Getting Gamers off the Couch: Red Robot Tests Location-Based Gaming

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via allthingsd.com

Over the past year, Red Robot Labs has discovered one major limitation in making games based on the real world: Laziness.

“Gamers are lazy,” said Pete Hawley, Red Robot Labs’ co-founder and chief product officer. “You can’t expect them to get off the couch.”

A year ago, the Mountain View, Calif., company attended the Penny Arcade Expo (a.k.a. PAX) in Seattle to launch its first game, Life is Crime. That weekend, three Red Robot employees hustled to make the convention a virtual game board, getting attendees to virtually commit more than 20,000 “crimes,” in addition to hospitalizing more than 1,000 people and stealing $35 million from real places.

Apple Will Buy Your Old iPhone for Good Money So You Can Buy a New iPhone 5

via gizmodo.com

A new iPhone is coming and if you want to smartly get rid of your old iPhone before it gets even older, you would want to sell it off for as much as you can get. If that’s too much work, go for perhaps the easiest route: sell your old iPhone back to Apple. They’re taking old iPhones with open arms.

Apple is accepting old iPhones as part of its Reuse and Recycle Program and the value you get from Cupertino actually isn’t too terrible: an excellent condition iPhone 4S 64GB can fetch $345 while a used and slightly scuffed iPhone 4 16GB will still score you $160. All you have to do is send the iPhone with the power cable and Apple will give you a gift certificate which you can promptly use to buy… your next iPhone. It’s like swapping car leases but for phones.

Stop the presses. Google has an ad on its homepage.

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via techi.com

Having the cleanest homepage on the internet has often been attributed to much of Google’s early success. Before they were the search engine, they competed against Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Alta Vista, and other portal sites that had ads, news, and just about everything else that one could fit onto a single website. Google’s was clean back then and remains clean today.

Every now and then, they do some promotions. Today, they used the most visited page on the internet to display a simple message:

“The playground is open. The new $199 tablet from Google.”

China’s Already Knocking Off the iPhone 5

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via gizmodo.com

According to highly suspect rumors website NowhereElse.fr, an industrious Chinese company has already copied the design for the iPhone 5—even before we officially know what the iPhone 5 looks like. Meet the Goophone i5, the bastard child of cobbled together rumors and unyielding ambition.

If you ignore the buzzing Android bug (?) on the back of the Goophone i5 it could easily be what many people think Apple’s newest iPhone will look like. At the very least it has the rumored two-tone back design. But where most believe the new iPhone will have a taller design than its predecessor, the dimensions of the Goophone i5 are the same as those on the old 4x3, 3.5-inch iPhone 4S. Oh well. It seems even counterfeiters aren’t willing to fully place their bets based on supposedly leaked specs.

Neil Armstrong, a video look back at a space pioneer

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via gigaom.com

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 82. For young technology followers, Armstrong’s name may seem a little distant. But his journey to the moon in 1969 inspired many of our best and brightest to take giant leaps and push mankind forward. He came to represent American determination and our drive to achieve greatness.

Neil Armstrong, a video look back at a space pioneer

Media_httpgigaom2file_csref
via gigaom.com

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 82. For young technology followers, Armstrong’s name may seem a little distant. But his journey to the moon in 1969 inspired many of our best and brightest to take giant leaps and push mankind forward. He came to represent American determination and our drive to achieve greatness.

Verdict reached in Apple/Samsung case, finds Samsung guilty of massive infringement

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via extremetech.com

In the fast-moving tech industry, most battles are won and lost in the market, not the court room. Courts are designed to move slowly and allow time for each side to make a case, conduct depositions, and call witnesses. More often than not, court cases function as mopping-up actions to redress alleged financial wrondoings long after the products and patents being fought over have faded from the public’s eye.

Guess What? IBM’s A Software Company Now!

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via businessinsider.com

In case you haven’t been paying attention, IBM’s stock has been on a tear of late, more than doubling off the 2009 low.
That may not sound particularly impressive—the market as a whole has doubled off the 2009 low—but IBM’s stock didn’t collapse the way the rest of the market did during the financial crisis. Also, the stocks of some of IBM’s big competitors have fared far worse over this period.