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MINI EMU: Retro Gaming Made as Easy as Pi

Gaming

Marty

-

19th March 2015

MINI EMU: Retro Gaming Made as Easy as Pi

Whether it be Sonic, Streets of Rage or Super Mario, do you remember gaming in the good ‘ol days? One of the latest Irish Kickstarter campaigns seeks to bring all those memories back to your TV.

Emulation is a popular method of gaming. By downloading an Emulator, you can play games from consoles of days gone by on your computer or smartphone. In the interest of convenience, Sumbo Design, a Dublin based company, have brought over 40 emulators into one neat little box – the MINI EMU.

The popularity of such a device cannot be questioned, as the project was funded within just 24 hours. It hardly comes as a surprise, as the device allows gamers to enjoy games like Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. Not all games come pre loaded as ‘including copyrighted games […] would be an act of copyright infringement’, however the projects site does maintain an FAQ section with details on how to install games.

It doesn’t stop there. The MINI EMU is powered by Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer. This means it can run other software. The MINI EMU comes preloaded with KODI, a full entertainment system that can be loaded with plenty of entertainment. KODI operates in a similar grey area to Showbox.

The MINI EMU offers quite a substantial entertainment package for a remarkably low price. Early backers of the Kickstarter can pick up the device from just €99, with delivery expected in August 2015.

Top 5 Groupon Apple Deals Available Right Now

Uncategorised

Marty

-

9th March 2015

0

Top 5 Groupon Apple Deals Available Right Now

Apple have a rich history or very high quality wares. Such high quality often comes at a certain cost. Groupon allows you the opportunity to get yourself some Apple branded tech while also saving a few bob! Here’s the top 5 Apple deals on Groupon right now.

1. Apple iPhone

You’re two months into your contract, but you’ve just dropped your brand new iPhone down the toilet. Of course, you didn’t take that insurance that seemed too pricey, but not you’re going to pay! Well, don’t pay too much. Groupon has a wide selection of Apple iPhones for you to choose from at cut prices.

Refurbished iPhone 5S 32GB – €409.99

With the launch of the iPhone 6, the 5S has maintained a strong level of popularity amongst punters, largely owing to it’s size offering the best, relatively small, handset on the market. The iPhone 5S comes in Space Grey (black), Silver (white) and gold, with a 12 month warranty.

Refurbished iPhone 5 32GB – from €299

These handsets come factory unlocked to all networks and with iOS 7 installed. You can pick up the iPhone 5 from Groupon in black and white.

Refurbished iPhone 5C 16GB – €269.99

If you want an iPhone but with a little bit more colour, the only option is the iPhone 5C. You can pick up this cut rate iPhone from Groupon in white, blue or pink.

Refurbished iPhone 4 8GB – €149.99

Maybe you want the Apple logo without all the cost and dazzle that comes with the latest iPhone. If you simply like the way iPhone works, then this is a great deal for you. This iPhone 4 comes with 8GB of memory and you can choose between black or white.

Note: Refurbished handsets are not brand new handsets. They are preowned and factory reset, often looking brand new or showing some signs of wear and tear. All refurbished handsets discussed here, come with a 12 month warranty.

2. iPhone Accessory Bundle

Maybe you look after your iPhone and don’t need to buy one at all. How about you get some discounted accessories instead? Valued at €71, Groupon offers this accessory pack for just €16.99. While not official Apple merchandise these kits are compatible with iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5S and 6. Included in the pack are two black cases, a sports band, a docking cradle and loads more!

3. Apple iPad

iPad Air Wi-Fi 16GB – €369

Perfect for sitting at home on the Wi-Fi while watching Netflix. Better still, to buy this directly from Apple would set you back €409. This is a brand new unit, though it does only ship with US power adaptors. Still, not enough to put us off it! The iPad Air 16GB comes in Space Grey (black) or Silver (White).

iPad Mini Wi-Fi 16GB – €219.99

Available in either black or white, the iPad Mini is perfect for use both on the go or at home. Most importantly, this is again brand new and to buy directly from Apple would set you back €249.99

4. Apple TV 3rd Generation – €79.99

We’ve updated this listing to direct you to the Apple Store instead of Groupon. A day after publishing this article, Apple slashed the price of the Apple TV, meaning you can now enjoy YouTube, Netflix and all your iTunes music on your TV for just €79.99

5. Space Bar Desk Organiser – €74.99

This may be a stretch as it’s not strictly Apple, but given its design it will appeal to anyone with a Mac (and many without). Worth €129.99, this piece of kit is designed to five you somewhere to push your keyboard and mouse when not needed. Rather neatly, it also gives you 6 additional USB ports, which is fantastic for charging throughout the day. Time to go begging to who ever does the buying in your office!

The Evolution of Console Controllers

Gaming

Marty

-

8th March 2015

0

This just made us go “uhhh”, “ahhh” while remembering the good old days. You can actually feel the controller in your hand as you watch the below controllers evolving!

Big hat tip to the guys over in gadgetlove and SpringDoseOfLove on Imgur.

Irish Kickstarter: The Apollo 11 Experience

Tech News

Marty

-

7th March 2015

0

Irish Kickstarter: The Apollo 11 Experience

Virtual reality is one of the world’s biggest technologies right now. While Samsung and HTC made headlines for their new flagships, many are more interested in the news that the two companies were working on Gear VR and Vive virtual reality. With VR making leaps and bounds, an Irish Kickstarter campaign has emerged, utilising Oculus technology to simulate the Apollo 11 Experience.

Waterford’s own Dave Whelan is hoping to take one small step for man, as his company Immersive VR Education has already received over €20,000 of its €30,000 Kickstarter campaign. The end product will be a virtual reality package that puts the participants in the shoes of Neil Armstrong on what was perhaps one of the most defining moments of the 20th century.

Immersive VR Education, seek to utilise the groundbreaking virtual reality technologies which are quickly becoming more accessible, to engage with students. Speaking to RTÉ news, Dave Whelan points out that pupils are only likely to retain 10% of what they read and 30% of what they see. When students experience their education, they are more likely to retail 70% of information after two weeks.

Although Virtual Reality is growing from strength to strength, this educational Kickstarter campaign is still €10,000 short of it’s goal with just 7 days remaining. More information is available on the project’s Kickstarter website, where you can also become a backer.

HTC One M9: Quietly Brilliant or Playing it Safe?

Uncategorised

Marty

-

5th March 2015

0

HTC One M9: Quietly Brilliant or Playing it Safe?

With Mobile World Congress 2015 drawing to a close, it would be unfair to only focus upon the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge. There is plenty of other news to come out of Barcelona, not least of which was the announcement of HTC’s brand new flagship handset, the logically titled One M9.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79T_XvhkHLc

According to HTC Chairwoman, Cher Wang, “HTC has built its reputation on challenging expectations in the mobile industry”. The big question surrounding the Utopia in Progress Event at this year’s Mobile World Congress would be whether or not HTC could challenge the expectations that had been set by several trend setting handsets.

HTC One M9 – What’s New

Avoiding the temptation to make this a small section, we want to point out the positives that come with the launch of a new flagship.

Dolby Surround Sound

Even prior to the HTC One M7 and HTC One M8, a certain amount of pride is attributed towards the sound that comes from the HTC One series, which has seen partner, Beats Audio, come and go. Boomsound and HTC’s trademark front facing speakers will now benefit from Dolby Surround Sound technology, meaning that your Netflix or Showbox experience will be better than ever.

Camera

While the M9 sees the departure of the unusual but somewhat successful Duos Lens, the camera is shaping up to be a real market leader. The primary camera boasts 20 megapixels, with 4K video shooting capability and a Ultrapixel front-facing camera which works brilliantly in low light.

The Rest

This is where a certain level of disappointment and respect comes in. A new phone every year is a tough thing to take if you like keeping up with the very latest tech. The M9 really softens the blow for M8 users, as there are no real leaps and bounds forward. Many of the other features which were announced at Mobile World Congress this year suggest that software rich improvements should be available to, at the very least, M8 users. This are features such as a new Gallery, Context bases information presentation and the “love it or hate it” Sense 7.

Should you buy the HTC One M9

This section is going to mirror the conclusions reached during our review of the Samsung S6 & S6 Edge Launch. If you are an M8 user, rest assured, there should be no real rush to grab an M9. While the M9 is almost certainly going to be a success and a beautiful piece of crafted technology, both Samsung and HTC have released underwhelming flagships this year.

If you are interested in knowing more about the HTC One M9 prior to launch, you can register your interest with Irish suppliers Vodafone, Three and Carphone Warehouse.

MWC2015: The Huawei Watch

Tech News

Marty

-

1st March 2015

0

Regular readers of Goos3d will know that we’re big fans of wearables, in particular the Pebble and since earlier this week, the Pebble Time. Huawei have just announced their latest range of Smartwatches, and it’s very interesting!

What’s so striking about Huawei’s range of Smartwatches is that…well…they look like watches -and classy watches at that.

Taking Apple’s approach to watch naming, the Huawei Watch, running Android Wear, aims to bridge the gap between Smart and non-Smart watches, opening up the market to more users. Initial reactions would seem to agree that they are on the way towards achieving this.

If Huawei can continue their tradition of delivering quality on a budget, the Huawei Watch could be the missing link for the success of wearable technology.

A nation holds it’s breath.

Samsung Unpacked 2015: Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge

Uncategorised

Marty

-

1st March 2015

0

Samsung Unpacked 2015: Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge

Following an hour of cringey waiting for applause and terrible use of hands while speaking, the outcome of Samsung’s 2015 Unpacked event is largely positive. We covered Unpacked in our Live Blog Feed, but keep on reading to get a summary of the whole event.

Design

Okay so straight away, Samsung has won here. The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge look gorgeous. The Edge’s design, while admittedly gimmicky, looks fantastic. The chassis of the handset has moved away it’s familiar plasticy feel, towards a metallic body. Users rejoice…

…wait wait…not everyone will be happy about this bit. The new Galaxy range will not longer have a removable battery. We’re not convinced that Samsung’s track record with power warrants moving to non-removeable.

Debate – Do you think the S6 design looks quite similar to the iPhone 6.

Battery

This is the one thing every phone user cares about. If the figures bandied about by Samsung are to be believed, the Galaxy S6 battery is extremely impressive. According to Samsung, a 10 minute charge will give 4 hours standard handset usage, and that 0-100% charging takes half the time of an Apple iPhone 6.

Awesome battery improvements 10 minutes will give you 4 hours #unpacked2015 #UNPACKED #SamsungGalaxyS6 pic.twitter.com/s6zybJ0DRg

— Wassim Al-Hammouri (@WHammouri) March 1, 2015

Samsung were clearly straining for new features to big up this year, as wireless charging was promoted as a massive feature of the new S6 and S6 Edge, yet this is something most users are unlikely be too excited about. The everyday user seems to be forgotten about in the features listing…

Features

Samsung have announced Samsung Pay, a new method of payment by using your phone. Samsung claim this means you can use your phone to pay anywhere that accepts Credit Card or NFC. This is a clear swipe at Apple, whose ApplePay feature has received criticism for it’s limited acceptance. Of course, Irish users should still remain quite calm about that…

#SamsungPay to launch in the US and Korea during the summer #MWC15 #UNPACKED #neverbeseeninireland

— GOOS3D (@goos3dblog) March 1, 2015

The Samsung screen is insanely high quality, which again, to many of us will never reach it’s true potential. The high quality is to facilitate the new Gear VR – virtual reality headset.

The camera took up a large portion of the Unpacked event, but was rather underwhelming. The launch of the camera has bee reduced to 0.7 seconds, and the layout changed around. The camera’s low light performance was directly compared to that of the iPhone 6 (one of many body shots that were send towards Apple). Through the demo shots, non-surprisingly the S6 Camera was vastly better.

Samsung Galaxy Edge

This is a strange one. A ground breaking piece of tech is certainly the dual curved edges of the Samsung Galaxy Edge. Yet, the introduction of such a development was extremely disappointing. We don’t know why, but the curved edge could go down as one of the biggest gimmicks of any handset in recent years.

Final Word

As with all handset launched, it comes down to this – Do you need this phone?

The answer completely depends upon what handset you have at the moment. If you have a Galaxy S5, they it is a resounding no. There are very few developments to warrant the change. If you are due your upgrade, by all means you are not getting a bad handset at all, quite the contrary. The Galaxy S6 is jam packed full of fantastic features that should keep anyone happy.

Final Final Word

We’re genuinely looking forward to seeing what Otterbox pull out of the bag to protect the Galaxy S6 Edge – sooo much glass.

@goos3dblog That one is tricky. We’ll be sure to keep you posted with any news!

— OtterBoxCS (@OtterBoxCS) March 1, 2015

LIVE BLOG – Samsung Unpacked: Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge

Uncategorised

Marty

-

1st March 2015

0

LIVE BLOG – Samsung Unpacked: Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge

Kickstarter: Pebble Time

Uncategorised

Marty

-

28th February 2015

0

The Pebble Smartwatch broke records when it’s initial Kickstarter campaign reached over nine million euros in 2012. Three years later, the Pebble is back from a second helping.

With 28 days remaining of the brand new Pebble Time Kickstarter campaign, Pebble Time has already achieved almost eleven million euros with around 10,000 fewer backers to date – it’s understandable why.

While a large amount of the Pebble Time’s latest Kickstarter success can be attributed to the record breaking initial campaign, the sheer beauty of the Time has sent wearable tech fans into a spiral.

Pebble Time Features

Colour ePaper

Pebble pioneered the use of ePaper in their wearable time pieces. ePaper is very similar to the eInk display found in the Amazon Kindle. The benefits of ePaper are manifold, namely combining long battery life and ease of viewing in any lighting conditions. The first Pebble Smartwatch was restricted to a black and white screen. This restriction has been lifted, making way for a gorgeous colour ePaper screen. Although the screen will be vastly improved, battery life is actually set to be prolonged by a further two days.

Microphone

Many Pebble users were crying out for a colour screen, but the second innovation comes as a bit more of a surprise. The Pebble Time will feature a built in microphone, but still maintain it’s water resistance rating (the mind boggles). This will likely be a feature which grows over time, but will initially support all major Android apps such as SMS, Facebook, Whatsapp and hundreds more. iOS will initially be a little more limited.

Timeline Interface

Okay so these Pebble employees look like they are in a cult, but they know this feature inside out.

Once again, this should be a really nice feature when the Pebble Time launches, but will grow as more developers jump on board with the new device.

Android Smart Lock

Okay, so admittedly, Pebble aren’t really responsible for this one. The recent Google update to Android 5.0 was initially quite underwhelming. That was until we discovered the Smart Lock feature. Smart Lock is a genius bit of design. When you have a bluetooth device conntected to your smartphone, the handset disables the lock screen code, assuming that when the device is nearby, you are too. This works perfectly for the likes of Pebble and of course now, Pebble Time, as when you walk away, you are less likely to leave your Smartwatch sitting beside your device than another item like Bluetooth Headphones.

Since upgrading to Android 5.0 Lollipop, this has by far been the best feature to appear, giving new value to wearables.

How to get the Pebble Time

Kickstarter

The Pebble Time will retail for $199 when it ships in May of this year. Many of the “early backers” packages on the Kickstarter campaign have already been gobbled up, but get over there now to see if you can save a few bob and get a limited edition “Kickstarter Edition” Pebble Time.

Just make sure you factor in the €30+ you’ll need to pay on customs!

Retail

Unfortunately, it will likely be quite some time before the Pebble Time reaches Irish Retail Outlets. If you want to go down the route of purchasing the original Pebble, which is still a great watch, it can be found in PC World along with the sleek Pebble Steel.

Real Life Where’s Wally

Uncategorised

Marty

-

22nd February 2015

0

You may know him as Waldo, but the guy in the red and white jumper is recognisable the world over…once you spot him of course! Wally has managed to pop out of his books into real life, owing largely to Reddit user poeticmatter (right).

poeticmatter spent the day taking some shots in a busy mall, so take a few minutes to see if you can spot the man himself below. Comment when you spot him!

1. Apple iPhone

2. iPhone Accessory Bundle

3. Apple iPad

4. Apple TV 3rd Generation – €79.99

5. Space Bar Desk Organiser – €74.99

HTC One M9 – What’s New

Dolby Surround Sound

Camera

The Rest

Should you buy the HTC One M9

Design

Battery

Features

Samsung Galaxy Edge

Final Word

Final Final Word

Pebble Time Features

Colour ePaper

Microphone

Timeline Interface

Android Smart Lock

How to get the Pebble Time

Kickstarter

Retail

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