It seems like a lot of MMO games are now free to play now, and it looks like Microsoft is making one of their classic games free with Flight Simulator.
It will become available this Spring, and the name of it has been curtailed to simply “Flight”. I’m not certain what requirements your computer will have in order to play it, but I really hope that it is capable of the rich detail that more recent Flight Simulator games have given us.
In fact, I still remember when I first played Flight Simulator back in the mid-eighties. It was one of the first PC games that I ever played, and the graphics looked about as good as the Atari 2600. It had an instruction booklet that was over 100 pages long, and the controls were not very instinctual. Still, Flight Simulator really changed the world of PC simulation gaming as we know it, and I’m sure that it has been a cash cow for Microsoft for many years.
By the way, those who are connected with a free Games for Windows Live account will be able to have additional content which includes planes, missions, and more. You can also get in-line purchases such as aircraft, regions, as well as customization options .
Well, I look forward to many “Flights” of fancy, as this game could be my next distraction for the spring.
I told Maggie I wanted to go to a strip club. She said this to me, she goes, ‘What do you want to go to a strip club for? I’ll strip for you.’ I was like, ‘How great is that? I guess I’ll just tell my friends to come over here.’
Australian illustrator DrFaustusAU created this wonderful series of Dr. Seuss-inspired Batman illustrations. See his versions of Batman, Catwoman, the Riddler, the Joker, and Harvey Dent in the style of Dr. Seuss illustrations.
I’m sure that most of you coolest-gadgets readers are familiar with WowWee, as they make some really cool robot toys. Last year at CES, they unveiled the Cinemin Slice, and CES 2012 will be the year of the AppGear.
I have a video of it after the jump, and it apparently uses augmented reality apps for both iOS and Android, combined with physical toys. I’m not certain how it all works, but it could be the next generation of gaming.
After all, who doesn’t want to see their toys come to life? It looks like the Alien Jailbreak works by placing the alien jail toy in front of you and then shooting the aliens with an iOS or Android augmented reality application of some type.
There will be six of these games/apps available, which will be available sometime in early 2012. They will cost about $9.99 and $19.99, and include the aforementioned Alien Jailbreak, Zombie Burbs, and Elite Commander.
I’m sure that more games will come, especially with Star Wars franchise tie-ins. that’s just a theory, but who wouldn’t make more money for Lucas if they can?
Using only brown packing tape and a scalpel, Dutch artist Max Zorn creates unbelievably realistic portraits. He then hangs them on street lamps across Amsterdam at night to place his scenes in their original dark, urban environments.
To show exactly how he does what he does, he’s just recently released this superb time-lapse video.
Using only brown packing tape and a scalpel, Dutch artist Max Zorn creates unbelievably realistic portraits. He then hangs them on street lamps across Amsterdam at night to place his scenes in their original dark, urban environments.
To show exactly how he does what he does, he’s just recently released this superb time-lapse video.
Generals, marines, lawyers, coach drivers, politicians, and even artists! These were “Women of the Future,” as imagined in a series of 20 French postcards from 1902.
Several if not all of the pictures seem to mock the idea of women entering the professional sphere, but this was only one year before Marie Curie shared the Nobel Prize in Physics, so perhaps there was a bit of cultural intimidation at play here.
You’ve got seconds to live, and whoever invented this thing gave it five syllables. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a rush job? … Shouldn’t they at least call it defibrillnow?
I think we all know what is missing from iPad games, a button-munching controller. Yeah, how else can iPad gaming compete with the Xbox and Playstation if it can’t reproduce the experience that gamers are so used to?
I don’t know if you are like me, but I can’t stand to do controls on the touchscreen. I recently downloaded some nineties-era X-men game and found that moving around was difficult. Those control touchpads in the corner take a lot of getting used to.
Fortunately, there is the 60beat GamePad, which connects to iPads and iPhones via headphone jack. Somehow, signals are sent to through the 4-foot cable and the iPad user can play any games that are compatible. This makes iPad gaming a lot like console gaming.
In all honesty, I am surprised that Apple hasn’t come out with some official gaming controller for the iPad. Maybe they will totally optimize the iPad 3 for games, and then have an official iPad joystick. I wonder if I am giving Apple any smart ideas for making more money.
Perhaps the 60beat should come up with a way to make a Wiimote for the iPad. Then again, that Wii U looks like a tablet, and we will probably never see the Wiimote again after its release.
Other features of the 60beat includes an ergonomic design, dual joysticks, D-Pad, and 10 action buttons including 2 for joysticks. You should be able to purchase the 60beat iPad Gaming Accessory for about $49.99 on this website.
Made in China is an impressive piece by artist Joe Black depicting a portrait of Chinese soldier that appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine in 1938. Black glued over 5,500 multi-colored toy soldiers to a vertical surface to achieve the pointillistic effect. The artwork was on display last October at the Moniker Art Fair in London.
Marking your workout’s progress can be quite a chore, but then again, I supposed if you have the discipline to work out each day without having to drag yourself out of bed, keeping track of your health record should not be too hard to do. The $99.99 Touch Screen Heart Rate Watch might help you out here, where it enables easy monitoring of your heart rate in order to maintain and improve on your cardio intensity target.
Basically, the Touch Screen Heart Rate Watch delivers an accurate reading to you without the need to wear an uncomfortable chest strap, and neither do you need to fiddle around with a wide range of function buttons while ensuring your activity level remains at the same, high intensity pace. All you need to do is touch The Touch Screen Heart Rate Watch’s bezel, and within seconds, you will be able to see what your current heart rate is. The LCD display is a snap to read, and it also doubles up as a watch, calendar and stopwatch. Love exercising at dusk? Fret not, there is a light-up display to help you there. Since the New Year is tonight, why not make a resolution and sweat away those pounds in 2012, with the help of the Touch Screen Heart Rate Watch?
Since today is my 40th birthday, I have decided to celebrate by spending the night at a hotel. I can’t say that I would like to spend a night at this hotel, but it would make for an interesting story about the day I turned the big 4-0.
This ICEHOTEL is an annual project in the village of Jukkasjarvi. Every suite is specially made by artists who submit their ideas and have them selected by a jury. There are fifty artists in total that create the church, icebar, reception area, main hall and rooms. Of course, like all art, it is sadly temporary, and it melts every spring in the Torne River.
I thought that this ICEHOTEL looked familiar, and you might recognize a similar ice hotel in the James Bond movie Die Another Day. The movie was not filmed there, but it was the inspiration. After the jump, read more about another ice hotel in Romania.
The ice hotel in Romania is the Balea Lac Hotel of Ice in the Fagaras mountains. It has 10 double rooms with king size beds, with a temperature of -2 to 2 degrees Celsius.
Yeah, that is very cold, but it’s better than staying at the hotel made entirely of fire.
UK-based artist David Mach used thousands of matchsticks to create incredibly detailed sculptures, then burns them and leaves them charred. Mach uses Japanese matchsticks because their heads come in all sorts of different colors, and color is definitely an important part of his works.
For folks who tend to do a whole lot of traveling, you would certainly know all the relevant exercises to release the tension of your body, including performing the right kind of exercises on your calves and rotating your feet from time to time, which works great if you happen to be on a long haul flight. Well, thanks to the wonders and advances of technology, we now have the $39.95 Traveler’s Circulation Enhancing Leg Massager.
This cordless device is said to improve circulation in your leg whenever you travel. The device will wrap itself around a calf, where it can inflate and deflate automatically, in order to facilitate the expansion and contraction of calf muscles so that there will not be any swelling in the long run, while blood flow will be enhanced. You can set it to cycle through three different compression levels, where each program takes around 15 minutes. Powered by a couple of AA batteries, it can fits up to a 20″ diameter calf.
I have girlfriends who will text message naked photos of themselves to their man. Which, I guess the whole point of that is, to be like, ‘Here’s what’s waiting for you at home, big boy.’ If I was to do a ‘here’s what’s waiting for you at home’ photo shoot, I would take some pictures of the frigging dishes, the bills right now. My vagina’s not waiting for you at home at all.
Dream Big was a year-long project in which artist Peter Fecteau created a mosaic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. using 4,242 Rubik’s Cubes. Dream Big was on display for the 2010 ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan placing in top 50 out of 1,700 artists.
For a short time it was the world’s largest Rubik’s Cube mosaic. He created it with the help of YouCanDoTheRubiksCube, First Park Congregational Church, The Student Advancement Foundation and Cooley Law School.
The Toy Atlas Rainbow is a wonderful installation of 2,500 old toy cars by UK artist David T. Waller, who won the People’s Award at the Arts Depot Open last year. The cars in the installation are arranged in a circular pattern according to their color, making a beautiful rainbow out of Hot Wheels cars.
Some of you might remember when we covered how the popular television show The Office (American version) satirized PC tablet culture as Dwight Schrute introduced a triangular tablet. Apparently, someone wants to harness “The Power of the Pyramid” as they are trying to develop an actual triangle tablet.
The man is Eric Calisto, and apparently he was inspired by the aforementioned episode of The Office. You can read about his progress at Kickstarter, and he wants about $25,000 of funding. At this writing, only four people have pledged about $28.
I noticed the picture on Kickstarter isn’t really of a triangular tablet, but only a triangle. Considering that Kickstarter is made for concept technology looking for funding, I’m surprised that there isn’t a better mock-up as proof of concept. Perhaps this guy needs to borrow some props from NBC.
If you want to try can get on board with this possible new tablet fad, head over to Kickstarter and pledge now. The first individual who gives $5,000 will actually get to pick the name for the tablet.
I’m not planning on sending an amount that large, but I do have a few suggestions for names: the Isosceles, the Equilateral, and the Scalene. Oh wait, those are just triangle types, and I can’t help but wonder type of triangle this tablet will be. Of course, I wonder if there is even a future for a triangular tablet, because I want to instinctively say “no”.
This is the Rollerphone, and it is currently a concept watch/telephone, but can do two things which are quite revolutionary.
The first is the pull-out screen which is good for making and taking phone calls. You can see in the image here that it is located on the back of the watch, and the user puts it to their ear to conveniently speak and listen.
As for where the front of the watch, the time is projected on the user’s wrist with a tiny projector. I have an image of that after the jump if you want to see how that works.
I suppose that selling a phone or a watch is difficult, as most features have been done before, but either of the two that I would have described would revolutionize either industry.
Especially the pull-out transparent screen. I’ve heard that technology has been under development by many big electronics companies for quite some time. If so, then I would imagine that the rollout screen has some other uses than just a phone dialer.
Yes, once those rollout display screens get developed, then we will see a lot of technology that will be similar to the Rollerphone. Of course, this is really just a concept, at least for now.
It seems like a lot of MMO games are now free to play now, and it looks like Microsoft is making one of their classic games free with Flight Simulator. 
I’m sure that most of you coolest-gadgets readers are familiar with WowWee, as they make some really cool robot toys. Last year at CES, they unveiled the Cinemin Slice, and CES 2012 will be the year of the AppGear. 
I think we all know what is missing from iPad games, a button-munching controller. Yeah, how else can iPad gaming compete with the Xbox and Playstation if it can’t reproduce the experience that gamers are so used to? 
Marking your workout’s progress can be quite a chore, but then again, I supposed if you have the discipline to work out each day without having to drag yourself out of bed, keeping track of your health record should not be too hard to do. The $99.99 Touch Screen Heart Rate Watch might help you out here, where it enables easy monitoring of your heart rate in order to maintain and improve on your cardio intensity target. 
Since today is my 40th birthday, I have decided to celebrate by spending the night at a hotel. I can’t say that I would like to spend a night at this hotel, but it would make for an interesting story about the day I turned the big 4-0. 
The ice hotel in Romania is the Balea Lac Hotel of Ice in the Fagaras mountains. It has 10 double rooms with king size beds, with a temperature of -2 to 2 degrees Celsius. 
For folks who tend to do a whole lot of traveling, you would certainly know all the relevant exercises to release the tension of your body, including performing the right kind of exercises on your calves and rotating your feet from time to time, which works great if you happen to be on a long haul flight. Well, thanks to the wonders and advances of technology, we now have the $39.95 Traveler’s Circulation Enhancing Leg Massager.
Some of you might remember when we covered how the popular television show The Office (American version) satirized PC tablet culture as Dwight Schrute introduced a triangular tablet. Apparently, someone wants to harness “The Power of the Pyramid” as they are trying to develop an actual triangle tablet. 
This is the Rollerphone, and it is currently a concept watch/telephone, but can do two things which are quite revolutionary. 
I suppose that selling a phone or a watch is difficult, as most features have been done before, but either of the two that I would have described would revolutionize either industry.