Samsung's Milk VR video app, announced Tuesday, marks a tantalizing step forward for virtual reality. The app will let you run full-motion, 360-degree video on the Gear VR headset. Not a movie in a simulated theater environment, like we've seen with Oculus Cinema demos, but a video beamed right to your eyes, bringing VR users ever closer to a real-life experience. Cross safari off the bucket list. Samsung will reportedly provide free video content for the app on an ongoing basis, to keep users coming back for more.
After an interminable year of private alphas and betas and gammas(?), I don't think it's appropriate to smack a score on
The highest praise I can muster for Nvidia GRID is that I sometimes forgot I was even using it. That’s no small feat for a cloud gaming service that streams high-end games to low-powered devices over remote servers. Other efforts, such as OnLive, constantly remind you of the journey its games must take from server to client, with rampant stutters, slowdowns and resolution drops. Nvidia GRID rarely has those problems—at least when the conditions are right. Nvidia has been beta-testing GRID with Northern California residents for about a year, but in November
Kim Dotcom, founder of the file hosting service Mega, is preparing to launch an encrypted video-calling and chat service that will shield its users’ communications from government surveillance. “Mega will soon release a fully encrypted and browser-based video call and chat service including high-speed file transfers,” the entrepreneur known as Kim Dotcom said in a Kim Dotcom is positioning the service as a more secure way to chat and collaborate online free of government surveillance or spying, partly by virtue of Mega being based in New Zealand. Kim Dotcom has been teasing the app for some time, though now it appears nearly ready for prime time.
Three out of three? That could be the score for the U.S. National Security Agency’s cryptographic “most wanted” list of 2012. In January 2012, it saw Internet traffic anonymizing tool Tor (The Onion Router), Linux distribution Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) and disk encryption system TrueCrypt as the biggest threats to its ability to intercept Internet traffic and interpret other information it acquires. Since then,
If you’ve ever seen an episode of Alas, much of that stuff remains science fiction, at least for the moment, but there are plenty of high-tech tools available right now that can help turn your house into a smart-home. And you don’t have to be president of Spacely Sprockets to afford it. In fact, if you already own a smartphone, you’re halfway there. Let’s take a look at some of the surprisingly affordable ways to raise your roof’s IQ.
Google's wearable platform is off to a great start with apps like these.
Its manufacturer ambitiously calls the Ubi—a voice-operated computer—the "Voice of The Internet." It's a small box (measuring 4.75 by 4.75 inches and 1.5 inches thick) designed to plug directly into an electrical outlet. With its integrated microphone and speaker, it looks much like an intercom. Once connected to your home Wi-Fi network, you can use the Ubi to control smart devices with voice commands, access online information and entertainment, get voice alerts for calendar events and incoming mail, and perform other potentially useful tasks. UCIC says Ubi works with smart-home devices such as the
The configuration of the i7 X99 that AVADirect sent us comes as close as any PC I’ve seen to perfectly melding class and gaming flash. I was not alone in my opinion. No fewer than three of the staff here at PCWorld commented on this gaming system’s good looks—a rare event for anything not Apple or thin-and-light. Of course, AVADirect has to share the credit with Corsair for the Graphite Series 760T case, as well as with EVGA for the GeForce GTX980 cards with their glowing neon-green call-outs. I did mention that the i7 X99 is fast, didn’t I? It is. With such a beautiful interior, why use naked DDR4?
We already took a look at the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Like its predecessor, the Chroma is a sleek and durable black keyboard designed specifically for gaming. This is most obvious in its custom-designed Razer Green switches, which (as far as I’m aware) are branded Kailh switches. Razer Greens feature the same tactile click and actuation force (50cN) as Cherry MX Blues, but the actuation point is a bit higher. Cherry MX Blues are traditionally considered good for typing, because you can learn to press keys without bottoming out—striking the key so hard it slams into the bottom of the board, putting strain on your wrists and fingers. However, the low actuation point can be problematic in games because it’s harder to double-tap keys.
The Corsair K70 and K95 RGB are the only keyboard models in this roundup that use Cherry MX switches—a relief for my fingers, after traipsing through Kailh Yellows and Kailh Browns and Romer-Gs and Razer Greens, only to return home to my tried-and-true Cherry Blues. But surprisingly, the real moral of the K70 RGB (and by extension, the K95 RGB) is that switches aren’t everything. While I love Cherry Blues—they make my fingers sing when typing—Corsair makes some drastic missteps on both the hardware and software sides that undermine what should be a fantastic keyboard. The K70 keyboard is a Corsair classic, with a sleek, brushed-aluminum industrial look that stands out from the competition. The K95 is basically the exact same keyboard, except there are three rows of macro keys attached to the left side. And I mean “attached” in the most literal of ways: The K95 looks like someone took a K70 and pasted an extra piece onto it. It’s not very pretty compared to the stripped-down K70, but if you need the dedicated macro keys that’s your prerogative. On the other hand, you could just use Corsair’s software to assign macros to literally any key on the keyboard and save yourself some desk space in the process.
Logitech's G910 Orion Spark is a completely new keyboard with completely new switches, built from the ground up for gaming and full RGB backlighting. As such, it's probably the device where we have the most to talk about because, well, it's entirely unique. Let's start with the design of the keyboard itself, which is weird enough as it is. The G910 is a similar shape to previous keyboards in Logitech's lineup—that is to say, a bit chunky. Even with the smaller of the two wrist rests attached, this thing will take up quite a bit of your desk—thanks to a row of macro keys on the side, another row on the top (above the function row), the dedicated media keys, and a phone dock (more on that later).
Mechanical keyboards are typically such beastly devices, I'm always surprised when I pull one out of a box and it's a dainty little thing. The Rapoo KX fits that bill, occupying a mere 13 x 6 inches of desk real estate thanks to a no-frills, tenkeyless (no number pad) design. For mechanical keyboard snobs needing something on the road, the KX would fit into a backpack easily. And thanks to its attractive brushed-aluminum top and solid plastic casing, you could do so without worrying about its durability. It's also a dual-mode wired/wireless keyboard. Embedded in the back are a MicroUSB jack, a power switch, and then a slot to hold the KX's small wireless USB dongle. As I type this I'm using the KX wired because the battery was low, but there's a lithium battery inside that held about a week's worth of charge for me.
Like the Rapoo KX, the Nixeus MODA will score points with some consumers right out the gate because of its small size. It's not quite as compact as the KX, thanks to a small palm rest and a dedicated Home block, but this is still a dainty model compared to your typical gaming monstrosity. And the Nixeus Moda is a great little device, provided you're looking for a bare-bones mechanical keyboard. You're not going to get many frills here—not even media keys. If you can live without those perks, though, this is a solid (and cheap) device. The Nixeus Moda uses "Brown" switches, but not those made by Cherry. These knock-offs are otherwise the same though, with an actuation force of 45cN and a 2mm actuation point that features a tactile bump instead of the click found in MX Blues. Despite being "the same," I did notice that the Moda has more of a hollow, clacking sound to it than other Cherry Brown keyboards I had lying around, but whether that's due to the switch or due to the Moda itself I can't say.