Hasta La Gadget!

If your foremost dream is to jack into a dystopian cyberpunk reality where hackers play with human brains (and you also happen to love Japanese anime), you’d best book your flight to Tokyo right now — a Shibuya department store has set up a basic cyberspace simulator straight out of Ghost in the Shell. That’s the film Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society, to be precise, which just got a stereoscopic 3D re-release in Japan this week, and in its honor creative services company Kayac set about constructing a high-quality Kinect hack. Microsoft’s depth camera tracks the lean of your body, while the honeyed virtual reality is projected onto a pair of nearby walls, and it’s your objective to slap the Tachikoma tank silly without falling over yourself. Get a peek at what it’s like to play with in the video above.

Kinect dives into anime cyberspace, dares you to catch cute robot tanks (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure it’s just sliding sticks and bouncing balls, but anyone who grew up playing Atari can tell you that Pong rules. Unfortunately, its earliest incarnation only supported enough 2D fun for two, which is why our eyes just about popped out of our heads when we saw this. The folks over at Instructables are showing off another awesome retro gaming project that makes everyone’s favorite game a party pleaser — it’s also a pretty good fix for an old coffee table. The Super Pong Table allows for up to four players and fives balls per game, and enlists 900 LEDs and four Atari paddle controllers to make the thing work. Each player controls his or her own stick and gains or loses a point depending on whether they hit or miss a ball — the first player to reach 20 points gets their very own “YOU WIN” light up display. Looks like we just found something to do with our weekend. You can check out a video of the table in action after the break or follow the source link for instructions on making your own.

Continue reading Super Pong Table serves up four-way retro play, whole lot of awesome (video)

Super Pong Table serves up four-way retro play, whole lot of awesome (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Based on the number of previous iPhone models sold, Apple could sell over 100 million iPhone 5s

Based on Past Sales Patterns, Apple Could Sell Over 100 Million iPhone 5s
If history is any indicator, it looks like the iPhone 5 (whenever it does debut) could sell over a hundred million units. That would be as much as all previous iPhone model sales combined. This is based on the chart above, which shows the monthly sales of every iPhone model thus far; each one has roughly doubled in sales over its predecessor.

Predicting iPhone Sales for Dummies [Asymco via 9to5 Mac]

American Express Debuting App-Based Digital Payment Service
Not to be outdone by other credit card companies getting in on the digital payment arena, American Express has revealed Serve, an iOS and Android app that manages a digital account that’s used for person-to-person transfers, bill payments, and online purchases. It’s not tied to one particular debit card, and sub-accounts can be setup from the main account. Ticketmaster, Flipswap, and Concur have agreed to partner with the service, which can also be accessed through Serve.com or through Facebook.

American Express Serve Services Launches With Android and iOS Apps [Slashgear]

Real-Life Fruit Ninja Looks Fun, and Kinda Difficult
At FH-Wedel in Germany, 4 students developed a real-life Fruit Ninja game using 3-D motion tracking (4 camera-based IR sensors), 5.1 sound, and haptic feedback with a Wiimote. The project was done in the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), which consists of 4 synced PCs and 4 duobeamers. Your ninja sword sits above the Wiimote, which you use to slash the onslaught of fruit flying at you from all directions. It looks pretty awesome, but judging by the number of missed fruit, not a little difficult.

German Students Create Life-Size Motion Controlled VR Fruit Ninja Game [The Gadget Site via Crunchgear]

Pioneer SE-NC31C-K Noise Cancelling Headphones Are In-Ear Style
14.2mm drivers and a variety of adapters means you can plug these active noise cancelling headphones into a variety of plugs and gadgets to enjoy your tunes. They’re powered by a single AAA battery, which provides up to 120 hours of music. To save battery (or once it’s dead), noise cancellation can be switched off or bypassed. These $99 in-ear headphones promise to cancel up to 90% of external sounds.

Pioneer Unveils New SE-NC31C-K Noise Cancelling Headphones [Slashgear]

Donya Gamepad Stickers Give You Better Mobile Gaming Control
If you’re looking for a little more action and traction while you play games on your capacitive screened mobile device, check out Donya’s $12 set of Gamepad Stickers. It includes 5 reusable, repositionable stickers: 3 different single button stickers and two 4-way directional controllers. Mobile device designers take away all those extraneous buttons… then we stick ‘em back on.

Donya New Gamepad Stickers for iPhones [Akihabara News via Geeky Gadgets]

The concept of a streaming console has been around for ages, and while Phantom Entertainment never could quite pull it off, the folks at OnLive seem to be onto something. ‘Course, only time will tell if that “something” is a legitimate enough business to make sustainable, but at least it has moved well beyond the point of vaporware. Now that the MicroConsole has been raiding living rooms for a few months, we’re curious to know your thoughts on things. Have you been able to try one out? Are you still reverting back to your conventional consoles? Are you pleased with OnLive’s performance given your ho hum cable connection? Would you have inked deals with a few more game publishers before pushing it out? Go on and get really real down in comments below — given the small size of the company, there’s a better-than-average chance it’ll be listening to what you have to say.

How would you change OnLive’s MicroConsole game system? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 23:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mobile gaming rigs don’t tend to be particularly upgradeable, so it’s important to get all the horsepower you can up front. With that in mind, MSI‘s latest is delivering a little more oomph than its last lap-warmer. It’s the GX680 and it’s rocking an Intel Core i7 2630QM processor paired with GeForce GT 555M graphics, NVIDIA’s latest bid at laptop pixel-pushing supremacy. That card has 1GB of GDDR5 memory onboard, while the system itself can be configured with up to 16GB of DDR3 — rather a lot for a laptop. A 15.6-inch, 1080p display is available, along with dual 750GB HDDs, which can be configured in RAID 0 if you like living dangerously. Blu-ray is also on offer, along with a THX certified Dynaudio sound system that is said to deliver audio “heretofore found only in cinemas.” No price yet, but as always with MSI that kind of hyperbole comes for free.

MSI’s GX680 laptop gets GeForce GT 555M graphics, up to 16GB of DDR3 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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