If there was one new tech invention of the last year that will actually change the game and can blow the minds of even non-techies, it is easily the Lytro camera. Not familiar with Lytro? I’ll do my best to sum it up.

The Lytro camera takes “living photos” that can be manipulated well after they have been taken. And when I say “manipulated,” I’m not talking about some Photoshop trickery or a hipster filter. I’m talking about refocusing it on a different area over and over again. This camera captures the entire light field “which is all the light traveling in every direction in every point in space” or dimension. The camera itself takes instant photos with no shutter lag and no need to deal with an autofocus. Since the focusing happens on objects of your choice after the photo has been taken, you don’t have to worry about it during the shot. So, you get insanely fast photos and the perfect shot that you decide on afterwards. Make sense? 

Our brief moment with the LG Spectrum at CES 2012 was exactly that, brief. In order to give this new release from LG and Verizon a shot at taking top Android phone honors from the Galaxy Nexus, we had to get one in hand for an extended period of time. Today marks the start of our quest to put the Spectrum through the ringer to decide if this reasonably priced ($199 on contract), yet highly spec’d phone is worth your money. With a 4.5″ HD display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8MP shooter, and 4G LTE connectivity, this phone is by no means a slouch on the hardware front. Does it have enough polish on the UI side to make it a winner though? We will soon find out.

For now, let’s see what it looks like in hand and out of the box.  

Who doesn’t love a well put together 8-bit game? From the creator of the underground cult classic Minecraft, comes Minicraft. Created as a contest entry, Notch gives you life in a world of finite resources. After your resources have been depleted though, it is time to kill the Air Wizard. You explore the world, chop down trees, mine rocks, and of course, kill zombies. But unlike Minecraft, Minicraft has a single purpose:

The goal of the game is to kill the only other sentient being in the world, making sure you’ll be alone forever.

Kind of a sad theme, but let’s face it, Notch is a genius. Controls were a bit tough at first, but if you have the right amount of screen real estate, then getting the hang of it shouldn’t be too difficult. It was created for PC, but has been unofficially ported to Android by Folstad Consulting Inc. Cheers to them for allowing us to play this great game on our mobile devices. Down below is a YouTube video of the Yogscast performing a livestream of the game. It will most definitely give a helping sense of how the game works. 

Google announced this afternoon that they would combine the individual privacy policies from a variety of their products into one “main policy,” giving you a single sign-on of sorts. The idea is to treat you as “a single user across all” products to provide you with a “more intuitive Google experience.” Critics and conspiracy theorists are already screaming with privacy concerns, but as far as I can tell, the services Google provides should simply get better and things really aren’t changing all that much. 

Bloggers and tech enthusiasts alike are abuzz over a video of a developer showing off his latest creation. He has taken an Xbox Kinect and hooked it up to his PC which is then wired to his Galaxy Nexus. Thanks to Android’s openness, he has been able to rebuild a version of Android to give the needed software system access for the process to work. In short, the Kinect sees his hand movements, relays it to the PC, which then relays it to his phone. 

Last night, the latest Siri wannabe was introduced to Android under the name Evi. It’s voice-inspired, can answer almost any question you ask it, and even learns on the go after receiving feedback directly from you. This actually is a decent attempt at being Android’s Siri, except for one problem which you will quickly find in the market:  they have like 1 or 2 servers trying to power the service for thousands of new users and simply cannot keep up with traffic.

At this point, if you jump into the app and search for something, you will see this: “I’m waiting for a network connection before trying this one.” It’s frustrating, especially after using it last night and finding pretty favorable results for the most part. In fact, it’s built-in map feature works well, however, we would have liked to have seen some way to launch navigation out of it. It returns simple, yet detailed results pages, beautifully laid out business or location pages, and even answered many of our off-the-wall questions. Again, this service actually isn’t bad and is probably the best attempt yet. Now, let’s hope we see a legitimate server infrastructure in the next day or so or it may be a short life for ol’ Evi.  

Back at CES, Gameloft was able to show off a new feature that both serious and casual gamers will surely enjoy, in-game voice chatting. During gameplay over Verizon’s 4G LTE network, some of Gameloft’s game portofilio will enable users to trash-talk chat with up to 3 opponents. While the first game to allow for this new feature is Asphalt 6, you will likely see this come to a variety of games in the near future. Modern Combat 3 with team chat, anyone?

Gameloft’s VP of publishing had this to say:

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Verizon to illustrate the potential of in-game voice chat and multiplayer over the 4G LTE network,” said Baudouin Corman, vice president of Publishing for the Americas at Gameloft.  “Gameloft seeks to provide gamers with a complete mobile gaming experience and feels that these features are at the forefront of the platform’s future.”

Excited to have in-game voice chatting? How many serious mobile gamers do we have?

Via:  Android and Me, Gameloft