Day: July 10, 2012

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From Droid Life: OUYA: The Android-Powered Gaming Console That Wants to Take on the Big Boys

My two biggest gripes with mobile Android gaming are as follows: I don’t have a reliable controller for most of the games, and the screens are too small to really get immersed in. Kickstarter is hosting a very promising looking project called OUYA (pronounced ooh-yah) that looks to take mobile gaming back to the living room, and rival the big console makers. This Android powered console is calling on the powers of Android’s open development platform and the free-to-play model of gaming that has been all the rage recently. Can this grassroots program rattle the cages of Sony and Microsoft?

The OUYA team has created a prototype console that is based off our favorite OS and even uses parts that you might find in your phones today:

  • Tegra 3 quad-core processor
  • 1GB of RAM
  • 8GB of flash memory
  • HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
  • WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
  • USB 2.0 (one)
  • Wireless Controllers
  • Ice Cream Sandwich

All the games that work for Android now will work on OUYA and the developers of the console are hoping to entice game developers to make games just for their console, that are made to play on the big screen in your living room. Games like Shadowgun and Dead Trigger will look and play great on your TV and even Minecraft will be included in all this fun.

One interesting note from the developer states “We’re handing the reins over to the developer with only one condition: at least some gameplay has to be free.” F2P has taken off in PC gaming recently with most games going free and then allowing you to buy upgrades to the game for real money. Microtransactions are now funding Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, even though some players never pay a cent to play them. It’s an interesting demand but in the long run it could be beneficial for any owners of the OUYA.

OUYA is looking to raise money through Kickstarter and their goal is $950,000 to get the project up and running fully. At the time of this post they are near half that already, with 29 days to go. You can reserve a username for as little as $10 but if you want to get a console for yourself, $99 will get you an OUYA before they hit stores. This little console definitely has a lot of potential and could redefine gaming on the Android platform, we’ll just have to see how we eventually get there.

Via: Kickstarter

from Droid Life

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: At the Imagine Cup 2012: A Real-Life Minesweeper App That Detects Buried Landmines

Team ARMED Team ARMED from Poland post with their bomb-detecting smartphones and a model of the land mines it finds. Julie Beck

Using both the military and software sides of their education, a team of Polish military students studying computer engineering at Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna (Military University of Technology) presented at the Imagine Cup here in Sydney an app that uses the built-in magnetometer in a Windows phone to detect the magnetic signature of land mines buried in the ground.

SAPER (Sensor Amplified Perception for Explosives Recognition) is Poland’s entry in the software design category of the 2012 Imagine Cup.

It’s like a high-stakes Minesweeper with real-world results. The corresponding web application shows the locations of mines users have already detected, or whose known locations were input by military professionals. Then, if you enter a dangerous area, the app sends you a notification on your phone.

SAPER has 75 percent accuracy in detecting land mines, and works from 30 centimeters away. However, both of these stats can be improved by purchasing their external, more powerful magnetometer/metal detector, for “premium users,” which the team says makes the app comparable in accuracy to current military tools. Being from a military academy, Team ARMED had access to a field test site, where they buried mines in the ground and tested their app on them.

The team hopes to first deploy their app in the most affected areas, such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam and Croatia, where, team mentor Mariusz Chmielewski tells me, there are regularly “bombs on the side of the road you are driving on. It is a big, big problem.”

 

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

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From Engadget: Austrian city builds public library with nothing but QR codes, NFC and stickers

Austrian city builds public library with nothing but QR Codes, NFC and stickers

Strangely, the Austrian city of Klagenfurt doesn’t have a public library, even though it hosts the Festival of German-Language Literature. However, an initiative dubbed Project Ingeborg is turning the municipality into a book repository of sorts with 70 QR code and NFC chip-equipped stickers. Plastered throughout town, they direct users to web pages where they can download public domain works, largely from Project Gutenberg. Oftentimes, e-books will be located in relevant locations — so you’ll be sure to find Arthur Schnitzler’s The Killer near the police station, for example. Come August, the team behind the effort will partner with local talent to distribute books, music and other digital content too. In an effort to build a stronger bond to the location, the organizers have prevented search engines from indexing the links, so you’ll have to visit Klagenfurt to access the curated goods. If you’d like to turn your city into a library, the group hopes to release instructions for replicating their system soon.

 

 

from Engadget