Visualized: A Christmas tree made out of Chevrolet Volt parts
Gary Card launches the Vauxhall Ampera Season's 'Electric Christmas' at The King's Cross Filling Station
London, November 2012 – Vauxhall Motors and The King's Cross Filling Station (KXFS) have commissioned one of London's most exciting creatives, set designer and illustrator Gary Card, to create an Electric Christmas tree that will light up Regents Canal as part of the Vauxhall Ampera Season.
Taking inspiration from the Vauxhall Ampera, Gary Card will create a giant, Electric Christmas tree that will become a nightly spectacle throughout the festive period. The sleek Christmas tree will reveal a gleaming engine-like structure within.
Gary Card's sets and installations have appeared in the windows of Dover Street Market both in London and Tokyo, Liberty, Topshop and Uniqlo, while his work has appeared in publications such as Vice, POP, Garage, Another Man, Dazed Confused, V Man and i-D Magazine.
"When Vauxhall approached me to design a Christmas tree, my immediate response was create something mechanical. I really wanted to create a Christmas tree I'd never seen before. I loved the idea of applying the almost alien cybernetic design of the Ampera engine, to the warm, familiar silhouette of the Christmas tree. The overall design is inspired by the angles of the Ampera with a little nod to the robot iconography I loved as a child. I wanted to celebrate the fact that the Ampera is an electric car by having an electrical mechanism powering the Christmas tree. The tree also has a transforming element that I can't wait to reveal to everyone." says Gary Card
"We are beyond excited to get Gary's Christmas Tree installed in the Forecourt of the KXFS ready for the run up to Christmas. A fitting festive finale to the Vauxhall Ampera Season." says Pablo Flack, Office of Change
Electric Christmas is the last in a series of events forming The Vauxhall Ampera Season, a six month programme of cultural events at the newly created KXFS. Inspired by the award-winning Vauxhall Ampera, the first extended range vehicle with zero range anxiety which launched in May. The season has been developed to offer an engaging and relevant program of culture, free to the public, with a focus on celebrating the fascinating future of art, science and technology.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/visualized-christmas-tree-chevy-volt/
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One Blu-ray set is back on, ships April 2nd
Just in case you were wondering whatever happened to that delayed-by-lawsuit 10-disc Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One - Avengers Assembled Blu-ray set that captured a full series of the Disney / Marvel movies, Amazon is notifying pre-orderers (previously mollified with free The Avengers discs) of the new release date: April 2nd. While the original suitcase has been scrapped due to a licensing dispute with its designer, a recent post on Marvel's blog revealed the set will still come in a not-exactly-S.H.I.E.L.D. briefcase complete with glowing Tesseract inside. The movies, bonus content, art cases and all are still intact, however with the delay have come a few extras. Buyers can expect an early preview of Iron Man 3 and the Phase Two series of flicks, as well as prop replicas and never-before-seen extras from the earlier films. The bad news? The price appears to have gone up, flashing a $219 MSRP and current selling for $197 on Amazon. While you're thinking that over, check after the break for a clip from Thor that didn't make the theatrical cut.
[Thanks, Jason]
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/marvel-cinematic-universe-phase-one-blu-ray-set-is-back-on-shi/
Next Issue grows iPad library with addition of eight new magazine titles
Next Issue Expands Magazine Catalog for Unlimited Plans
New Titles Include ESPN, Fast Company, Food Wine, Inc., Men's Fitness, Men's Journal
New York Magazine, Travel + Leisure
New York, NY – November 29, 2012 – Next Issue Media, the first and only company to provide unlimited access to premium digital magazine content in the US, today announces the addition of eight new titles to its iPad® catalog. These new magazines increase the total number of top titles to 80 across a spectrum of interests, maintaining the company's commitment to offering the world's most popular brands in a high-value consumer subscription model.
The new titles added to the Next Issue catalog include: ESPN The Magazine, Fast Company, Food Wine, Inc., Men's Fitness, Men's Journal, New York Magazine and Travel + Leisure. While the Next Issue catalog continues to grow with the addition of these eight new magazines, pricing of the unlimited access plans remains the same.
The Unlimited Basic plan provides access to all monthly and bi-weekly titles, 73 in total, and continues to be offered for just $9.99 per month. The Unlimited Premium plan offers access to all 80 titles, which includes the weekly titles, for the same low price of $14.99 per month. Both plans include access to back issues.
"These new titles augment key areas of our catalog, including men's interest and business, and enhance the value to unlimited customers by giving them an even broader selection of world class, category leading magazines for a single low price" said Morgan Guenther, CEO of Next Issue Media.
Just in time for the holidays, the eight new titles are included in gift subscription packages. Consumers have the option to purchase three, six or 12 month subscriptions to the Unlimited Premium plan for their friends and family.
The new titles are added to the existing catalog of favorites such as: Better Homes and Gardens, Condé Nast Traveler, Cosmopolitan, Details, ELLE, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Fitness, FORTUNE, GQ, PEOPLE, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, The New Yorker, TIME, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired and many more. For a complete list of titles, visit nextissue.com/storefront.
Work is currently underway to bring the new titles to compatible Android® tablets.
Availability and Requirements
ESPN The Magazine, Fast Company, Inc., Men's Fitness, Men's Journal and New York Magazine are available now.
Food Wine and Travel + Leisure will be available in December.
Next Issue for iPad v3.1.0 is required to access the new titles and is available now in the United States on all iPad models. iPad users can go to nextissue.com to sign up for an account, purchase individual magazines or subscribe to an unlimited plan and then download Next Issue for iPad from the App StoreSM.
For more information on Unlimited Plans and device compatibility visit: nextissue.com/pricing.
For more information on Next Issue visit: nextissue.com.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/next-issue-ipad-magazine-library-eight-new-titles/
Nokia outs PhotoBeamer picture-sharing app for new Lumias
Back in June, Nokia splashed out on a big chunk of Scalado's imaging business, and now we're seeing the first fruits of that costly union. The handset maker has re-launched and re-branded Scalado Photobeamer as, you guessed it -- Nokia PhotoBeamer. Aside from the name change, it's the same QR code-based seamless picture service we've seen before, albeit with a Windows Phone 8 twist. It works over WiFi or cellular data and is currently available from the Windows Phone Store -- although it looks like it's exclusive to just the Lumia 820 and 920 for now.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/nokia-photobeamer/
Raspberry Pi’s $25 Model A enters production, could be in tinkerers’ projects early next year
Raspberry Pi's Model B computer will be no stranger to regular readers. We've seen it turn up in all sorts of projects, and generally stretched in various directions. If you were holding out for the cheaper, lower specced Model A however, your time is near. A recent post on the official Raspberry Pi site confirms that the first Model A samples are rolling off the production line. The main differences? Whereas Model B has two USB ports and 512 MB of RAM plus Ethernet, Model A sports only the one port, has half the RAM, and no Ethernet connection, making it more power economical as well as $10 cheaper. Price likely isn't the issue here, but if you were after the even more stripped back version, it's estimated they'll be ready to purchase online early next year.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/raspberry-pi-model-a-enters-production/
GAME sells Steam vouchers in its UK stores, sees no dramatic tension in that whatsoever
GAME is certainly up for trying new things after getting a second chance at life, and today it becomes the first store in the UK to offer Steam Wallet Codes for purchase. You can buy £5, £10, £20 or £50's worth, and until December 7th, you can get a 33 percent bump in trade-in value, should you put the credit towards codes. Customers can also browse the entire Steam catalog on tablets dotted around the shop floor. While the vouchers will obviously make good gifts this holiday, and also appeal to those who don't want Steam knowing their card details, we're not sure how smart a move this is. We imagine there are still a few keyboard-and-mouse gamers out there who don't use Steam, but once GAME shows them the light, will they ever set foot in a physical game store again?
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/game-uk-selling-steam-wallet-codes/
New iMacs on sale now starting at $1,299, we unbox both of them
This is more of a PSA than anything else: just like Apple said they'd be, the new iMacs are on sale today, with the 21.5-inch model available right away and the 27-inch version shipping in December. The smaller guy starts at $1,299, though there's also a more tricked-out $1,499 version; the 27-incher starts at $1,799 and goes up to $1,999. Whichever the model, a few key design principles apply. For staters, both measure just 5mm thick at the edges, and neither has a built-in optical drive. Both promise a 15 to 20 percent performance boost fueled partly by Ivy Bridge, and partly by Apple's new FusionDrive, which combines an HDD with a 128GB solid-state drive, with everything stored on the SSD by default until you run out of space. Finally, both promise 75 percent less screen glare, thanks to a manufacturing process that eliminates the gap between the LCD and the glass. (Apple and other OEMs already use a similar technique on smartphones; we've just never seen it done on a screen quite this large.)
So what separates the two, then, aside from screen size? Specs, mostly. And also, resolution. The 21-inch version has a 1,920 x 1,080 pixel count, while the 27-incher steps up to 2,560 x 1,440. (In other words, the same resolution as last year's offerings.) While both pack quad-core Core i5 processors, the 21.5-inch model starts with a 2.7GHz clock speed, compared with 2.9GHz for the bigger guy. As you might have guessed, the graphics are slightly better on the larger version: NVIDIA's GTX 660M is standard there, versus GT 640M on the 21-incher. Both offer 1TB of storage, but the smaller machine uses a 5,400RPM drive while the bigger one has a 7,200RPM disk. The 27-incher can also be configured with a 3TB drive or 768GB SSD. As for RAM, both come with eight gigs standard, but the 21.5-inch model goes up to 16GB, while the 27-inch version goes up to 32GB and has user-accessible memory slots.
As it happens, we have two new iMacs here in house (one in each size, natch) and you can expect a full review very soon. For now, though, we've got some unboxing shots and first impressions just past the break.
iMac (2012) unboxing
We'll spare you any performance impressions because frankly, we've had these guys less than 24 hours, and would prefer to spend some time actually using them before we tell you how awesomely fast they are. We do, however, feel equipped to talk about two things. First, we know our regular readers are probably used to getting inundated with specs, but 5mm is really quite thin for an all-in-one. It's impressive to behold and makes for an interesting conversation piece, assuming your guests are at least half-interested in tech. The thing is, it's all a little tough to appreciate head-on. After all, both the 21- and 27-inch models have the same screen height and width as last year's. And while the stand is slightly more compact, the iMacs still take up the same amount of space as they ever did. They just look a bit chicer doing it.
Second, and more importantly, the display truly is an improvement over the panel on last year's iMac. Even with the two machines powered off, the newer model reflects noticeably less light than the old one. Turn it on and you're basically looking at a wall of color: balanced, lively tones, uninterrupted by screen glare or artifacts. The screen is fantastically crisp, too, but we're tempted to say the resolution is secondary to the screen technology here; we always noticed the colors before the finer details. Plus, as we said, the screens on last year's models had the same pixel count, and still didn't look as nice as this.
In any event, that is as far as our eyes and unboxing will take us for now. We'll be back with a full review soon, but in the meantime, enjoy the computer porn.
Zach Honig contributed to this report.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/2012-imacs-on-sale-now-first-look/
EU stands with the US against proposed ITU internet changes: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’
While Russia and some African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries want to tax foreign content providers and track web-based traffic, the EU has formed a bloc with the US to kibosh any such changes. The showdown will happen at the ITU in Dubai next month, during a meeting of the 193 member countries. All 27 EU states are stolidly opposed to the changes (though many of its network providers aren't), some of which were leaked from a draft Russian document proposing more control over traffic entering its networks. Other nations like Cameroon said that Google and other content providers should pay to have their traffic routed to the nation, which it said would help pay for network expansion there. But the European Commission believes "there is no justification for such proposals," that the internet functions fine as is and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The EC added what others were likely thinking, namely "some countries treat this as a euphemism for controlling freedom of expression."
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/eu-stands-firm-with-the-us-to-oppose-internet-tax-tracking/
CEOh no he didn’t!: Rahul Sood heckles HP over strangely named Envy h8 PC
It's no secret that Rahul Sood, who now runs Microsoft's Bing Fund, feels a twinge of bitterness towards his previous employer. Having worked for HP until 2010, and having endowed it with the Envy sub-brand, he's since been forced to watch from the sidelines while the mothership floundered. But it's not the u-turns or bad investments that have jerked Sood's chain this time -- it's actually the slightly awkward (and potentially emotional) branding of a model in HP's desktop range. After seeing details of the product pop up online, he tweeted:
"Thought I'd seen everything... then I saw the 'HP ENVY H8' desktop... what the heck guys? Is this code for I give up?"
Tom's Hardware reached out to Sood for an explanation and got a carefully-worded response in which he implied that HP has become preoccupied with the "logo on the box" at the expense of "culture" and "community." Meanwhile, the old Pavilion h8 has somehow slipped by unnoticed.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/rahul-sood-envy-h8/
Apple confirms iPhone 5 coming to China on December 14th, iPads due December 7th
iPad mini iPhone 5 Arrive in China in December
CUPERTINO, California―November 30, 2012―Apple® today announced the Wi-Fi versions of iPad® mini and fourth generation iPad with Retina™ display will be available in China on Friday, December 7, and iPhone® 5 will be available on Friday, December 14. iPad mini and the new fourth generation iPad with Retina display are currently available in 42 countries, and iPhone 5 is available in 47 countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK.
iPad mini is a completely new iPad design that is 23 percent thinner and 53 percent lighter than the third generation iPad, and features a stunning 7.9-inch Multi-Touch™ display, FaceTime® HD and 5 megapixel iSight® cameras, ultrafast wireless performance* and an incredible 10 hours of battery life.** The fourth generation iPad features a gorgeous 9.7-inch Retina display, new Apple-designed A6X chip, FaceTime HD camera and ultrafast wireless performance*. Both iPad mini and the new fourth generation iPad come with iOS 6.
iPhone 5 is the thinnest and lightest iPhone ever, completely redesigned to feature a stunning new 4-inch Retina display; an Apple-designed A6 chip for blazing fast performance; and ultrafast wireless*-all while delivering even better battery life.** iPhone 5 comes with iOS 6, the world's most advanced mobile operating system with over 200 new features including: Shared Photo Streams, all-new Maps app, Passbook® organization and even more Siri® features and languages.
iPad mini with Wi-Fi models come in black slate or white silver for a suggested retail price of $329 (US) for the 16GB model, $429 (US) for the 32GB model and $529 (US) for the 64GB model. The fourth generation iPad with Wi-Fi models come in black or white for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model and $699 (US) for the 64GB model. In China, iPad mini and the fourth generation iPad will be available through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), select Apple Authorized Resellers and by reservation from Apple retail stores. Reservation requests will be accepted daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. beginning Thursday, December 6 for pick up the following day. Additionally, iPad 2 will be available at just $399 (US).
iPhone 5 comes in either black slate or white silver for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model, $299 (US) for the 32GB model and $399 (US) for the 64GB model. In China, iPhone 5 will be available through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), select Apple Authorized Resellers and by reservation from Apple retail stores. Reservation requests will be accepted daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for pick up the following day. iPhone 4S is available for just $99 (US) and iPhone 4 is available for free with a two-year contract from participating carriers.
*Network speeds are dependent on carrier networks. Check with your carrier for details.
**Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
Article source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/30/apple-iPhone5-ipad-mini-china/