Tuesday, 24 September 2013
86,000 square miles of Great Britain meticulously recreated in Minecraft
3D printer duplicates paintings down to the last brush stroke (video)
Beyond Kinect: Is This Controller the Future of Gaming?
Hackear el TouchID del iPhone 5s, paso a paso
«Trivial», dijo Starbug – el hacker que ha ganado el premio.
Mejor que la gente lo use solo por comodidad, que no por seguridad (…) No critico a Apple, pero lo anuncian como «seguro» y sabían perfectamente que no lo es y que alguien acabaría hackeándolo. Desde luego, es mejor usarlo [Touch ID] que no usar ni PIN ni nada.
(Vía Ars Technica.)
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/seguridad/hackear-touchid-paso-a-paso.html
Sixense's Stem motion tracker may get Android and iOS support through stretch goal (video)
Una ilusión visual especialmente potente y alucinógena
Esta ilusión visual es una versión modernizada de otra que publicamos en la noche de los tiempos, recreada en alta resolución y diseñada meticulosamente según dicen para ser más alucinógena todavía. Es muy sencilla y produce un efecto divertido a la par que asombroso –quizá un poco mareante para algunos– así que lee estos consejos antes de empezar:
- Si eres de los que se marea fácilmente, tienes algún tipo de epilepsia o similar, o simplemente no te gusta experimentar cosas raras que pueden resultar flipantes (aunque esta es más bien divertida), ni lo intentes. De todos modos, mejor que hagas el «experimento» sentado.
- Esta diversión no es un susto, es simplemente una ilusión visual que juega con tu percepción visual y tu cerebro.
- Tienes que ponerla a pantalla completa y saber que «funciona» mejor en alta resolución [icono de la ruedecida de YouTube].
- Simplemente pon el vídeo en marcha y quédate mirando fijamente al centro, donde aparecerá un texto en inglés letra a letra que de puedes aprovechar para leer y concentrarte. La duración es de unos 60-70 segundos.
- Cuando finalmente acabe la música y se oiga una voz, mira a tu alrededor.
- ¡FLIPA!
El efecto puede durar 5 o 10 segundos, quizá hasta 20 o 30 según las personas y el momento. Puedes hacer pruebas y mirar lejos, cerca… Seguramente no es buena idea repetirlo muchas veces seguidas, pero tú verás. Si algún efecto visual está cerca de hacer parecer Matrix el mundo que nos rodea, seguramente es este.
- Sea Sickness: ¿Se mueve, no se mueve?
- La ilusión óptica de la habitación y las niñas (del documental Brain Story)
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/juegos-y-diversion/ilusion-visual-potente-alucinogena.html
Aereo to roll out its TV streaming service in four new cities
9 Lifelogging Apps to Log Personal Data
Apple Updates iMac With New Intel Processors, Graphics
iMessage unofficially comes to Android, needs a big health warning
Nokia's Internships Lens uses AR to help find your next unpaid college gig
Babbel's subscription-based language learning apps arrive on the iPhone
3Doodler pen gets safety feature, attaches to CNC arms to fulfill its 3D printing potential
Apple updates iMac with Haswell chips, available today starting at $1,299
iSketchnote Makes Digitized Copy of Work on Paper
Majority of medical apps won't be FDA regulated
Meet Studio, The App That Launched A Million Designers And Counting
There’s no doubt that photo-sharing is hot, but among the hundreds of services out there tackling the space, there hasn’t been an app that has made a splash in photo-sharing in this post-Instagram world. Until Studio.
In one month on the App Store, Studio has hit 1 million downloads with over 1.3 million designs published and 1.9 million social shares generated. But what does Studio do?
Studio lets users lay designs, text, borders, etc. onto photos and share them to various websites. That isn’t all that exciting on its own, but there is also a collaboration feature that’s largely unexplored in the land of social. On Studio, you can remix other people’s designs by swapping out the base photo with one of your own, and then re-share the design.
There are controls for just about anything, with options to rotate and crop the photo, add filters, adjust brightness and saturation, as well as adding the aforementioned text, borders and designs.
For example, my sister could share a photo of herself on the beach with a special border and the text “Hang Ten.” I could then remix that photo and place the same border and text on a picture of my 10 toes hanging over the edge of a surfboard. If I surfed.
“You see, having design software alone doesn’t make it easy to produce great designs – but, if you can piggyback off creative friends with the remix feature you can produce designs above your natural ability,” said founder Joe Wilson. “This is how everyone will become a designer, just like everyone’s now a photographer.”
Studio doesn’t want to compete with Instagram or any other social network, seeing itself as a place for designers at all levels to express creativity. In fact, Studio designs can be shared to Instagram.
Where the UI is concerned, Studio has a bit of a task on its hands. Power designers will enjoy the extended feature set of Studio, while newbie designers or users can explore these tools to learn more. However, it could be slightly overwhelming for those of us who are used to slapping a filter, or maybe a blur effect, on a photo and calling it a day.
Wilson explained that the company is well aware of the complexity of broadening these tools to be accessible to experts and the average Joe, but it’s something the company is working on vigorously in order to find that “sweet spot.”
So far, the company’s shown real traction, with $800k in investment from CrunchFund*, SVAngel, Kickstart Fund, Peak Capital and others, reserving around $200k for hyper vertical investors.
In terms of a business model, Studio will start by offering in-app purchases for specialized design packages. According to Wilson, designers are emailing the company daily to submit design packs to Studio. The company splits revenue from the in-app purchases with designers, and is currently in the process of setting up a system for designers to seamlessly submit their designs.
However, there is an interesting opportunity to introduce native advertising to the platform. Rather than throw banner ads up within the app, Studio plans to let brands create their own design packs which can be promoted, and then used by designers. For example, Nike could create design packs with “Just Do It” slogans and “Swoosh” branding, and then users can upload pictures of their own sport skills to couple with those designs.
Brand-created design packs will be automatically hashtagged, and that hashtag will be included in exports to other social networks.
It’s a powerful form of user-generated content marrying advertising.
To learn more about Studio, check out the app on the Apple App Store.
*Disclosure: CrunchFund, one of Studio’s investors, was started by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who co-founded TechCrunch
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/cBJQqALPaRY/
With $3B Under Management, Simplee Lands $10M To Bring Medical Bill Payments Into The Smartphone Era
In 2009, Tomer Shoval went on vacation with his family to Mexico, which unfortunately ended on a sour note — and one with which many travelers can empathize — they all got sick. Back in the U.S. several months later, Shoval and his wife started receiving a series of invoices and summaries of benefits, which seemed to add insult to injury. The bills were expensive, the invoices were complex, and what their insurance covered and what it didn’t was confusing.
Frustrated and beginning to get the sense that he wasn’t alone, Shoval quit his job eBay (where he was an executive) and co-founded Simplee with Roberto Rabinovich and Tom Tsarfati to help both patients and healthcare systems understand and manage healthcare expenses — from the comfort of their smartphones.
Fast forward to 2013, Simplee is tracking and managing more than $3 billion in patient medical expenses and now processes “tens of millions” in patient payments each year, Shoval tells us. Since launching in 2011, the startup has raised $7.8 million from investors like Greylock IL, The Social+Capital Partnership and Embarcadero Ventures, and today, with adoption continuing, Simplee is announcing that it has adding $10 million in Series B financing, led by Heritage Group. Existing investors, Social+Capital and Greylock IL, also contributed to the round, bringing the startup’s total investment to just under $18 million.
Shoval attributes the raise, and the startup’s growth over the last two years, in part, to the rise in consumer-driven healthcare in the U.S. People are increasingly choosing insurance coverage that comes with the pain of high deductibles, which means that patients have begun to pay of the cost of healthcare out of their own pockets. In fact, Shoval says that the average family in the U.S., on top of the cost of insurance, pays an additional $4,000 every year.
Increasingly, patients are confused what exactly they’re paying for and why, while, on the other side, hospitals, practices and care providers have to deal with collecting a growing share of costs directly from these confused patients — rather than insurance companies. To help consumers deal with the hassle of confusing healthcare payments, Simplee launched a platform that combined the financial management tools of Mint.com with a mobile wallet to make the process easier to manage, to track visits, monitor benefits and pay their bills online.
In addition to allowing users to track expenditures by each family member, the app also acts as a payment platform so that users can pay their bills direct, link their spending accounts and alert them to problems with billing — a huge value-add considering the changes that Obamacare will bring to this space. Today, the app offers coverage for 80 percent of insurance plans in the U.S., and Simplee continues to work to expand the list of insurance providers it supports, the co-founder says.
Another factor that has contributed to growth on the business side was the launch of SimpleePAY earlier this year — a B2B-style payment and loyalty platform that gives hospitals the ability to more easily distribute and collect bills, texting and emailing patients simple URLs instead of sending out printed versions. The goal was to enable hospitals to access the same kind of medical wallet it had made available to consumers, giving them a more robust set of features through which they could cut costs, increase revenues and deliver new features, along with a more modern billing experience.
The startup is already working with partners like El Camino Hospital in Mountain View to enable patient payments online, and today, it announced that Emergency Medicine Associates — the largest provider of emergency room services in Washington D.C. — will be deploying SimpleePAY as well.
In the coming months, Simplee hopes to continue expanding its roster of SimpleePAY customers, leveraging its new strategic investment from the Heritage Group — an organization that represents hundreds of hospitals across the U.S., investing in solutions that seek to “reduce cost, improve outcomes and increase the efficiency of healthcare delivery.”
With the new funding under its belt, Shoval says that Simplee will look to significantly expand its team of 30, and continue to invest in innovation and growing sales and marketing around SimpleePAY, which has become its chief source of revenue. But, in the end, he says, Simplee will look to stick to its core mission, which is helping both patients and healthcare providers to reduce the complexity of healthcare payments — even as Obamacare makes that job all the more difficult.
For more, find Simplee at home here.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/h0DBZlb1W5U/
Western Digital refreshes MyBook external HDDs, offers 4TB for $180
Boeing gives retired F-16 fighter new life as a drone (video)
California lets kids erase 'Bieber Fever' phase from online past
How to Create Tilt-Shift in Photoshop
¿Cuánto vale BlackBerry?
En Quartz, a raíz de la oferta de 4.700 millones de dólares hecha por Fairfax para comprar BlackBerry: Cheat sheet: Here are the bits of BlackBerry investors want to flip for a profit ,
[Valor en dólares de] BlackBerry troceada, según los analistas
- Negocio de terminales¹: 0
- Promoción de Alicia Keys: 0
- Servicio de mensajería BBM²: 1,2 millardos
- Efectivo disponible en el banco: 2,8 millardos
- Patentes: 1 millardo —aunque los cálculos varían entre 2,25 y 5 millardos
Al parecer la marca BlackBerry no vale nada, o no lo suficiente. Raro.
1. Aunque se le podrían dar todavía algunos meses de cortesía antes de darlo por muerto.
2. Mucho a pesar del fiasco que ha sido el no-lanzamiento de las versiones para iOS y Android. De WhatsApp, que es «casi universal» o que al menos «lo utiliza la gente», se habló de una oferta por parte de Google de 1 millardo.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/tecnologia/cuanto-vale-blackberry.html
Line messaging app update adds distinctly Vine-ish Snap Movie feature
Flu-fighting teenager takes home top prize at Google Science Fair 2013
IndieGameStand Launches Online Store And Steam Competitor With Democratized Access For All Indie Devs
Buying indie games online can be a hit-or-miss experience, often involving some hunting, but IndieGameStand has just launched a new centralized online store where you should be able to access just about anything you want to, given some time. Initially, IndieGameStand started off as a sort of flash secret sale club for indie gaming software, offering a specific title at any given time on a “pay what you want” model.
Now, it’s offering a full-fledged store, similar to Steam, but with a very different underlying mechanic and guiding philosophy. Steam has its Greenlight program, which makes indie titles vie with one another and essentially prove marketability before they get offered on its storefront, but IndieGameStand tells Escapist it will offer up its platform to any and all indie devs who want to participate. The entire process, from setting up an account to submitting games to getting them listed, can all happen with in single day.
IndieGameStand co-founder Mike Gnade told Escapist that their platform supports games at either the extreme alpha stage, or in ready-to-ship condition, and there’s another difference, too: Setting sale prices and durations are completely at the discretion of developers, which means that while the company itself isn’t planning to do broad, sweeping Steam-style sales, groups of developers could theoretically coordinate and offer discounts at the same time to achieve the same effect.
The IndieGameStand will still offer “pay what you want” deals, which pay 70 percent to developers, as well as 10 percent to a charity of the developer’s choosing and 20 percent to IGS itself, but the new store has a slightly different split, with 75 percent paid to devs and 25 percent paid to IGS. Steam and GOG both offer 70 percent to devs, while the Humble Store, which doesn’t actually have a consolidated storefront, offers a best-in-class 95 percent to devs, according to Fez’s Phil Fish.
That said, there is a launch sale that’s 14 titles strong going on right now, to celebrate the store’s debut. All told, there are 94 different games on IndieGameStand at launch, including celebrated recent indie hits like Proteus. If you’re looking for an indie gaming fix, you could always try Steam or GOG, but IndieGameStand is a great new option that will probably draw a lot of top-notch content.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/OUOn9vyJRTw/
eBay announces click and collect for UK retailers, partnering with Argos for 'collection points' for merchants without premises
Archos GamePad 2 outed with quad-core CPU, higher-res display
La física de los satélites y el papel que juega la gravedad para mantener sus órbitas
La gente de Astra explica en este vídeo cómo la gravedad mantiene «atrapados» a los satélites que orbitan la tierra. El vídeo es parte de una miniserie llamada cómo funcionan los satélites que es bastante divulgativa y entretenida de ver.
(Vía The Kid Should See This..)
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/fisica-satelites-gravedad.html
ZBoard launches crowdfunding campaign for its San Francisco Special, pre-orders start at $1199
China said to be unblocking sites like Facebook, Twitter and the NYT, but only in a small part of Shanghai
