Three months after the release of Crysis 2, Crytek has finally released a trio of patches, totalling 2.32GB, to enable its promised DX11 features. According to our calculations, that’s at least two more DirectXes than it had at launch. It’ll definitely look prettier now (not that it was ever even close to ugly to begin with), but will that be enough to bring you back to play the game again, or has its moment in the spotlight already passed? And oh, EA follows up by announcing that the map editor will be available for download from mycrysis.com this Wednesday, which is tomorrow.

These days everything needs to go green, or at least have a “green mode” or “green option”. Designed for the younger generation, Jeffrey Greger’s Float is a compact, folding catamaran that provides users with some affordable and portable water relaxation in the sun.

With a retractable solar cell roof that gathers energy for the vessel, users will be able to enjoy maximum sun exposure or protection while lounging on the comfortable mesh hammock. Something tree huggers will need if they want to go for an expedition along the Rajang River stream in Kapit or Bako National Park.

The Solar Catamaran is steered using a simple gyroscopic handle that is discreet and easy to use. With nothing but relaxation and comfort in mind, Gregor’s design features a convenient folding and collapsing design that allows the Catamaran to fit in a standard rooftop car carrier. Nothing quite beats a comfy hammock in the middle of the water on a warm summer day.

Fifth Gear’s Tiff Needell and Jason Plato had a go at both the McLaren MP4-12C and Ferrari 458 Italia, testing each car for thrills and for precision. While both may seem to be winners in the pantheon of automotive excellence, only one can come off victorious.

Both drivers render the same verdict, and it’s the kind of final assessment you don’t often get from motoring shows: one wins on paper, and then gets trounced once they discard the spec sheet and grab the wheel.

Well, what can you say? One makes cars for Jenson Button to drive at incredible G-force, but hadn’t built any road cars for almost 15 years. The other is a name that will always be related to Formula One, and famous for its awesome road-legal sport cars.

Powerslides, tire smoke and some unintentional off-roading can be found in the video after the jump. Enjoy! And oh, by the way, notice that Fifth Gear is using Top Gear’s test track, and also, the McLaren MP4-12C is actually tested and developed on the same track.

Read more…

Have you ever use Google Sites to publish articles to the web? Blogwhores rejoice, the search giant just added automatic mobile rendering to make your website more mobile-friendly when viewed on an iOS 3.0 or Android 2.2+ device.

A new setting to “Automatically adjust site for mobile phones” can be activated in the site management page, at which point pages designed for desktop viewing will be displayed in a much simpler web format, so readers won’t need to pinch-to-zoom just to see a page’s content.

Google also added mobile versions of the site list, site search, and browse sites categories, for easy access from your smartphone. There’s nothing ground-breaking here, but if you happen to run a Google Site or have a friend that does, it wouldn’t hurt to flip the switch on mobile viewing — your visitors will appreciate it.

SOURCE via Google

The Atrix 4G is today an eminently more intriguing smartphone than it was yesterday. Leaked code from Motorola’s upcoming Gingerbread update for the handset has made its way into the hands of the always-eager coders at xda-developers, which has resulted in two things: one, the discovery that Motorola intends to unlock the Atrix’s bootloader when it upgrades it to Android 2.3, and two, downloadable files to let you do exactly that today, even if you’re still stuck on Froyo.

Moto users have been pleading for this change for a long time and Motorola did pledge to make it happen across its portfolio of devices, but it comes as a mild (and happy) surprise to see this change being effected retroactively. Check the links below to see how you can unchain your phone’s bootloader if you can’t wait for the official software to drop.

SOURCE via xda-developers

Any Transformer fanbois and fangals around here? It’s just around the corner, and from what I heard the tickets are sold out, so why not buy this new USB flash drive and go sob at the corner just coz you just missed out on the most anticipated action movie of the year, in 3D!

These particular Mimobots come in the likeness of everyone’s second favourite morphing robot rivals — Optimus Prime and Megatron. (Obviously Cy-Kill and Leader-1 take the top slot in our hearts, step aside you sissy Bumblebee!) Sadly, these Transformer thumb drives don’t actually transform (well at least you can remove their head), but they do come preloaded with screensavers, wallpapers, and digital comics… if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Autobot and Decepticon leaders are available now, starting at $23 for 2GB of storage and reaching $60 for the 16GB model. Why so expensive you ask? Well, collections!

A car that looks like the one above and gets the “equivalent” of 1,980 miles to the gallon (and one gallon only) is certainly impressive enough on its own, but it’s all the more so when you consider that it’s driven by a 14-year-old and built by his classmates (with a little assistance, of course, they had no license anyway).

This particular vehicle hails from Kingdown School in Wiltshire, England, and it won the recent Mallory Park Mileage Marathon by a margin of more than 1,000 MPG over its next closest competitor.

Not surprisingly, however, the students are already looking to improve things for next years’ race, and say they’re planning on upgrading the engine for starters. No word if they’re considering an X-Prize challenge after that. So are there any takers on this? Why not ask BMW to invest this into their new EV lineup.

SOURCE via BBC