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Games Hardware Dev

Xbox One controller cost over $100 million to develop, smell-o-vision and built-in projector were considered

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As reported on Engadget. BY ALEXIS SANTOS While Sony was content to toy with radical designs for the PlayStation 4’s controller, it turns out Microsoft took a more conservative approach when building the Xbox One’s gamepad. GamesBeat scored a look at the controller creation process and discovered that Redmond was reluctant to tweak the Xbox 360 controller at all since it considers the hardware “best-in-class.” After some pressure from Zulfi Alam, Xbox’s general manager for accessories, Ballmer and Co.…

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Business Mobile

Samsung boasts 800,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatch sales in two months

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As reported on Engadget. BY MATT BRIAN   In an attempt to end speculation surrounding the popularity of its Galaxy Gear, Samsung has shared its smartwatch sales figures for the first time, and they might surprise you. Reuters reports that the company’s Android-powered wearable has sold 800,000 units since its launch in September, surpassing its own expectations and setting straight recent reports that pegged worldwide South Korean sales at 50,000 units. To stimulate sales, Samsung has offered plenty of incentives to buy the Galaxy…

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Security

THE CAMERA NEXT DOOR: HOW NEIGHBORS WATCH NEIGHBORS IN NEW ORLEANS

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As reported on The Verge. By Adrianne Jeffries Ordinary people are installing security cameras in high-crime cities to help police, but is it working? About three years ago, there was an armed robbery in Tom Vogel’s driveway. Three women were walking down one of the quaint, narrow streets in New Orleans’ Lower French Quarter around 1AM when a car crept up and a man jumped out with a gun. The robber grabbed one of the women,…

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Automotive

Power play: how Tesla’s unprecedented battery demand could energize US manufacturing

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As reported on The Verge. By Sean Hollister  Can Elon Musk build a better battery market? If you build it, they won’t necessarily come. In 2009, the Obama administration invested $1.2 billion into US-based factories creating batteries for electric vehicles. The result was a disaster. One by one, every company that received federal funding went belly-up or admitted the money hadn’t had a real impact. For instance, LG-owned Compact Power quietly revealed that it hadn’t produced a single battery in over two…

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Business Cloud Culture

Salesforce.com Launches Salesforce1, A New CRM Platform For Connecting Apps, Services Like Dropbox And the Internet of Things

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As reported on TechCrunch.  by Alex Williams  Salesforce.com is launching Salesforce1, its next-generation CRM platform that it has designed for developers, independent software vendors and customers to connect apps and third-party services such as Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn. The mobile first environment symbolizes the company’s focus as a platform provider with the promise of connecting the enterprise to the billions of things that are increasingly capable of being programmed through APIs. It’s a big promise, especially considering…

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Science

Time Machines: Silver platters

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As reported on Engadget. BY JON TURI  It bears a passing resemblance to the vinyl record, but this futuristic concept was envisioned as more than just sound on a platter. The recording method involved electron beams and lasers; the base material was a coated, transparent plastic disc; and you’d get both an eyeful and an earful from the end product. Its intended goal in the market may have initially flubbed, but its core design has been…

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Business Games

Sony sells over 1 million PlayStation 4 consoles in first 24 hours

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As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS  There was little doubt that the PlayStation 4 would sell well on launch given the sheer amount of hype, but we now have proof: Sony has revealed that it sold over one million PS4s in North America during the console’s first 24 hours of availability. While that figure pales in comparison to the sales numbers we see for smartphones, it gets the company a long way toward its goal of moving five million units before the end of…

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Art Culture Design

Weird Nanophotonic Materials Bend and Trap Light to Make Crazy Colors

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As reported on Wired. BY NADIA DRAKE Normally, the colors we perceive are determined by the wavelengths of light reflected by objects in the world around us. But not all surfaces reflect light the same way. Picture an iridescent butterfly, for example. It might look drab from one direction, but explode into bright yellows or purples from another. That’s because of microscopic structures that alter the way light bounces off the butterfly’s wings.At the NanoPhotonics Centre at the…

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Engineering Military

Christening the USS Gerald Ford: inside the most advanced, most expensive warship ever built

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As reported on The Verge. By Matt Stroud Is the $13 billion price tag worth it? This weekend, the United States Navy christened what many claim is its greatest engineering achievement: the USS Gerald Ford supercarrier, the first in a completely new line of warships called the Ford class. The ship, seated in a huge dock on the James River near the southern district of Newport News, Virginia, is the most technologically advanced, the most expensive,…

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Government Security

The edge of the abyss: exposing the NSA’s all-seeing machine

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As reported on The Verge. by T.C. SOTTEK “I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975 On November 4th, 1952, a new…

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