The custom PC gaming company ORIGIN PC has released three new PC gaming peripherals designed to look as sleek as they perform. The BlackWidow Ultimate keyboard ($140) and Taipan mouse ($80) are solid pieces of gaming hardware with some handy gaming features built-in, and the Goliathus mouse mat ($20) gives you smooth, reliable control in […]
When we reviewed the Leap Motion controller earlier this year, we found the application selection to be a bit lacking. Since then, the number of apps has doubled from 75 to around 150, and the Airspace store’s newest edition is the coolest Leap app we’ve yet seen. It’s called Free Form, and it’s a 3D sculpting app (not unlike 3D Systems’ Sculpt) built in house at Leap Motion that lets you manipulate and shape digital objects using your fingertips. David Holz, company co-founder and the man who figured out the math behind Leap Motion’s technology, gave us a demo of the app and talked a bit about why Leap built it. Additionally, he showed us a new developer beta software that does 360-degree tracking built to address some of the original Leap shortcomings.
Filed under: Peripherals
Remember that fuzzy-looking iOS 7 gamepad that leaked back in June? Turns out it’s called the Logitech PowerShell Controller + Battery (a mouthful, right?), and it’s one of the first iOS 7 certified gamepads on the market. Compatible with Lightning-equipped iPhones and iPods, the controller juts off of your device’s top and bottom edges, adding four face buttons, a d-pad, two shoulder buttons and a 1,500 mAh battery that charges your phone while you game. It’s also one of the least obstructive gamepad accessories we’ve ever used.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Mobile, Apple
Your new running shoes have WiFi, but there are still — still! — no flying cars. We’ve got mini-supercomputers in our pockets, but where’s the kitchen machine that materializes beef bourguignon? It’s not quite the future we predicted, at least as far as Back to the Future 2 and The Jetsons informed us, but it’s the future we’ve got. Something as basic as, say, turning on electronics using your voice is still novel. Microsoft’s Xbox One is representative of just such a novelty, pairing old tech like IR and HDMI passthrough with brand-new 1080p video capture and voice control — all to impressive effect. When you turn on your Xbox One and TV in one fell “Xbox: On!” grandpa’s gonna be wowed, as will little Suzie. Guaranteed. The deeply integrated fantasy sports and ESPN apps will no doubt get pigskin-obsessed Aunt Linda interested.
But it’s not the expensive camera and sports partnerships that makes Microsoft’s proposition impressive to the hardcore gaming faithful. The Xbox One is a beast of a games console, capable of running beautiful games. But can it serve two masters? It’s not quite the game box we would’ve predicted, but it’s the one we’ve got.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD, Microsoft
Remember when we spotted that FiftyThree, makers of the iPad sketching app Paper, was working on a stylus? Now it’s time for Paper to meet Pencil. Looking like an enormous marker pencil, the unit comes in a choice of sustainable hardwood or brushed aluminum, jam-packed with technology inside. Innovations include palm rejection, an eraser-end to remove your digital mistakes and a rechargeable battery that promises a month of life with normal use. Pairing to your iPad over Bluetooth, you’ll also get access to various paid-for tools like Outline, Mixer and Sketch for free. Of course, the unit will set you back $50, but that’s a small price to pay to be top of the life drawing class.
Filed under: Peripherals
Source: FiftyThree
Gaming controllers for iPhones are nothing new, but MOGA claims it’s just launched the first to work with iOS 7 and its native gamepad support — as we saw with the as-yet unreleased GameCase. The Ace Power works with the Apple’s latest handsets, including the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s and fifth-gen iPod, connecting via the lightening port and locking it in place with something Moga calls “S.M.R.T. Lock technology.” Like the Android model, you can charge your device while playing thanks to an 1,800mAh battery and the whole thing can be collapsed for easy toting when you’re done. As for controls, you’ll get dual analog sticks, L1/R1 and L2/R2 buttons, a D-pad, and four action buttons. Moga hasn’t said which games will support it yet, though it believes that a “flood” of game developers will take advantage of the iOS7’s new native gamepad controls soon. We’re looking forward to getting our own mitts on it, but if you’re willing to jump in now, you can pre-order it soon for $100 at Apple’s online and retail stores, or via Moga, at the source. %Gallery-slideshow122223%
Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Apple
Source: Moga
Honda’s Walking Assist is finally getting a large-scale test run in the US. The company has started clinical trials of the leg-boosting device at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where it will (hopefully) help stroke victims regain their mobility. While Honda hasn’t said how long the study will last, it could have a significant impact if it proves successful. Up to 80 percent of US stroke survivors have trouble walking quickly or smoothly, and Walking Assist’s combination of hip sensors and motors could get some patients back to a normal stride.
Filed under: Peripherals, Transportation
Source: Honda
The PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 controller may seem like the logical evolution of Sony’s gamepad design, but we now know that it wasn’t always destined to be that way. Product manager Toshimasa Aoki tells VentureBeat that the company threw out all the rules during the early design phase, and had tested both all-touchscreen gamepads as well as one where a touchpad could move to different locations. The PlayStation team had also considered abandoning its signature bottom-mounted analog sticks in favor of moving them up top, much like Nintendo’s Wii U Pro Controller. However, feedback pushed Sony to a more conservative layout — many early PS4 game developers were worried that a new control scheme would break their software design. While it’s unfortunate that Sony had to restrain its creative impulses, we suspect that many gamers are happy with the end result.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Sony
Source: VentureBeat
NVIDIA’s Tesla GPUs are already mainstays in supercomputers that need specialized processing power, and they’re becoming even more important now that the company is launching its first Tesla built for large-scale projects. The new K40 accelerator only has 192 more processing cores than its K20x ancestor (2,880, like the GeForce GTX 780 Ti), but it crunches analytics and science numbers up to 40 percent faster. A jump to 12GB of RAM, meanwhile, helps it handle data sets that are twice as big as before. The K40 is already available in servers from NVIDIA’s partners, and the University of Texas at Austin plans to use it in Maverick, a remote visualization supercomputer that should be up and running by January.
As part of the K40 rollout, NVIDIA has also revealed a partnership with IBM that should bring GPU-boosted supercomputing to enterprise-grade data centers. The two plan on bringing Tesla GPU support to IBM’s Power8-based servers, including both apps and development tools. It’s not clear when the deal will bear fruit, but don’t be surprised if it turbocharges a corporate mainframe near you.
Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals, NVIDIA
Source: NVIDIA
In the race to create a better battery, scientists have gazed longingly at silicon, prized for its ability to hold copious energy during charging. The material has a significant drawback, however: it likes to expand during said charging, causing it to eventually crack and become useless. However, scientists at Stanford’s SLAC laboratory have developed silicon electrodes that repair themselves, inspired by — of all things — the latest research into robotic skin. They created a silicon polymer with weak chemical bonds which attract each other when the material cracks, allowing it to regain its shape in a few hours (as pictured above). The team managed a respectable 100 discharge cycles with a battery that used the material, a promising start but still far from their goal of 3,000 cycles for an electric vehicle. You can add that to the growing pile of promising battery tech that may amount to something, some day — but at least the odds keep getting better.
Filed under: Misc, Peripherals, Alt
Via: Forbes
Source: Nature
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