Let’s say you’re walking along the street with your friend. They’ve got an iPhone, you’ve got an Android. You tell them about an awesome app you just bought. They can get it to. But at nearly double the price. Odd. If it’s the near future, you can read the Wall Street Journal’s explanation as to why that is on your snazzy Google Glass unit. And after that, you can read about the professor who’s been using augmented reality eye-wear for years or how an octogenarian made 3D printing affordable. We’re not sure if your sci-fi looking Google product will feel about you using it to find out about how Twitter built its biggest weapon though.
No ad to show here.
On the other hand, you could stop fantasizing about the future and read all about those things in our weekly round-up of some of the best stories from around the web.
The evolving economics of the app
If you’re neutral on the OS wars and have iDevices and ‘droid things alike, you have probably noticed that app prices can differ significantly from platform to platform, even for essentially the same app. Why? It’s all part of the strategies and tests of the app and game developers, who track everything from simple downloads to how long it takes to make that first in-app purchase, so they can pinpoint the exact right time to give you the option. The Wall Street Journal investigates how developers predict prices and often prefer to give away their games for free so they can cash in from advertising indefinitely.
Steve Mann: my “augmediated” life
Seriously into Google Glass? This might interest you. This university professor has been building (and wearing) his own augmented reality glasses for decades, and he has quite a lot to say to the team at Google working on the production of the futuristic specs. He points out potential problems with the devices, and how Google’s current set up could potentially lead to eye strain and neural confusion. It’s in in-depth read for anyone interested in more than Google’s snazzy concept videos and focused on what it would be like to wear the specs daily.
Ever wondered how those little smiley faces you include in your messages came into being? Well, they started out as little 12 x 12 pixel blobs which attempted to help stop breakdowns in communication in Japan because you couldn’t gain as much meaning from straight old text. The Verge speaks to the inventor of emoji about the back story behind the pixellated icons and how they became such a phenomenon.
How an 83-year-old inventor beat the high cost of 3D printing
TIME delves into the maker culture to share the interesting story of the man who recently won a competition to convert cheap plastic pellets into the strings of filament used in 3D printing. If every home will one day be producing everything from spare parts to art, the price of the materials needs to come down — and Hugh Lyman’s machine can help make that a reality.
Return of the Borg: how Twitter rebuilt Google’s secret weapon
With all the data floating around Google, its server army is legendary: it always needs more space for an amount of data most probably couldn’t pronounce. If you could find a way to optimise space — save a data centre — it would be massive. Wired discusses Google and Twitter’s efforts to make data storage simpler and more efficient.
