It’s an old adage that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. Great advice, but what happens when life hands you a missing limb? Make a smartphone mount.
Though far from an insurmountable handicap, Briton Trevor Prideaux was born without a left arm, a not-insignificant inconvenience in our era of increasingly convenient – and hands-on – technology. For most of his life, and especially as smartphones have become ubiquitous, he’s had to rely on uncomfortable ad hoc solutions, namely balancing his phone on the prosthetic, or placing it on a nearby surface.
However, thanks to a joint effort by medical experts and techies at Nokia, Prideaux is now able to use his smartphone with the same convenience as the rest of us. The solution is an ingenious custom fibercast prosthetic arm with a slot designed to accommodate a Nokia C7. Prideaux envisioned the concept himself and approached several developers, including Apple (who apparently declined), before finding interested ears at Nokia. With further help from technicians at the Exeter Mobility Centre, a working prototype was finished in just over a month. While the phone doesn’t respond to any bionic commands – it simply fits snugly in the artificial limb – it is conveniently placed so that Mr. Prideaux can manipulate the device with his right hand, or remove it from its mount to speak.
Living with a handicap is a challenge, and despite the gains made by that community in recent decades, having to remind everyone around you of your distinction can add injury to something that should never be seen as injury. While this device is custom, it has tremendous consumer implications and is a welcome step toward making certain that all of us, regardless of how abled we are, can participate in the society we’re creating with ease. It’s also, quite frankly, really, really cool looking.
A few weeks ago, Spacetime Studios said that its upcoming MMOG Star Legends: The Blackstar Chronicles for the PC would be the first Native Client (NaCl) game released on Google’s Chrome Web Store. According to the developer, NaCL allows native C++ code to run inside a sandboxed environment within the Chrome browser. NaCl supports 3D graphics, stereo audio and local file access.
On Tuesday Google officially launched the new version of its Chrome Web Store. It now sports a more organized interface that seemingly borrows some of its style from the revamped Android Market installed on Android devices. The site is broken into two sections including a directory on the left leading users to specialized categories including Education, Entertainment, Shopping, Utilities and more. On the right side is a bottomless wall of app teaser images laid out in a window pane-like design.
Tuesday the Chrome Web Store launch also served as a launching pad for Spacetime’s sci-fi themed MMOG. According to the company, this is the first title to bridge numerous desktop and mobile platforms together simultaneously: Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux and Android. Now players can jump into the virtual world and play with their friends whether they’re on a Windows 7 desktop, the Xperia PLAY smartphone, the iPad 2 tablet or a Macbook Air. Ubuntu users can even load up the game thanks to the Google Chrome browser.
Tuesday Bethesda released the minimum and recommended system requirements for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, revealed just over two weeks away from the game’s retail release. Bethesda’s VP for PR and Marketing Pete Hines also added via Twitter that the minimum specs will “get you playing” without going into any additional details.
“The recommended specs let you play on High, not on Ultra,” he said. “You’ll want a beefier rig for that.” He later said that Bethesda doesn’t plan on releasing a spec list for the “Ultra” setting.
Snoop Dogg’s official YouTube channel is currently playing host to the first two installments of “Snoop Dogg’s Guide to the Wasteland,” a look into surviving id Software’s new shooter RAGE.
The first installment covers seven bare necessities to survive in a post-apocalyptic world: a waffle maker, chicken feed for your chicken ranch, crops (because vegetation is important), scented candles, a remote control, honey BBQ twists, a clean ride and porn magazines.
The second installment covers “Boss Dogg’s” arsenal that essentially demonstrates the various weapons in the game with in-game footage. He even reveals a dog with a head-mounted machine gun that obviously didn’t make it into the game. Holla. Read more…
One man lost his cool and actually assaulted a teen living up the street over words exchanged in Call of Duty: Black Ops. When playing deathmatch or other multiplayer options online with other gamers, heckling comes with the territory, even more so for newbies still trying to figure out the benefits of certain weapons or the layout of a map. Sometimes it’s just not possible to not get offended by some of the more insulting remarks without some kind of retaliation. For one father of three, he took his revenge just a little too far.
46 and unemployed, Mark Bradford of Plymouth said he “lost it” while playing Call of Duty: Black Ops over the PlayStation Network. A local 13-year-old was reportedly subjecting Bradford to a barrage of taunts and verbal abuse including the name “d***head.” It suddenly became personal when the teen then gunned down Bradford’s character.
Android 4.0 clears up the fragmentation of OS and app versions for Android smartphones and tablets and has the task of making Android tablets much more attractive than they are today.
DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim voiced concerns that Android 4.0 may not be enough for Google and tablet makers to achieve the breakthrough they are hoping for. In the end, Android does not solve Android’s most pressing problem: Differentiation.
“The main challenge in the tablet market continues to be differentiation,” Shim wrote in a blog post. “There are still too many tablets offering similar usage experiences, making it difficult to compete with the entrenched player, Apple and its iPad, and leading to a price-driven market.”
So far, we have seen the iPad control the $500 and above tablet market, with Android and other competing platforms making waves only with heavily discounted products. Shim’s expectation is that this environment will not change unless Google will give tablet makers as well as application developers tools that will specifically leverage capabilities in Android that Apple cannot match with iOS. In previous Android versions, Google leveraged this capability on smartphones and offered exclusives such as the Sky app to create an incentive to buy an Android phone.
Fancy some turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation, cloud based music or sports highlights on your brand new Nokia smartphone? You don’t need an app for that: the Lumia 800 is now the only Windows Phone with full navigation built-in. Nokia announced its Drive navigation, which has a look and feel that should be comfortable with users of its former Ovi Maps suite. It also looks to have similar functionality, enabling the download of maps so that you can find your way into offline areas.
There are also exclusive Music and ESPN Sports Hub apps. The former features Mix Radio, a service that streams “locally relevant music” across hundreds of channels. The latter, meanwhile, allows sports fans to check up on stats, scores and news, and to pin their favorite teams or leagues to the start screen. All told, the company is promising a “uniquely Nokia” experience — guess their slick hardware won’t be the only way they break out of the WP7 pack. Check out a video demo of the navigation embedded after the break.
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