Brains Archive

  • Gyroscope gunning on the iPhone 4 with Eliminate: Gun Range (video)

    Gyroscope gunning on the iPhone 4 with Eliminate: Gun Range (video)

    Posted on June 25, 2010 | No Comments
    We'd heard earlier that ngmoco's new game Eliminate: Gun Range was one of the first apps to really take advantage of the iPhone 4's gyroscope, and now that we've had a chance to play with it, we've got say there's a ton of potential here. E:GR is itself just a simple shooter, but the gyroscope adds what seems like nearly 1:1 motion control to the proceedings -- and since you're moving the display itself, it almost feels like augmented reality. It's hard to explain, since it's so unlike any mobile UI experience we've encountered before, but as soon as we tried it our brains pretty much exploded with possibilities -- we're thinking drastic improvements to actual augmented reality apps like Layar, all kinds of crazy flight simulator games, much more refined GPS apps, you name it. Video after the break.

    Continue reading Gyroscope gunning on the iPhone 4 with Eliminate: Gun Range (video)

    Gyroscope gunning on the iPhone 4 with Eliminate: Gun Range (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • No, The Internet Won’t Make You Stupid

    No, The Internet Won’t Make You Stupid

    Posted on June 14, 2010 | No Comments
    Nick Carr is worried the Internet is making us stupid. It's not so much our preoccupation with LOLCat photos or videos of fat girls flying off of swings that concerns him as it is the way we read and consume information on the Internet itself. He thinks the Internet is rewiring our brains, perhaps for the worse, and he's written a book to warn us all about it called The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. Carr also finds links to be too distracting. Carr raises some good points worth contemplating, but his arguments also strike me as incredibly self-serving. After all, he is an author who makes money writing books. Of course he is going to argue that they make you smarter than the Web, with all of its neurological distractions. Carr is the master of technological alarmism. It sells his books and provokes debate, and this time is no exception. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote in the New York Times on Friday that "cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk," and NYT Bits blogger Nick Bilton marshaled some other counter-evidence as well. Carr then responded to Pinker's Op-Ed at length, claiming that Pinker has an "axe to grind here" because Carr's point that experiences can change the brain on a cellular level "poses a challenge to Pinker's faith in evolutionary psychology." Of, course, Carr as his own axe to grind. Remember, he's the one pushing the new book. At the core of Carr's alarmism is that the Web is simply at odds with deep, contemplative thought and reflection. It's really a defense of book learning in its most basic form—again, not surprising coming from an author of books who values above all else the printed word.

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  • Daily Crunch: Station to Station Edition

    Daily Crunch: Station to Station Edition

    Posted on June 9, 2010 | No Comments
    Bigelow Aerospace building first private space station Cthulhu cozy keeps your phone safe from the prying eyes of mortal men Pro gamers have brains like fighter pilots, lungs like career smokers Toyko Flash’s Changing Lanes Watch: Changing the way you view your time Panasonic Japan announces two 3D plasma TVs

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  • Terror in Taipei: Computex taxi drivers watch live TV, video chat while cruising

    Terror in Taipei: Computex taxi drivers watch live TV, video chat while cruising

    Posted on June 4, 2010 | No Comments
    It's a Christmas miracle that Joanna and I survived the week in Taipei. Not because our brains nearly exploded from the wealth of non-functioning Windows 7 tablets we saw, but because most of our cab drivers found themselves -- um, preoccupied -- while on the job. Over here, deep within a WiMAX hotspot, it's not uncommon to see cabbies video chatting and watching live local TV over-the-air while driving, and since you'd never believe me sans pics, I've got a handful of those as proof. Call it culture shock, or call it reckless -- we're calling it "America needs to get with the program and catch up to Asia."

    Terror in Taipei: Computex taxi drivers watch live TV, video chat while cruising originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Microsoft’s ‘Menlo’ working towards a mobile future without Windows CE?

    Microsoft’s ‘Menlo’ working towards a mobile future without Windows CE?

    Posted on May 5, 2010 | No Comments
    Since Courier's now a mystery unearthed -- and subsequently sent six feet under -- it looks like we need new secret Microsoft projects to pique our curiosity. Enter the ever-connected Mary Jo Foley with some investigative notes into "Menlo," which seems to be a future replacement of Windows CE "with Windows NT inside of mobile devices." The associated graphics platform would be "Experiment 19" (not quite as interesting a codename, we agree). Presumably heading up Menlo is Galen Hunt, a researcher from the Singular project, joined by other Microsoft brains Ruben Olinsky and (at least at some point) Kerry Hammil. It's always surprising how much info we can glean from LinkedIn, but we digress: Hunt's associated profile says Menlo "[combines] OS, UX, and applications research to explore the future of computing when mobiles becomes users primary PCs." Some bigger picture conjecture seems to center around Menlo having a Silverlight-based UI and boasting improved compatibility between itself and Windows desktop apps. Lots of food for thought, and if you're interested in what might come out of Redmond many, many years down the line, head on past the read link for all the juicy tech gossip.

    Microsoft's 'Menlo' working towards a mobile future without Windows CE? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 May 2010 04:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Japanese researchers develop mini brain wave measuring device

    Japanese researchers develop mini brain wave measuring device

    Posted on April 6, 2010 | No Comments
    Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba (just outside Tokyo) is well-known for its work in robotics, but the institute is active in other fields as well. It has now announced [JP] a mini brain wave measuring device that can help handicapped people convey up to 512 "messages" just with the power of their brains.

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  • XFX “gunning” for Nvidia with the ATI HD 5970

    XFX “gunning” for Nvidia with the ATI HD 5970

    Posted on March 30, 2010 | No Comments
    Well, it looks like XFX packaging is going to be a little more secure then the stuff that Amazon uses. You'll have to be careful leaving the store with this stuff, XFX appears to be packaging their version of the ATI HD 5970 in a replica of a H&K P90. Catchy, but hopefully they don't lose any customers to gunfire.

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  • Jailbreak fix for iTunes 9.1 on Windows already on the way

    Jailbreak fix for iTunes 9.1 on Windows already on the way

    Posted on March 30, 2010 | No Comments
    There was a wee bit of chaos amongst iPhone jailbreakers after this morning's iTunes 9.1 update hit. Seemingly out of nowhere, "tethered" jailbreaks (the slightly-less-convenient type necessary for newer iPhones) stopped working. Panic! Fortunately, the endlessly resourceful army behind the jailbreaking effort has already isolated the problem, and a fix is in the works.

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  • The Twist Alarm Clock forces you to activate your brain in the morning

    The Twist Alarm Clock forces you to activate your brain in the morning

    Posted on March 19, 2010 | No Comments
    Japan and its alarm clocks. Most of these devices force you to wake up through an extra-annoying noise (or by moving away from you), but this new one, the so-called Twist Alarm Clock [JP], makes you solve (simple) math problems.

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  • Brains, brains, scanning brains

    Brains, brains, scanning brains

    Posted on March 12, 2010 | No Comments
    Researchers would be wasting their time, and their patrons' money, scanning my brain. They'd quickly find nothing but World of Warcraft Auction House strategies and an incredible amount of space devoted to translation Marca, A Bola, La Gazzetta Dello Sport, and France Football every morning. Maybe if they'd scan, say, the brains of Fez Whatley or Vince McMahon, then they'd find something interesting.

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  • Scientists create coevolved Predator and Prey bots

    Scientists create coevolved Predator and Prey bots

    Posted on February 1, 2010 | No Comments
    Some scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne have built "evolving" predator and prey robots designed to, in short, learn from each other. Read that again: While we're worried about Taylor Swift and and Lady Gaga, robots are now teaching each other how to hunt us. The robots use Darwinian Selection to decide how to escape each other or work together to avoid collisions.

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  • Surprise! There will be another iPhone next year

    Surprise! There will be another iPhone next year

    Posted on December 10, 2009 | No Comments
    After 3 years of back-to-back new iPhones, it probably doesn’t take a whole lot of guts (or brains, for that matter) to predict that Apple will be announcing a new iPhone in 2010. But when this guy comes along and says that the orders been placed, pretty much all doubt goes out the door. Early today, [...]

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  • Verizon ad confirms Droid is a not-quite pretty ‘racehorse duct taped to a Scud missile’

    Verizon ad confirms Droid is a not-quite pretty ‘racehorse duct taped to a Scud missile’

    Posted on December 3, 2009 | No Comments
    There's something peculiar about Verizon's latest addition to its promotional Droid onslaught. Sure, we get the expected Mad Libs-esque hyperboles like "it rips through the web like a circular saw through a ripe banana," but other nods seem to indicate an acknowledgement that, well, it's not the prettiest of flagship phone princesses. "Should [a phone be] be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?" (Wonder who that's a reference to.) Listen Verizon, trading "hairdo for can do" is great and all, but why can't we simply have both brains and beauty? Still, it's nice to know the fighting words haven't all but left the industry. See the ad for yourself after the break.

    [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

    Continue reading Verizon ad confirms Droid is a not-quite pretty 'racehorse duct taped to a Scud missile'

    Verizon ad confirms Droid is a not-quite pretty 'racehorse duct taped to a Scud missile' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Monopoly: Nintendo Edition

    Monopoly: Nintendo Edition

    Posted on November 30, 2009 | No Comments
    In your face, parents all over the world. After pleading with your children to quit rotting their brains with non-stop video game playing, your suggestion of playing a board game instead has backfired on you with the Nintendo edition of Monopoly.

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  • Virtual Mirror: augmented reality without glasses

    Virtual Mirror: augmented reality without glasses

    Posted on October 8, 2009 | No Comments
    The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute -- the same Fraunhofer that holds many of the patents on MP3 -- have a booth at CEATEC exhibiting some of their research efforts, shopping them around for potential licensees. Their Virtual Mirror display is, I think, a great example of augmented reality done right. It uses a camera, a display, and their special software to dynamically alter the image projected back to the viewer. Video inside!

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