Is your milk fresh?
March 30, 2010
Cravendale, a UK-based dairy, has created a new milk jug that keeps you informed of whether or not your milk is still fresh. The technology used in the jug was discovered by the company’s R&D team while researching the bacteria that actually turns milk sour, and is essentially a unique PH sensor that’s built into its base. When sour milk is detected, a small LCD display on the outside of the jug changes from ‘Fresh’ to ‘Sour’ and if that doesn’t get the message across, it also incorporates an “innovative alarm system” so there’s no question you probably shouldn’t drink it.
There’s no word on whether or not Cravendale plans to actually put the jug into production, but it’s hoped that the technology could one day drastically reduce the amount of milk that is thrown away because people just aren’t sure if it’s safe to drink or not.
Droid Does… only have 256MB of storage for apps
March 25, 2010
Motorola’s Droid is a sweet piece of hardware that’s hyped to give the iPhone a run for its money, especially since it’s running the new Android 2.0 OS, and works on the Verizon network in the US. We care about software here at Download Squad though, and there’s some dismaying news about the Droid on that front: it has only 256MB for app storage. Seriously.
The Droid reportedly only packs a 512MB ROM (that’s the built-in memory), of which only half is allocated for apps. There are some iPhone games that couldn’t even fit in that teeny-weeny storage space! But at least it’s expandable, right? Um, nope. Google doesn’t support installing apps to the SD cards that Motorola relies on, so developers are pretty limited in terms of file sizes for their Android 2.0 software.
The Droid may have a solid CPU and GPU for gaming, but games that take full advantage of that hardware are likely to need 100 megabytes or more of storage space. That’s going to make things pretty tough until Android 2.0 comes to a device with a lot more pre-installed flash memory.
UPDATE: While it’s true that the Droid only has 256MB for apps, various resources for the apps (graphics, etc.) CAN be stored on the device’s SD cards. The situation isn’t as bad as the numbers seem to indicate at first.
HP adds a sexy transforming video wall to its HQ
March 25, 2010
Visitor’s to HP headquarters in Palo Alto will find quite the sight awaiting them: a motorized art installation titled “Manifold,” which is half video wall and half room divider at the turn of a coin.
The divider-side appears to be a 60-foot, wavy blue wall of fiberglass, but wait until it spins around. All of a sudden you’re confronted with one massive high definition display, which was built for the company by a studio called Tronic. Now the only real question is, who has the coolest video wall?
You can see a video of the Manifold here, and be sure to check it out in our gallery below.
USB storage coming to an Xbox 360 near you
March 20, 2010
Good news for Xbox 360 owners: those USB ports on the front of your console won’t just be for show anymore. I mean, sure, you can do stuff such as charging your controllers with them or plugging in a wireless adapter, but you mysteriously can’t do what a universal port is supposed to enable you to do. Namely: use a USB memory stick to save your files. Instead, you had to rely on Microsoft’s small, overpriced memory unit. Not anymore!
From Joystiq:
Documentation obtained by Joystiq - and subsequently confirmed with two separate sources - reveals that “USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360″ will soon be a reality. The document, authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, states that due to “increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update” will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is purportedly coming in Spring 2010.
Of course, there’s a catch. The 360 won’t let you just hook up another hard drive. You’ll only be able to configure around 16 GB to work with your system. For more than that, you’ll still be at the mercy of Microsoft’s proprietary 360 hard drives, which are, frankly, a rip off.
Now if only Microsoft would stop charging an arm and a leg for its hard drives, we’d be set!
Joystiq, via CNET
OnLive - Launching June 17th
March 10, 2010
One year after it was unveiled at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, OnLive finally has a launch date. Company CEO Steve Perlman announced today at his keynote at the GamesBeat mini-conference at GDC 2010 that OnLive will go live on June 17. The service will initially be available as an application for the Windows and Mac operating systems, with a micro-console that can be attached directly to HDTVs to arrive later on in the year.
OnLive goes live in the lower 48 stats on June 17.
OnLive’s launch will be limited to the contiguous lower 48 United States, and will cost $14.95 per month. According to the OnLive Blog, the first 25,000 thousand people to sign up will have the service fee waived for three months. (To apply, sign up on the official OnLive site.) Multi-month pricing and other promotions will be announced prior to the service’s debut.
OnLive’s monthly fee does not include the purchase price of games themselves, which can be rented or bought from publishers directly at a lower-than-retail price. Publishers supporting the service with PC titles include Electronic Arts, Take-Two, THQ, Ubisoft, Epic, Atari, Codemasters, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. At the DICE Summit last month, Perlman demonstrated both Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 running on the service with minimal lag.
The June launch will only be start of the OnLive rollout. The service will offer 1080p high-definition gaming at 60 frames per second starting in 2011. An international launch is also planned for an undetermined date.
For those unfamiliar with OnLive, the service aims to offer lag-free PC gaming via the Web. The company claims that since the heavy lifting of graphics processing will be done on the service’s servers, it will offer high-definition gaming on any PC or Mac, regardless of graphics card or CPU speed.
The addition of the micro-console will also allow the service to be streamed directly onto televisions, without the need for a standard game console. Perlman sees this as a positive, since OnLive games will not be tied to increasingly antiquated consoles. He promised that the OnLive servers would receive graphical upgrades every six months in order to provide the latest PC graphics.
