Tag: gadgets

Sit in the orchestra pit with Google’s 360-degree video

To get a good view of a world-class orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, you normally have to buy an expensive front row seat. With a little help from Google, however, you can now sit on stage for free. The company is launching a “virtual exhibition” today called Performing Arts which includes four performances recorded with multiple 360-degree camera rigs. Alongside Carnegie Hall , you can experience the Berliner Philharmoniker , London’s Royal Shakespeare Company and the Theatro Municipal in São Paulo. Via: Google (Blog Post) Source: Performing Arts

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Sit in the orchestra pit with Google’s 360-degree video

Stretchable square of rubber doubles as a keyboard

There’s a whole branch of science that’s dedicated to turning flexible surfaces into sensors that can be used as an artificial substitute for skin. These materials could then be used to give robots a sense of touch , or even to restore feeling for people with artificial prostheses. Researchers at the University of Auckland have taken the concept in a slightly different direction after building a square of soft, stretchable rubber that pulls double-duty as a keyboard. It’s hoped that the technology can be used to create foldable, rollable input devices, which reminds us of Nokia’s twisty-stretchy phone concept from way back when. Via: EurekaAlert Source: Smart Materials

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Stretchable square of rubber doubles as a keyboard

Bill Gates is launching a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is set to reveal a massive clean energy project on Monday, during the first day of the United Nations climate change summit in Paris. According to Reuters , which originally reported the news, the French government has confirmed that the ex-CEO-turned-philanthropist will launch the Clean Tech Initiative, a push to commit countries to double their budgets on clean energy tech research and developments by 2020. But Gates won’t be working on this multibillion dollar fund alone: The US, Australia, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, Norway, Saudi Arabia and South Korea will all be backing the plan, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters .

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Bill Gates is launching a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund

Unofficial app makes PlayStation 4 to PC streaming a reality

Sony’s had its Remote Play tech in one form or another since the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, but it didn’t truly take off until its implementation on PlayStation 4 and the PS Vita handheld. But that’s kind of wasted when nobody is buying the Vita and it’s getting zero love from its parent company . Remote Play PC is exactly what its name implies: an application that tricks the PS4 into thinking a PC is a Remote Play device. Microsoft changed the game (sorry) with the ability for the Xbox One to stream its games to Windows 10-based hardware and until Sony catches up we’re just going to have to settle for an unofficial app that costs money to perform the task. Via: Kotaku Source: Tmacdev

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Unofficial app makes PlayStation 4 to PC streaming a reality

Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the reusable rocket race

Blue Origin, the private space firm owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has just dropped a huge, unexpected gauntlet in the race to develop a reusable rocket. In video released by the company (below), it managed to launch its New Shepard space vehicle consisting of a BE-3 rocket and crew capsule to a height of around 100.5 kilometers (62 miles). Minutes later, the capsule made a controlled landing beneath a parachute, but more importantly, the BE-3 rocket started its own decent when rockets fired at 5, 000 feet. From there, it made a a controlled vertical landing and touched down at a gentle 4.4 mph. Source: Blue Origin , Blue Origin

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Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the reusable rocket race

Google Street View gives you a tour of ancient Jordan landmarks

Jordan is home to some extremely significant historical and religious sites. However, visiting those landmarks in person is no mean feat — which is why Google just added many of them to Street View. Fire up your web browser and you can get virtual, 360-degree tours of more than 30 ancient locations, including the city of Petra (above), Jerash and legendary castles from the Crusades. We suspect that this will pale in comparison to the grandeur of seeing these relics first-hand, but you should at least have an inkling of what the experience would be like. Source: Google Maps

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Google Street View gives you a tour of ancient Jordan landmarks

Shazam’s song recognition just got a lot faster

Shazam is doubling down on what it does best with its latest update: Recognizing songs when your memory (or pop cultural knowhow) fails you. And, for the first time, the app now highlights a search feature on its main page, which lets you dig for more information about songs and artists. The goal, naturally, is to convince you to stay within Shazam rather than hopping over to the web for music research. In my brief testing, the new Shazam app recognized songs from television and radio in a few seconds — at times it even found a result in under a second. It feels significantly faster than previous versions of the app, which sometimes took over five seconds to lock onto a song. That’s not a huge difference, but given that Shazam has been around for years (it was one of the first killer apps back when the iPhone’s App Store launched in 2008), it needs to keep improving to keep up with competitors like Soundhound. Via: TechCrunch Source: Shazam

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Shazam’s song recognition just got a lot faster

Oddball machine makes ‘analog’ techno music with vinyl records

Many techno DJs are used to playing music on vinyl , but creating it? That’s another matter. However, Graham Dunning has found a wonderfully strange way to make that idea work. His Mechanical Techno device produces full-on dance tracks by driving several heavily modified records at once with a turntable, with each record relying on unique triggers to produce a sound. Electrical contacts will produce a synth sound as one record spins around, while piezoelectric triggers create that all-important beat on another disc. The result is techno that’s at once analog and not. It sounds digital, but it has the imprecision and unpredictability that you’d never get from software. Via: Boing Boing , Nerdcore Source: Graham Dunning

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Oddball machine makes ‘analog’ techno music with vinyl records

Google now lets you join Hangouts as a guest, no account needed

The worst thing about organizing an online meeting is squabbling over platform. Should you choose WebEx? Skype? Google? Your decision just got a little easier. As of today, you no longer need to have a Google account to join a meeting Hosted on Hangouts — just a link.

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Google now lets you join Hangouts as a guest, no account needed

Doctors can now grow human vocal cords in a lab

Used to be that if you damaged your vocal cords and needed a new set, doctors would have to shoot you full of immunosuppressants to keep your body from rejecting the cadaver-sourced replacements. Not anymore. Researchers at University of Wisconsin Medical School have published a preliminary study in the journal Science Translational Medicine wherein they successfully cultured 170 sets of vocal cords in the lab. These organs do not require the course of immunosuppressants that conventional transplants require. “We never imagined that we would see the impressive level of function that we did, ” study senior author Nathan Welham told Buzzfeed . Via: Buzzfeed Source: Science Translational Medicine

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Doctors can now grow human vocal cords in a lab