Netizen

Thursday, October 09, 2014

Let's Get Physical

Amazon is about to open its first-ever physical store in New York City

it will be located in midtown Manhattan ..... on 34th Street, right between the flagship Macy's store and the Empire State Building. ..... Amazon will accept returns at the location, and will use it as a mini-warehouse particularly tuned for same-day delivery of products in New York. You'll also be able to pick up online orders at the store, meaning you'll be able to buy online and get items even faster. Amazon may also use the store to show off its Kindle and Fire products, which seems like a spectacularly obvious thing to do but is evidently still only being considered. .... the company launched a tool for identifying products, a card-reader for buying them, and much more that suggests it could quickly build a full-fledged physical retail space. It's been rumored for years that Amazon would do this, and even now Amazon tells the Journal that this is just an experiment.

OnePlus

Low Price, High Hopes for OnePlus Phone

I’ve been using the One for the last couple of weeks, and I’ve found it to be one of the best smartphones I’ve ever used. The One has a beautifully spare design, it’s loaded with the latest tech specs, and it runs CyanogenMod, a version of Google’s Android operating system that is far more flexible and easier to use than the cumbersome flavors of Android now stuffed into rival phones. Best of all, the One sells for $299. ...... Samsung’s profits are being battered by the intense competition from low-priced rivals. .... of OnePlus’s global staff, a third of the employees are from Asia, a third from Europe and a third from the United States. “We don’t really think of ourselves as a Chinese start-up” ..... the One is similar to Google’s Nexus 5, another high-quality, low-price phone — but over all, the One is more powerful, and far prettier, than the Nexus.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

RoomAlive

English: The Xbox console with the S controller, made by Microsoft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can see this having major educational uses. But it still feels version 1.0 with a long way to go. This will make new kinds of games possible. This will also get used by the porn industry. This could be used to create exotic backgrounds for parties you might want to throw.

Microsoft’s ‘RoomAlive’ transforms any room into a giant Xbox game

Relive’s video projectors and Kinect combination is far too costly and large for living rooms right now, but Microsoft is imagining a future where this technology will be smaller and low-cost...... "There’s still lots to explore with RoomAlive as a gaming platform," explain’s a Microsoft Research spokesperson. "We envision a future where games can use physical objects as part of the game."

RoomAlive: Magical Experiences Enabled by Scalable, Adaptive Projector Camera Units

Users can touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that seamlessly co-exists with their existing physical environment. ..... focuses on interaction, and the new kinds of games that we can create with interactive projection mapping. RoomAlive looks farther into the future of projection mapping, and asks what new experiences will we have in the next few years? ...... The projector is used for display and the Kinect is used for tracking. Normally video projectors are used to display PowerPoint presentations on flat screens. RoomAlive uses cheap commodity video projectors to animate every square inch of your living room, this technique is known as projection mapping.

Watch Microsoft's RoomAlive Prototype Turn an Entire Room Into a Game
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Microsoft's Insane New Technology Will Turn Your Living Room Into One Gigantic Xbox Game
Microsoft's RoomAlive turns your walls into a life-sized interactive Xbox game