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Walyou

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Can Understand Hand Gestures
LG G Watch Comes to France in June for €199, Will Cost $199 in the US
Brick Game Boy: Literally Rocks
LIX 3D Printing Pen Enables You to Draw in Midair
Skype Offers Free Group Video Calls on Desktop and Xbox One

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Can Understand Hand Gestures

Posted: 01 May 2014 10:18 AM PDT

Following road safety concerns over Google's self-driving cars, the search giant has now announced that the vehicles can understand hand gestures.

As a pedestrian, there's one known danger that you try to avoid any time you step foot outside: cars. Being a bipedal creature made up of flesh and bone, fast driving vehicles have propensity for being able to smush our mortal bodies into paste. It's a reality of crossing the road which is exactly why traffic lights are in place to prevent that from happening. Accidents can still occur however and a lot of the time as road-crossers we have to count on drivers noticing us and being courteous enough to let us pass without hassle or we'll have to go out of our way to request safe passage with a head nod or by extending our arm and showing our palm to the driver. But with Google's self-driving cars, concerns are rising that these established road crossing traditions won't be observed if the cars on our streets become robotic, but thankfully Google have announced that that won't quite be the case.

Revealed in a new update video, Google have revealed that their self-driving cars use cameras on the car's body to identify what's going on on the streets that they're navigating. According to the search giant, the front camera is now able to recognise a myriad of different obstacles including road signs, construction work and, of course,busy crossings. Even cyclists are accounted for in their own special "category" as explained in the vehicle and because of this, Google's cars can understand the hand signals – such as an extended arm to show that they want to change lane – that cyclists use in real life and not just in theory.

The video makes Google's self[driving cars seem promising but it only shows static vehicles and static construction work objects. It's unclear what would happen if, for instance, someone was stood right in the middle of the road. Would they be classed as a pedestrian or would the car simply give up and be unable to categorise them? This is something that Google's team will have to figure out as they're been testing various scenarios that the car might get into so as this seems to be a small update for now, we'll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: Google

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LG G Watch Comes to France in June for €199, Will Cost $199 in the US

Posted: 01 May 2014 06:30 AM PDT

LG France spilled the beans to French site Les Numerique regarding the launch and the price of the G Watch.

A few weeks ago, LG showcased the final design of its G Watch, which had only been featured sparingly in the Android Wear promo video. Now, the French subsidiary of the South Korean tech company apparently revealed the price that the G Watch will carry at launch, respectively €199. Judging by how gadgets are usually priced on the two sides of the pond, it’s easy to assume that in the US LG’s smartwatch will cost $199. The difference of about $76 is represented by taxes, and I will take advantage of this opportunity to thank the EU for making our lives easier… NOT!

The Android Wear promo video showed two smartwatches: a rectangular one that ended up being LG’s G Watch, and a round one, Moto 360, which was spotted in a video a couple of days ago. While I do think that a rectangular case makes much more sense when it comes to smartwatches, a round dial could make the transition from a classic design to a smart device. Despite all that, LG claims that it might still consider launching a rounded version of the G Watch, probably just for the sake of variety, since the functionality would not be altered.

Probably one of the best things about LG’s G Watch is the fact that it does not have any buttons. All of its functions are easily accessed via the 240×280 pixel 1.65-inch touchscreen display.

In terms of memory, the G Watch is not exactly impressive, as it comes with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. Still, that is enough for a smartwatch, especially since the CPU isn’t actually built for multitasking.

If the predicted US price turns out to be true, then we’ll assist to a South Korean battle on the American continent, since the Samsung Gear 2 carries the same price tag. Aside from the slightly different technical specs, there is one important aspect that differentiates the two: LG G Watch runs Android Wear, while the Gear 2 is based on Tizen, Samsung’s proprietary mobile operating system.

Once the G Watch gets launched, a new era will begin for smartwatches, and the only sad thing is that Apple is not joining in… NOT!

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Brick Game Boy: Literally Rocks

Posted: 01 May 2014 06:00 AM PDT

We’ve seen many cases and mods for the Game Boy across the years, but this is the first time we ever see a bricked Game Boy and we’re happy about it.

The old Game Boy has just turned 25 and Vadu Amka decided to do a little something to commemorate it. Remember what a brick the thing was? Well, Amka took this quite literally, and transformed it into a brick wall with a Zelda theme on top displaying both the Triforce and Hylian crest.

Source: Technabob

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LIX 3D Printing Pen Enables You to Draw in Midair

Posted: 01 May 2014 05:30 AM PDT

After showing us what can be achieved with 3D printing, the bright minds of the world felt the need to miniaturize the printers, and this is how the world’s smallest 3D printing pen was created.

LIX is not exactly the first 3D printing pen, as the 3Doodler and others preceded it. However, it seems to be the first one to do the things right. It has a sleek design, weighs only 40 grams and is extremely easy to use and power.

The manufacturers describe the product as follows: “LIX 3D printing pen has the similar function as 3D printers. It melts and cools colored plastic, letting you create rigid and freestanding structures. Lix has a hot-end nozzle that is power supplied from USB 3.0 port. The plastic filament ABS/PLA is introduced in the upper extremity of Lix Pen. The filament goes through a patented mechanism while moving through the pen to finally reach the hot-end nozzle which melts and cools it down. An interesting fact about this light-weight, engineered pen is that these structures can be formed in any imaginable shape.”

In terms of filaments, LIX works perfectly fine both with ABS and PLA, but there’s no word about the price of these. The functionality of the miniature 3D printer is somehow affected by the fact that it can only be powered from a USB 3.0 port. There are plenty of USB wall chargers capable of delivering an equivalent current, but what about people that want to 3D print on the road and they only have their old notebook with them?

At the moment, the developers of the LIX 3D printing pen are running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, but the compensation tiers are pretty odd. Very early birds can get the device for $70, early birds for $120 and regular backers for $135. Unfortunately, both early bird spots are gone, so anyone wanting the 3D printing pen will have to pay the retail price. At press time, people backed the project with more than 5 times the initial goal, so there’s no doubt that the LIX pen will become a reality in December, when the manufacturer promises to deliver the product.

The LIX 3D printing pen only comes in two colors, Black Matte and Grey Matte, so hopefully one of them matches your style, in case you like the concept.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the 3Doodler pen that lets you print 3D figures freehand and the BioPen that helps surgeons 3D print orthopedic implants.

Skype Offers Free Group Video Calls on Desktop and Xbox One

Posted: 01 May 2014 05:11 AM PDT

In an effort to compete with the free Google Hangouts service, Skype is now offering their group video calls for free too.

It's been a good few years for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service Skype. After being bought in 2011 for over $8 billion (the exact figure was $8.5 billion) by Microsoft who were in turn fighting off competition for the company from Google and Facebook, Skype has only gone on to bigger and better things as people use it as a cheaper alternative to talk to their loved ones, business partners and clients even when they can't be reached by a traditional phone call. Needless to say, Skype is more than a bit useful and it's one of the most popular ways of staying in touch with the people you know (or to talk to the people you don't) available right now on the market. It's even been featured on the Microsoft-made console the Xbox One, exercising its practicality once more. However, despite its popularity the fact that many of its useful features are stuck behind a pay wall makes it an expensive but handy alternative so it's good news then that Microsoft have now made group video calls on Skype for desktop and Xbox One free.

Letting you chat with up to 10 other people by group video call, the news of Skype's new freebie will be fantastic Skype users with lots of colleagues to talk to or large families to keep in touch with, especially for those who haven't wanted to venture out into Google Hangout territory. In fact, Google Hangouts, it's being suggested, are a key reason why Microsoft is now offering Skype group video calls for free. Google+ (pronounced Google Plus) has around 100 million active users with G+ accounts required to set up a Google Hangout so with numbers like that it's easy to see why Skype is doing more of an effort to compete with the search engine giant's free competitor.

While this decision to take on the market is good, it's bad news for those who don't use a Windows or Mac desktop or have an Xbox One. However, Skype's announcement post also explained that "in the future, we'll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms – at no cost" meaning that anyone who is keen to get in on the Skype group chat action via a mobile device may soon be able to do so too. We'll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: Skype

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