FlexBeta

A More Efficient Jet Engine Is Made from Lighter Parts, Some 3-D Printed

Posted by Gsurface on May 14, 2013 No comments

Composite and 3-D-printed components will mean jet engines that use 15 percent less fuel.

A new generation of engines being developed by the world’s largest jet engine maker, CFM (a partnership between GE and Snecma of France), will allow aircraft to use about 15 percent less fuel—enough to save about $ 1 million per year per airplane and significantly reduce carbon emissions.

Google Launches Content Recommendation Engine For Mobile Sites, Powered By Google+

Posted by Gsurface on May 13, 2013 No comments

Google continues to increase the reach of its Google+ platform, and today the company is launching a new mobile content recommendation service powered by Google+. These recommendations will appear as small widgets at that bottom of the screen as users browse a news site that has enabled this service. Google’s launch partner for this service is Forbes, but others can implement these recommendations by just adding a single line of code to their mobile sites. Recommendations, Google says, can appear regardless of whether a users are signed in to Google+.
TechCrunch

Air-breathing engine in Boeing’s X-51A WaveRider may lead to Mach 20 planes

Posted by Gsurface on May 9, 2013 No comments

The Air Force plans to double down on hyperspeed planes, following the successful test last week of a prototype jet that flew a remarkable Mach 5 — that’s an astonishing mile per second, or nearly 4,000 miles per hour.

DICE says Battlefield 4 game engine won’t run on Nintendo Wii U

Posted by Gsurface on May 8, 2013 No comments

One of the most anticipated games for next-generation game consoles comes from DICE. That game is Battlefield 4 and fans of the Nintendo game consoles have received some bad news this week. DICE has announced that the game engine that operates Battlefield 4 won’t run on the Nintendo Wii U game console. The game engine

Next-gen EA games will skip Wii U due to performance issues with Frostbite engine

Posted by Gsurface on May 8, 2013 No comments

EA’s Frostbite 3 engine, which underpins many of the company’s next generation titles, looks like it won’t be supported by Nintendo’s Wii U. Johan Andersson, Technical Director of the Frostbite project at EA DICE, says the company tested Frostbite 2 on the console and found the results to be “not too promising,” to the point where it “chose not to go down [the] path” of porting the next version. Leaked slides from earlier this year revealed that EA has approximately 15 games in development that use Frostbite 3, the implication being that Wii U gamers are going to miss out on some fairly big titles, including Battlefield 4, Star Wars, the next Mass Effect and — as Joystiq pointed out last week — this year’s version of Madden NFL. All of this adds up to a notable loss of support for the new Wii, but then again EA games were never really a core part of the Nintendo experience anyway, which has generally tended to be a bit more lighthearted, not to mention songful.

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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Via: Joystiq

Source: NeoGAF, @repi (Twitter)

Mozilla shows off ‘Epic Citadel’ web version ported with Unreal Engine 3 (video)

Posted by Gsurface on May 3, 2013 No comments

Mozilla wants to quell any doubt that its Unreal Engine 3 Firefox port works well, so it’s just released a demo browser version of Epic Citadel so you can see for yourself. The game was ported to Javascript using the technology, and will run in HTML5 on most browsers without any plugins — though using the latest nightly build of Firefox is recommended. Epic says that the performance of such games “rivals native” with “stunning” visuals, and in a short test, we managed to get about 16fps on a reasonably equipped PC. Mozilla wants to recruit more developers to the new platform as part of its Emscripten project (see More Coverage link), but meanwhile you can grab the game at the source or see the video after the jump — just don’t count on wreaking any havoc, as the demo’s strictly a scenic tour.

Filed under: Gaming, Internet

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Source: Mozilla (blog)

Unity stops offering Flash game engine licenses, cites a lack of Adobe love

Posted by Gsurface on April 25, 2013 No comments

The Unity 4 engine has given Flash gaming a lot of TLC by simplifying web ports of complex projects. If you ask Unity Technologies, however, that love isn’t being requited — and the company feels jilted enough to stop offering new Flash licenses, effective immediately. Adobe supposedly isn’t committed enough to the plugin, having halted work on both a re-engineered Flash Player Next as well as an attractive revenue sharing model. Unity is equally concerned about the broader developer community shying away from Flash at the same time as its own plugin, Unity Web Player, has soared past 200 million installs. While those with existing licenses should have Flash support for as long as versions of Unity 4 are in the field, the exit is bound to have game creators scrambling to find alternatives for any future web-based titles.

Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Software

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Unity Technologies

Wedding Search Engine Loverly Launches Mobile App For Searching, Snapping & Sharing Inspiration While On The Go

Posted by Gsurface on April 4, 2013 No comments

Lover.ly, a search engine for weddings, is today launching a mobile application to complement its online experience. The new app also allows brides-to-be and others planning a wedding (or just dreaming about one), to save and share the inspiration they find while on the go by snapping photos.

TechCrunch

Google simplifies integration of SMS and voice with App Engine

Posted by Gsurface on April 3, 2013 No comments

Google is hoping to make it easier for developers to integrate SMS or voice communications in applications running on the company's App Engine platform.
Computerworld News

AMD Releases UVD Engine Source Code

Posted by Gsurface on April 3, 2013 No comments

An anonymous reader writes “Years of desire by AMD Linux users to have open source video playback support by their graphics driver is now over. AMD has released open-source UVD support for their Linux driver so users can have hardware-accelerated video playback of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG video formats. UVD support on years old graphics cards was delayed because AMD feared open-source support could kill their Digital Rights Management abilities for other platforms.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Visualized: Unreal Engine 4 ‘Infiltrator’ demo gives an impressive peek at next-gen gaming

Posted by Gsurface on March 31, 2013 No comments

Just in case you missed it last night buried in our interview with Epic Games VP Mark Rein, the company showed off a new real-time demo at GDC 2013 this week, titled “Infiltrator.” The nearly four-minute clip, showcases a sci-fi shootout created with its Unreal Engine 4, and remarkably powered by a single GeForce GTX 680. Now that we’ve piqued your curiosity a bit, check out this gorgeous display of futuristic espionage after the break, plus a bonus clip of the “Elemental” UE4 demo running on a PlayStation 4 dev kit in real-time.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

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In conversation with Epic Games’ Mark Rein: Unreal Engine 4 support for Oculus Rift (and everything else), and thoughts on next-gen

Posted by Gsurface on March 30, 2013 No comments

Epic Games isn’t just offering up its ubiquitous current-gen game creation tool Unreal Engine 3 to Oculus Rift developers, but also its next-gen tool, Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games VP Mark Rein told Engadget as much during an interview at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, repeatedly stating he’s “super bullish” on the Rift, all the while rocking an Oculus pin on his exhibitor lanyard. “Oh, for sure,” he said when we asked about UE4 support for the Rift. “We’re working on that now.” The Rift dev kit was demoed at CES 2013 running Unreal Engine 3′s “Epic Citadel” demo, and Epic’s offered support to the Oculus folks since early on, making the UE4 news not a huge surprise, but welcome nonetheless.

The next-gen game engine was being shown off at GDC 2013 with a flashy new demo (seen below the break), as well as a version of its “Elemental” demo running on a PlayStation 4 dev kit (shrouded behind a curtain, of course). Rein was visibly excited about that as well, unable to contain random vocal outbursts during the presentation. “It’s a war out there, and we sell bullets and bandaids,” he jokingly told us in an interview the following day. The quote comes from coworker and Epic VP of business development Jay Wilbur, and it’s fitting — Epic only makes a handful of games, and the company’s real money comes from game engine licensees. In so many words, the more platforms that Unreal Engine variants can go, the better for Epic (as well as for engine licensees, of course). “It’s a good place to be — we try to support everything we can. We have to place some timed bets on things that we feel are gonna be the most important to licensees, and also to us where we’re taking games. But because the engine is portable — it’s written in C++ — a licensee can take and do whatever they want,” he said.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD

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Google Maps Engine Lite beta lets amateurs craft their own location sets

Posted by Gsurface on March 28, 2013 No comments

Pros have long had access to Google Maps Engine if they need to highlight anything from local stores to natural resources. Today, Google is catering to the rest of us would-be cartographers with a beta for Google Maps Engine Lite. The web service lets everyday users draw objects and import locations for their own reference, whether it’s plotting favorite hiking trails or pinpointing worthwhile places on an upcoming vacation. Map makers can stylize the maps and share them with others, if they like — the Lite label mostly limits users to “small” spreadsheet imports and a maximum of three data sets for comparisons. As long as you can live within those prescribed boundaries, you can try the slimmed down engine right now.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Via: Google Lat Long Blog

Source: Google Maps Engine Lite

Unreal Engine 3 adding Oculus Rift support this April, Epic Citadel demo packed in

Posted by Gsurface on March 25, 2013 No comments

The engine that powered the vast majority of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3′s hit games, Unreal Engine 3, is getting a development kit update to support the soon-to-be-released Oculus Rift VR headset. Of course, the model of the Rift that’s soon-to-be-released is intended for developers, so the Unreal Engine 3 UDK update is right on time; it arrives at some point in “early April,” soon after the headset itself arrives for Kickstarter backers. Beyond UDK integration, full UE3 licensees will also get an update for integrating the headset into their games.

That said, if you snagged yourself a Rift dev kit and have no intention of actually developing games with it, the upcoming UDK release also includes a “VR Mode” version of the software’s sample Unreal Tournament game, as well as a summer version of the Epic Citadel demo we were shown at CES 2013. Paired with Valve’s offering of Team Fortress 2 VR Mode, that brings the grand total of playable things with the Rift headset to … five or six (depending on what you define as a “demo”). Upcoming PC mech shooter Hawken is also promising Rift support, though it won’t launch until mid-December. The Oculus folks are saying that Rift dev kits will begin shipping to Kickstarter backers this month, with orders fulfilled by mid-April.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD

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Honda recalls 93,000 Acura TSX sedans due to potential engine stalls

Posted by Gsurface on March 24, 2013 No comments

Honda has recalled about 93,000 of its Acura TSX vehicles due to a problem with its ECU (Electronic Control Unit) that could set of a series off problems culminating in engine stalling. Depending on when the engine stalls, the driver could potentially be at risk for crashing, resulting in injury. The information comes from a

The Rare Disease Search Engine That Outperforms Google

Posted by Gsurface on March 18, 2013 No comments

A powerful new search engine designed to help diagnose rare diseases could prove a boon for both medics and the public

By the Numbers: How Google Compute Engine Stacks Up To Amazon EC2

Posted by Gsurface on March 17, 2013 No comments

vu1986 writes “Google launched its EC2 rival, Google Compute Engine, last June, it set some high expectations. Sebastian Standil’s team at Scalr put the cloud infrastructure service through its paces — and were pleasantly surprised at what they found. A note about our data: The benchmarks run to collect the data presented here were taken twice a day, over four days, then averaged. When a high variance was observed, we took note of it and present it here as intervals for which 80 percent of observed data points fall into.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trulia Launches Trulia Suggests, A Recommendation Engine For Real Estate

Posted by Gsurface on March 7, 2013 No comments

Trulia, the popular real estate search engine, just launched the beta of Trulia Suggests, a personalized real estate recommendation engine. The typical search experience on virtually every online real estate site involves telling the service how much you want to pay, how many bedrooms and bathrooms you need and what locations you are interested in. That works, but you often end up looking at many homes that clearly don’t match what you’re looking for. Trulia’s service, on the other hand, learns from your behavior on the site and then shows you houses that it believes will match your interests. For now, Trulia Suggests will only be available on the web, but the company plans to roll it out to its mobile apps in the future. As Trulia’s VP of product Lee Clancy told me earlier today, he believes that adding this recommendation service will have a “transformational effect on the company.” While it won’t replace the usual search experience, he thinks this feature could become a part of the company’s other tools, including its rental business. “Personalization is not just a feature but a new product direction,” Clancy said. Here is how it works: users seed the proprietary recommendation algorithm with a few ‘likes,’ in order to start creating their personalized profile (users can now also likes every posting on the service as well). Trulia will ask new users to sign up for the service after this in order to track their behavior on the site. After reviewing a few more homes, the service will start showing a selection of houses that should match your interests under the Trulia Suggests tab. You can, of course, also ‘hide’ homes you don’t like in order to tell the algorithm when a place doesn’t match your preferences. For now, Clancy told me, this feature only hides homes in Trulia Suggests, but they will still appear in your regular search results. Once Suggests comes out of beta, hiding a house will also remove it from your search results. The algorithm looks at the kind of houses you like, hide and look at on the site and automatically tunes its recommendations in real time according to your preferences, including how much you seem to be willing to pay for a house, location and other details. A feature like this, Clancy argued, is especially important in today’s real estate market. With only a few houses available
TechCrunch

Aktana Raises $5M For A Suggestion Engine Designed For Sales People In The Field

Posted by Gsurface on March 4, 2013 No comments

Aktana has raised $ 5 million in angel funding for its suggestion-engine technology designed for sales people in the field.

Aktana provides data insights into sales activity that learns from interactions with a decision-based engine on the frontend and a backend that uses machine learning to determine better go-to market strategies. In all, it is meant as a virtual assistant for a sales rep.

Aktana started off as a project for NASA to optimize scarce resources, such as wind tunnels and computer resources, said Co-Founder Jack O’Holleran. The company changed direction when they realized there was a better application in a top line driven area.
TechCrunch

China’s Largest Search Engine Baidu Launches English Site For Developers

Posted by Gsurface on February 28, 2013 No comments

Baidu, the search behemoth often referred to as “China’s Google,” launched its new English-language Web site for developers today. While the site is still in its infancy–right now there just a few intros up and no documentation–but it promises to grow up into a valuable resource for developers who want to take a crack at the Chinese market.
TechCrunch

Free Ride Will Soon Be Over For Google Compute Engine Limited Preview Beta Users

Posted by Gsurface on February 14, 2013 No comments

Google Compute Engine Limited Preview beta customers who want to continue using the cloud service will have to fork over their credit-card numbers after receiving emails announcing the March 1 end of their free trials.
TechCrunch

Russian Search Engine Yandex Beats Bing

Posted by Gsurface on February 9, 2013 No comments

judgecorp writes “The Russian search engine Yandex has beaten Microsoft in the search engine rankings, taking fourth place behind Google, China’s Baidu and Yahoo, according to ComScore. The result won’t be encouraging for Microsoft, which will also be disappointed to see Bing behind its partner Yahoo.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unreal Engine 3′s Epic Citadel demo now available on Android with special features, iOS version updated

Posted by Gsurface on January 29, 2013 No comments

Epic Games’ first internal initiative to produce an Unreal Engine 3 project on Android is complete, nearly three years after a similar initiative produced the Epic Citadel demo. That same demo is being employed on Android, albeit with one shiny new feature: benchmarking. The new mode enables users to test framerate, quality settings, and resolution details — it’s an exclusive for the Android version. The iOS version also saw an update today across its various iterations, enabling support for higher-res displays (the original app launched in September 2010 and has seen little in the update department since).

While Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 has supported Android for some time, the release of the internal app means, “we’ve invested in plenty of QA testing against a wide range of devices, and we’ve executed the necessary profiling required for shipping Android games,” an Epic Games rep tells us. Moreover, that investment carries over to Unreal Engine 3 licensees. To snag the Epic Citadel demo (for free) on your Android device of choice, head to Google’s Play store or Amazon’s App Store. And for a taste of games currently on Android based in Unreal Engine 3, check out the incredible trailer for Horn just beyond the break.

Show full PR text

Epic Games Releases “Epic Citadel” for Android
Android users can download the free app now, plus ‘Epic Citadel’ gets iOS update
CARY, N.C. (January 29, 2013) – Epic Games, Inc. today released “Epic Citadel” for Android devices. The free app, which is used to demonstrate the studio’s award-winning Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) technology on multiple platforms, is available now on Google Play and Amazon Appstore for Android. A new benchmarking mode and updated visuals bring added depth to the popular app.
In “Epic Citadel,” players navigate the dynamic fantasy setting of the award-winning Infinity Blade. From the circus bazaar to the sweeping cathedral in the center of town, “Epic Citadel” dazzles with a visual parade of special effects.
“While we’ve licensed our engine to help developers build and ship many fantastic games for Android, ‘Epic Citadel’ is our first internally developed product to be released to Android users,” said Jay Wilbur, vice president of Epic Games. “It’s a free, easy way to check out the high-quality experience Unreal Engine technology delivers on mobile devices.”
High-End Graphics for Android
“Epic Citadel” was created with the same UE3 tools and technologies used to develop best-selling PC, console and mobile games. Features include:
· Amazing visuals. “Epic Citadel” pushes the envelope for modern visuals on Android devices. Through the latest advances in Unreal Engine 3 technology, the application delivers unrivaled graphics and special effects that immerse players in the kingdom’s grounds.

· Benchmarking mode. “Epic Citadel” enables users to gather performance data for Android devices through its benchmarking mode, which displays frames per second stats, quality settings and resolution details.

· Realistic reflections and animations. Environment mapping and other high-end rendering techniques produce lifelike reflections, and vertex deformation and skeletal animation bring trees and banners to life with dynamic movements.

· Global illumination. Unreal Engine 3′s built-in global illumination system, Unreal Lightmass, provides realistic lighting and shadows with minimal development resources.

· Dynamic specular lighting with texture masks. Sophisticated graphics features impart a tangible quality to cobblestone roads and vivid reflective marble surfaces, while lens flares and light coronas add dramatic emphasis when panning across light sources.

Outstanding Cross-Platform Performance
Epic has worked closely with hardware leaders to ensure that “Epic Citadel” delivers a superior experience on the latest mobile platforms.
“‘Epic Citadel’ features beautiful, high-performance graphics that are characteristic of mobile Unreal Engine games. Throughout the app’s development for Android, we worked closely with Epic Games to ensure that the visuals can be experienced on NVIDIA Tegra-based devices in all of their glory,” remarked Tony Tamasi, SVP Content and Technology, NVIDIA.
“Intel is very pleased to see Epic’s award-winning Unreal Engine 3 technology shipping on Android with full native support for x86,” said Mukesh Goel, Director of Ecosystem Enabling, Mobile Communications Group, Intel. “We’re especially excited by the tremendous performance being realized in ‘Epic Citadel’ on the Atom Z2460 platform.”
“As the leading supplier of mobile and embedded GPUs for both iOS and Android, Imagination has worked extremely closely with Epic for many years as it has continuously pushed the boundaries of mobile graphics with Unreal Engine technology,” Tony King-Smith, VP of Marketing, Imagination Technologies. “We are delighted that our collaboration is extending into the Android space and that Epic is making such excellent use of our PowerVR GPUs and tools as it brings the best of gaming capability to the rapidly growing Android market.”
New iOS Update
Today Epic also released an update for “Epic Citadel” on the App Store that improves the industry-leading visuals of the iOS app. Available for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, “Epic Citadel” now supports high-resolution devices and offers aesthetics even more striking than previously seen.
About Unreal Engine
Developed by Epic Games, the award-winning Unreal Engine is known for its cutting-edge graphics technology, world-class toolset and scalability across PC, console and mobile platforms. Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) is designed to accelerate developers’ productivity for creating high-quality games, applications, training simulations, visualizations, digital films and animated entertainment. Powering hundreds of games and integrated with two dozen leading middleware technologies, UE3 holds more than 20 technology awards, including eight Game Developer Front Line Awards and five Develop Industry Excellence Awards. The Unreal Engine also owns a seat in the Front Line Awards Hall of Fame. Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), winner of multiple Best of E3 2012 awards, offers unprecedented graphical capabilities and workflow improvements that provide unparalleled accessibility for developers building the next generation of games and applications. For more information, visit http://www.unrealengine.com and follow @UnrealEngine.
About Epic Games
Established in 1991, Epic Games, Inc. develops cutting-edge games and cross-platform game engine technology. The company is responsible for the bestselling “Unreal” series of games, the blockbuster “Gears of War” franchise and the groundbreaking “Infinity Blade” line of mobile games. Epic’s award-winning Unreal Engine technology has won dozens of awards and is available for licensing. Epic is continually recruiting top talent for its studios located in North Carolina, Washington, Utah, Maryland, Poland, Korea and Japan. For more information, visit http://www.epicgames.com and follow @EpicGames.
Epic, Epic Games, Gears of War, Infinity Blade, Unreal, Unreal Engine, UE3, UE4, Unreal Lightmass and Unreal Tournament are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Handhelds, Tablets, Mobile, Google, Amazon

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Engadget

McLaren proves P1 concept car has an engine

Posted by Gsurface on January 26, 2013 No comments

McLaren released a video showing track testing of the P1 concept car it unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, demonstrating that the car is being developed for production. [Read more]

CNET News

NASA tests vintage Apollo 11 rocket engine for ideas for new US missions

Posted by Gsurface on January 25, 2013 No comments

Young NASA engineers are testing a vintage rocket engine that was meant to blast the first U.S. lunar mission into Earth’s orbit more than 40 years ago.

NASA tests vintage Apollo 11 rocket engine for ideas for new US missions

Posted by Gsurface on January 24, 2013 No comments

Young NASA engineers are testing a vintage rocket engine that was meant to blast the first U.S. lunar mission into Earth’s orbit more than 40 years ago.

An Engine That Uses One-Third Less Fuel

Posted by Gsurface on January 20, 2013 No comments

Achates Power gets $ 5 million to build a multi-cylinder version of its diesel engine.

The Jumo engine, made by the German aircraft company Junkers in the 1930s, was an oil-burning, smoke-spewing machine. But it was the most efficient engine of its day. Achates Power, based in San Diego, California, is modifying the design to make it meet modern emissions standards, while improving its efficiency. Data from Achates’s small, single-cylinder test engine convinced the U.S. Army to give Achates, and partner AVL Powertrain Engineering, $ 4.9 million to build a complete multi-cylinder prototype engine that the Army hopes can be the basis for a range of applications, including powering tanks.

Facebook unveils search engine for 1 billion people

Posted by Gsurface on January 15, 2013 No comments

The world’s biggest social network has unveiled a new search engine to let you pore through the 1 trillion connections linking its billion users.

Inside the Tech of SpaceX’s Homegrown Rocket Engine

Posted by Gsurface on January 15, 2013 No comments

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a look at the engine behind SpaceX’s Falcon rocket, the Merlin: “The rockstar of SpaceX may be Elon Musk, but the lead man behind the fire power is Tom Mueller. He is the Vice President of Propulsion Development and founding employee at SpaceX. Musk sought Mueller out in 2001 when Musk decided to build his own rockets instead of buying some from the Russians. Musk caught wind of a rocket engine Mueller built in his garage and ‘apparently had a religious experience’ once he saw it. If you didn’t know, Elon Musk used $ 100 million of his Paypal money to start SpaceX. That money was used to build the Merlin engine Mueller had designed. The Merlin engine is the first new American booster engine in ten years and only the second in the last 25 years.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Engine That Uses Half the Fuel

Posted by Gsurface on January 14, 2013 No comments

Achates Power gets $ 5 million to build a multi-cylinder version of its diesel engine.

Continue reading First Unreal Engine 3 game gets honest-to-goodness Linux port

First Unreal Engine 3 game gets honest-to-goodness Linux port

Posted by Gsurface on December 20, 2012 No comments

Who gives the official all-clear after the End of the World? We have no idea, but soon as the happy signal comes we’re going to reconfigure our Linux-powered bunker for a spot of gaming. It’s an eerily fortuitous time for that, in fact, what with the Steam for Linux beta now open to all and the Unity and Unreal engines also having been adapted for the open source OS. In terms of actual playable titles, Dungeon Defenders in the latest Humble Bundle is being put forward as the first native Linux game to use Unreal Engine 3, and if it proves successful then it’ll hopefully inspire others to come out with more ports in lucky 2013.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

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Source: Ryan C. Gordon (Twitter), Phoronix

Engadget

Data-Driven Travel Pricing Engine Nor1 Raises $9M From TripIt-Acquirer Concur

Posted by Gsurface on December 18, 2012 No comments

Nor1, a company that powers dynamic pricing for and merchandising for hotels and resorts has raised $ 9 Million in Series B funding led by Concur, the acquirer of TripIt. This brings the company’s total funding to nearly $ 18 million.
TechCrunch

Lumi: a Useful Web Recommendation Engine

Posted by Gsurface on December 12, 2012 No comments

The service, from two founders of Last.fm, uses your browser history to suggest new pages to visit.

Lumi is the latest venture from two of the three founders of Last.fm, a popular Internet radio service that keeps track of what you listen to and then recommends new tunes based on your tastes. Similarly, Lumi is a browser plug-in that tracks the websites you visit and suggests other sites it believes you’ll enjoy.

Ford recalls Fusion and Escape due to spontaneous engine combustion

Posted by Gsurface on December 1, 2012 No comments

The Ford Motor Company has been forced to recall over 70,000 Ford Escapes and nearly 16,000 2013 Ford Fusions due to an issue with overheating that may cause the cars’ engines to catch on fire. The recall is only for select models that were sold in Canada and the United States. This comes after several

Oracle Proposes New Native JavaScript Engine for OpenJDK

Posted by Gsurface on November 27, 2012 No comments

hypnosec writes “Oracle has proposed a new project for OpenJDK — Nashorn, which aims to implement a high-performance yet lightweight JavaScript runtime that would run on the JVM natively. Nashorn will be headed by Jim Laskey, multi-language Lead at Oracle and the project will be sponsored by HotSpot group. The project proposes an implementation of JavaScript such that it can run standalone JavaScript applications via the JSR 223 APIs. Nashorn’s design will enable it to take advantage of new JVM technologies like the MethodHandles and the InvokeDynamic APIs.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HydroICE Project Developing a Solar-Powered Combustion Engine

Posted by Gsurface on November 25, 2012 No comments

cylonlover writes “OK, first things first – stop picturing a car with solar panels connected to its engine. What Missouri-based inventors Matt Bellue and Ben Cooper are working on is something a little different than that. They want to take an internal combustion engine, and run it on water and solar-heated oil instead of gasoline. That engine could then be hooked up to a generator, to provide clean electricity. While that may sound a little iffy to some, Bellue and Cooper have already built a small-scale prototype.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Exploding Engine Could Reduce Fuel Consumption

Posted by Gsurface on November 23, 2012 No comments

The military and GE have made strides toward a practical detonation engine.

A new kind of engine under development, called a detonation engine, could save the military hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel costs every year. The technology, which military researchers are working on together with scientists at GE and other companies, could reduce fuel consumption at power plants, in ships, and on airplanes by as much as 25 percent. The Navy alone estimates that retrofitting its ships with the technology would reduce annual fuel costs by $ 300 to $ 400 million.

Continue reading Valve’s Gabe Newell confirms work on new game engine, still won’t answer your Half-Life 3 queries

VoiceBunny Launches A Search Engine For Voice Talent, Records The Best Voiceover Ever

Posted by Gsurface on November 22, 2012 No comments

“Crowdvoicing” startup VoiceBunny is expanding its services today with a new feature called Search ‘n Book.

The startup launched a few months ago with what it’s now calling its “Speedy” service, where customers upload a script and identify what kind of voiceover they’re looking for. VoiceBunny matches up their request with the appropriate voice actors and actresses and delivers a completed voiceover, often in less than an hour.
TechCrunch

Valve’s Gabe Newell confirms work on new game engine, still won’t answer your Half-Life 3 queries

Posted by Gsurface on November 11, 2012 No comments

“So what do you wanna know about that’s not Half-Life 3?” Valve president Gabe Newell, laughing, asks a crowd of 4chan members who recently visited the Washington-based studio. The group’s first question, however, was just as worthwhile. What’s up with that supposed new game engine? “We’ve been working on new engine stuff for awhile,” Newell says. It’s tough to hear what he says next, but it sounds like, “We’ll probably just roll it out in one of our games” (subtitles of the video read: “We’ve just been waiting for a game to roll it out with”). Thankfully, a followup question directly addresses Newell’s ambiguity. “Is it going to be more than just an update to Source [Valve's first game engine]? Is it an entirely new engine?” the 4chan member asks, which Newell directly (and concisely) responds to with a simple, “Yeah.” See the full back-and-forth beyond the break.

Newell doesn’t directly refer to the in-development engine as “Source Engine 2,” so it’s possible (albeit unlikely) that he’s referring to a separate engine altogether, or (even more unlikely) Valve has more than one game engine being created. We’ve yet to hear back from Valve for clarification.

Oh, and if you want an update on Half-Life 3, Newell re-confirms that “Ricochet 2” is being worked on, so take that as you will.

Filed under: Gaming

Valve’s Gabe Newell confirms work on new game engine, still won’t answer your Half-Life 3 queries originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 17:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget

Outages hit Google App Engine, Dropbox, Tumblr and more

Posted by Gsurface on October 26, 2012 No comments

Connection woes hit popular services across the Internet. So far, though, it’s unclear if they are related [Read more]

CNET News

Shopping Engine Decide.com Rolls Out Premium Pricing: “When To Buy” Recommendations Now $5 Per Month

Posted by Gsurface on October 24, 2012 No comments

Decide.com, the shopping search engine that tells consumers both what and when to buy, is introducing its premium level of service today. Starting now, Decide.com will begin to charge for its “when to buy” recommendations – the recommendations which serve as Decide.com’s distinguishing feature versus the other shopping search services on the market currently.

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SpaceX Dragon engine loss had consequences for Orbcomm OG2 satellite

Posted by Gsurface on October 9, 2012 No comments

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is currently on the way to the International Space Station, but today we found out that the launch didn’t exactly go as smoothly as planned. A little over one minute into the launch, the Falcon 9 rocket lost one of its engines. We were told that this little issue won’t affect

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Why Facebook’s Search Engine Won’t Be Anything Like Google’s

Posted by Gsurface on October 3, 2012 No comments

Trying to match Google’s immense index of the Web would be very costly—but Facebook could instead build search on top of the data we’ve already given it.

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg mentioned during an interview last month that he wanted to build a search engine, headline writers instantly put leading search engine Google on notice. Yet, while Larry and Sergey are probably watching closely, the technology and data at Facebook’s disposal suggest the company will most likely create something fundamentally different from Google’s search service.

Maserati and B&W mark in-car audio deal with “Seven Notes” engine music

Posted by Gsurface on October 1, 2012 No comments

Maserati and high-end speaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins have announced a deal to fit top-spec audio equipment in the Italian marque’s cars, and they’ve celebrated the news with a bizarre new piece of music. The collaboration will see a new audio system developed especially for Maserati cars, hitting options lists sometime in 2013, as well

Daimler and Renault-Nissan duo on eco-gas engine and more

Posted by Gsurface on September 29, 2012 No comments

Car manufacturers aren’t betting the farm on all-electric and hybrid cars; gas engines are still going to be around for a while, and Renault-Nissan and Mercedes-owner Daimler plan to squeeze the very best out of them. A freshly inked collaboration between the firms will see them double up on a new, turbocharged powerplant that – despite

A safer web, thanks to new porn search engine?

Posted by Gsurface on September 27, 2012 No comments

The creators of a search engine specifically for adult content argue that it will make it easier for randy websurfers to find what they crave — and keep that content away from unsuspecting eyes and children.

.xxx Registrar To Launch Pr0n Search Engine

Posted by Gsurface on September 27, 2012 No comments

angry tapir writes “The company behind the .xxx top-level domain plans to launch a search engine in an effort to drive more traffic to .xxx websites and give pornography fans a more satisfying search experience. ICM Registry, which operates the 9-month-old .xxx TLD, is scheduled to launch Search.xxx this week, said Stuart Lawley, ICM’s CEO. The new search engine will give users a more streamlined searching process, help protect them from viruses and malware and help guard their privacy, he said. The search engine has cataloged 21 million webpages from .xxx sites, he said. ‘It’s porn, only porn, all porn,’ he said. ‘There’s as much porn there as anyone would need, I’d imagine.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.