San Antonio Will Launch The First Bookless Public Library
It turns out, a public library completely free of any physical books in San Antonio, available for all those who live in Bexar,is actually going to open. It will be called “BiblioTech” and which actually loan out devices for two-weeks along with eBooks. No books, whatsoever will be available at the library. In fact, it’s been described as “like an Apple Store”. The brand of e-reader is (as of now) unannounced.
As for anti-theft? The man in charge, Judge Nelson Wolff has a fix for that: “We do have your name, we do have your address. You check it out for two weeks, just like a library book. In two weeks, your e-book goes dead, so you won’t have anything worth keeping.”
Seems like a plan. Via: Giz
Good news from the folks at Mountain View: Google Chrome has now reached version 24, which remedies two dozen software bugs and promises to add some additional speed to sweeten the deal. Specifically from the changelog, there are Flash updates, bug fixes, searchable bookmarks from the Omnibox, and support for MathML. To update, just jump straight into the settings page and let Google Chrome auto-update, taking care of the rest.
Why won’t Samsung release lots and lots of Windows RT tablets in the United States? Because consumers don’t know what Windows RT is. Plus it sucks. Plus it would take tons of marketing dollars to educate them. On top of all of that, people want Windows 8, not a watered-down version of it. In an interview with CNET, Samsung executive Mike Abary stated that, ”When we did some tests and studies on how we could go to market with a Windows RT device, we determined there was a lot of heavy lifting we still needed to do to educate the customer on what Windows RT was,” and furthermore, “We didn’t necessarily attain the price point that we hoped to attain,”
The Pebble SmartWatch, a famous Kickstarter project that raised $10 million for an outstanding number of pre-orders is finally being sent out to the 65,000 Kickstarter supporters. The rest of the units will ship out in 6 to 8 weeks, An added plus of this delays is Pebble added some extra sensors to the watch: a magnetometer and ambient light sensor. That’s on top of the accelrometer, vibrating sensor, Bluetooth 2.1, and four buttons for control. It will interact with an Android phone or iPhone, receiving calls and interacting with other apps, all the while allowing you to customize the watch faces.
Space pioneers are wanted by a Netherlands-based Mars One is seeking a legion of applicants; basically anyone who fits the basic requirements is wanted. The idea is that it’ll begin the selection process in the first half of this year, with contestants potential astronauts whittled down into at least six teams of four, through a combination of votes from ‘a global televised program’ and a team of experts. The catch? The trip is one-way and will take years — if you were 18 when you left Earth, you’d be 28 when you reach Mars. There’s also eight years of training before you embark into space.
So what if all these 11.6-inch Windows 8 tablets with Core i5 to Core i7 processors just don’t cut it for you? And maybe the Nexus 7, iPad Mini, and iPad are just puny? Well, Panasonic announced a 20-inch 4K resolution Windows 8 tablet, which weighs 5.3 pounds and is an incredibly slender 0.4 inches thick. Battery life? Just two hours. Other specs? 4K display (3840 x 2560 pixels), a stylus, a 720p HD camera, a 1.80 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM (though it can be upgraded to 16GB), and a 128GB SSD (plus support for USB and microSD).
The Steam Box is definitely real, according to Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve. In fact, it may exist in different form factors, and one of them is in fact what you see above: a $999 custom PC with a quad-core 64-bit x86-based processor, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, an SSD as large as a terabyte, supports up to three displays and resolutions of up to 4096×216. The motherboard is tiered into three parts so that it can fit into the small cube (which can fit in a human hand), and is upgrade-able as time goes on. It’s only a prototype in its current stage, but in the coming months more work will be put towards the project, and something very materialistic will come out of it: a Steam console.
Google is once again showing its kind side: a free, public WiFi network in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer joined Ben Fried, Google’s CIO, who together made the announcement at 10.30 am Eastern time. The new public network will cover Gansevoort Street and 19th Street from 8th Avenue to the West Side Highway, and will include the Chelsea Triangle, 14th Street Park and Gansevoort Plaza.
Meet the XPERIA Z. It’s everything a phone has never been (at least from Sony): attractive, fast, and up-to-date. There’a a quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, 4G LTE, 5-inch 1080p display, Android 4.1, 2GB of RAM, NFC, is water and dust resistant, 2,330 mAh battery, 16GB of storage (expandable to 32GB via microSD), and finally a 13.1MP rear camera with 2.2MP front-facing camera. Where is it launching? Western Europe and Japan; no exact word on an American release.
Sigma has a tendency to design unusual cameras, and the DP3 Merill is no different. It has a 50mm f/2.8 lens with Sigma’s unique APS-C Foveon X3 sensor, which basucakky stacks three 15.3-megapixel layers on top of each other; so Sigma claims this equates to a 46-megapixel image, though in practice the resulting shots aren’t necessarily comparable to more traditional cameras. Instead, they’re known for their unique color rendering and high quality considering the cameras’ small physical size against other cameras produced by Sony, Nikon, and Canon. No word on price, but expect it to ship this year for close to a grand.