Doctor Who Corn Maze: Orville Reden-Doctor Approves

Posted on 16/07/2013 by Conner Flynn

You know what Doctor Who needs? More corn! A cornocupia of corn. It’s timey-wimey, corny, worny. Forget the Brigadier. We need the Kernel! Ugh! Terrible. That’s it for my corny jokes.

doctor who maze

So what’s the deal with this huge Doctor Who crop formation? It’s to celebrate 50 time-traveling years of Doctor Who. The 300+ meter-long maze was made by York Maze and and you may have noticed, it depicts a giant Dalek, along with the first and latest Doctor.

It looks pretty awesome, but I would hate to get lost in this maze of maize – especially if I bumped into these guys…

daleks corn maze

At least we know that aliens didn’t create this one.

[via BuzzFeed and Obvious Winner]

Hello Lamp Post Lets You Have a Conversation with Your City

Posted on 15/07/2013 by Hazel Chua

How many people do you know in your city? Hello Lamp Post won’t exactly let you meet or talk with anyone specific, but it will allow you to listen to the thoughts, comments, and other random ramblings of others who live in the city.

Hello Lamp Post

First things first, what is Hello Lamp Post? It’s a city-wide experiment that involves turning objects throughout the city (like the mailbox shown above, or lamp posts, for example) into interactive objects. These objects have been assigned with a unique reference code. Whenever someone wants to “wake” them up, all they have to do is text “Hello [object] #reference code” to 0117-325-9898.

hello lamp post 2

The object will respond with a question for you to answer. If someone has “woken” them up before, then you’ll receive their answer instead, followed by the option to add your own message so you can join in the conversation.

The concept launches today, July 15th in Bristol, UK. It’s a fun way to get to know your city and its other inhabitants in the most unconventional way possible.

Check out what sort of street objects are having the most conversations here.

[via Dvice]

Leeds Phone Boxes Get Turned into TARDISes, Become Wi-Fi Hubs

Posted on 07/07/2013 by Conner Flynn

It’s about time somebody started painting UK phone boxes in TARDIS blue. My only question is, what took so long? This is now happening in the city of Leeds. They are repainting their red phone boxes in a shade of TARDIS blue. The boxes will also be outfitted with Wi-Fi and touchscreens so they can serve as Wi-Fi hubs.

Image: Yorkshire Evening Post

But that’s not all. The phone boxes are also getting recording devices so that visitors and residents can record their thoughts about Leeds for other people to watch. It will be full of stuff like “Great city, but this TARDIS isn’t even bigger on the inside? Bollocks!”

A company called aql is handling it all. Unfortunately, the boxes won’t be all over the U.K. – just in Leeds. They have to rig them to make the TARDIS sounds though. How could you not add that?

[via Engadget via TechRadar via The Mary Sue]

Bloodhound Supersonic Car is Displayed at Downing Street

Posted on 26/06/2013 by sumayah

A replica of Bloodhound Supersonic Car is being displayed at Downing Street on June 24, 2013 in London, England. British Prime Minister David Cameron viewed the full size replica of the car along...

Twitter Parody Accounts Hail the Eventual Arrival of the #royalbaby

Posted on 06/12/2012 by Hazel Chua

So it’s official: Prince William and Kate are having a baby. To some, it’s great news. To the curious, it’s information worth knowing. To the vast population, it’s merely news that doesn’t have anything to do with them. But among this latter group exists a smaller group who make it their business to talk about it anyway: Twitter parody accounts.

If you’re active on Twitter, then chances are you’ve seen a couple of these accounts and might even be following some of them.

They’re mostly there for comic relief when you need it. With the lack of mockable news lately, it’s only to be expected that most of them will leech onto news of Kate’s pregnancy:

Laugh a little. If you like what you see, then follow them for more.

[via BuzzFeed]

Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents

Posted on 04/11/2012 by Sean Buckley

Sure, you can always play catch with the dog, but what kind of game can you play with a caged rodent? Well, "find the poster," apparently. A team of researchers from Universities in Spain, Germany, Austria, England and the US have put together a virtual reality system designed to let humans interact with rats at the rodent's scale, challenging human participants to find and lead the rodent to a unmarked goal. According to a paper published in PLoS One participants were "beamed" into the rat's environment by linking a head-mounted display and joystick to a rat-sized telepresence robot. Human players were then treated to a proportionally accurate representation of the game arena. The rat was there too, tracked with an overhead camera and represented by a human avatar.

Participants were tasked with coaxing their opponent in front one of three posters in attempt to sleuth out which one represents the "winning" position. When both players are in front of the correct mystery poster, a bell sounds and the game ends. The game was primarily created to test a scaled immersive virtual reality teleoperator system, but researchers are optimistic the technology could be used to observe animal behavior from a new perspective. Check out the setup in action after the break, or read on through to the source link below for a detailed description of how mankind and some of nature's smaller creatures can get along in a virtual space.

Continue reading Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents

Filed under: Misc, Robots

Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seagulls Torment Woman By Dropping Plastic Golf Balls on Her House

Posted on 22/09/2012 by Technabob

Well, here’s an odd little story that happened over in jolly old England recently. A woman living in Paignton, Devon started hearing strange clanking noises on the roof of her house, and decided to go outside and have a look. After investigating, she found a couple of orange practice golf balls sitting on her yard. She figured it was from some neighborhood kids playing around, and moved on with her life. But then the balls kept raining down.

seagull golf balls

Turns out that after much puzzlement, the brightly-colored plastic golf balls were coming not from kids, but from gulls flying overhead and dropping them on her roof. Apparently, the seagulls think that the balls are mussels, and that dropping them will crack them open so they can get at the tasty morsel inside. I’m sure the gulls are very disappointed when they find out there’s a whole lot of nothing inside of them. Now why they decided to repeatedly use this woman’s house for target practice is anyone’s guess – maybe she ran over a seagull in a past life. So far, more than fifty of the balls have found their way onto the woman’s home.

What’s even more confounding is that nobody seems to know where the balls are coming from – after checking with many local golf courses, none of them use such balls for practice. Perhaps she can start her own driving range now.

[via Daily Mail]

UK pricing begins to filter out for Motorola’s Intel-powered RAZR i smartphone

Posted on 21/09/2012 by Darren Murph

Soon after it's unveiling, the Intel-based RAZR i showed up in Clove's listings with a SIM-free price of £342, and now it looks as if a few more outlets are pushing pricing details to the world. Expected to storm the UK in October, the phone should ship to Virgin Media customers for around £23 per month on its Premiere Tariff, while T-Mobilers will be able to score one for £0 to £31 per month depending on the contract. All told, not too shabby for the world's first 2GHz Atom-backed Android phone, and if you're eager to push all of this iPhone 5 stuff aside, at least you know precisely how many quid to save up between now and next month.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

UK pricing begins to filter out for Motorola's Intel-powered RAZR i smartphone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft announces new entertainment and game studio focused on Windows 8 tablet development

Posted on 15/09/2012 by Alexis Santos

Windows 8 slates are riding a wave of 40 Xbox titles into an October launch, and now Microsoft has laid the foundation to deliver more games with a brand new studio focused on tablet development. The currently unnamed, London-based outfit will be headed by former Rare Production Director Lee Schuneman, who has shepherded Kinect Sports titles, the Xbox 360 Avatars, Fable: The Journey and the Xbox's Sky TV app to completion. Slabs running Redmond's latest OS won't see a project from the team for a while, however, as the studio is still looking for new hires and won't open its doors until November.

Continue reading Microsoft announces new entertainment and game studio focused on Windows 8 tablet development

Filed under: Gaming, Tablets

Microsoft announces new entertainment and game studio focused on Windows 8 tablet development originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Sep 2012 15:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Barnes & Noble continues British invasion, forges pacts with Argos, Blackwell’s and Foyles

Posted on 30/08/2012 by Steve Dent

Barnes & Noble has continued its quest to stock the shelves of United Kingdom bookstores with Nooks, by adding Argos, Blackwell's and Foyles to the list of where you can get one. Those retailers will join John Lewis in carrying the Nook Simple Touch and its Glow Light-toting cousin, giving UK'ers nearly a thousand bricks and mortar sites to get one -- including bookstores at 55 colleges and universities. Those locations will join Barnes & Nobles recently launched online website in selling the e-readers -- but if you like to Touch before buying, the PR is after the break.

Continue reading Barnes & Noble continues British invasion, forges pacts with Argos, Blackwell's and Foyles

Barnes & Noble continues British invasion, forges pacts with Argos, Blackwell's and Foyles originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.