Middle Earth comes to life in epic Chrome experiment

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/20/hobbit-chrome-experiment/

We're go out on a limb here and say that the Venn diagram of Engadget fans and Tolkien fans looks something like this. So, we figure you'll probably want to hear about a brand new Chrome experiment that brings various parts of Middle Earth to life, including the Trollshaw and Dol Guldur. It starts with a pretty simple interactive map, but from there you're able to dive into several locations and learn about Hobbit lore through text, animations and audio. At the end of each lesson on Tolkien's fantasy world, you're challenged to complete a simple mini game that has you causing flowers to bloom or avoiding troll attacks. While the WebGL-powered games are pretty impressive, its the HTML5 audio and animations that are the real eye-candy here -- doubly so since they work just as well on a phone or tablet as they do your desktop. As you swipe through slides in the story, camera angles change in coordination with your finger and characters dart across bridges. Honestly, even if you're part of that tiny sliver in the diagram that can't stand Tolkien, it's worth checking out the latest Chrome Experiment, if only to remind yourself of the growing power of the web browser.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Chromium Blog

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This App Lets You Control Objects On Your Computer Screen Just Like Tony Stark Does In 'Iron Man'

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/leap-motion-desktop-app-2013-11

Leap Motion, a company specializing in motion sensor devices, has expanded their services into a brand new desktop app called Free Form.

The app is an extension of the services found on the Leap Motion Controller. The program focuses on 3-D sculpting from the base of your fingertips. Similar to the technology found in the "Iron Man" movies, the app lets designers develop and sketch out their designs in a much more refined model. 

It has a large selection of customizations tools which can let users adjust and mold their drawings in which the CEO Michael Buckwald has compared to playing with Play-Doh.

As of right now, Free Form is still in beta with developers working out more of the kinks but Buchwald is expecting it to expand to other platforms like smartphones and tablets and be released to the public in 2014. Check out Engadget's demo to see it in action.

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Scientists Make An Incredible Super-Waterproof Surface [GIF]

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/super-waterproof-surface-inspired-by-nature-2013-11

Normally, to make water roll off surfaces we spray them with toxic chemicals, like Rust-Oleum's NeverWet, which contains acetone (nail polish remover), liquid petroleum gas, and a few additional "magic" ingredients.

But some surfaces aren't safe for chemical spray — like things we want to eat off of or are near children. Instead of using chemicals, we can design surfaces that naturally repel water. Because of their texture, these surfaces completely shed water instead of absorbing it.

Researchers from MIT designed a new, even better textured surface that stays completely dry. The paper was just published in the journal Nature.

Without the texture, the hydrophobic surface acts like a lotus leaf. It traps air on the surface, which provides a buffer between the actual surface and the water droplet. Although a droplet of water will roll right off, it will still flatten completely against the surface (allowing time for the surface to absorb some of the water) before retracting into a ball and bouncing off.

Scientists realized if they could make the droplets break up into smaller drops instead of flattening into a pancake, the water would be in contact with the surface for a much shorter period of time, meaning there's less of chance of the water absorbing into the surface.

They did this by adding microtextures to an already hydrophobic surface. These microtextures redistribute the water and break up the flattened pancake of liquid so it can't form back into a drop.

Here's a comparison of the two surfaces, with and without microtextures:

One application, the researchers say, is in air! craft. I t works so quickly that even in super-cold environments the water doesn't stick long enough to freeze. By making the surface of the engines repel water before it ices up, they could potentially reduce the amount of frost that builds up.

Here's a quick Nature Video on the development:

They went looking in nature and realized that a very similar pattern is used on butterfly wings and the leaves of the nasturtium plant, which also have ridges to break up droplets.

This is just one example of bio-mimicry, a growing field of engineering and other sciences in which researchers are looking to nature for inspiration.

SEE ALSO: The Incredible Science Behind How Nature Solves Every Engineering Problem

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This 19-Year-Old College Dropout May Have Reinvented The Smartwatch

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/neptune-pine-smart-watch-2013-11

In the emerging wearable tech space, there is no one device that clearly trumps the rest. As Sonny Vu of Misfit puts it: "We're in the first half of the first inning of a nine inning game." 

But 19-year-old Simon Tian wants to change the game. 

He's working on a device called the Neptune Pine, which he claims will be the "definitive all-in-one smartwatch." The idea is that it's actually much more like a smartphone than anything else on the market. It doesn't need to be tethered to your phone via Bluetooth: You insert a micro-SIM card and can use the device to text, make calls, video chat, take pictures, use a GPS, check your social media, and more. The watch runs on the same Android operating as many regular smartphones. 

Tian launched his project on Kickstarter two days ago and promptly blew past his $100,000 goal, putting it on track to become one of the highest funded projects of all time, according to Quartz.  

Tian, a Canadian teen who dropped out of school to work on the Pine Neptune, says in the Kickstarter video that the design and engineering are basically finalized (you can see the guts of the watch and all its specs on Kickstarter) and that all the money raised will be used to mass produce the watch. 

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MediaTek unveils world's first true octa-core mobile chip, first devices due end of year

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/20/mediatek-true-octa-core-mt6592/

Qualcomm's nightmare has finally come true. Earlier today, MediaTek officially introduced the world's first true octa-core mobile processor, MT6592, and the first devices to feature it are expected to arrive as soon as end of year. This 28nm chip packs eight low-power Cortex-A7 cores, and courtesy of the Heterogeneous Multi-Processing use model on top of ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, all eight cores can operate simultaneously -- at up to between 1.7GHz and 2GHz, depending on the bin.

MediaTek pointed that Chrome can already make use of all eight cores, and likewise with some map apps, video players plus multi-window function. According to the company's figures, the MT6592 manages to beat what appears to be the quad-core Snapdragon 800 in benchmarks, power consumption (as low as 40 percent) and temperature. You can see the full detail in this article's gallery.

There are plenty of goodies on the multimedia end. For starters, the MT6592 has an image signal processor that supports 16-megapixel camera modules. Then there's an ARM Mali-450 MP graphics processor clocked at 700MHz, which promises to deliver smooth full HD UI drawing at 60fps, as well as decent gaming performance -- as we saw on an alpha demo of MT6592-optimized Modern Combat 5 (video after the break), which is due March 2014 according to a Gameloft rep. The chip also does video frame rate upscaling to 60fps to reduce motion blur, along with 4K H.264 video decoding plus full HD H.265/VP9 playback -- the latter of which can save up to 40 percent of file storage space.

What's left for MediaTek to do is to tackle the 4G space, which is still Qualcomm's stronghold at the moment. According to General Manager Xie Qingjiang, his company will launch its own 4G modem also by end of year, and device manufacturers will be able to start using it alongside MediaTek's quad-core or octa-core chips in the first half of 2014. Judging by how MediaTek went from being the 3G underdog in 2011 to a notable player today (with expected shipment of over 200 million chipsets this year), Xie feels confident about catching up with 4G. Ultimately, it'll also depend on the pricing of the devices using MediaTek's latest chip, and while Xie refused to make guesses, he referred to the affordability of current quad-core MT6589 handsets, so anything is possible.

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Mobile

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