Google podría estar pensando en comprar Groupon según podemos leer en All Things Digital, y es que como sabéis, a Google le gusta comprar aunque no sepa muy bien que hacer con sus compras luego. De confirmarse este rumor, aplicaciones como Google Maps o Google Place podría, no sólo ser el servicio de mapas online más visitado, sino el más deseado.
¿Qué es Groupon? Groupon es un sitio web en el que podemos adquirir descuentos para restaurante, cupones de 3×2, entradas a eventos, regalos exclusivo y tickets para ir al cine, por poner sólo algunos ejemplos, a precio reducido en el área en la que te encuentras. El servicio, diariamente te ofrece algo que hacer, un lugar donde acudir con alguna oferta o promoción. Si consigues que un determinado número de personas se apunte, este quedará validado y podrás acceder a el. El sistema siempre ofrece promociones cerca de donde vives, es decir, ofertas localizadas.
Ahora seguro que entendéis el interés que podría tener Google en la compra de Groupon y las grandes ventajas que podría tener su incorporación en Google Place. Imaginas que estáis dando un paseo por vuestra ciudad, sacáis vuestro teléfono y consultáis que oferta hay hoy disponible a tu alrededor: hoy 40% de descuento en el restaurante que tienes a 500 metros de ti. No sabes dónde está el restaurante, pero no importa, Google Maps te guiará con tu teléfono y GPS. Llegas finalmente al restaurante y te das una gran cena con un 40% de descuento.
¿A que suena interesante? Pues ahora sólo queda esperar y estar atentos porque a la justicia norteamericana con las leyes antimonopolio federales en la mano, puede que no le haga demasiada gracia la idea.
Excelente artículo en donde se publica una selección de excelentes alternativas al teclado, como método de entrada de texto en dispositivos móviles Android.
Let's face it: Typing on your touchscreen phone with your big fat fingers is still too difficult and error-prone. These alternate Android keyboards aim to make text entry on a tiny touchscreen faster and easier using radical redesigns and smarter predictive text.
Ed. note: We've featured most of these keyboards on their own at Lifehacker, but here's a nice side-by-side comparison of some of the best alternate Android keyboards.
The newest and most ambitious of the bunch, 8pen redesigns the mobile touch keyboard completely by splitting the keyboard area into quadrants. To type, you swipe circles around the quadrants that specify letters based on what quadrant your circle started and ended in. The 8pen keyboard takes dedication and time to learn, but once you do, text entry is very fast with big targets fit for big fingers. You can program certain gestures to output frequently used phrases, too. For example, a circle could output your email address or full name. The 8pen keyboard is free in the Android Market.
Pros: 8pen's large quadrants and function keys are almost impossible to miss. Custom gestures for frequently-used phrases is a powerful time saver.
Cons: 8pen's learning curve is extremely steep. Plan to work through the 8pen tutorial and spend at least 20 minutes just learning the placement of the letters in the quadrants. Skip to 1:18 to go right to seeing what it's like to type with 8pen:
Like Google's own Gesture Search input, Graffiti offers Palm-like writing on your Android device. To use it, draw a letter similar to the way you would with a pen on a piece of paper onto the touch canvas. Graffiti is free in the Android Market.
Pros: No pecking, just intuitive swiping, familiar to Palm graffiti lovers.
Cons: There's a medium learning curve while getting all of Graffiti's gestures down pat; also, tapping a letter key takes a lot less time than swiping it out Graffiti-style.
Graffiti demonstration:
SlideIT (Gesture-based on traditional keyboard layout)
Similar to Swype and ShapeWriter, SlideIT is a gesture-based keyboard that uses the key layout you already know. To type a word, slide your finger from letter to letter on a standard QWERTY keyboard. SlideIT involves a bit of getting-used-to, but once you're there, it's easy to type very fast even with some inaccuracy in your gestures. SlideIT is about $8 (depending on the exchange rate) right now in the Android Market.
Pros: Easy to learn gestures for people who don't like pecking; also offers a graffiti mode.
Cons: Takes some time to teach it words it doesn't know through old-school pecking, like proper names.
ThickButtons is the same keyboard layout you already know, but it integrates smart text prediction into the keys themselves. With ThickButtons enabled, as you type, it enlarges the particular keys it anticipates you want to tap next based on the word you're inputting. ThickButtons is free in the Android Market.
Pros: Zero learning curve.
Cons: Removes Android's voice input button from the keyboard.
SwiftKey is also a traditional keyboard, but with souped-up text prediction smarts. Instead of basing its predictions only on the letters of the current word you're typing, it also uses the word that appeared before it. It learns how you write as you use it, and will predict words in phrases you type often. SwiftKey is free in the Android Market.
Pros: Virtually no learning curve and highly accurate predictions. Also adds other shortcuts, like the ability to swipe across the keyboard to delete the last word you typed.
Cons: SwiftKey crashed my Nexus One once, right after installation, and requires you install a language module to enable predictions.
SwiftKey demonstration:
Mobile keyboard preferences are a personal thing, but out of all five, I liked two of these keyboards the best. If you're into gesture-based input, go with SlideIT. If you like tapping as usual but just want better text prediction, SwiftKey is a great start—with ThickButtons a close second.
Until our smartphones are smart enough to read our minds, happy hunting, pecking, and sliding.
Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business. This articlerepublished with permission.
Una de las mejores notas que he leido ultimamente en Tom’s Hardware, donde analizan que tanto beneficia el agregar una placa Nvidia para el proceso de físicas con motor PhysX, junto a una placa AMD, para mejorar la experiencia de juegos. Excelente que hayan tenido en cuenta el impacto que produce el agregar placas de rango bajo y medio… y les adelanto que para bien de nuestros bolsillos, una mínima 240 es una opción a considerar!
Rarely does an issue divide the gaming community like PhysX has. We go deep into explaining CPU- and GPU-based PhysX processing, run PhysX with a Radeon card from AMD, and put some of today's most misleading headlines about PhysX under our microscope.
The history and development of game physics is often compared to that of the motion picture. The comparison might be a bit exaggerated and arrogant, but there’s some truth to it. As 3D graphics have evolved to almost photo-realistic levels, the lack of truly realistic and dynamic environments is becoming increasingly noticeable. The better the games look, the more jarring they seem from their lack of realistic animations and movements.
When comparing early VGA games with today's popular titles, it’s amazing how far we’ve come in 20 to 25 years. Instead of animated pixel sprites, we now measure graphics quality by looking at breathtaking natural occurrences like water, reflections, fog, smoke, and their movement and animation. Since all of these things are based on highly complex calculations, most game developers use so-called physics engines with prefabricated libraries containing, for example, character animations (ragdoll effects) or complex movements (vehicles, falling objects, water, and so on).
Of course, PhysX is not the only physics engine. Up until now, Havok has been used in many more games. But while both the 2008 edition Havok engine and the PhysX engine offer support for CPU-based physics calculations, PhysX is the only established platform in the game sector with support for faster GPU-based calculations as well.
This is where our current dilemma begins. There is only one official way to take advantage of PhysX (with Nvidia-based graphics cards) but two GPU manufacturers. This creates a potential for conflict, or at least enough for a bunch of press releases and headlines. Like the rest of the gaming community, we’re hoping that things pan out into open standards and sensible solutions. But as long as the gaming industry is stuck with the current situation, we simply have to make the most of what’s supported universally by publishers: CPU-based physics.
Preface
Why did we write this article? You might see warring news and articles on this topic, but we want to shine some light on the details of recent developments, especially for those without any knowledge of programming. Therefore, we will have to simplify and skip a few things. On the following pages, we’ll inquire whether and to what extent Nvidia is probably limiting PhysX CPU performance in favor of its own GPU-powered solutions, whether CPU-based PhysX is multi-thread-capable (which would make it competitive), and finally whether all physics calculations really can be implemented on GPU-based PhysX as easily and with as many benefits as Nvidia claims.
Additionally, we will describe how to enable a clever tweak that lets users with AMD graphics cards use Nvidia-based secondary boards as dedicated PhysX cards. We are interested in the best combination of different cards and what slots to use for each of them.
