Whatever Google can do, Amazon can do... too? Sure seems it, as the latter is celebrating a rather momentous occasion by giving back to the people that have brought it this far: you (and you, and you!). The Amazon Appstore for Android has officially been alive and kicking for 12 months, and Bezos and co. are slashing prices for a week instead of tossing one forgettable party. We're told to expect rock-bottom rates on iconic titles such as Fruit Ninja, Wolfram Alpha, Splashtop Remote Desktop, Dr. Seuss's The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, TuneIn Radio Pro, TETRIS, PAC-MAN, The Lost City, MONOPOLY, AccuWeather Platinum and more. Birthday deals start today with one of the top paid apps, Plants vs. Zombies, at 67 percent off, and you can expect to see more in the coming days. Crack open that dusty wallet and hit the source link, vaquero.

Continue reading Amazon Appstore for Android celebrates a year of life, deals for a week

Amazon Appstore for Android celebrates a year of life, deals for a week originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don't think Roku is sitting back on its laurels after rolling out a slew of new hardware including the Roku 2 family and the new, low end Roku LT. As promised, it has issued a firmware update enabling new gaming options including Pac Man:CE, Galaga, and Angry Birds Seasons. Even if you're committed to Roku's hockey pucks as purely video streamers, there's a new firmware update to correct, among other things, issues that caused a darker than normal image on some displays, WiFi performance, boot performance, readiness for HBO Go, and subtitles on Netflix. Check out Roku's blog for the full list of fixes or just hit the software update section in your settings menu to make sure you have the latest software.

Roku adds more games, cleans up the PQ on its latest streamers originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Logitech unveils suction cup joystick for the iPad (video)

Logitech unveils suction cup joystick for the iPad (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not Working Films has re-envisioned the arcade classic Pac-Man as a ride down a bleak stretch of highway. It's like if Namco directed Vanishing Point — the only Pac-aphernalia more surreal than this is the 1982 Pac-Man Christmas Album. More »

Enabling surfers to play Pac-Man instead of actually initiating the search they showed up to complete? Taking a stroll through an episode of Burn Notice? Throwing internet on a magical Indian bus? All relatively normal things from one Google, Inc., but it seems that Larry Page's deadpan demeanor is actually covering up quite the character. During the outfit's recent attempt to outbid the likes of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony for a sliver of Nortel's coveted wireless patent portfolio, Reuters is reporting that Google's plays were... less than conventional. Reportedly, the company bid $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128, better known by mathematicians as Brun's constant and Meissel-Mertens constant, respectively. Funnier still, Google decided to offer $3.14159 billion (you know, pi) when the bidding reached $3 billion. One of the unnamed sources summed up the bizarreness quite well:

"Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers. It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi. Either they were supremely confident or they were bored."

Or, perhaps they're just supremely awesome?

Google bids pi for Nortel's wireless patent stash, brings comedy to places you never thought possible originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 20:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace is now home to more than 25,000 applications, according to the app tracking website WindowsPhoneAppList. That’s a rapid jump from the 18,000 applications that were available in May but it’s still a far cry from the competing app stores offered by Apple and Google. The Android Marketplace is populated with more than 200,000 applications, and Apple said in May that its iTunes App Store boasts more than 500,000 apps. The top-5 paid apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace are all games. Angry Birds is the most popular download, followed by Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1, Plants vs. Zombies, Doodle Jump, and Pac Man Championship Edition DX. Microsoft has yet to officially announce having reached the milestone.

[Via TNW]

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Think your body's a temple? Turns out it's actually just the antenna the temple's staff uses to watch football when they're done praying. A group of engineers from Microsoft Research showcased a technology at Vancouver's Conference on Human Factors in Computing that offers gesture-based control on a scale that could make the company's Kinect controller downright laughable. The team demonstrated how it could harness the human body's reception of electromagnetic noise to create gesture-based computer interaction that does away with the need for a camera -- though a receiver is worn on the body (the neck, in this case). The system uses the unique signals given off in different parts of the home to help measure the interaction, effectively turning one's walls into giant control pads, which can regulate things like lighting and the thermostat. Hopefully games, too, because we can't wait to play Pac-Man with our bedrooms.

Microsoft motion controller concept kicks sand in Kinect's puny face originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 May 2011 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here's what you're going to do when your bored at work for the next few months: The World's Biggest Pac-Man is a brower-based version of the classic blown up to epic proportions. The game connects thousands of user-created levels like tiles to create a single immense map. More »

The tabletop arcade market isn't exactly a crowded one these days, and for the most part we'd say that's for good reason -- remember those Pac-Man-induced neck spasms? Then again, most arcade tables don't look like this. The Stealth console system from the aptly-named Arcade Tables offers 60 classic games, including Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Galaga, in a high gloss cocktail table, sporting an HD LCD screen with an 89-degree viewing angle, built-in speaker system, and two-player controls. Okay, so the thing costs $3,300, which is more than a touch too rich for our blood, but wouldn't it be nice if more throwback consoles looked a little more, well, Stealth-y.

Arcade Table's Stealth brings high design, crazy price tag to tabletop arcade originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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111 human pixels. Countless colored t-shirt changes. Weeks of planning. That, some homemade bleep bloops, and four long hours in Baden, Switzerland's Trafo cinema will get you one incredible stop-motion game of human Pac-Man. More »

With just a roll or two of painters tape, some patience, and a willingness to forfeit the respectability of their apartments (except, maybe, from a single perspective), some brave souls have created a very impressive collection of tape-based illusions.

Earlier today, Boing Boing posted this neat Back to the Future-inspired piece featuring an impressively detailed DeLorean rendered with painters tape. Kudos to YouTube user Wablamo for immortalizing everyone's favorite time traveling automobile in such an appropriately mind-boggling medium.

But the true hero of the anamorphic painters tape illusion is a YouTube user who goes by the name of BrussPup. I've watched BrussPup evolve over these last few weeks from his first experiments in the form—when he was, indeed, just a pup—up through our current moment in which BrussPup stands as a titan of tape-based illusions.

But let's start back with his humble beginnings. BrussPup's first piece, "X Room Illusion!," was a relatively simple undertaking but it betrayed the artist's natural ability for this particular endeavor:

A week later, we were treated to "Crazy Cube Illusion!," a more complex, confident effort that garnered a corresponding increase in YouTube views and blog notoriety:

Emboldened, BrussPup quickly offered up his next piece, "Pac-man Illusion!," which was noteworthy for spanning all the way down his hallway and incorporating a piece reflected by a mirror, which just piled extra mind-boggling on top of the regular mind-blogging to which we had grown accustomed:

BrussPup's most recent piece, "Nintendo Illusion!," is certainly his most ambitious effort to date. In this illusion, which took BrussPup fifteen hours to complete, blacklights and white paper were employed to create a glowing Nintendo controller:

There's no telling what's next in the world of tape-based anamorphic illusions. Has BrussPup retired his tape roll forever? Will Wablamo usurp his title as preeminent anamoprhic illusionist? We'll just have to wait, squint our eyes, scratch our heads, and see. [BrussPup's YouTube Channel and Boing Boing]

All this time you thought Pac-Man was a harmless game. This artist's rendering, built entirely in tin cans, shows you the terrifying reality 8-bit graphics couldn't.

Besides being an impressive structure, this can memorial reminds us of the horror Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde have faced daily for almost 30 years. Hopefully the day will come when they can stop running. [Walyou]