Gizmag's 2012 Game of the Year

Welcome to the newsletter for Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine. These are the headlines for December the 20th, 2012. Gizmag's 2012 Game of the Year The world of gaming is changing. It's no secret that behemoths like EA and Activision dominate much of the industry. But 2012 showed us that smaller developers aren't going anywhere. Which indie games stood out? Which big-budget games lived up to their hype? And which game is Gizmag's Game of the Year? Read on, as we salute the top games of 2012. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Only 12 light years distant, two super-Earths orbit in Tau Ceti's habitable zone Our stellar neighborhood is becoming crowded courtesy of some newly discovered real estate. Astronomers have uncovered evidence buried in the noise of apparently empty data showing that five super-Earths are orbiting the nearby Tau Ceti – a star chosen as one of the targets in the pioneering 1960 Project OZMA search for extraterrestrial life because of its strong similarity to the Sun. Better yet, the two outermost of Tau Ceti's planets appear to be in the star's habitable zone. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Link found between global warming and increased volcanic activity It's no secret that volcanic eruptions can cool the planet by spewing ash and droplets of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere that obscure the sun. Now researchers at Germany's GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and Harvard University have found evidence that suggest the reverse could also be true. The researchers have discovered a strong historical link between global temperature increases and increases in volcanic activity. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Want better posture? There's an app for that When you think of smartphone accessories, images of Otterboxes, camera lenses, and health monitors may dance through your head. Smartphones can also, however, be used to change habits. Startup Lumo BodyTech hopes to do just that, with the Lumoback posture-correcting gizmo. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Entry and Mid-Range DSLR Comparison Guide 2012 After a couple of years ruling the roost as the default go-to for photographers wanting a step-up from their point-and-shoot, DSLRs are now facing increased competition from mirrorless cameras. As a result manufacturers are having to up their game and in 2012 we've seen DSLRs gain improved performance and a number of new features. Our 2012 Entry and Mid-Range DSLR Comparison Guide is designed to help you pick the best new DSLR for you. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Cadillac set to reveal the ELR plug-in hybrid next month Cadillac announced this week that it will debut the ELR plug-in hybrid at the 2013 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) next month. Based on the 2009 Converj concept, the ELR 2+2 coupe will re-purpose Chevy Volt technology in a sportier, more upscale package. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Game Review: Hitman: Absolution He may not be a nice guy to meet in a dark alley, but Agent 47 is always fun to take adventuring. 47's latest game, Hitman: Absolution, shakes things up a bit too, with new features and a lovely twist in the tale narrative wise. Gizmag goes into stealth mode in this Xbox 360 review. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile X-47B completes first sea trials The Northrop Grumman X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator completed its first sea trials aboard the Nimitz-class nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman this week. The unmanned aircraft was shipped aboard the Truman on November 26 and has been subjected to a wide variety of tests to see how the robotic vehicle operates on a warship. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile MirrorCase – the covert (pervert?) photography accessory for iPhone 4/4S Do you spend an appreciable percentage of your day wishing you could take iPhone photos of people, but knowing they'd be really upset or annoyed if you did? Well, my unshaven, trenchcoat-wearing, pervert friend, have we got the device for you! Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Hexacopter and hexapod: together at last What do you get when you cross a hexacopter with a hexapod? A hexacopterpod? Hexapodcopter? Hexahexapopter? Whatever it's called, it's pretty cool and it comes courtesy of a couple of some industrious lads at Mad Lab Industries. After first attempting to get a quadrocopter and hexapod to mate by throwing them in a closet and cranking the Barry White, the team finally found success with a more engineering-based approach. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Machine uses artificial intelligence to sort dead batteries While it's definitely important to keep the heavy metals in discarded batteries out of the environment, the sorting of all of the different types of batteries that arrive at a recycling depot could no doubt get extremely tedious. It's the type of job that often goes to a machine. Well, such a machine has been invented. Called the Optisort, it can recognize about 2,000 types of batteries, and is currently being used to sort one third of those recycled in the UK. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Portable sensor lets users monitor air pollution on their smartphone Air quality is one of those things that many of us should be more concerned about, but aren't. According to some people, this is because we're not easily able to know how clean the air around us really is – we just assume it's "clean enough." Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have set out to change that. They're developing a compact, portable air pollution sensor that communicates with the user's smartphone, to provide real-time air quality readings for their immediate surroundings. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile LG's latest Magic Remote can understand natural language At first glance, it may seem that the guy sat in front of the television is having a heated argument with his TV remote, but closer inspection will probably reveal that he's just trying to get the voice recognition feature to recognize his dialect. Folks similarly afflicted are about to be offered a helping hand from LG, in the shape of its newly updated Magic Remote with enhanced language recognition capabilities. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Induced "pacemaker" heart cells could take the place of man-made pacemakers Scientists at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have successfully reprogrammed ordinary heart cells to become exact replicas of so-called "pacemaker" heart cells. Such replica cells could conceivably one day be used instead of electronic pacemakers, in patients with heart disease. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Nanofocusing device shrinks light beams Engineers at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and the University of California at Berkeley have developed a nanofocusing waveguide, a tiny passive plasmonic device which is capable of concentrating light onto a spot a few nanometers in size. In so doing, they have sidestepped the diffraction-limited nature of light, which normally prevents focusing light to a spot smaller than its own wavelength. This remarkable feat may lead to new optoelectronic applications in computing, communications, and imaging. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile University of Sydney developing robots to automate Australian farms The idea of an automated farm has probably been around since rural electrification started in the early 20th century. Replacing back-breaking labor with robots has an obvious appeal, but so far cheap labor in many countries and the insistence of agriculture on being so darn rural has made automation limited in application. Despite this, Salah Sukkarieh, Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies of the University of Sydney, is heading a team working on developing robotic systems for farms with the aim of turning Australia into the "food bowl" of Asia. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Special promotion for Gizmag readers Learn How to Code from Scratch (No initial experience required) Welcome to coding bootcamp! This is the crown jewel of coding courses jam-packed with everything a serious programmer should know inside and out. Learn to code training includes 47 hours of online training that will teach you HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Python, Ruby, Responsive Web Design and more. After finishing the training, you will have all the necessary skills to build your own websites or to land your dream job. Find more about this training here. Read More You are receiving this email because you signed up for our daily newsletter at http://www.gizmag.com. If you would like to switch to our weekly newsletter, click here If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter please click here to unsubscribe. COPYRIGHT GIZMAG (C) 2012