Jan 15
A few years ago if you wanted to run multiple monitors, you needed a video card with multiple outputs or multiple video cards in your PC. DisplayLink came along and … Continue reading
Jan 14
Here is a tummy tickling compilation video of Vines from Zach King, the magic wizard of Vine. He’ll snatch cats out of computer screens, turn Rubik’s Cubes into candy, fly through beds and doors, jump out of his clothes, magically change colors of any object and more. It’s the most entertaining use of the 6 second medium because it’s just short enough to make me feel like magic can be real.
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Jan 14
When we first heard about the developers behind Horizon making an effort to allow users have always-horizontal video recording with the iPhone, our immediate wish was that there was also … Continue reading
Jan 13
How do the animals we eat perceive their own existence and what do they think of us? This experimental short film from Shunsaku.H attempts to find out.
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Jan 12
SolarCooler Keeps Your Brews Icy With The Power Of The Sun, But It’ll Cost You $1K
Posted in: Today's Chili
Every year at CES, the Eureka Park outpost where they stick the scrappy startups is the best damn part of the whole shindig. This is where all the people with a screw loose or a decided lack of good common sense come to peddle their spaghetti-cooking robot or aroma-powered computer – or, as happened this year, their solar-powered beer cooler.
SolarCooler is a “world first,” which is a common epithet at Eureka Park, and it’s currently undergoing crowdfunding on Indiegogo. The startup is looking for $150,000 to make their portable refrigerator (it even makes ice!) a reality, but it’s currently looking like it’ll need a real groundswell of support to get there.
Here’s the big issue: the entry-level model costs just under $1,000, and that’s a special backer-only price. Retail for the SolarCooler is $1,200, which is bound to be a bitter pill to swallow even for the most ardent of tailgaters. Still, this is essentially a solar-powered 12V battery backup for everything combined with a cooler that offers true, continuous refrigeration, so that price tag starts to look at lot more reasonable when you consider its other potential uses.
It also has a lot of potential to help out in commercial and medical settings as a transport for goods that need to be kept cool when direct power is in scarce supply and loading up a device with a significant number of batteries would make it cumbersome to use.
SolarCooler is pursuing a flex funding goal, meaning it walks away with whatever it raises, and the founder seems keen on building it whatever the outcome, but there are still over 40 days left in the campaign, so it could still turn into a Cinderella story. All I know is I like beer, and I like it cold (that ‘best served at room temperature stuff’ is BS) so SolarCooler makes sense to me.
Jan 11
Toshiba’s 5-in-1 Computing Device Concept Looks Like What Windows 8 Is Meant For
Posted in: Today's Chili
One of the best parts of CES are the devices that companies show off that are more or less conceptual, and may or may not ever even get made. One such gadget is the Toshiba 5-in-1 tablet, notebook, media player, drawing slate, etc. It’s sleek looking in pre-production solid aluminum, and also has a lot of potential as a flexible hybrid with a form factor that’s tailor-made for Windows 8.
As explained by Toshiba, the device isn’t yet ready for production, though it does exist as a fully functional prototype. And really it isn’t too far off from existing devices like the Lenovo Yoga line of notebooks. But this Toshiba concept has some unique elements, like the dockable keyboard which is usable on its own with any other Bluetooth-enabled hardware, and the battery that lives in the display for fully independent tablet-style usage.
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Windows 8 is a bit of an odd duck for many PC OEMs: It’s not something that necessarily works with traditional device designs including notebooks and desktops, and yet it’s also an OS that’s made to take advantage of existing Windows software, which isn’t optimized for touch-based interfaces.
It’s rare that concept devices displayed at CES make it to market fully intact, but Toshiba’s got something good going on with its industrial design, as well as the basic concept behind this 5-in-1, so hopefully it doesn’t get too watered down before hitting store shelves.
Jan 10
Jan 10
Photographer Adam Magyar took a high speed camera and recorded everything as his subway train car was getting into the station. Here’s the result in three spellbinding clips, part of his film Stainless, in three different cities: New York, Berlin and Tokyo. Above you can see 42 Street—Grand Central.
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Jan 10
Snakebyte Vyper Adds Home Theatre Features To An Android Game Console And Tablet
Posted in: Today's Chili
Many companies are betting that people want some kind of Android-based gaming solution in their living room, from Ouya to GameStick to Nvidia. One new initiative along those lines debuted at CES 2014 called the Snakebyte Vyper. The Vyper is from a German startup, and the company is bringing the product the U.S. in the coming months.
It’s one device that has a number of different faces, including a standalone 7-inch tablet that’s powered by Android, packing a quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, along with 8GB of storage (and expandable Micro SD-based storage). There are two USB ports, a front-facing 2 megapixel and rear-facing 5 megapixel camera and HDMI out for plugging into your TV.
There’s a docking base that you plug it into when you want to play games from your home theatre setup, or any television anywhere. It provides power and transmits video to your screen, and automatically puts the tablet into television mode. There’s a controller that acts as an air mouse and has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back for input, as well as a Bluetooth game controller with a fairly standard layout compatible with many Android games.
The advantage of its platform over others, according to the company, is that it doesn’t focus on either gaming or media to the exclusion of the other. Instead it’s designed to do both equally well, as well as to be a standard, full-featured Android tablet in its own right, too. It’ll retail for $199 when it goes on sale later this month, which is a surprisingly good deal, provided it works well and offers at least a decent user experience.
Jan 10
Before Pac-Man, before Pong, before Space Invaders there was pinball. And it was good.
While we were in Las Vegas this week for CES 2014 we had the distinct pleasure of stopping by the Pinball Hall of Fame, an amazing space dedicated to all things electromechanical. I spoke with Tim Arnold, Director of Things And Stuff (or, alternately, Stuff And Things) who has made it his life’s mission to maintain some amazing amusements.
Arnold has a collection amassed over many years. He was – and still is – a trained Bally’s pinball technician and he has hundreds of machines in storage that he has amassed in fire sales back at the tail end of the pinball craze. He rebuilds many of the machines from scratch, using good parts from bad machines to make one uber machine that anyone can play in his nondescript museum.
Arnold has it all: Gottliebs, Ballys, Midways, and more. He has standup arcade games, as well, including amazing electromechanical games like Bally Road Runner, one of the first arcade games to use transistor controlled electronics. He also has a mini workshop in back where he repairs the old machines, keeping them in working condition even 60 years after they rolled off the factory floor.
There’s a lot of history – and a lot of fun – to be found in the Pinball Hall of Fame. Arnold is a tinkerer and a dedicated maker. He recommended that young makers learn to build things, not just mash things together. By being good with your hands, he said, you ensure your job and your skills are always in demand.
Visiting a place like the Pinball Hall of Fame makes you feel in touch with the long arc of history that led from the first bells and gears of the original pinball parlors to the ultra-realistic game machines of today. It’s mind-boggling to think that we moved from the pinball machine – essentially a glorified gas pump – to the arcade machine to the home console in a less than 20 years. Plus the games are really, really fun.
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