the honor of waiting it out before the public will have the chance to receive their own units.

Oculus Rift development kits now shipping is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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.

Motion control, ever since you were introduced in a relatively usable and broadly accessible form with the Wii Remote, the public has had a bit of a crush on you. Recently, that crush has turned into a full-fledged infatuation, and now Orange is bringing motion control to its Livebox Play TV service in France via Movea’s gesture-based tech and a motion-sensitive remote.

Microsoft’s Kinect proved their was a broad appetite for the use of motion controls integrated with home entertainment systems, and Orange’s decision to tap Movea’s OEM-independent SmartMotion Server product to bring it to its Livebox Play TV system is an indication that there’s a drive among traditional entertainment networks and providers to make sure they don’t get left behind.

What can consumers do with the Movea-enabled hardware? With the right set-top box and remote control, both of which are available for pre-order and set to ship in February, they can wave at their TVs and use gestures like twisting to control volume playback, on-screen menu item selection, close and open apps and more. Also, the interface will allow viewers to interact with motion-controlled games, in a more casual incarnation of what the Wii can accomplish via its gesture-based input devices.

Movea is a broad-based play to introduce motion control to any kind of device that wants to include it, including Windows Phone 8 and Android smartphones, Windows 8 tablets and notebooks, and home entertainment and other CE devices. It also sells to semiconductor manufacturers, so that motion intelligence can be built into devices at the processor level. Obviously this is a space that’s generating a lot of interest, beyond just the implementations by big-name players like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Platform agnostic companies like Movea, and Leap, which just today announced a new $30 million funding round and a deal that will see its hardware ship with ASUS computers, indicate we’ll probably see a lot more companies try to provide motion as a service, API or OEM hardware add-on for third-parties.

I still think that despite the way it has proven its viability with the Wii and Kinect, motion control is a tricky thing to sell to a wide consumer base, especially as a control mechanism for TV content usually handled via remote. In many ways, it’s still a tech that has novelty appeal and not much else, but as more companies try to integrate it with more traditional tech like set-top boxes, we’ll get a better idea of how it can fare in terms of long-term adoption.