Light Start – Samsung’s bike windscreen, underwater beds, Angolan pirates, and Contra Mobile

Samsung’s smart windshield for bikes is a possibly awesome, possibly horrible innovation

Smartwatch? Notifications on your wrist. Smartphone? Ditto, but in your pocket. Smart windshield for a motorcycle? Er… guess. Samsung’s Italian arm and Yamaha have come up with a smart windscreen for scooters that connects to a phone and shows you navigation, notifications, and more, by projecting a heads-up display in front of the rider. The problem is, it does so on a motorcycle. Of sorts. We’re torn, in this case. The idea of a smart windscreen that can talk to a cellular phone talks to us on a technological level but we’re extremely hesitant to add extra distractions to the already demanding experience that is navigating a motorcycle without serious injury. Good thing it’s just a concept for now.

Source: Samsung Italia

AirBnB has limited space for a room in the Paris Aquarium shark tank

If you’re not tempted to travel to Paris just to spend the night in the Paris Aquarium surrounded by sharks, then you’re already dead inside. That’s what AirBnB, the avoid-the-hotel-industry service, has in store for a few lucky patrons though: a shark-infested glass bedroom on either April 11, 12, or 13 in Paris –  a feature which, incidentally, has finally made the city properly honeymoon-worthy. You won’t have to pay, either. AirBnB are going to be flying winners (who should enter here first) to Paris, as long as they’re over 18 and are able to enter and leave the glass bedroom under their own steam. You’ll note that we didn’t make any silly water-bed puns. We’re so proud.

Angolan internet pirates are using Facebook’s zero-rating and Wikipedia to trade files

If you live in Angola, you’re able to access Facebook and Wikipedia on mobile devices. It’s free, but you can’t go anywhere else. Can you think how to set up an ad-hoc file-sharing system given those restrictions? Internet pirates in Angola have. They’re hiding pirated files in the Portuguese version of Wikipedia and then sharing the links to said files, which are often movies or music tucked away inside JPG or PDF files, to closed Facebook groups. The catch now? Nobody’s quite sure how to police these new infringements. Sure, you could shut down the Angolan zero-rated access but that wouldn’t be very nice for the non-pirates, now would it? Commence Operation Whack-A-Mole? Perhaps.

Source: Motherboard Image: AlexyStein

Contra‘s getting a visually sparkling (no, not like that) update for its official mobile release

Wait, the two Rambo-looking dudes from Contra actually have names? How about that. That’s also just the first thing that you’ll notice in the video above, which details the official mobile Contra release being made by IP owner Konami and mobile game maker Tencent (who make a lot of money doing what they do). While the prospect of a NES-era shooter being controlled with a touchscreen – and it can be done, in a twin-stick shooter kinda way – is a little jarring, it’s the visual updates that have caught our eye. It looks as though the first Contra has been given the update treatment and we might just have to give this one a go, if it ever launches here. Just to see if we’ve still got it.

Source: Konami (YouTube)