The 37th anniversary of a video game — even a classic like Breakout — isn’t something most would ordinarily celebrate in any major way. But Google, as we’ve seen, isn’t one to pass up an opportunity to inject a bit of fun into its websites, and it’s now turned in a particularly inspired easter egg to commemorate the landmark Atari title. Hit the source link below or do an image search for “Atari Breakout” to try it out for yourself.
Source: Google
Microsoft’s celebrating a rather important milestone for SkyDrive: 250 million users, with 50 million of those signing up in just the last seven months since the debut of Windows 8. With the cloud storage service being so tightly integrated into Microsoft’s new OS, it’s no surprise that its popularity has started to skyrocket. And, with recent upgrades to the platform, it’s becoming an increasingly viable alternative to competitors like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and SugarSync. To commemorate the milestone, Microsoft has a nice self-congratulatory infographic at the source filled with all sorts of fun stats about Redmond and its favored file-syncing system.
Filed under: Storage, Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Twenty years ago today, CERN released World Wide Web technology — all royalty free.
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Google likes to celebrate the birthdays and anniversaries of various people who contributed to the world, as well as technological breakthroughs. For instance, Google is currently celebrating mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler’s 306th birthday today. However, they’re also celebrating the 57th anniversary of the VCR with a new VHS mode in YouTube. For a limited
Editor’s note: Danae Ringelmann is a co-founder of Indiegogo. Prior to that, she was a securities analyst at Cowen & Co. where she covered entertainment companies, including Pixar, Lionsgate, Disney and Electronic Arts.
One year ago, U.S. lawmakers joined together with overwhelming bipartisan support to pass the JOBS Act. It was an exciting moment in history — one that my co-founders and I at Indiegogo didn’t expect to see for many years, especially not within just five years of launching our perks-based crowdfunding platform in 2008.
TechCrunch
It’s already been a year since the Android Market was renamed Google Play, and the folks in Mountain View are offering up a boatload of free party favors throughout the week to celebrate. Technically, the store’s birthday is March 6th (yes, it’s a Pisces), but Page and Co. have already begun serving up free music downloads, in-game content, TV shows, books, discounts and more. Though the selections vary by country, folks in the US can currently pick up a free tune from LCD Soundsystem, $ 20 in free gift cards through Gyft and a gratis download of Breaking Bad’s pilot episode among other things. Hit the bordering source link to partake in the festivities or head past the jump to catch a video of how some games on the digital storefront are celebrating the occasion.
Via: Android Central
Source: Google Play
Browser developer Opera has passed the 300m monthly users mark, celebrating the milestone by transitioning to WebKit for its Android and iOS apps, with the first open-source contributions already apparently made. The shift to WebKit, away from Opera’s home-grown browser engine, will begin this year, though the roadmap is described as “gradual”; it’ll get its first
An anonymous reader writes “Congratulatory tweets and missives pour in to honor @theRealStanLee (nee Stanley Lieber), the Romanian immigrant who created or co-created most of Marvel Comics’ memorable heroes. Lee celebrated his 90th birthday on Friday. Earlier this year, someone posted a collection of Lee’s cameo appearances in Marvel Comics movies, often playing an older gentleman in the crowd (‘Superheroes in New York? Give me a break!’), but watch for the time he plays himself, trying to get past a club bouncer (‘I’m Stan Lee. I should be on that list!’).”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Today’s Google Doogle celebrates the 197th birthday of Ada Lovelace, the pioneering mathematician who is regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. Responsible for the first algorithm designed for Babbage’s Difference Engine, even if the machine wasn’t built in her lifetime, she envisaged a future where computers could create music and images. Every October, a day of celebration is held in her honor, designed to raise awareness for women’s achievement in the fields of science and technology. If you’d like to know more about her story, head on over to Google and click on her portrait.
Source: Google
Don’t think the festivities surrounding Pong’s 40th are limited to official channels. Sander Veerhof of the Netherlands is marking the occasion in his own way with an augmented reality version built as a Layar plugin. Instead of batting the ball across a TV screen, players play across whole continents: anyone who’s been online recently is fair game as a fresh target, and the camera’s field of view gives a sense of where opponents reside in real life. Games won’t be nearly as fast-paced as you might remember from that classic system from the arcade or living room. However, they’ll still be reminders that people worldwide have a soft spot for the Nolan Bushnell title that arguably started the video game industry — and global Pong sure beats a game of global thermonuclear war.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Alt
Atari’s celebrating 40 years of arcade classic Pong today by releasing … another version of Pong. Pong World is being dubbed “the first-ever official new Pong game on iOS” (despite our search of the App Store dictating the contrary), but more importantly, it’s totally free and it’s already available on the iOS App Store (see gameplay below the break). The iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch game started life as one of many entries in Atari’s “Pong Indie Developer Challenge,” which pitted devs against each other for $ 50K and lead representation on the big four-zero celebration.
Should the free game not be enough for you, you could always vie for one of the crazy sweet portable Xbox 360s (seen above) on Atari’s Facebook page. Why yes, that is a custom LCD screen attached to a modded Xbox 360, which also happens to resemble a classic Atari console. And yes, we agree, it is totally sweet.
Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Software, Mobile, Microsoft
Source: iOS App Store, Facebook
The International Space Station just celebrated its 12th anniversary of having a crew continuously onboard, and to mark the occasion, NASA’s unveiled a new service to help folks catch the station in the night sky. Dubbed Spot the Station, the web app texts or emails the time that the ISS will pass over a user’s location to their phone. The calculations are done for more than 4,600 places across the globe by NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which determines when the ISS will be high enough in the sky to be seen above obstacles such as trees and buildings. Since the station is the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon, it’ll appear to the naked eye as if it were a star moving at a steady clip. To get pinged with sighting alerts by NASA, hit the second source link below.
NASA releases web app to help you spot ISS, celebrates 12 years of continuous crew occupation originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google Play, the company’s Android app store, has passed 25bn downloads, and to celebrate Google is running a series of discounts on top titles over the next week. There are now 675,000 apps and games in the former Android Market, Google says, with downloads jumping from the 1bn point in 2010 to a whopping 25bn
If you’re a fan of the original Star Trek series, especially its role in modern science fiction history as well as television history, you’ll be glad to see Google’s newest Doodle, celebrating the birth of the series. It was on the 8th of September, 1966, that the show first broadcast its opening sequence, and set
This week sees many corners of the globe celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing. A man whose contribution to the worlds of tech and gadgets is immeasurable — a sentiment not lost on Google. Today, geeks and norms worldwide will be waking up to possibly the most complex doodle to date. Can you set the machine and spell out “Google”? If you can, you’ll be sent off to lots more information about the man himself. This isn’t the only thing Mountain View’s done to keep his legacy alive, having previously helped Bletchley Park raise funds to purchase (and display) Turing’s papers, and more recently helping curators at London’s Science Museum with its Codebreaker – Alan Turing’s Life and Legacy exhibition. If you haven’t already, head to Google.com and pop your logic hat on, and if you get stuck, head past the break for a helpful video.
Continue reading Google’s Turing doodle celebrates his genius, reminds us how dumb we are (video)
Google’s Turing doodle celebrates his genius, reminds us how dumb we are (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jun 2012 10:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dr Herbert West writes “20 years ago today, ID software released ‘Wolfenstein 3D’, a remake of a classic Apple II game, ‘Return to Castle Wolfenstein.’ To celebrate, Bethesda Softworks on Wednesday released a free, browser-based version of the iconic first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D. Users can pick which level they wish to play in the browser version, even the secret levels.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
To commemorate the big two-oh years since its release, Bethesda has offered up the full Wolfenstein 3D experience to play for free in your web browser. Not only that, you’ll also be able to play the id original on iOS devices gratis (at least for today) and creator John Karmack has decided to offer us a director’s commentary on the game’s development while shooting his way through a few levels. Watch, nod and reminisce right after the break, then hit up the source to play for yourself.
Wolfenstein 3D celebrates 20 years of machine guns and flag-obscured passages with free web version originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Logitech’s Q4 and full-year report makes for uncomfortable reading. Despite profits increasing by a factor of nine in the last quarter of the year, overall annual profit fell 44 percent from $ 143 million to $ 71 million. The company has already parachuted in former Whirlpool exec. Bracken P. Darrel to turn things around and recover the losses made when the company went big on Google TV. His first action has been to kick-start a restructuring operation that will save $ 80 million in costs, starting by cutting a whole management layer — demoting current product VP Junien Labrousse and firing sales VP Werner Heid. Mr. Darrell is now working directly with his team on a new lineup of “stronger” products to be unveiled later this quarter, with an emphasis on Windows 8 peripherals and LifeSize video conferencing gear.
[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Continue reading Logitech president celebrates end-of-year earnings with management cull
Logitech president celebrates end-of-year earnings with management cull originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hit up Google’s homepage today and you’ll see the company’s colorful logo devolved into a section of equine squares, commemorating the 182nd birthday of Eadweard J. Muybridge. Responsible for the zoopraxiscope in 1879, Muybridge used the stop-motion projection display to prove that all four of a horses’ hoofs leave the ground while they’re running. In fact, the
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the social fitness mavens at Fitocracy – they’ve been doing plenty of behind-the-scenes work, and now they’re ready to share the fruits of their labor. After spending over a year hunkered down in private beta mode, the RPG-esque exercise tracker and 500 Startups graduate has finally opened its doors to the general public.
Here’s their gist, if you haven’t heard it already — after a workout, you log all of your exercises and receive points for them. Earning enough points will cause you to level up, while earning points in certain exercises unlocks new achievements. The service also sports quests for the particularly motivated, along with a strong social component to get users commiserating and sharing workout tips.
In short, it aims to rewire the way users think about exercise, and Fitocracy CEO Brian Wang tells me the formula has struck a chord with nearly 300,000 users.
TechCrunch
Google celebrates Nelson Mandela with virtual museum originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The platform that allows users to buy and download Android apps without actually going to the Android Market has been alive and kicking for an entire year. In that time, it has arguably grown to be an even more attractive place to find and discover apps than Google’s own service. It gained even more traction
A new deal with China will enable U.S. film companies to distribute more movies in that country, and studio execs hope this will lead to a drop in Web piracy.
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Does your employer offer a “wellness rebate program?” No? Then you can’t be working for IBM, which has been bribing its staff to eat healthier since 2004. It’s a Watson-worthy idea, because what the company pays out in incentives it recoups in lower healthcare costs. Now, after a decade of toing and froing with the USPTO, IBM has finally patented a web-based system that makes the whole process automatic. For it to work, a person must use a micro-payment network to buy food, which allows their purchases to be monitored and compared against their health records. If they’ve made the right choices, the system then communicates with their employer’s payroll server to issue a reward. Completing the Orwellian circle, the proposed system also interacts with servers in the FDA and health insurance companies to gain information about specific food products or policy changes. You can duck the radar, of course, and buy a Double Whopper with cash, but it’ll bring you no reward except swollen ankles. This is IBM we’re talking about; they’ve thought of everything.
[Photo via Shutterstock]
IBM wins diet monitoring and reward patent, celebrates with sip of Spirulina originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s hard to believe, but it’s been exactly ten years since the iPod was first unveiled, ultimately changing the music industry forever. The iPod wasn’t the first, it wasn’t the smallest, it didn’t have the largest hard drive, but it did have an iconic style and simple to use interface that led march away from CDs. When the history of Apple is written the iPod (perhaps more than the iMac, OS X or the iPhone) will be credited with helping spearhead the company’s second coming. Over the years the music player has seen countless iterations and redesigns, and an expansion of the product line to include smaller devices and touch screens — but for most it’s the scroll wheel and white earbuds that define the iPod. Sure, what is now called the iPod classic hasn’t seen a serious update since about 2007, but it still holds a special place in our hearts, especially for those of us who don’t measure their music collection in a few dozen iTunes downloads.
The iPod turns 10, celebrates a decade of destroying physical media originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Microsoft Research was founded way back in 1991 as a way of turning cutting edge concepts into products. Over the years, the division has been behind some of the most exciting ideas that have come out of Redmond, from fluffy mice to HIV / AIDS research. The department is celebrating its 20th anniversary by highlighting some of its favorite projects over the next four weeks, so we’re beating it to the punch with some of picks. Check out our list below.
Continue reading Microsoft Research celebrates 20 years of crazy innovation
Microsoft Research celebrates 20 years of crazy innovation originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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