Let's Talk Tech
This thing is a beast. An absolute monster.
We’ve played with a few large screened phones here, most recently the Lumia 1520, and while I’m still not a huge fan of the phablet, LG has shown they can refine their phone experience and bring a few new tricks to the table. Let’s take a look at their G Flex on AT&T!
Continue reading “Long Term Review: The LG G Flex on AT&T!”
As I take in the sights and sounds of Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) 2014, and the occasional suspicious smell, which I overhear someone claim is that of hot dogs, a deep feeling of suspense starts stirring within me. A merciless coup is forming poised to strike with undaunted ferocity. The harbinger, a very specific new trend with the capability of completely disrupting everything we think we know about gaming. No, more than that. Reality itself.
Virtual and augmented reality is about to mount a full-scale invasion on your sense of “the real.” It is about to change the way you consume interactive and passive content. An assault, amassing so much power and such allies, before it even lands upon the shores of our consumer collective consciousness, it is doing everything in its power to win the war before a single shot is fired.
At every recent tech convention, the absolutely longest line, by far, to experience the latest and greatest in entertainment and gaming is not at any long-established heavyweight veteran’s booth. It is, instead, snaking along the perimeter of a brand new, fresh-faced, hyper-ambitious startup’s booth. The banner reads, “Oculus.” And this phenomenon is repeated at every other booth showcasing their wares via a “generation one Oculus developer’s kit.”
Having taken the Oculus experience for a spin at CES a few months ago, I will not be waiting in the hour-plus line to demo a couple minutes of the developer’s latest generation Rift, sporting 1080p displays, much wider field of vision, and low-latency buttery goodness. I will say, at CES, it lived up to every shred of hype I had heard prior, even exceeding my unfairly high expectations. But here at GDC, what I was more taken in by was the very fact that I was staring at a booth filled with dozens of people jacked into Rift headsets, lost in a world separate from this one, truly immersed and interacting inside in a virtual sphere.
Then… the trumpets sounded, the heralds cried, and Sony announced Project Morpheus. Their own version of a totally immersive, HD, virtual reality headset, complete with infrared head-tracking, stylish blue LED-glowing trim, and tailor-made to be a bold companion peripheral to their own Playstation. Continue reading “Your New Reality Is Ready – A look at the newest VR and Augmented Reality from GDC”
Let’s do this!
This month’s Loot Crate theme is “TITAN” and we can be sure there’s going to be some Titanfall stuff inside, but let’s see what other surprises the box holds…
Related:
Save 10% on a Loot Crate by using promo code “SGLOOT” at checkout!
Behind the Scenes at LootCrate: How cool geek & gamer gear ends up on your doorstep!
A pair of exciting announcements dropped today for wearable computing fans. Google took the wraps off of Android Wear, the OS and UI that will be gracing many a wrist in the future. Motorola quickly followed (or maybe preempted) with the reveal of the Moto 360.
Now that Google has officially joined the smartwatch wars, let’s talk about the future!
I’m joined by a terrific panel of bloggers, so make sure to give them all a follow!
Enobong Etteh – @BooredAtWork – http://booredatwork.com
Andrew Kameka – @AndrewKam – http://MobileBurn.com
Tori Dorsey – @GlassesnGlitter – http://www.glassesandglitter.com/
I like my Pebble, but I’m paranoid about scratching it. Sure a Steel version is coming soon, but what about us folks using the plastic fantastics?
Not only does Slickwraps have a handy kit for protecting it, but we can have fun with some colors that Pebble doesn’t offer. Plus, this wrap has the unique feature of glowing in the dark. Who doesn’t love glow in the dark? Fascists. That’s who.
Let’s take a look at the Glow series Pebble cover from Slickwraps!
More info at: http://www.slickwraps.com/
It’s an icon.
For all of our tech gamesmanship, Apple vs PC, iOS vs Android, days like today are fun to celebrate regardless of which team you’ve sided with.
The Mac is 30 years old.
Many are focusing on the revolutionary ad which played during Superbowl XVIII. Seeing “18” in Roman numerals makes me feel damn old, as I was actually alive for that presentation. We of course have that video linked below, but I wanted to focus briefly on the actual Mac itself, and what we might still be able to learn from it today.
It’s impossible to overstate how important the Mac was in making computing accessible to consumers. For many people my age, it was likely their first computer and graphical user interface. In schools, it was often the computer used to populate labs where we learned basic programming skills, supplemented traditional math, science, and writing education. It was probably one of the first machines we were able to play games on. I’m pretty much always down for a round of Oregon Trail.
What made it so revolutionary was a focus on the user experience. Utilizing precious little computing power by today’s standards to draw pictures and icons on the screen. It gave many first time users a much clearer understanding of what they could accomplish on a little magic box. We live in a world now where my watch is more powerful than those cute little Macs of old, so this aesthetic wasn’t easy to pull off.
A multi-disciplined team of individuals was responsible for bringing Mac to life, including doctors, artists, even an archaeologist. All working together to bring a more informative UI to the user than the flashing text prompt of UNIX and DOS. It’s where we first started having conversations about conveyance and skeuomorphic design.
As we move forward…
As we look towards the next 30 years, we must keep asking ourselves the same questions those early Mac pioneers struggled with. We must keep demanding efficiency, but not at the cost of experience. We’ll constantly be evolving, receiving more powerful devices, but we must have applications for that power.
Lastly, we need to start having frank conversations about our social use of technology and ergonomics. How we incorporate it into our daily lives, use it respectfully and safely.
Happy birthday Mac! You’ve been an inspiration for generations.
(Photo courtesy of Mac History)
I work in voice over and spoken word recording, and it’s kinda killing me how many people are still pumping out bad audio for their podcasts.
With all of the radical improvements in our technology, it really does drive home the point that nicer equipment doesn’t guarantee better results. If you’re wanting to produce more professional sounding audio, you’re still going to have to learn the basics of how recording works.
So, in true internet geek fashion, allow me to insult you for a bit while we take a look at some tips to improve your home recording.