Xbox 720 Countdown :

The countdown will end on June 11, 2013, with E3 running from this date until June 13.

COUNTDOWN CLOCK

Microsoft's IllumiRoom Concept Makes Your Living Room Look Amazing :

Microsoft is no rookie when it comes to experimenting with new gaming technology, as they've spent over two years trying to convince us that Kinect is a thing worth owning. Based on a new tech demo video showcased at Samsung's CES keynote, they're working on a new display-based accessory that incorporates the gamer's living room.

I'm no expert on display technology, but it appears that the IllumiRoom accessory makes it so a whole bunch of crazy crap gets shined all over your walls. The video below showcases flames erupting out of the side of the television, city streets and other backgrounds scrolling by on the room's back wall, and assorted particles flying all over the entertainment center's drawers and shelves. 

According to the official Microsoft Research YouTube page, this video is a real time demonstration. A thread on NeoGAF is currently speculating that the tech may be related to this patent. 

No details regarding a potential retail release were discussed, but the Microsoft Research site says that more info is coming in late April at the CHI 2013 conference in Paris.

Steam 'game console' hardware debuted at CES

 

A modular PC designed to let users to play Steam games on their TV has been unveiled at CES.

Some Xi3 small form factor PCs are based around dual core Intel chips
Codenamed "Piston", the prototype, developed by Xi3 Corporation and funded by Valve, was unveiled at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.

The set-top box will allow users to access thousands of gaming titles through an integrated system, a statement said.

Plans for the living room-friendly console emerged early last month.

"Today marks the beginning of a new era for Xi3," said Jason Sullivan, founder and chief executive of Xi3, in a statement.

"This new development stage product will allow users to take full-advantage of their large high-definition TV displays for an amazing computer game experience," he added.

"As a result, this new system could provide access to thousands of gaming titles through an integrated system that exceeds the capabilities of leading game consoles, but can fit in the palm of your hand."

Despite the grapefruit-sized device being on show on both Valve and Xi3's stands at CES no details of its internals have been given. Other Xi3 computers are based around dual core Intel chips and use solid state storage.

Valve, best known for the Half-Life, Left4Dead and the Steam online game store has long been known to be working on a console or set-top box that puts PC-based titles onto a TV. It is not yet clear if Piston is the hardware gaming gadget that will bring that project to fruition.

Razer’s Project Fiona is now the Razer Edge gaming tablet

Razer’s Project Fiona is now the Razer Edge gaming tablet :

Razer were busy teasing this device as Project Fiona a year ago. It re-emerged from the obscurity of Razer’s R&D shroud this week at CES this week with a new name and some new moves. The ungainly handlebar controllers that we saw a year ago are detachable, the base unit can slot into a keyboard to turn it into a more conventional desktop unit, or you can carry it around and use it as you would any touchscreen tablet.

It’s also quite powerful. An Intel Core i7 chip, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, a solid state HDD and an NVIDIA GT 640M LE GPU should push decent framerates to the 10.1″ 1366×768 screen. The downside? You’ll need $1,299.99 to buy one. Razer are giving potential customers a chance to register interest on the Razer Edge site now alongside a video showing off the Edge in its various guises. Watch that and grab the full specs below.

Here are the tech details for the Pro version of the Edge.
Processor: Intel Core i7 Dual core w/ Hyper Threading Base 1.9GHz / Turbo 3.0GHz
Memory: 8GB DDR3 (2x4GB 1600MHz)
Video: Intel HD4000 (DX11), NVIDIA GT 640M LE (2GB DDR3, Optimus Technology)
Display: 10.1” (IPS, 1366×768) 10-point capacitive touch
Operating System: Windows 8
Storage: 128/256GB SSD (SATA-III)#
Network: Intel WLAN (802.11b/g/n + BT4)
Others: Stereo speakers
Codec supports 7.1 (via HDMI)
HD Webcam (front-facing, 2MP)
Array microphones
Dolby Home Theater v4
USB 3.0 x1 (green, SuperSpeed)
Audio jack (3.5mm, 4-pole, stereo out / mic in)

Well, I definitely like it better than Lenovo’s giant table tablet PC.

The vibrating fork that stops you eating too much

• Gadget set to go on sale in April, and comes complete with an 'eating coach' app
• 
  
• Fork vibrates and lights flash if user tries too eat too quickly

 Smart cutlery that can monitor exactly how much you eat is set to go on sale within months.

The HAPIfork uses electronic sensors to monitor how much , and how fast a user is eating.

If they eat too quickly, the fork vibrates, and bright lights flash on its handle.

The Hapilabs fork, which wirelessly transmits details of how quickly you eat to an app. Eat too quickly, and it vibrates and flashes.

The fork also wirelessly connects to a user's phone to send their eating habits to a special app.

The HAPIfork's makers claim that people only naturally feel full after about 20 minutes of eating, and so by diminishing the amount eaten in that period users will eat less and consequently lose weight.

 

 

The project, which is set to be funded via Kickstarter, will sell for $99, also claims to reduce digestive problems and acid reflux

'Most people eat faster than they should and do not realise that eating too fast ins’t a healthy behaviour, negatively affecting things like digestion and weight control,' said HAPIlabs’ US President Andrew Carton.

The fork will track the duration of a meal, the number of fork servings and the duration of each interval between servings.

The smart fork can monitor any food, and warn user's if they are eating too quickly.

'Eating too fast, and not chewing long enough leads to poor digestion and poor weight control,' the firm says.

'Every time you bring food from your plate to your mouth with your fork, this action is called a 'fork serving'.

The HAPIfork also measures how long it took to eat your meal, the amount of 'fork servings' taken per minute and intervals between 'fork servings'.

The HAPIfork also comes with the HAPILABS app plus a coaching program to help you eat better and change your eating behavior, and is expected to go on sale in April.

The fork is set to go on sale in April for £60 ($99)

 

Samsung shows off paper-thin, bendable mobile screen :

 By showing off a phone with a flexible screen, Samsung is hinting at a day when we might fold up our large phone or tablet screens as if they were maps.

The Korean electronics company has provided a glimpse of such a device at a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

What it is

Brian Berkeley, head of Samsung's display lab in San Jose, California, demonstrated a phone that consists of a matchbox-sized hard enclosure, with a paper-thin, flexible colour screen attached to one end. The screen doesn't appear flexible enough to fold in half like a piece of paper, but it could bend into a tube.The company also showed a video of a future concept, with a phone-sized device that opens up like a book, revealing a tablet-sized screen inside.

How it works

The screen uses organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. Only a thin layer of these chemicals is needed to produce a bright, colourful screen. They're used in many Samsung phones already, though with glass screens. For the bendable phone, Samsung laid the chemicals over thin plastic instead of glass. That's a trick you can't pull off with liquid crystals in standard displays.

Why you'd want it

You could pack a bigger screen in your pocket. In a more conventional application, Berkeley demonstrated a phone with a display that's rigid, but bent around the edges of the device, so it can show incoming messages even with a cover over the main screen. In short, OLEDs free designers to make gadgets with curved screens.

Why it might not work

It's tough to use a touch screen if it bends away from your finger. Flexible OLED screens have been demonstrated for years, but the OLED chemicals are extremely sensitive to oxygen, so they need to be completely sealed off from the air. Volume production of flexible displays that remain airtight has so far stumped engineers. Samsung's screens aren't yet flexible enough to fold, just bend.

Availability

Samsung didn't say anything about when flexible displays might be commercialised.

"The concept of the flexible screen has been around for some time, but it finally looks as if Samsung is really going to deliver on that technology," said Steve Bell, a technology consultant and president of KeySo Global.

 

Nvidia Shield: Gaming tablet review

Nvidia Shield: Gaming tablet impresses(Hands-On) 

Whether the device will actually be called Shield when it debuts has yet to be decided, but that's the name Nvidia's going with for now. Shield is shaped and feels like a gaming controller. In fact it could be described as an Xbox 360 controller with a 5-inch screen at the top. Weight-wise it felt a bit heavier than a stock controller, by maybe a pound or so. Overall, it felt nearly as comfortable as my beloved Xbox 360 controller, but I did notice that the screen on one of the models felt kind of loose and wobbled a lot when I moved the device.

 Streaming has its limits

The coolest feature of Shield is most definitely its ability to stream games from your PC to the device. A really cool concept that feels part Wii U, part OnLive, but as exciting as the prospect is, there are limitations.

For one, it only streams over Wi-Fi; unless your buddy also has a powerful PC and doesn't mind you playing games at his house while you two hang out, this will be something you only do in the comfort of your own home. Also, there is latency. If you're a frame counter or someone who plays games professionally, that's going to be a problem. Admittedly, that's a very small percentage of the public, however.

 Also, the quality of your experience will depend on the quality of the Wi-Fi network you're connected to. During my demo, the Wi-Fi network lost connection to Shield and the connection had to be re-established, which took a few minutes. An Nvidia rep, however, did comment that this is one of the reasons the device is not yet on shelves.

The final stipulation/caveat I'll mention is the fact that in order to stream games, the PC you're connected to must house a GeForce GTX 650 or later to function. AMD/ATI owners need not apply.

First thoughts
Despite the caveats I've mentioned, I'm champing at the bit to see the final product. Nvidia plans to release Shield in the second quarter of this year, but the real question is price. While Nvidia wouldn't tell me outright what to expect, it hinted at what not to expect: a heavily subsidized device.

No, expect the price to reflect the advanced hardware housed within, and while streaming from a PC is a cool novelty, as a gaming device, this thing will live or die based on the quality and proliferation of the games natively available for it. Hopefully the several months of lead time before release will be enough for Android developers to get Android gaming into a much more impressive state. 

The New Lego Mindstorms EV3 hands-on:  

 

Lego Mindstorms build-your-own-robot kits have been with us since 1998, back when programming them required a computer with a serial port. The new Linux-based Lego Mindstorms EV3, however, doesn't even need a computer: you can set up basic routines right on the programmable Lego brick itself, and / or remote control a robot from an Android or iOS smartphone. For many buyers willing to spend $349.99, though, the best part will probably be this: the EV3 is an absolute blast to play with, right out of the box. We just got to try the EV3 at CES 2013 today, and each and every one of the included designs is a wonderful, thought-provoking toy even on its own. 

There's a robot snake that slithers along on wheels, and actually snaps out to bite your hand when the infrared sensor sees you there. You can shake a smartphone to make it hiss and strike, or tilt to use the phone's inertial sensors to steer. There's a robotic rover that can track lines on a floor, with a set of four working snap-on interchangeable tools: a gripper claw, a ball launcher, a hammer, and a spinning bladed chopper for some purely plastic BattleBots action. There's a treaded design with strong gear-driven arms just large enough to bring you a beer soda can. And then there's the scorpion with a seek-and-destroy mode, where it hunts down your infrared remote control brick, then flips up its missile launcher of a tail to blast it with little plastic balls. It didn't work quite right in our video, sadly, but the scorpion shot us earlier.

BLAST, GRAB, FOLLOW, CHOP, HAMMER, WALK, STRIKE, SLITHER, ROLL

If you've got an iPad, they're even easier to build, because Lego's got an app with animated step-by-step instructions courtesy of Autodesk. (A company rep tells us that Mindstorms is the first, but future Lego set instructions might also be available there.) The infrared remote control and sensor, color sensor, touch sensor and three motors give the kit room to expand on these designs, too. What if you put a color sensor next to the infrared one on the robot snake, programmed it to ignore that color, and then wore that color of shirt? You could have a snake that snaps at other people... but not its master. We can't wait to see what Mindstorms EV3 will do when builders like Akiyuki —and NASA — get their hands on it.

Do Not Disturb !!

Do Not Disturb iPhone and iPad bug found in iOS 6 :

Those iPhone 5 owners who decided to sleep through the coming of the New Year may have found a library of messages they never heard thanks to a new iOS 6 bug

   

UPDATE:

Apple has announced that the bug affecting the Do Not Disturb app for iPhone 5 and iPad will sort itself out by January 7th. In a statement on its official support blog, Apple said:

"Do Not Disturb scheduling feature will resume normal functionality after January 7, 2013. Before this date, you should manually turn the Do Not Disturb feature on or off."

ORIGINAL STORY:

A bug has been found which stops the Do Not Disturb feature for iPhone 5 and iPad turning off after the 1 January. The feature which comes withiOS 6 allows users to silence everything except their most important contacts.

Engadget reports that the bug is connected to 1 January with users finding that when they woke up the Do Not Disturb feature was still enabled with the only fix being to change the date on the phone or restart the handset.

Apple hasn't yet come forward to comment which suggests that there may not be a fix available at Apple stores yet either. This isn't the first time that the technology company has come unstuck thanks to the date.

In 2011 an iOS clock bug meant that many users found their alarms failing to go off on New Year's Day with the clocks then failing to update to DST automatically.