Oculus Rift's latest VR headset prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 (hands-on)

Oculus Rift's latest prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 handson

"This is the latest prototype," the Oculus guys tell us. That's great, now strap us in. The team decided to make a sudden stop in Germany ahead of appearances back in the US over the next few weeks -- and we're glad, because it meant we got to call in on them and grab some time with the Oculus Rift. If you didn't know, the Rift is a Kickstarter-funded VR gaming headset (stay with us) that's caught the attention of several games developers -- most notably John Carmack. He liked it so much, in fact, that he developed a special Rift-ready version of Doom 3 for the headset and Doom 4 will also be heading to the VR peripheral too. We got to play with the earlier game and while there's a video after the break, we reckon you'll really need to try this in person to fully grasp how the Oculus Rift plays. Check out our impressions after the break.

Continue reading Oculus Rift's latest VR headset prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 (hands-on)

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Oculus Rift's latest VR headset prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/16/oculus-rift-hands-on/

Square intros flat-rate payment option at $275 per month, hits small business sweet spot

Square intros flatrate payment option for $275 per month, hits small business sweet spot

Square is most often pitched as heaven for small businesses, but that 2.75 percent cut per transaction is sometimes a problem for stores that are too successful. Enter a new flat rate option. Shops that don't take more than $250,000 a year in Square payments, or charge more than $400 in a given sale, can instead pay a flat $275 per month regardless of how many swipes they take. The deal makes the most sense for businesses handling more than $120,000 a year through the reader, establishing a definite limit to its usefulness; this isn't exactly for a budding jeweler (or Starbucks). Even so, the simplicity of the rate might be very alluring for companies that aren't keen on surprise costs or working out the math, and it's a contrast to the half-steps towards flat rates taken by VeriFone and other, more traditional outlets going mobile.

Continue reading Square intros flat-rate payment option at $275 per month, hits small business sweet spot

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Square intros flat-rate payment option at $275 per month, hits small business sweet spot originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/16/square-intros-flat-rate-payment-option-for...

Bluetooth Bulb lets you switch on, time, dim and color your lighting from your phone (video)

Bluetooth Bulb lets you switch on, time, dim and color your lighting with your phone video

Every once in a while, someone tries to give the humble light bulb a little next-gen flavor. This time, we're adding Bluetooth 4.0 to the mix. Why, you ask? Good question, and one with a simple answer. The Bluetooth Bulb lets you pair your phone with one or more of the lights in your home, and then control them via an app. Switch them on, off, change brightness, set a timer, and a special RGB bulb even lets you change the color ambiance. If you're worried about the cost and waste when these things burn out, fear not, as apparently every part is replaceable -- and as there's no home automation system involved -- you won't need anything else to get set up. If this idea switches you on, you might have to hold out a little longer, as the product is just a patented prototype right now. Sights are set on mass production, but you'll have to stick with your old clapper for the time being.

Continue reading Bluetooth Bulb lets you switch on, time, dim and color your lighting from your phone (video)

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Bluetooth Bulb lets you switch on, time, dim and color your lighting from your phone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/19/bluetooth-bulb-lets-you-switch-on-time-dim...

How to Automatically Archive Your Life with IFTTT and Evernote [Journaling]

Keeping a journal can be fun, but it's hard sometimes to keep up with recording all your memories or important thoughts. Brilliant webapp automating service If This Then That (IFTTT) can create an automatic journal for you by archiving your events, pics, and social media posts to Evernote. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5935658/how-to-automatically-archive-your-life-with-ift...

The Olympic Live Stream: Observations, Recommendations, Predictions

lpress writes "The Tour de France and the Olympics were live streamed on the Web. The BBC streamed 2,500 hours of live coverage of the Olympics and NBC streamed the entire Tour de France and 302 events from all 32 Olympic sports. I watched both events as a fan and as an observer of the online content and the network performance. I blogged detailed descriptions of my experience and summarized it in 12 observations and recommendations. The summary concludes with predictions about the way live events will be covered in the future — coverage of these events was an early step in a major shakeup of the way live events are produced, distributed and viewed."

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from Slashdot http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/08/17/2246222/the-olympic-live-stream-obser...

An Ideal First Credit Card Churn

A credit card churn is about signup bonuses. It isn’t about what card gets you the most for your spending (other than the minimum spending necessary to earn a bonus). It’s about getting a card which gives you a big upfront bang for the buck.

You may or may not keep that card, depending on what other features and benefits you have. But it’s about a big payment to you for applying for the card, which can fund your travel in premium cabins all over the world.

I’ve written in the past about managing good credit to fly and stay cheaply all over the world. If you have good credit you can do this, and you can often even improve your credit in the process.

Now when I write about the cards I’m looking at to apply for and the cards I have in my wallet and which I will keep and which I will cancel, I hope that’s a useful window into strategy and at least the way that I think about these opportunities.

But I’ve been at this for 15 years and I’ve already had many of the cards that offer the best bonuses. Some you can get again, others you can’t, some you have to wait awhile before you do.

So what I thought would be useful would be to highlight how I would approach signing up for cards to get the best bonuses if I were new to this game.

See, Chase usually will only give you a signup bonus once for each card. Sometimes they revamp a card and consider it ‘new’ like the British Airways Visa a couple of years ago, I had had it years before but the new features and benefits meant I could get the card again, and I did (for the 100,000 point bonus). There are folks who will report getting bonuses over and over still, but they’re generally the exception.

American Express used to be one bonus per cardmember in a lifetime, or if you signed up for a card you’ve had in the past they would only give you the incremental bonus over what you had gotten before. More recently they seem to be open to allowing signup bonuses every two years, at least in my experience and reading.

Meanwhile Citibank has been good in allowing me to get the same bonus on the card after 18 months.

And Bank of American and Barclays have both given bonuses more than once, though there are reports that Bank of America is clearer in their terms and conditions at least (though unclear as yet if in real world practice) that they’ll only give a bonus one time.

None of this is like the good old days of getting a bonus over and over on Chase cards every 60 days or every 90 for Citi. Those days are long past, but on the plus side the bonuses themselves are bigger. I used to get excited by 15,000 and 20,000 point signup bonuses!

Roughly speaking conventional wisdom is that you sign up for a bunch of cards at once every 90 days for best effect. Each card issuer will only give you so many cards at a time, so try to pick one card from each. Business cards are often considered different and it’s possible to get both a personal and business card from Chase and from American Express at the same time, though they may make you talk to one of their representatives if you do try (e.g. American Express might want to make sure it’s not a duplicate application).

Some folks will check their credit report and see which issuers are pulling from which bureaus in their state, hoping to spread out their credit inquiries across the different bureaus. Since I’m really only interested in a few card issuers anyway, that’s not affected my decision-making in the past.

But if I were starting from scratch what I would do as my ideal churn is:

Chase:

  • Sapphire Preferred Visa.
    • No fee the first year, 40,000 points after $3000 in spend within 3 months.
    • No foreign currency conversion fees
    • Double points on travel and dining
    • Points transfers to United, Hyatt, Southwest, Amtrak, British Airways, Korean Airlines, Marriott, Priority Club, and Ritz-Carlton.
    • One of the very best all-around cards, and with a great signup bonus.

  • Ink Bold small business charge card or Ink Plus small business credit card.
    • These are the small business counterparts to the Sapphire Preferred
    • No fee the first year, 50,000 point signup bonuses: 25,000 after first purchase and 25,000 more after $10,000 spend within 3 months.
    • Points transfer to United, British Airways, Korean Airlines, Southwest, Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Priority Club, and Amtrak.
    • Quintuple points on wireless/telecommunications services, cable and satellite TV and radio, and office supply stores and double points on hotels and gas stations up to 200,000 points per year.
  • American Express:

    • Starwood Preferred Guest American Express
      • 30,000 point bonus limited time offer — 10,000 points after first purchase and then 20,000 more after $5000 in spend within six months (a reasonably long time in which to do it).
      • No fee the first year
      • Points can be used for hotel stays or transferred to airline miles, in most cases 1:1 and with a huge variety of programs. When you transfer points to 20,000 miles you receive 5000 bonus miles.
      • That means if you use this as an airline mileage-earning card you effectively receive 1.25 miles per dollar on all spend.
      • 2 stays and 5 nights towards elite status

  • Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Business Card
    • 30,000 point bonus limited time offer — 10,000 points after first purchase and then 20,000 more after $5000 in spend within six months (a reasonably long time in which to do it).
    • No fee the first year
    • Points can be used for hotel stays or transferred to airline miles, in most cases 1:1 and with a huge variety of programs. When you transfer points to 20,000 miles you receive 5000 bonus miles.
    • That means if you use this as an airline mileage-earning card you effectively receive 1.25 miles per dollar on all spend.
    • OPEN savings, I like it for domestic Hyatt spending because you earn the Starwood point for credit card spend and receive 3% cash back credited to the card as well.
    • 2 stays and 5 nights towards elite status
  • Citibank:

    • Citibank American Airlines American Express
      • 50,000 bonus points and $100 statement credit after $3000 spend within 4 months
      • No fee the first year.
      • Links is direct to an application page, I’ve gotten no reports of the bonus having any problems however.

  • Citibank American Airlines Visa
    • Many folks have success getting approved for 2 Citibank cards at a time, even similar cards, when submitting applications simultaneously via two different web browsers (e.g. Google Chrome for one, Internet Explorer for the other).
    • 50,000 bonus points and $100 statement credit after $3000 spend within 4 months
    • No fee the first year.
    • Links is direct to an application page, I’ve gotten no reports of the bonus having any problems however.
  • Barclays: US Airways Mastercard

      • 40,000 points after first purchase and fee waived the first year.
      • 10,000 more points after first year, which is worth the $89 annual fee.
      • 2 club passes each year
      • $99 companion ticket

    Bank of America: Alaska Airlines Visa

      • 25,000 miles on approval and then 15,000 more after $7500 in spend within 6 months of account open.
      • $75 annual fee not waived.
      • $99 companion ticket which is valid for use on any paid coach fare.

    (Note that the Chase and American Express cards above over a referral credit to me if you use my links, which are the best available I’m aware of, and I truly appreciate it if you choose to do so. The Citibank links are better than any that would offer credit to me, so I suggest these as your best bet. I receive no credit for anything from Bank of America or Barclays.)

    from View from the Wing http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/2012/08/18/an-ideal-first-credi...

    Sky Sports TV app for Android now available, brings live events to the UK and Ireland

    Sky Sports TV app for Android now available, gives you all the football soccer you need

    Not to be outdone by The Worldwide Leader in Sports, Sky's just released its own application to keep football enthusiasts entertained while on the go -- at least Premier League fans using Android slabs. Unlike the ESPN app, however, Sky Sports is charging £5 (around $8) per month for its offering, though it will -- with the help of ESPN, no less -- stream over 100 EPL matches live, so you're not limited to only highlights and previews. That being said, Sky Sports TV also lets UK and Ireland folks watch other sporting events, including F1 races, PGA Golf and tennis events like the US Open. The bad news is the app currently doesn't support Jelly Bean-loaded devices, which, for now, will most likely only affect a tiny section of Mountain View's user base -- if that's not you, though, the link to download is down below.

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    Sky Sports TV app for Android now available, brings live events to the UK and Ireland originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 07:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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    from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/18/sky-sports-tv-app-android/

    Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers

    Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers

    Early last year, Valve mentioned it was working on something called Big Picture mode for Steam, an alternative user interface with controller support designed specifically for use on televisions. According to Gabe Newell, the distribution services' couch-ready UI is almost upon us. "We should have both Linux and 10-foot betas out there fairly quickly," he told Geoff Keighley in the latest episode of GTTV, noting that the interface would be available on both the current iteration of Steam and the upcoming Linux version. Newell said that Valve has been showing the interface to hardware manufacturers, but ultimately feels that the community will decide its fate. "I think customers will say 'this is really great,' or they'll say it's another interesting but not a valuable contribution, fairly quickly." Check out the interview for yourself (and the full episode) after the break.

    Continue reading Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers

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    Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink Joystiq  |  sourceGameTrailers, Geoff Keighley (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

    from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/18/steam-big-picture-beta-soon/