Hip-hop fans are dropping their collective jaws as word of the Tupac “hologram” is ricocheting around the Internet. As seen in the five-minute video, a three-dimensional Shakur is seen, shirtless, moving across the stage, and even greeting the crowd at the beginning with a stunning voice that sounds an awful lot like Tupac himself: “What the [f] is up, Coachella?”

The virtual rendition of the late rapper then proceeds to do renditions of two classic ‘Pac tracks, “Hail Mary” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” while gesturing and walking back and forth across the stage in an extremely lifelike manner, replete with Thug Life tattoos and his characteristic necklace. Twitter, unsurprisingly, has been abuzz with chatter—spawning an admittedly hilarious new account: @HologramTupac: “Anybody got a spare 54 AA sized batteries? I think Snoop done smoked my charger. #PlugLife”

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Tupac ‘hologram’ merely pretty cool optical illusion

A month ago to the day, SpaceX informed us all that it was aiming to launch its Dragon spacecraft skyward on April 30th, and rendezvous with the ISS a few days later. Now NASA’s finally finished its flight readiness review and has given Elon Musk’s capsule the green light to hit that launch window. The capsule will hitch a ride on one of the firm’s Falcon 9 rockets and will launch from Cape Canaveral just after noon ET — from there it’ll perform a flyby of the station to check its sensors and flight systems before its inaugural docking with the ISS. Wanna watch the magic happen? Live video of the launch starts at 11AM on NASA TV, and night owls can watch the docking itself occur May 3rd at 2AM.

NASA deems SpaceX Dragon worthy of the ISS, locks in April 30th launch date originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA deems SpaceX Dragon worthy of the ISS, locks in April 30th launch date

We’ve known for what feels like ages that Windows 8 would come in at least two flavors: one supporting x86 devices and one for ARM machines. Now Microsoft’s ready to put a naming scheme on its much-anticipated menu for the operating system. According to a post on the Windows blog, ARM devices will get Windows RT, while x86 / 64 devices will run Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro (also for x86 devices) will offer the suit-and-tie set added features for “encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity.” Windows Media Center will be packaged as an add-on for the folks who go Pro. For a full break down of what each version will hold hit the source link below and check out our hands-on impressions of the OS preview here.

Microsoft outs three flavors of Windows 8: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft outs three flavors of Windows 8: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT

Have you been getting a kick out of Coachella’s jams and arts in Indio, California? Or, did you decide to peacefully enjoy it from home via YouTube’s site? Either way, you may have heard Tupac made an on-stage holographic appearance over the weekend, performing Hail Mary and 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted alongside Snoop Dogg. Tupac’s hologram was made possible by AV Concepts in partnership with Dr. Dre’s production company, after reportedly working on the project for a few months. The outfits used a display technology dubbed “Eyeliner” that, with the help of a custom rig and a mechanical solution, was able to shoot out a life-sized, 3D illusion of Mr. Shakur onto the Coachella platform. Don’t believe us? Hit ’em up at the source below, though we feel compelled to tell you language isn’t exactly for all ages.

Continue reading Tupac hologram performs at Coachella, keeps all eyez on him

Tupac hologram performs at Coachella, keeps all eyez on him originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tupac hologram performs at Coachella, keeps all eyez on him

The FCC has cleared Google of any wrongdoing over the WiFi snooping case, but nonetheless hit it with a $25,000 fine for “noncompliance with [FCC] information and document requests.” Google, for its part, has repeatedly said it has done nothing illegal, and that its previous practices were a “mistake,” despite the fact the FCC found that the Google engineer involved in the project declined to testify.

“It seems that the FTC and other regulators around the world weren’t able to assess the full scope of the problem without [this withheld information] and may have closed their investigations prematurely,” Katitza Rodriguez, the international rights director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars on Monday, adding that the technical information was “critical to a proper assessment of what [Google] did.” Just to be clear, 25 large is pretty tiny to a company like Google. For a company worth almost $200 billion, this amount is so meaningless it’s basically laughable, particularly when the FCC has said it’s now dropping this case.

Earlier this year, European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding put forward a proposed revision of EU law that would radically update the 27-member bloc’s 1995-era data protection directive. Had this new proposal been in place prior to Google’s violation, it would have been required to notify data protection authorities as soon as possible—and face a fine of up to 2 percent of annual sales, which in Google’s case, could have reached €758 million ($990 million). Of course, these new proposed European regulations, if they do pass the European Parliament, will likely take a few years to become the law of the land.

To date, this appears to be the only fine from American authorities that Google has faced in relation to the WiFi snooping case. Across the pond in Europe, fines for judicial obstruction or privacy violations haven’t been much stiffer, either: CNIL, the French data protection authority, fined Google a maximum of €100,000 ($130,000). Their Dutch counterparts threatened to hit Google with a €1.4 million ($1.8 million) fine if it didn’t provide a way for Dutch users to opt out, which it did last April—and that case resulted in no fine at all. In 2010, Italian authorities threatened Google with an €1,800 fine ($2,352) if the company didn’t fulfill its new privacy restrictions. In some really privacy-conscious corners of Europe, like Germany, Google has pulled the plug on entire projects—abandoning collecting new Street View data as of last year.

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Proposed EU law would have hit Google with nearly $1 billion in fines

There’s no better way to control the visual experience from shoot to show than to create the camera and the projector. That’s likely the thinking behind the REDray, the 4K laser cinema projector making an appearance at the company’s NAB booth today. The device supports 2D and passive 3D (up to 120fps in 3D mode), with 4K projection for each eye and has a rated laser life of over 25,000 hours. While the device itself is likely to be hidden behind glass in an elevated projector room, the REDray has the same industrial look and feel of its Scarlet and Epic capturing counterparts, with a solid matte metal construction, heavy duty bolts and dedicated access panels for the lens filter, the laser phase adjustment oscillator and the angular refraction aberration indexer. There’s also a T1.8 50mm lens mounted up front, sufficiently completing the beautifully monstrous package. Also on display was the tablet-controlled REDray Player, which includes four HDMI 1.4 video outputs with 7.1-channel audio output, the ability to move 4K video to the internal hard drive and an SD reader for ingesting content. You’ll also find dual gigabit Ethernet ports, along with USB and eSATA connectors.

The projector experience is much less about the hardware than it is the projections themselves, which certainly did a justice here — especially considering the imaging device’s mid-development status. During a screening of the 3D short Loom, which was shot with the RED Epic, images looked fantastic with accurate color and excellent dynamic range, allowing us to see every detail in a contrasty dark scene, where we were able to make out a very dimly lit female actress. The projection was incredibly sharp on the 24-inch screen, despite the film being displayed with 2K for each eye, rather than the maximum 4K. There will be two versions of the REDray projector, including a home theater flavor that supports screens up to 15 feet in size that’ll ring in at under $10,000, and a professional model with support for larger venues. RED CEO Jim Jannard confirmed that the home-bound version will ship sometime this year, though he was unable to provide a more precise ship date. We weren’t permitted to record video during the screening — which is for the best, considering that there’s really no way to do this thing justice — but you can still flip through the gallery below for an early look at REDray.

Continue reading REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on (video)

REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on (video)

There’s no better way to control the visual experience from shoot to show than to create the camera and the projector. That’s likely the thinking behind the REDray, the 4K laser cinema projector making an appearance at the company’s NAB booth today. The device supports 2D and passive 3D (up to 120fps in 3D mode), with 4K projection for each eye and has a rated laser life of over 25,000 hours. While the device itself is likely to be hidden behind glass in an elevated projector room, the REDray has the same industrial look and feel of its Scarlet and Epic capturing counterparts, with a solid matte metal construction, heavy duty bolts and dedicated access panels for the lens filter, the laser phase adjustment oscillator and the angular refraction aberration indexer. There’s also a T1.8 50mm lens mounted up front, sufficiently completing the beautifully monstrous package. Also on display was the tablet-controlled REDray Player, which includes four HDMI 1.4 video outputs with 7.1-channel audio output, the ability to move 4K video to the internal hard drive and an SD reader for ingesting content. You’ll also find dual gigabit Ethernet ports, along with USB and eSATA connectors.

The projector experience is much less about the hardware than it is the projections themselves, which certainly did a justice here — especially considering the imaging device’s mid-development status. During a screening of the 3D short Loom, which was shot with the RED Epic, images looked fantastic with accurate color and excellent dynamic range, allowing us to see every detail in a contrasty dark scene, where we were able to make out a very dimly lit female actress. The projection was incredibly sharp on the 24-inch screen, despite the film being displayed with 2K for each eye, rather than the maximum 4K. There will be two versions of the REDray projector, including a home theater flavor that supports screens up to 15 feet in size that’ll ring in at under $10,000, and a professional model with support for larger venues. RED CEO Jim Jannard confirmed that the home-bound version will ship sometime this year, though he was unable to provide a more precise ship date. We weren’t permitted to record video during the screening — which is for the best, considering that there’s really no way to do this thing justice — but you can still flip through the gallery below for an early look at REDray.

REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on

While Apple, Amazon and competition authorities globally tussle over book pricing, a fleet-of foot startup is quietly building an alternative platform others would do well to check out.

txtr is one of the largest independent eBook platforms in Europe. The Berlin based startup began back in 2008, deciding, as one did back then, to bring out an eReading device called the “txtr reader”. I actually saw some of the early units.

However, as colleague John Biggs noted in 2009, there wasn’t much point in doing devices without a store. And so they’ve since switched pretty successfully to a BtoB business model, backed by large investor 3M.

Now they are cleverly expanding around into the nooks and crannies so far unpopulated by the 800 pound gorillas, and have their own iPhone and Android apps to prove it.

Today it’s expanding its relationships with publishing companies across Europe, Asia and North America. Its txtr eBook store is now pre-installed or prominently featured on mobile devices from brands such as ASUS, Acer, Samsung or Toshiba. It’s also on iPhone/iPad.

Similar to Amazon’s multi-device approach, with various Kindle apps complementing its own dedicated e-Reader, txtr employs what it calls its “buy once – read anywhere” strategy (up to 6 different devices per eBook purchase) and targets Apple iOS, Android, PCs running Windows, as well as web and dedicated e-Ink based eReaders.

They do deals with publishers and sell the whole platform (or parts of the technological infrastructure) plus content to hardware manufacturers, telecom companies and ebook distributors.

Txtr is also now entering direct relationships with publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Hachette UK, the Cloudary Corporation from China, Immatériel, the sole independent distributor of digital books in France representing 250 publishers, Diogenes Verlag from Switzerland and WPG Uitgevers from the Netherlands. More international deals are on the cards.

The idea is to cover not just books from large publishers, but small independent presses, specialty publishers and self-published authors. It’s also signed an agreement with
Smashwords, the global eBook distributor that represents over 100,000 eBooks
from 40,000 self-published authors and small independent presses.

Next up is a launch in Denmark with two of the leading Danish publishers, Gyldendal, Rosinante&Co and Lindhard go Ringhof.

This will bring the total number of countries in which txtr operates local language eBook
stores to 26.

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Txtr Fights Amazon/Apple With iPhone/Android eBooks For The Rest Of Us

First time accepted submitter jcho5 writes “China’s 600-year-old Forbidden City is looking less forbidding these days. As part of a major restoration, the Chinese Palace museum will use 3D-Printers to re-manufacture and replicate many of the city’s most precious and unique objects. From the article: ‘PhD student Fangjin Zhang—along with her colleagues at Loughborough Design School in the East Midlands of England—had, for a number of years, been looking into the use of 3D printing as means to restore sculptures and archaeological relics. According to a Loughborough press release, Zhang developed a “formalized approach tailored specifically to the restoration of historic artifacts.” After reviewing Zhang’s techniques, the Palace Museum then invited Loughborough researchers to repair several Forbidden City artifacts, including the ceiling and enclosure of a pavilion in the Emperor Chanlong Garden.'”

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Restoring China's Forbidden City With 3-D Printing

If you’ve ever wondered how some website that looks like it was an early draft from the proverbial infinite number of monkeys on infinite keyboards managed to get to the top of a search result page instead of something you actually want to read (or something you’ve written), you’ve been victimized by the dark art of search engine optimization (SEO). In the never-ending battle for the top of the Google search results page, and for advertising click-throughs, marketers and bloggers enlist an ever-changing bag of tricks to game search engine algorithms, often with the help of SEO consultants and a collection of tools that track the best tactics of the moment.

I recently got an advance look at the latest version of a tool that helps bring SEO to the masses. InboundWriter, a web-based software-as-a-service offering, coaches bloggers and other writers for the web on how to tweak their content based on best practices tuned to the user’s site strategy. The latest version, due out next week, adds a feature that tracks topics on Twitter to find similar material—giving bloggers potential new sources, and marketers an eye on their competition.

Whether giving the masses the power of SEO is a good thing or not is another question entirely—while InboundWriter can optimize pages for search, following its advice to the letter doesn’t make you a better writer (though the new Twitter research tool certainly can make you a better-informed one). But like the honey badger, Google doesn’t care if you’re no Raymond Carver. To get a feel for what SEO experts think determines a “high-quality” page from the standpoint of a search engine, I used InboundWriter to search-optimize this story. I’ll let you be the judge of the outcome; InboundWriter gave it a score of 99 out of a possible 100.

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I am SEO and so can you: tool helps tweak content for search, Twitter