Light Start – Apple’s Precious, Minecraft story, Moonspike, solar upgrades, and Vox DSL comes cheap
Brett Venter
One ring to rule them all? Apple is patenting a smart ring
Tim Cook can’t be Sauron, can he? We’ve seen too many movies to rule that out, especially as Apple have just taken a patent application for a smart ring that sounds, according to the description, a whole lot like it supports the functions of the Apple Watch. Heart-rate sensing is just one of the functions references and the ring could be using in conjunction with Apple’s wristwear as well. Whether it’ll turn you invisible and will require disposal on the slopes of Mount Doom when you’re done with it hasn’t been explored. An application doesn’t mean that Apple are definitely making this iRing (or just Ring) but it has been suspected for some time so… make of that what you will.
Minecraft as a surprise hit that sold massive numbers, made its creator a billionaire and spawned many, many impressive creations. And it never had a storyline. But now Microsoft owns the property and we’re getting Minecraft: Story Mode, a game that nobody was really sure was needed. And there will still be people on the fence, even after this story trailer which looks like it’s headed in the right direction. That’d be the influence of Telltale Games, a development studio known for consistently telling some great stories. We’ll soon see how well named they really are.
To outer space with Moonspike (and a lot of crowdfunding)
Crowdfunding has done some amazing things. It gave us the Pebble, it resurrected a couple of old game franchises, killed off a couple, gave us some new ones, allowed all sorts of tech to be made – but never once has it sent us to space. It still won’t, but it will send a rocket to the moon if there around enough takers. And that rocket will contain your stuff. Digital stuff. The idea is to fire the rocket at the moon and plant digital data, provided by the Kickstarter backers, into the moon’s surface contained inside a titanium spike. Sounds like one way to preserve your selfies in case of global annihilation. They’re looking for £600,000, they have £12,290 so far.
Solar power could soon be over-powered, thanks to carbon nanotubes
Heard of an optical rectenna? It’s pretty new so we wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t. It’s a combination between and antenna and a rectifier diode and its purpose is to turn light, that stuff that bounces off everything outside, into electricity. DC electricity, specifically. The creation of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology (heh, GIT), the optical rectenna has the potential to change the way that we harvest solar power. Just… not yet. This carbon nanotube construction isn’t as efficient as we’d like it to be yet – less than 1% of the light that touches it can be turned into electricity. But that number can be changed, say the researchers, to around 40%, which would make solar power about twice as effective as it is now. Well, guys, get a move on.
Vox drops ADSL pricing, making uncapped very attractive indeed
If you were giving any thought to changing your ISP, Vox Telecom might have provided the impetus to make the jump. Their uncapped packages have dropped in price, from their 1Mbps uncapped costing R89 (R99 with the DSL line included for uncapped) and their 10Mbps offering costing R699 (with the DSL line) per month. All of the bits in between have also seen similar drops and Vox have brought out a new 8Mbps line to boot. Time to comparative-shop.
