3d illusion arts: Walyou

Walyou

Paper To iPad Pen helps artist digitalize their work
8 Most Controversial Apps of All Time
Jack White & Google Cardboard to team up for VR performances
Mionix NAOS QG Is a Biometric Mouse for Quantified Gaming
Xiaomi Mi Air Purifier Does Away with Air Pollution
The Pirate Bay down after Swedish police raid their offices

Paper To iPad Pen helps artist digitalize their work

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 10:35 AM PST

Bringing your finely crafted art from paper to the virtual world can still be a pain without the right tools, but this pen is the best tool we’ve seen yet. Say goodbye to headaches.

Technology and art are no longer mutually exclusive and one feeds off of the other, and generate some fantastic synergy between the two. Yet, turning art, doodles, drawings and sketches to digital remains a rather painful, cumbersome process, and some users just prefer drawing on paper first instead of on their tablets. This is the group this $169.95 Instant Transmitting Paper To iPad Pen is aiming to please.

What this pen does is digitize whatever you do on physical paper so it shows up on your tablet screen too, so the author is left with both a digital and a hard copy of whatever they just did. This is useful not only for art, but also for taking notes in class or at a meeting.

The way it works is that It has the pen pair up with a receiver clipped to the top of any surface, and transmits a digital version of each and every trace to a tablet or smartphone.Furthermore, this content can be saved (up to 100) pages at a time and be transferred later, which isn’t bad at all.

Via Reality Info

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Scribble Pen lets you work with 16 million colors and Mininch Tool Pen Multi-tool, an alternative to screwdrivers.

8 Most Controversial Apps of All Time

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 06:00 AM PST

As more and more apps are released, more and more people get offended and in this list we point out some of the most controversial apps of all time.

According to statistics released earlier this year, the Apple App Store on iOS and Google Play on Android are home to over 2.7 million apps between them. And, people have downloaded them over 125 billion times.

With so many downloads there are many opportunities for developers to make money but with so many apps there’s also increased competition. That’s why devs are branching out – sometimes into controversial waters – and often having their apps deleted for it.

It’s these controversial apps that we’ve now collected in this list so you can remind yourself of some of the apps of days gone past (or apps that still exist) that have offended, upset and enraged the masses.

1. Flappy Bird

The app that everybody thinks of when they’re asked to name an app that’s annoyed them, Flappy Bird hit the headlines last year because of its insane difficulty.

The game was simple enough and saw people tap the screen in order to make an aerially challenged bird fly through a series of different sized pipes. However, hitting one of those pipes instantly killed your bird and saw you greeted with a ‘Game Over’ screen for your trouble.

The game’s difficulty caused so much trouble that people began to send Flappy Bird’s creator, Dong Nguyen, masses of hate, eventually leading him to remove the game from stores never to return again. In Flappy Bird’s wake Nguyen has since graced (or plagued, depending on how good you are at it) us with Swing Copters which is even harder than the game before it

2. Bang With Friends

Bang With Friends requires you to have two things: a Facebook account and some friends. And, as the name would suggest, you also have to be 18 or over to use this one.

A play on Words With Friends, the popular Scrabble app, Bang With Friends’ aim isn’t for some word based funtimes but to help friends hook up with one another. It gives you a list of your Facebook friends and lets you select which friends you’d like to ‘bang’. If they’ve said they want to ‘bang’ you too then it will let you know and then the two of you can message one another, presumably to set up an appropriate time to do just that.

3. Snapchat

Also relating to carnal desires is Snapchat. Most people just use it for pulling silly faces and making funny, soon to be deleted videos, but plenty of other people have used it as a multi-media sexting app.

Because of the way that Snapchat’s photos and videos work, users get to stay relatively anonymous. There’s also little risk of someone accidentally discovering your nude photos (or whatever innocence images you’ve sent) as although Snapchat allows users to screenshot images or photos, it doesn’t automatically save them for you.

Not only this but the recent instant messaging addition to Snapchat has only furthered sexting potential rather than taken it away.

4. Tinder

Similar to Bang With Friends at number two, Tinder is an unorthodox dating app. Most people wouldn’t date someone they weren’t attracted to and so, for want of a better phrase, Tinder helps you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, with the app telling you who’s nearby and what they look like before giving you the option to unceremoniously ditch or ‘like’ their photo, Tinder was always going to be controversial. However, the controversial bit of software has also led to 50 engagements and a whopping 75 million matches so it must be doing something right.

5. Exodus International

Much less can be said about this one in terms of ‘doing something right’ though as the aims of the Exodus International app are strictly nefarious.

If you’ve not heard of Exodus International then you’re one of the lucky ones but their mission statement is to use Christianity to “minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality.” So with awful anti-gay views it was always probably that the Exodus International app would be the same.

The app allowed gay users to seek a ‘cure’ for their homosexuality and become heterosexual instead. As if that wasn’t bizarre and offensive enough, Apple awarded it a 4 during the review process to signal that it contained ‘no objectionable content’.

Plenty of people disagreed however, and after over 20,000 of them signed a petition against it, the Exodus International app was taken down.

6. Playboy

The biggest selling point of Playboy is its nudity so when Playboy boss Hugh Hefner claimed that the magazine would soon be coming to the App Store in all of its uncensored glory, plenty of people got excited. Less excited though, was Apple.

Apple keeps a firm ‘no nudity’ policy on the App Store and any apps found to violate that rule will be shown the door. Unwilling to make a lone exception for Playboy, the publication was forced to seek other means for its mobile presence.

7. Big Brother Camera Security

Nowadays, high-end smartphones will set you back by several hundreds of dollars so as a smarpthone user you would want to do everything in your power to stop anyone from stealing it, right?

That’s what Big Brother Camera Security aimed to help with, with the app taking a photo every single time someone unlocked your phone.

While it seemed like a brilliant idea on paper, Apple was forced to shut the app down when it was discovered that the developer had been harvesting user passwords.

8 Buzzed and Tipsy

Finally, Buzzed and Tipsy was an app that wasn’t just controversial but was potentially dangerous and life-threatening too.

The entire aim of Buzzed and Tipsy is to allow intoxicated users to circumvent police breathalyser checks. It would keep you updated of all of the police stops and checkpoints so that if you were drunk or a little bit tipsy, you wouldn’t have to face a police officer and risk getting your license taken away.

The problem with this is that those checks – no matter how much we hate them – are there for a reason. Drunk driving is illegal and can put people’s lives in danger. Apple wasn’t about to allow these risks and possibly contribute to road accidents and alcohol related deaths and so they soon nixed the app after it was released.

Have a controversial app that you think we should have mentioned? Leave a comment and let us know.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories, Third-Party Android Apps Will Soon Use 'OK, Google' for In-App Searches, Apple Reveal Why They Reject So Many Apps

Jack White & Google Cardboard to team up for VR performances

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 04:00 AM PST

Modern rock legend Jack White won’t shy away from technology, so his next videos will be in full 360 degrees and 3D thanks to Google Cardboard.

It’s been a non-stop road to the top for Jack White ever since the White Stripes meteoric rise to fame. Countless bands and projects later, White sees no reason to stop innovating, and the latest experiment he’s conducting has to do with 3D and virtual reality. By working along with Jaunt to create immersive performances in full 3D, White & co. are now ready to launch 360-degree, live videos of two of his recent shows. The songs in question are “Freedom at 21″ and “Ball and Biscuit” from The Bleacher Theater at Fenway Park as well as “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” from Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

If you’re interested in Google Cardboard but don’t have your own yet you can download the specifications here, or straight up buy one from that very same page. They retail for $20-$25 USD, while the app runs on most Android devices and can be downloaded at Google Play.

Via Engadget

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Archos: a set of VR glasses that costs less than $30 USD and Oculus VR's 'Crescent Bay' Prototype Hints at Soon-to-Come Retail Version.

Mionix NAOS QG Is a Biometric Mouse for Quantified Gaming

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 12:45 PM PST

The only purpose of biometric components in mice and other peripherals was to help users authenticate, but Mionix looks to take things to a new level with the NAOS Quantified Gaming mouse.

The concept behind this ambitious project is to get a precise idea about how gamers are feeling while shooting others up (or when being shot at), and the impact of body reactions on their performance.

It may not sound like much, but in time, game developers might learn to adapt the action according to how gamers react. On the other hand, Quantified Gaming is all about noticing where things went wrong and what can be done to make them better.

The four factors that are taken into consideration for Quantified Gaming are heart rate, skin response, actions per minute and movement data. The first two are obviously captured using biometric sensors, while the other ones rely on different counters. All the stats are displayed using a transparent overlay, so that gamers are aware at all times of how they are performing.

Skin reactions, or in other words the amount of perspiration produced while gaming, could point out the moments when gamers were under a lot of stress. Learning how to react better could help gamers improve their stats.

That being said, not all gamers are excited about this biometric mouse. Some of them expected dynamic DPI depending on stress levels, while others claimed that they don’t need something to tell them when they’re stressed, as they’re all aware of that. There even are gamers who find the whole concept ridiculous, as they see no point in their mouse measuring their heart rate. Next thing you know we’re strapped to machines that scan our brains and measure our blood pressure while gaming. Oh, wait! Is that a thing, already?

Mionix Labs have turned to Kickstarter to crowdfund this mouse. The approach may seem a bit unusual for a well-established company, but on the other hand, what better way to measure the demand than by launching a crowdfunding campaign and see whether the funding goal is reached or not. Speaking of funding goals, the project has 33 days to get to $100K, and so far it’s 30% there. Pledging $89 will get you a NAOS QG in July 2015, supposing that the campaign is successful.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the SteelSeries Rival gaming mouse, or the Logitech G302 Daedalus Prime gaming mouse.

Xiaomi Mi Air Purifier Does Away with Air Pollution

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 12:13 PM PST

After dethroning Samsung as China’s first and foremost smartphone vendor, Xiaomi launched a lot of gadgets, the latest being the Mi Air Purifier, a welcome addition to the Mi Smart Home Appliance Family.

Publicly announced yesterday, the Mi Air Purifier comes to help us with yet another aspect of our lives that seems to have gotten out of hand, recently. The quality of the air we breathe deteriorates with each passing day, and indoor air often contains up to 10 times more pollutants than the outdoor one. Xiaomi deserves applauses for launching such a product, seeing how China, the home country of this company, is the 13th most polluted country in the world.

Mi Air Purifier is efficient in many ways, the small space it occupies being one of them. While the device is undeniably tall, its footprint is no larger than an A4 sheet of paper.

To clean the indoor air, the Mi Air Purifier employs a system made of 3 distinct filters: a pre-filter, a HEPA filter and a carbon one. When all of these get combined, the resulting air is allergen free and much cleaner than before.

Speaking of efficiency and effectiveness, Mi Air Purifier has a debit of 10.000 liters of air per minute, or 460 m3 per hour. Since the manufacturer claims that this is enough for purifying the air in an up to 48 m2 area, I’d say that the device is good enough for small apartments and offices or conference rooms. Anything larger than that and you may need to buy more of these.

As any good smart home device out there, the Mi Air Purifier comes with a companion app that enables you to schedule it, control its speed and monitor air quality in real time.

Check out the following video to get an idea about how the Mi Air Purifier looks and works in real life:

The Mi Air Purifier will be available for RMB 899 (approximately USD $145), while the filter will carry a price tag of RMB 149 (around USD $24). Assuming that this product gets the necessary certifications to be sold in Europe and the US, expect the price to be a tad higher, as shipping and other costs will be added to the bill. Regardless of the price, let’s just hope that the Mi Air Purifier won’t end up being a China-exclusive product, as the Mi TV 2 currently is.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Xiaomi’s iHealth $32 Android-compatible blood pressure monitor, or the Xiaomi Mi 4 and Mi Band.

The Pirate Bay down after Swedish police raid their offices

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 11:42 AM PST

The Pirate Bay, arguably the Internet’s biggest source of torrents has been taken offline after the Swedish police raided their Stockholm offices.

The torrenting world took a hit this week after the Sweddish police seized servers, computers, and other equipment from The Pirate Bay, which has been rendered offline ever since. The reason? Protecting intellectual property, as they accuse them of enabling piracy.

Although technical problems and downtime happens a lot with this type of website, every time one goes offline users hold their breath and wonder if the site will ever return. That’s exactly what happened to The Pirate Bay, as the site disappeared offline, with the police raid being confirmed afterwards.

While the exact location of the raid and targets have not been revealed, we know the national police IP chief is involved, so it must be quite an operation as it is quite early. Furthermore, The Pirate Bay was far from the only site to go down as EZTV, Zoink, Torrage and the Istole tracker are also experiencing downtime that might or not be related.

Via Torrent Freak

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Bittorrent's Bleep is the Secure Chat App You're Looking For and Hollywood Launches 'Where to Watch' In Effort to Fight Piracy.