Mereja

Author: Zach Walton

  • Check Out Gears Of War: Judgment’s Multiplayer Modes

    Gears of War has always had some excellent multiplayer. The introduction of Horde mode in Gears of War 2 introduced a cooperative angle that made the game that much sweeter. The latest game in the series – Gears of War: Judgment – will introduce new elements to multiplayer to hopefully make it even better.

    The folks at People Can Fly, the developers behind Judgment, show off some of the new weapons that will populate the Team Deathmatch mode. The weapons seem to be some of the best the series has yet seen thanks to the super creative efforts from the team behind the original Painkiller and Bulletstorm.

    Beyond Team Deathmatch, the game will also feature Free-For-All, Domination and Overrun. The usual XP bonuses and perks will be present as well.

    Gears of War: Judgment takes players back into the past on March 19 exclusively for Xbox 360.

  • WebGL Has Come A Long Way Since Last Year

    Last year, Mozilla released an impressive tech demo called BananaBread that showed how HTML5 and WebGL can handle 3D rendering in a game. It was very basic, but it showed a lot of promise, especially in Web-based texture compression. Now one developer has released a new tech demo that blows prior experiments in WebGL 3D rendering out of the water.

    Mozilla has the story of Anthony Liot, a developer for Actisku He took on the task of porting a 3D engine called Unigine to HTML5 using Mozilla’s Web technologies and Emscripten. The results are absolutely mind blowing. You can check out the non-interactive demo here. It works in either Firefox or Chrome.

    If your browser, namely Internet Explorer, can’t display WebGL rendered 3D visuals, check out some screenshots below:

    HTML5-Based 3D Rendering

    HTML5-Based 3D Rendering

    HTML5-Based 3D Rendering

    For more details on this project, check out Actisku’s blog post.

  • FCC Votes To Free Up Spectrum For Wi-Fi Devices

    The spectrum freed up for Wi-Fi is a finite resource. Too many devices can congest the networks and slow down service for everybody. The FCC wants to prevent that from happening, and have taken steps to relieve congestion with its latest proposal.

    The FCC announced today that it has unanimously voted to free up 195 MHz of additional spectrum in the 5 GHz band. This new spectrum will be available to unlicensed devices. The Commission also proposed to relax regulations on wireless devices and to streamline existing rules.

    FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the Commission is taking “a big step to ease congestion on traditional Wi-Fi networks, which will mean faster speeds and fewer headaches from U.S. consumers.”

    The FCC notes that the freed up spectrum will not only help decrease congestion in public spaces, but it will help increase speeds of personal wireless networks in the home. That’s great news for those of who have multiple devices running on a single Wi-Fi network in the home.

    Before you start lining up more devices on your personal network, know that the FCC has only voted on a proposal to free up the spectrum. The Commission now has to take public comments before making its final decision. The plan will probably not face any real opposition, however, as industry groups are already praising it.

    The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said that the FCC’s bid to free up more spectrum will help meet increasing consumer demand:

    “…existing Wi-Fi spectrum is growing increasingly congested and more must be found to meet skyrocketing consumer demand and enable increased speeds of next-generation Wi-Fi. More extensive use of the 5 GHz band, along with additional unlicensed spectrum in other bands, will permit cable companies and other innovators to continue to provide Americans with new benefits, businesses with new opportunities, and those in need with life-saving connections.”

    The FCC’s proposal fits snugly into its National Broadband Plan that aims to increase access to broadband across the nation. Freeing up more Wi-Fi can help accomplish that, but let’s hope the Commission can get to work on setting up Gigabit networks across the nation as well.

    [h/t: The Hill]

  • Next Generation Kinect To Have Higher Resolution, Larger Viewing Field [Rumor]

    Microsoft’s Kinect was a pretty revolutionary piece of technology. It’s unfortunate that many of the games released for it have turned out to be so bad. That may not change with the rumored next generation Kinect, but the technology is definitely getting a major upgrade.

    VGLeaks, the source behind the recent next Xbox and PS4 specs leak, comes the latest round of leaks concerning Microsoft’s next generation Kinect hardware. We already know that the next Xbox may require Kinect to be plugged in at all times, but this latest rumor gets into the nitty gritty details of the hardware.

    According to the rumor, here’s what we can expect from the next generation Kinect hardware:

  • Improved field of view results in much larger play space.
  • RGB stream is higher quality and higher resolution.
  • Depth stream is much higher resolution and able to resolve much smaller objects.
  • Higher depth stream accuracy enables separating objects in close depth proximity.
  • Higher depth stream accuracy captures depth curvature around edges better.
  • Active infrared (IR) stream permits lighting independent processing and feature recognition.
  • End to end pipeline latency is improved by 33 ms.

    • The field of view for the next Kinect has been increased to 70 inches by 60 inches. That’s a pretty sizable increase from 57.5 inches by 43.5 inches. The resolution has been increased from 640×480 to 1920×1080. The latency has also been decreased from 90 ms to 60 ms.

    All in all, the next Kinect is a substantial upgrade in pretty much every respect. Games utilizing the technology will be able to detect more limited range of movements, and capture more parts of the body. The original Kinect was going to have finger tracking, and that feature may come back in the newest Kinect hardware.

    Of course, all of this is rumor for now. We won’t know anything for sure until Microsoft lifts the veil on its next generation console. The PS4 will be unveiled tonight, however, so Microsoft better show its hand sooner than later.

  • 3Doodler Destroys Kickstarter Goal, Raises Over $500K In A Day

    The folks at WobbleWorks had an idea – a 3D printer reduced to the size of a pen that anybody can use. They went to Kickstarter to ask for $30,000 to fund the idea, and had already raised a little over $70,000 in a few hours. I predicted they would get about $300,000 over the course of a month, but the project has raised double that amount in just a day.

    The 3Doodler has absolutely shattered its initial Kickstarter goal by raising over $500,000 in just a day. As of now, the project has 7,826 people pledging $692,878. Every single tier of 3Doodler, except for the $10,000 has sold out. The team at WobbleWorks have added another 5,000 pens available at either $75 or $99, but these are also going incredibly fast.

    Here’s the latest update from the team:

    The aim of this Kickstarter was to create a first run of 3Doodlers, set the foundations in place to scale from there, and create an early 3Doodler community. Well we’re about 30hours in and we’re pinching ourselves. We are honestly gobsmacked! 3Doodler has now raised over $500,000 and has more than 5,700 backers! Thank you all, each and every one of you.

    We are now announcing a further run of 3Doodlers, and we have expanded the 3DOODLER backing level as well as the COLOR-TASTIC backing level. The main difference is that these new levels, while priced the same, will ship a month later than the previous levels. i.e. NOVEMBER 2013.

    As we have mentioned in the Comments section of our campaign, we purposely chose a production partner that would allow us to start small and then scale up. That is exactly what is happening now. Can we still deliver the first run on time? Yes. Will the additional quantities slow things down or make things harder for us? No. In fact scale helps in this case, as long as we schedule production and delivery accordingly.

    The success of the 3Doodler proves yet again that 3D printing is incredibly popular among consumers when the price is right. Sure, the 3Doodler isn’t technically a “3D printer,” but it’s a close approximation that has exceeded all of my, and I’m sure the inventors’, expectations.

    I won’t be making another prediction for fear of looking foolish yet again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it raised over a million before all of this is over. It’s already half-way there, and there’s still 32 days to go.

    [h/t: The Verge]

  • Watch Yesterday’s HTC One Unveiling

    HTC made it known yesterday that it’s serious about gaining back some smartphone marketshare this year with the HTC One. Unfortunately, only the press was allowed at the actual unveiling, and HTC neglected to livestream the event to all its fans. That bit of oversight has been rectified today.

    The HTC One unveiling is now up on YouTube for all to see. Check out 30 glorious minutes of HTC trying to sell the press, and you, on how it’s latest smartphone is going to take the market by storm. Expect plenty of buzzwords and some ham-fisted acting.

    The HTC One will feature a 1080p 4.7-inch display, a 1.7GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. There’s no price or release date announced for the product yet, but the company is offering a buyback program that will give you the value of your old phone in cash when you buy the HTC One.

    Ah, but where are my manners? You may be short on time, and can’t watch the full 37 minute unveiling event. For those who can’t sit around all day watching executives pretending to be excited about their products, you can watch the condensed highlight reel from the event below.

    [h/t: Droid-Life]

  • Mega Gets 3 Million Users In A Month, Mobile App Coming Soon

    Kim Dotcom’s Mega launched last month with a ridiculous launch party that included a fake FBI raid on Dotcom’s mansion. After the launch, the file-sharing service managed to snag over a million users in just a few days. According to Dotcom, the latest numbers show that Mega continues to grow.

    In a Twitter post yesterday, Dotcom revealed that Mega now has over 3 million users and over 125 million files hosted on the service. He also revealed that Mega would be getting a mobile app soon:

    Dotcom also revealed usage statistics by country, and found that most of Mega’s users come from France, followed by Spain, Brazil and Germany. The U.S. brings up the rear at number five. TechDirt points out that France leading the world in Mega usage is interesting as the country recently put in a “three strikes” system to punish those who pirate content on torrents and P2P networks. They note that correlation is not causation, but it is interesting to think that Mega is becoming a file-sharing haven for those in countries, like France and Spain, that have implemented harsh file-sharing laws.

    As the year goes on, expect Mega to grow even larger with the help of a mobile app and the recent announcement that Mega would be accepting bitcoins as payment. The security and anonymity promised by Mega may also help the file sharing network grow as more countries around the world implement systems intended to punish file-sharers.

    [h/t: The Next Web]

  • Learn To Use Dart With Google Web Toolkit

    Dart, Google’s own programming language for the Web, has a number of fans and proponents that elevate it beyond a simple hobbyist language. Now the company is supporting its users with frequent tutorials on how to get the most out of Dart.

    The newest video on Dart will teach programmers how to use Dart with Google Web Toolkit. Here’s what you can expect:

    In this episode of Dartisans, I’m going to show you a variety of ways to use Dart with Google Web Toolkit. I know that there are a lot of GWT developers out there who would like to give Dart a shot, but they aren’t sure how because they already have a large, successful app that’s written in GWT. I’m going to show you ways to integrate Dart into your existing GWT application without having to rewrite it from scratch.

    To do this, I’ve built a sample application that uses both GWT and Dart. I’ll show you how to setup a development environment so that you can work with both technologies. Then, I’ll show you a variety of ways in which you can get GWT and Dart to interoperate.

  • This Is How It Feels To Wear Google Glass

    Aside from the folks at Google and a few lucky developers, none of us have had the chance to wear Glass yet. We, the consumers, still don’t know how Glass is going to impact our lives, but a recent video from Google gives us a small idea.

    In a new video simply titled, “How It Feels [through Glass],” Google shares a point of view walkthrough of how Glass will work in everyday scenarios. Check it out:

    Now, I don’t think all of us will be doing anything quite as extreme as skydiving or performing barrel rolls in an air plane. What it illustrates, however, is how Glass will greatly impact sharing of information from one person to the next. A pilot can wear Glass, take off in a plane, and then have students watching a live feed from Glass on the ground. They get first hand experience in piloting a plane without having to be on board the vehicle.

    Of course, Google’s views on how people will use Glass are a bit optimistic. We all know that the majority of Glass users will be using the technology to share inane statuses and irreverent jokes.

  • iPhone 5 Took Over The World In Q4 2012

    A recent analysis of the smartphone market in 2012 found that Android dominated with over two-thirds of total smartphone shipments. The wide variety of Android devices ensures that the mobile OS ends up in the hands of more people. Another analysis, however, has found that Apple is still king when you take individual smartphone model shipments into account.

    According to numbers released by Strategy Analytics this morning, the firm estimates that the iPhone 5 was king of individual smartphone shipments and marketshare in the fourth quarter. The firm estimates that the iPhone 5 sold 27.4 million units in the fourth quarter for 12.6 percent of the market. The iPhone 4S came in second with 17.4 million units for 8 percent of the market.

    It wasn’t just purely an Apple game as Samsung’s Galaxy S3 came in third place with 15.4 million units shipped in the fourth quarter for 7.1 percent of the market. What’s interesting is that the Galaxy S3 was beating out both the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 in the third quarter, but lost out to both in the fourth quarter. In fact, both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S saw growth while the Galaxy S3 saw a decline.

    So, why is the Galaxy S3 starting to see decreased demand? Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, says that the S3′s global demand has peaked:

    “Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S together accounted for 1 in 5 of all smartphones shipped worldwide in Q4 2012. This was an impressive performance, given the iPhone portfolio’s premium pricing. We estimate Samsung’s Galaxy S3 was the world’s third best-selling smartphone model and it shipped 15.4 million units globally, capturing 7 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2012. Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has long proven wildly popular with consumers and operators across North America, Europe and Asia. However, global demand for the Galaxy S3 appears to have peaked and Samsung will surely be keen to introduce its rumored Galaxy S4 upgrade in the coming weeks to fight back against Apple’s popular iPhone range.”

    The iPhone 5 and 4S certainly benefitted from the holiday shopping season in quarter four, but Neil Shah, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, thinks Apple’s success can be attributed to a few other factors as well. For one, he cites “generous operator subsidies” as one reason for the devices’ combined success, but also the fact that the iPhone is available in more places around the world compared to Samsung’s flagship product.

    It’s worth nothing that Apple’s dominance is a phase and Samsung is poised to take back the lead when it introduces the Galaxy S4 in a few months. Some reports peg it for a March reveal and an April launch. Apple will then undoubtedly release the iPhone 5S later this year. The device will push Apple to the top yet again. It’s all part of the cyclical nature of popular consumer technology.

    [h/t: Engadget]

  • Windows 7 Still Most Popular OS On PCs Sold In The UK

    Microsoft announced last month that it had sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses. It’s pretty obvious that most of those sale went to OEMs who will be putting the software onto computers going out to market. That’s good news for Microsoft as OS market penetration is largely driven by hardware sales, not software upgrades. Unfortunately, new PC buyers may be sticking to Windows 7 according to a new report.

    PC Pro reports that Windows 7 is still the most popular operating system on PCs sold in the UK. The publication was contacted by several PC system building companies who said consumers are requesting Windows 7 on their machines instead of Windows 8. In fact, one company said that 93 percent of its machines are shipped with Windows 7.

    What may be even worse for Microsoft is that customers who buy systems with Windows 8 are returning the PCs and requesting they be changed back to Windows 7. One particular PC vendor – Computer Planet – said that it’s now offering Windows 7 as the default OS again after Windows 8 failed to catch on.

    So, what’s the major beef people are having with Microsoft’s new OS? It seems that driver issues and the newness of the Metro UI are turning people off. A common complaint seems to be that people can’t figure out how to get around in the new OS. That being said, those same customers like the general look of Windows 8′s desktop mode, but wish it was in a Windows 7 environment.

    Despite all this, the OEMs say that PC sales haven’t been hurt by the general negativity directed towards Windows 8. They feel that most of the complaints are due to the initial shock at the newness of Windows 8, and that most consumers get used to it relatively quickly. The only thing they would suggest is that Microsoft include a guide or tutorial that took consumers through the more intricate features of Windows 8.

    That last suggestion has been echoed by major players in the PC manufacturing business. Samsung, in its decision to not release its Windows RT tablet in the U.S., said that Microsoft needs to do a better job of explaining Windows 8 to consumers. The company has been too busy lately focusing on crazy office parties and pinata slaughter instead of showing consumers how the new OS works.

    Microsoft needs to slow down, and actually show people how Windows 8 works. Show consumers still on Windows XP or Vista how Windows 8 can improve their computing experience. The rumored relaunch of WIndows 8 and the future launch of Windows Blue may give Microsoft the opportunity to do just that.

  • Game Consoles, Phones Make Up The Past 30 Years Of Popular Tech

    What’s popular in consumer technology? If you look at most wanted lists from last Christmas, it seems that tablets and smartphones were all the rage. As it turns out, however, it seems that the most wanted gadgets of our time move in a kind of cycle where one particular product dominates a few years to only concede to something else down the road.

    The cyclical nature of popular tech has been documented in a new infographic from Insurace2go. The information may be popular tech from the UK, but I think you’ll find that it’s largely analogous to popular tech in the U.S. As you’ll see, game consoles and phones have dominated popular tech for the past 30 years with both going in and out of vogue until something new comes out.

    The past few years have been dominated by mobile devices like the iPad and the Galaxy Note, so does that mean that game consoles are going to move back in on their turf? Probably not, unless the next PlayStation or Xbox really wow consumers. I’m with Insuracen2go on this one – the next popular technology will involve wearable computing.

    Game Consoles, Phones Make Up The Past 30 Years Of Popular Tech

  • Blizzcon Returns To Anaheim On November 8

    Blizzard fans were understandably distraught last year when the beloved developer announced that Blizzcon had been canceled for the year. Some feared that the annual show was done for good, but fortunately, that is not the case.

    Blizzard announced today that Blizzcon is coming back in 2013. The show invites Blizzard fans from around the world to the Anaheim convention center on November 8. The event will promises to be bigger and better than ever, with fans of the company’s franchise, except for Lost Vikings, invited to take part in all the fun.

    “BlizzCon gives us a chance to connect with our players and share our latest projects in a very personal way,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Members from all of our gaming communities have helped make this event bigger and better every time, and we look forward to meeting up and celebrating with them in November.”

    Blizzard is remaining mum on the specifics of Blizzcon 2013, but fans can expect to see the latest and greatest games from Blizzard. There might even be some unannounced games shown off as the developer doesn’t really have much beyond the third StarCraft expansion and the codenamed Titan MMO in their official pipeline.

    Those interested in Blizzcon will want to keep their browsers pointed at the event’s official Web site. Tickets to the event in 2011 sold out in seconds, and that’s likely to be true again this year.

  • Miyamoto Becomes A Ghostbuster, Talks Up Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

    The business world will tell you that the Wii U is doomed. After all, the console only sold 57,000 units in January, which is by all accounts pretty bad. That being said, Nintendo is taking it all in stride, and are even having a little fun.

    You may remember Nintendo President Satoru Iwata sporting a Luigi hat last week in celebration of the Year of Luigi. I thought it couldn’t get better than that, but master game designer Shigeru Miyamoto strapped on Luigi’s ghostbusting vacuum, the Poltergust 5000, for an astronomical amount of fanservice in this extended look at Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon.

  • Canonical Is Bringing Ubuntu To Tablets

    Ubuntu is set to take the world by storm this year by coming to smartphones, smart TVs and more desktops than ever before. Now it’s time for Ubuntu to tackle the final frontier.

    Canonical announced today that its bringing Ubuntu to tablets. The Ubuntu tablet combines the best desktop and smartphone UIs have to offer and combines them into a cohesive interface that offers maximum usability. It’s the continuation of Canonical’s philosophy that Ubuntu should remain the same across all devices with only a changing interface to reflect the platform its currently on.

    Check out a quick video tour of Ubuntu for tablets below:

    The most interesting feature of Ubuntu for tablets is the new “side stage” feature that promises to improve multitasking on tablets. Here’s the breakdown:

    Ubuntu’s unique side stage places a phone and a tablet app on the same screen at the same time for amazing tablet productivity. True multitasking comes to the tablet. Take calls in Skype while you work in a document, make notes on the side while you surf the web, tweet while you watch a movie. Or use apps collaboratively – drag content from one app to another for a super-productive day. We’ve reinvented the tablet as a bridge between phone and PC.

    Ubuntu for smartphones will be out in October of this year, but it’s still unknown which territories it will be initially launching in. I would presume that Ubuntu for tablets would be on a similar schedule, but it’s still up in the air at this point.

    That being said, Canonical is inviting developers to start making apps for Ubuntu on phones and tablets for when they become available. You can grab the preview mobile SDK here.

  • Last.fm Open Sources Moost, A C++ Library

    Last.fm may be well known for its Internet radio services, but the company is also breaking into the open source scene. It’s latest release is sure to pleas all the C++ coders out there.

    Last.fm’s Marcus Holland-Moritz announced today that moost, it’s C++ library is now available to all under an open source license. He says that moost has been in development by Last.fm’s MIR team over the past five years, and contains all the tools and utilities they use on the site. It’s based on the boost C++ libraries.

    Moost contains a number of features that programmers will find handy. Here’s some of the features you can expect when using it:

    There are a lot of different things in moost. Some are really simple, yet very helpful in day-to-day work, like the which template that allows you to use pairs (and containers storing pairs) more easily with standard algorithms; or stringify, a function template that turns complex objects into strings. Other parts are slightly more sophisticated: for example, moost contains the framework that is shared by all our backend services, and that allows you to write a daemonisable service with logging, a set of standard options and even a service shell that multiple users can connect to when the service is running, all in a few lines of code.

    As our backend services are inherently multi-threaded, there’s also a bit of threading support in moost. For example, the safe_shared_ptr template is immensely useful for resources that are shared between threads and need to be updated atomically.

    Moritz says that moost also features memory wrapped dataset classes and an abstraction for loading shared objects. Both of which will make it easier to manage resources while building out large datasets.

    You can check out moost for yourself now over at GitHub. Moritz encourages any interested developers to contribute to the project if they have the time.

  • Anonymous Hacks State Department, Leaks Database

    #OpLastResort continues as a branch of Anonymous continues its war against the U.S. government in response to the death of Aaron Swartz. The last major offensive saw Anonymous hacking the Fed and releasing banker records on the net.

    In its latest attempt to get the government’s attention, Anonymous announced that it hacked the State Department . To top if off, the hacker collective also released a database it found while going through the Web site. The database contains the personal information of State Department employees in the U.S. and overseas. The information in the dump includes names, birth dates, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, etc.

    According to Anonymous, this latest hack is not only a continuation of #OpLastResort, but a response to the U.S. arresting and imprisoning members of Anonymous. Here’s the full statement:

    Our reasons for this attack are very simple. You’ve imprisoned or either censored our people. We will not tolerate things as such. You don’t see us going around censoring everything that is inappropriate or we do not like. Basically, you tried to put an end to us and you got owned, there’s nothing more you can say or do. You took away Topiary, Avunit, Neuron, Pwnsauce, lolspoon, Aaron Swartz shall we go on? Heck you think this makes us weak? We are only growing stronger because of the fact that you are forcing us to revolt. When the lions roar you will hear them. And when it’s feeding time you’ll be our dinner.

    Aaron Swartz this is for you, this is for Operation Last Resort.

    We are Anonymous.
    We are Legion.
    We do not forgive.
    We do not forget.
    Expect us.
    #OpLastResort

    The State Department wasn’t the only target of this latest hack. Anonymous also targeted private investment firm George K. Baum and Company. The site was defaced with a link to a pastebin that featured private account information of all the firm’s customers. According to the OpLastResort Twitter feed, this particular hack was made because of the firm’s ties to Stratfor, the private intelligence company that Anonymous hacked into last year.

    Once again, it looks like #OpLastResort won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Anonymous will continue looking for exploits in government Web sites, and publicly hack them for all to see. At this point, it’s not so much about getting any kind of information, but rather just embarrassing the government.

    It will be interesting to see how Obama’s new cybersecurity executive order will affect how the government reacts to attacks from Anonymous. The new rules for information sharing between public and private institutions may just help stop some of these attacks before they happen, but it isn’t likely.

    [h/t: Net-Security]

  • 3Doodler Shrinks A 3D Printer Into A Pen

    3D printers are generally pretty large machines that require multiple components to create the lovely models and prototypes you often see. That being said, the technology required to build 3D printers is becoming smaller, and people are making truly innovative desktop 3D printers. Now two inventors have decided to take it a step further with a handheld 3D printer.

    Say hello to the 3Doodler, a 3D printer “pen” that you hold in your hand. The best way to think about it is a hot glue gun, but it sends out melted plastic through the extruder instead of glue. In fact, it’s pretty much the extruder on a 3D printer without any of the frame so you’re free to create anything you want as large as you want. The only limitation is your own endurance to hold a tiny device for hours on end.

    The best part about the 3Doodler is that it’s cheap. On Kickstarter, the device is going for $75 as part of a limited promotion. It was originally being offered for $50, but the 100 backer limit was quickly filled. Now there’s only a little over a 1,000 of the $75 pens left.

    What is perhaps even more amazing is that the 3Doodler is proving to be one hell of a Kickstarter campaign already. The device has just went up, but it already has over 800 backers. It has also raised more than $71,000 after only asking for $30,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if this project raised over $300,000 in the next month.

    You can grab the 3Doodler for $75 at its Kickstarter page. There are more expensive options that offer the pen alongside a number of other neat awards.

    [h/t: Engadget]

  • Ubisoft Will Release Rayman Legends’ Challenge Mode For Free In April To Wii U Gamers

    After being an early proponent of the Wii U, Ubisoft had seemingly lost the support of the console’s fans after delaying the highly anticipated Rayman Legends until September. Despite the game being done, Ubisoft wanted to release the game across all platforms simultaneously as it now works on getting the game up and running on the PS3 and Xbox 360. To make up for it, Ubisoft said it would release a new demo, but Wii U gamers are actually getting much more.

    Ubisoft announced via Facebook that Wii U gamers will get the entirety of Rayman Legends’ online challenge mode for free starting in April. As the name suggests, this mode will have players competing across various levels in various challenges to see who can reach the top of the leaderboards.

    In further good news, the development team will be using the extra time to add new characters and features into all versions of the game. It’s good to know that the developers aren’t just using the delay to focus on the extra SKUs. Adding new content is a major win for everybody.

    There’s no specific date mentioned for the release of the Rayman Legends challenge mode, but you can expect to see it at the beginning of April. The full game will be released sometime in September.

    [h/t: GoNintendo]

  • Grab Firefox 19 Early Before It Officially Launches Tomorrow

    Mozilla has been hard at work the past six weeks readying Firefox 19 for official launch. That launch comes tomorrow, but you can grab it now if you want to start taking advantage of its incredibly helpful HTML5-based PDF viewer.

    The Next Web found that Mozilla is now publicly hosting the official release of Firefox 19 on its servers. You can grab it for Windows, Mac or Linux. We don’t know what’s new in this version, but it should be similar to what was in the beta.

    Of course, the big addition is the built-in PDF viewer that rids Firefox of its reliance on browser plug-ins like Adobe Acrobat Reader. The plug-in was just recently found to have an exploit that could be used to infect a user’s computer, so Firefox’ addition of an HTML5-based PDF viewer comes just in time.

    The other additions in the beta include a number of new developer tools relating to CSS, debugging and the upcoming Firefox OS. You can check out the beta release notes here. Just expect there to be some differences between this list and the official one released tomorrow.

    Firefox for Android should also be updated to version 19 tomorrow as well. From the release notes, it seems that mobile Firefox users will only be getting a few notable changes such as theme support and support fo Chinese localizations. Lower power phones can also now take advantage of Firefox for Android as the minimum CPU requirement has been dropped to 600MHz. Keep an eye on Google Play tomorrow for the official release.