News - page 1183

There are those who ride mountain bikes and then there is Eric Barone. He rides his mountain bike down actual mountains.

Apparently, the faster the better.

The French daredevil known as the Red Baron recently rode a specially groomed speed track down a snow-covered mountain in Vars in the French Alps, breaking his own world speed record with a ride that nearly approached 139 miles per hour.

If you want to skip out on posing for photos during the next family vacation, do what Hauke Scheer plans to do — use a 3-D-printed version of yourself as a stand-in.

The Scheer family might let him get away with it, since the fully articulated action figure of himself that he created is a pretty good likeness. The quality of his miniature plastic doppelganger — and the geeky scheme to get out of family portraits — tell you something about Scheer, 39, who earns a living making 3-D-printed figures of mechanized whales and other crazy characters from his home in Frankfurt, Germany.

“I am a total geek with a huge collection of comics, science fiction and fantasy movies and, of course, action figures,” Scheer, who runs Deep Fried Figures, told Cult of Mac. “I started sculpting my own figures during my early teenage years at a time when lots of characters I loved were not available in figure form. After a while, I realized it was even more fun to make characters of my own.”

Apple may have already used the name “Force Touch” for its touch-sensitive tech, but if you’re a sci-fi fan who’s ever dreamed of wielding The Force to control your Mac with an Obi Wan-like sweep of the hand, you could be in luck.

Apple today published a patent for a technology which describes in-air 3D gesturing which allows it to accurately establish not only where a user’s hand might be, but also what it is doing. As such, it opens up the possibility of creating detailed hand poses for triggering different actions.

Throwing up a pair of hand horns to get AC/DC blaring out on iTunes? Yes please.

Considering how great its other products are, there’s little contesting the fact that Apple’s search functions have traditionally sucked.

That remains true to this day, although improvements are slowly being made — and proof of this is the newly-uncovered acquisition of a search startup called Ottocat, which now powers the “explore” tab in the App Store.

From pop-up kiosks in up-scale luxury department stores to focusing more on the fashion press than the tech pages, it’s been fascinating to watch the unorthodox way in which Apple is choosing to spread the word about its upcoming Apple Watch: attempting to make it into this summer’s must-have item.

During Monday’s episode of The Voice, the next step of this roll-out was revealed, as Pharrell Williams — acting as a judge on the show — was spotted wearing the device, without a supervising Apple engineer or PR bod in sight.

Hey, as fashion items go, it makes a change from giant hats, at least!

The Star Wars movies will finally arrive in iTunes this week, marking the classic series (and its three disappointing prequels) going digital for the first time ever.

“We’re thrilled that fans will be able to enjoy the Star Wars saga on their digital devices wherever they go,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “These films broke new ground in technology, design, sound, and visual effects, and we’ve created some very special bonus material which delves into the saga’s rich history, including new and never-before-released conversations between legendary Star Wars artists — the masters who helped George bring his iconic universe to life.”

Check out more details about the bonus features below:

Launch day queues for the latest must-have gadget are as much a part of Apple culture as learning to live without ports and optical drives.

But Apple retail guru Angela Ahrendts wants to change all that — sending out an email to Apple Store employees proclaiming that, “The days of waiting in line … are over” for customers.

Her alternative? Shop online.

Snapchat used to have a “Best Friends” list that showed you who each of your friends snapped with the most. It was a weird, slightly stalkerish part of the app that was removed last year.

Now Snapchat has brought back a way to see top friends, but in a more fun way that relies totally on emojis (and won’t destroy your relationships). Here’s how to decode what the new Snapchat emojis mean.

Update: Samsung has denied the report, claiming that all invitees were “formally invited to the Shanghai Culture Square where the event took place.”

Samsung is trying to match the iPhone 6 in every way with the launch on the Galaxy S6. That includes pre-launch hype with over 1,000 people at events clamoring for a look at the new flagship phone, but in Samsung’s case, it has to pay for fans to show up.

Over 500 fake fans were paid to attend Samsung’s launch event for the Galaxy S6 in China on Friday. The total attendance reached around 1,000, but with the meager $4.80 Samsung shelled out to anyone under who looked like a student under 30, and could sit through one hour of the keynote.

I had the kind of dad who brought his work home with him. That was exciting since he was in the business of putting men on the moon.

Each time there was a scheduled launch, my two brothers and I could always expect our dad to come home with mission patches. Robert Pierini was an engineer in the late 1960s and early ’70s with an electronics company in Milwaukee that developed the guidance system for the Apollo mission.

So when filmmaker Neil F. Smith recently posted a video to YouTube, bringing animated life to each mission emblem, I immediately felt the same rush I had as a kid when I held a patch in my hand.

We can’t wait for Game of Thrones to make its fifth season debut next Sunday filled with all the mystery, violence and betrayal that have cemented the fantasy epic as one of TV’s best shows.

We don’t recommend letting your kids tune into the newest episodes, but Sesame Street gives kids the next best option with a funny parody of the hit HBO show that pits Joffrey, Daenerys, Tyrion and Cersei in a serious Game of Chairs contest. Ned Stark does the officiating without managing to lose his head, and Grover makes a surprise power play at the end that could forever change Westeros.

Watch the full clip below.

Grand Canyon National Park is one of the most incredible wonders you could ever visit. To truly appreciated the Big Ass-ness of it, you really need to view it from the bottom. As someone who’s hiked there a few times, I can attest that getting down there is a pain.

Rafting through it on the Colorado is funner, but it’s also really wet and slightly dangerous, so the folks at Western River Expeditions captured the first-ever 360 interactive video on one of their recent trips. Now, thanks to wonders of virtual reality, you can now take a trip down the Colorado River without worrying about a mountainous wave of chocolatey water knocking you off the side of your raft.

Watching their video is like Google Street view for the Grand Canyon. You can explore it yourself below:

Ellanora Baidoo, 26, can finally change her Facebook status to “single” after a landmark decision in a Manhattan courtroom Monday that allows her to serve her evasive husband via private message on Facebook.

This is the first time anyone has been able to use the ubiquitous social networking site to serve legally binding papers.

The Ghanaian nurse “is granted permission serve defendant with the divorce summons using a private message through Facebook,” wrote Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper.

What’s next–small claims court via Twitter?

Apple leapfrogged the desktop competition last year with the 5K Retina iMac, but according to its display partner LG, Apple is going to announce an is going to release an ‘iMac 8k’ later this year.

The Korean display manufacturer published an explainer on its website last week claiming a super-high resolution iMac will be hitting stores later this year. It’s probably just an error or typo, but the comments have led to a lot of speculation among Apple fanboys on Reddit.

Here’s the full quote from LG:

The iPhone 6 has helped Apple shatter sales records worldwide, and nowhere is it bigger than in China. According to a new report from Kantar, Apple’s smartphone market share in China is at an all-time high of 27.6 percent.

China Mobile accounted for 59 percent of iOS sales in the country from December to February, adding to Apple’s momentum in key international markets. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were two of the three top-selling smartphones in urban China, with Xiaomi’s RedMI Note coming in second.

While Apple market share is up in developing nations, iOS market share shrank year-over-year in the U.S. and Japan. Five other countries also saw losses over the last three months. Look at how much Apple’s market share declined in January and February in seven of the world’s largest markets:

An extreme video that might be seen as a testimonial to the ruggedness of GoPro cameras probably won’t attract people to the sport of skydiving.

A GoPro camera that fell off a skydiver’s helmet in Sweden was found intact and the finder, in an attempt to reunite the camera with its owner, posted the dizzying video it contained to YouTube.

The camera flew off the helmet within the first minute of the jump from roughly 3,000 feet and began spinning, the browns, golds and greens of the Earth smearing in a swirl that, while pretty to look at, puts the viewer’s equilibrium off-kilter.

Having been the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning reports and BBC documentaries, the questionable standards of conditions at Apple supplier Foxconn’s factories has made the company notorious, while its work building iPhones has made it rich.

But a new tour of the company’s sprawling Shenzhen factory — where the company makes iPads and Macs among other products — is eager to paint a very different picture: one of changing company, more like a university campus, with plenty of educational opportunities, and suicide stats below that of the U.S.

Apple will apparently utilize oxide TFT displays for its next-generation iPad models, allowing the tablets to consume drastically less power.

In order to gain a bigger piece of the pie, manufacturer LG Display (aka the world’s largest LCD panel maker) is reportedly investing in the necessary P8-P9 production-line technology in its plants in Paju, South Korea, according to new reports coming out of Asia.

Apple’s been known for its extreme levels of secrecy since Steve Jobs made his return back in the late 1990s and, while that has changed somewhat under Tim Cook’s stewardship, there are still areas Apple is incredibly careful about revealing. An example? How about its new spaceship-style campus, for one.

According to a recent news report, Apple is insisting on criminal background checks for even the construction workers simply involved with pouring concrete for the new Apple HQ. It’s an unusual move from an unorthodox company, and it’s rubbing a few people up the wrong way.

Both the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 secretly support 4K video, but don’t expect the same from the next-generation Apple TV, according to one new report.

Citing “sources in position to know,” BuzzFeed News claims that the much-speculated-upon 4th generation Apple TV isn’t going to go out of its way to support a video resolution “still in its infancy” — despite the fact that rivals Netflix and Amazon already offer this service, albeit in limited supply.

When the Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, one place it will be conspicuous in its absence is Switzerland: the spiritual home of the wristwatch, which Jony Ive famously (allegedly) said was “f**ked” due to the awesomeness of Apple’s upcoming wearable.

One possible reason? A trademark claim made by a company called Leonard Timepieces for a watch and watch parts carrying the image of an apple and the English word “APPLE.” First filed in 1985 — not too long after Apple originally launched the Mac — the 30-year trademark expires on December 5, 2015.

The Apple Watch may be good at telling you how healthy you are, tracking your steps, propelling you to move, and reminding you of upcoming appoints, but conventional wisdom says it’s rubbish for reading. The 38mm and 42mm screens are just too tiny to read anything more than a sentence or two long on, and certainly not any longreads.

So on paper (no pun intended), Instapaper for Apple Watch is a terrible idea. Amazingly, though, it looks like the Instapaper team at Betaworks has made it work.

This week on The CultCast: With Apple Watch apps now hitting the store, we discuss some of the most popular ones. And if you want an Apple Watch you absolutely need to preorder — we’ll tell you why and how. Plus: Periscope! Learn all about it and why it’s way better than Meerkat. All that and so. Much. More…

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Full show notes ahead!

With Apple Watch about to become a reality, recent reports have questioned the benefits of fitness trackers, highlighting their inaccuracy and even claiming they make you fat.

So can wearables like Apple Watch really help you get fit? From my experience, what’s in your heart is more important than what’s on your wrist — but gadgets still have a role to play.