(video link) If you read yesterday's hands-on report from Microsoft's Xbox One reveal event, you already know about what the new Kinect sensor is bringing to the table over its predecessor. But reading about it is one thing and seeing it in action is another. With that in mind, here's a quick five-minute video that outlines how all of the new Kinect's major features work in the real world. Things to look out for: Revolutionary … [Read more...]
Amazon sets up system to trade on fan fiction
Mai 22, 2013 By
Amazon plans to start selling fan-written fiction based on the works of other authors and franchise creators, according to a press release sent out on Wednesday. Kindle Worlds will be a platform heavily regulated by Amazon itself and will only sell fan-fiction for which it has the rights-holders' explicit permission to do so. Fan fiction has long existed at a murky copyright cross-section, where even fanfic-like works that have the strongest … [Read more...]
Chrome 27, released today, is 5 percent faster and includes conversational search
Mai 22, 2013 By
Google has updated the stable version of Chrome to version 27. On top of the usual bug and security flaw fixes, the new version is claimed to load webpages about 5 percent faster on average. Finding a 5 percent improvement in a browser that's already fast is no mean feat. The better performance comes from making Chrome smarter about the way it uses the network: being more aggressive to download things in some instances and being less aggressive … [Read more...]
Patent troll that wants $1,000 per worker gets sued by Vermont A-G
Mai 22, 2013 By
Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Late last year, a vigorous and secretive patent troll began sending out thousands of letters to small businesses all around the country, insisting that they owed between $900 and $1,200 per worker just for using scanners. The brazen patent-trolling scheme, carried out by a company called MPHJ technologies and dozens of shell companies with six-letter names, has caught the attention of politicians. MPHJ and … [Read more...]
Pines punched a “one way ticket toward genome obesity”
Mai 22, 2013 By
Relatives of the Norway spruce are some of the oldest living things on the planet. They haven't used all that time to tidy up their genomes, though. National Park Service Last week we heard about the genome of a plant that pushed the limits of compacting its DNA: the bladderwort seems to have done away with of most of the genetic material that typically makes plant and animal genomes so large without any apparent ill … [Read more...]
Merger of ancient galaxies could explain the origin of today’s giants
Mai 22, 2013 By
The elliptical galaxy NGC 4150. Observation of a merger between two galaxies early in the life of the Universe could explain the origin of large elliptical galaxies. NASA, ESA, R.M. Crockett (University of Oxford, U.K.), S. Kaviraj (Imperial College London and University of Oxford, U.K.), J. Silk (University of Oxford), M. Mutchler (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, … [Read more...]