Sifteo Cubes up for pre-order tonight, gaming gets tangibly-cute this September

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/10/sifteo-cubes-up-for-pre-order-tonight-gaming-gets-tangibly-cute/

Want a game for the tabletop with on-screen pop, and a sprinkle of adorable? Sifteo is officially set to get your gears going when its interactive Cubes, up for pre-order by the end of today, ship out in September. If you'll recall, the MIT-rooted project uses blocks equipped with 1.5-inch displays to create a variety of gaming environments mixing touch, motion and on-display content. Also announced is a bundled "Creativity Kit," which enables you to make your own games on the fly. It was was briefly available to early adopters in January for $99.99, and now $149.99 gets everyone in on some good times. You'll receive a triplet of the oh-so-cute Cubes, a charging hub and a 2.4 Ghz wireless USB adapter for connectivity, as well as transferring Sifteo store apps purchased on your computer. Interest piqued? You'll find details in the PR just past the break -- unless you're a square, that is.

Continue reading Sifteo Cubes up for pre-order tonight, gaming gets tangibly-cute this September

Sifteo Cubes up for pre-order tonight, gaming gets tangibly-cute this September originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sifteo  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Verizon opens Application Innovation Center in San Francisco, we go eyes-on (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/10/verizon-opens-application-innovation-center-in-san-francisco-we/

Verizon's made good on its promise to open an Application Innovation Center in San Francisco, and kindly invited us down to have a gander. It's much like its sister facility in Boston, except it eschews the LTE focus for one on mobile-app innovation. Developers both big and small will be able to take advantage of several labs, where they'll be privy to Verizon equipment and services "not available elsewhere," all while being a stone's throw from Big Red's in-house engineers and developers. On hand was Qualcomm, whose MDPs garnished the test lab, and Chomp, whose app-search tech powered an impressive nine pane multi-touch App Wall -- allowing one to find and explore apps, replete with informative videos and QR codes for each. Want to know more? Check the gallery, videos and PR after the break.

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.

Gallery: Verizon Application Innovation Center

Continue reading Verizon opens Application Innovation Center in San Francisco, we go eyes-on (video)

Verizon opens Application Innovation Center in San Francisco, we go eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

GameFly to launch 'Unlimited PC Play' download service, offer less incentive to leave the house

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/10/gamefly-to-launch-unlimited-pc-play-download-service-offer-le/

GameFly hasn't wasted any time jumping into the digital download waters after acquiring IGN's Direct2Drive platform a little over two months ago. Set to launch September 8th in beta form, its new "Unlimited PC Play" service will offer subscribers access to 100-plus downloadable PC and Mac titles, with hundreds more expected in time for the official end of year launch. Fans of the video game rental outfit's snail mail subscription service don't have to worry about a shift to digital only, as the company has no plans to abandon its "unique combination of console and digital PC game offerings." Interested in getting an early peek at the new platform? If you live in the Los Angeles area, you can look forward to a planned beta launch party next month, where access codes for the new, invite-only service will be distributed. The rest of you PC gaming warriors will just have to settle for a sign-up page at the source.

GameFly to launch 'Unlimited PC Play' download service, offer less incentive to leave the house originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  GameFly, Joystiq  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/10/researchers-demo-3d-face-scanning-breakthroughs-at-siggraph-kin/

Lookin' to get your Grown Nerd on? Look no further. We just sat through 1.5 hours of high-brow technobabble here at SIGGRAPH 2011, where a gaggle of gurus with IQs far, far higher than ours explained in detail what the future of 3D face scanning would hold. Scientists from ETH Zürich, Texas A&M, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University as well as a variety of folks from Microsoft Research and Disney Research labs were on hand, with each subset revealing a slightly different technique to solving an all-too-similar problem: painfully accurate 3D face tracking. Haoda Huang et al. revealed a highly technical new method that involved the combination of marker-based motion capture with 3D scanning in an effort to overcome drift, while Thabo Beeler et al. took a drastically different approach.

Those folks relied on a markerless system that used a well-lit, multi-camera system to overcome occlusion, with anchor frames acting as staples in the success of its capture abilities. J. Rafael Tena et al. developed "a method that not only translates the motions of actors into a three-dimensional face model, but also subdivides it into facial regions that enable animators to intuitively create the poses they need." Naturally, this one's most useful for animators and designers, but the first system detailed is obviously gunning to work on lower-cost devices -- Microsoft's Kinect was specifically mentioned, and it doesn't take a seasoned imagination to see how in-home facial scanning could lead to far more interactive games and augmented reality sessions. The full shebang can be grokked by diving into the links below, but we'd advise you to set aside a few hours (and rest up beforehand).

Gallery: Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH 2011

Continue reading Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted

Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:46:00 EDT.! Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Archos' Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2 tablets launch in Hong Kong, taste like Gingerbread

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/11/archos-arnova-7-g2-and-10-g2-tablets-launch-in-hong-kong-taste/

It looks like Archos' summer of the sequels is just heating up. Less than a week ago, we spied the outfit's 8-incher at the FCC, and now our brethren at Engadget Chinese are offering up a hands-on with two more second-gen Arnovas: the Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2. These made-over slates best their predecessors with Gingerbread and capacitive touchscreens. The original 7-inch tablet ran Froyo while its big brother came with Eclair; both sported resistive displays. The pair will also see a spec bump in the processor department, with the inclusion of a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 -- likely the same processor found in their 8-inch sibling. While we do have Hong Kong pricing -- HK$1,680 (or $215 US) and HK$1,980 (about $250 US) -- we've yet to land a release date. So, for now, we'll just stick with "coming soon to a retailer near you?" If the wait is too much to bear, hop on past the break for some hands-on love from our Chinese counterparts.

Archos' Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2 tablets launch in Hong Kong, taste like Gingerbread originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Engadget Chinese (Translated)  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...