drag2share: Go Inside The Futuristic NYC Hotel Where Practically Everything Is Controlled By Tablet [PHOTOS]

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/citizenm-times-square-hotel-tour-2014-5

CitizenM, a new hotel in New York City's Times Square, is a beautiful combination of high tech and high design.

Guests check in using a station of touchscreen computers, and each room can be customized using a sleek Samsung Galaxy tablet. Artwork by Andy Warhol and David LaChapelle line the walls.

CitizenM operates branches in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London, Glasgow, and Paris. In April, the boutique hotel chain opened the new location in Times Square, its first in the United States.

The brand's emphasis is on affordable luxury. Each of the 230 rooms has the same layout, and rates start at $199 a night.

The hotel is both artistic and futuristic, with some stunning design details and impressive technology.

Welcome to citizenM Times Square.

Even before you enter the hotel, you'll see a wall full of art and knickknacks.

There's no reception desk at this hotel. Instead, guests use this kiosk of touchscreen computers to check in, though hotel 'ambassadors' in red shirts stand close by if you need help.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider




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drag2share: Researchers Figured Out How To Make Robots That Can Assemble Themselves Into Any Type Of Furniture

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/roombots-2014-5

Above is an animation of how small robots might recombine themselves to form a chair! Here's what they look like in real life:

Researchers at the EPFL — that's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne — have built awesome modular robots called "Roombots" that can join together to make mobile structures, even furniture.

Each ball-shaped robot is capable of rotating in two diagonal halves, so this makes some curious movement possible. Check out how they can form a figure that waddles across the floor:

The balls can connect to each other (each has several green-tinted "joints"), but they can also pair with passive, non-robotic "plates" to introduce surfaces to the equation. Here's an animation of how they might come together to form a table:

The real value here is in mobile furniture that can accommodate the elderly or disabled. Watch how this table, outfitted with Roombots, can adjust its height and move into position for someone with limited mobility.

Auke Ijspeert, head of the EFPL's Biorobotics Laboratory, said, "Eventually, all you'll need to do is program the layout of a bedroom or a conference room, then let the modules do the work."

A full video demo appears below:

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Article: Storehouse, the iPad storytelling app from a former Apple designer, raises $7M

Storehouse, an iPad app that lets users create and share digital stories from photos, videos and text, has raised $7 million in Series A funding, the company announced Thursday. Storehouse's cofounder and CEO is Mark Kawano, Apple's former user experience evangelist and iPhoto and Aperture design...

http://gigaom.com/2014/05/22/storehouse-the-ipad-storytelling-app-from-a-former-apple-designer-raises-7m/

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drag2share: First Unreal Engine 4 mobile game built in a week with no coding skills

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/22/unreal-engine-4-tappy-chicken/

Epic Games can crow all it wants about how easy its next-gen development toolset is to use, but until we actually see results, those words are pretty hollow. That changes today with the release of Tappy Chicken, the first Unreal Engine 4 game released for Android, HTML5 browsers and iOS. Yeah, it's a far cry from the fiery demon we've come to associate with anything UE4-related (and it looks more than a little bit like another flying fowl), but the key here is that Epic says it's the work of exactly one person using a sort of simplified scripting system called Blueprints. What's more, the developer isn't even a coder -- he's an artist by the name of Shane Caudle. Caudle designed the game-play loop for the procedurally-generated game in an evening and spent around a week on the menus and squashing bugs. Epic says that it could even be ported to consoles pretty easily. The reason for the free game? To show how easy it is to mod and add-on with UE4 even by someone who doesn't know a lick of typical programming languages like C++. If you want to give it a go for yourself, all it takes to start is $19.

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Mobile

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Source: Google Play, Apple App Store

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drag2share: Using Explosives to Put Out Wildfires Is Actually a Great Idea

Source: http://gizmodo.com/using-explosives-to-put-out-wildfires-is-actually-a-gre-1579732658

Picture this: a drought-fueled wildfire is heading for Los Angeles, and fast. Millions of lives are at stake, and water can't stop it. When suddenly, a helicopter—armed with what can only be described as a giant cannon—flies straight for flames and BOOM. There's an explosion, and the fire's gone.

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