Fully Charged: A wearable device for infants, Ryse slashing its way to PC, and Wikipedia’s Bitcoin donation push pays off
End the week with a news-filled bang by reading our diverse morning roundup
Infant wearable device tracks sleep data
Raising an infant is challenging – seemingly impossible at first, and then if you’re lucky, you build some skills and intuition as he/she grows in size and ability. Before that? You need all the help you can possibly get. Which is why we’re struggling to be snarky about the Sproutling wearable baby monitor.
Wearable tech for infants? It’s real. The band goes around your child’s ankle while sleeping and it syncs with an iPhone app (Android to come), letting you gauge heart rate, mood, estimated time until waking, and even if the room is too loud or warm. And if your little one rolls over (and isn’t yet able to roll back), you’ll get an immediate alert. It comes with three differently-sized, washable bands, and it charges wirelessly on the pictured base.
As of this writing, Sproutling has pre-sold about one-third of its first shipment, which is being billed as a “preview” release and will be available in March 2015. That initial launch will only be for the US and Canada and at a price of US$249 (about £148), but an international debut is teased at some point thereafter.
[Source: Sproutling via Engadget]
Ryse: Son of Rome being ported to PC
Once an Xbox One launch exclusive, Crytek’s Ryse: Son of Rome is on its way to PC this autumn. The hack-and-slasher was a stunning, albeit rather repetitive showcase for Microsoft’s hardware, and the PC version will offer 4K support for even more pristine guts and glory drawn as a revenge-fueled Roman general. It will also bundle in all of the add-on content from the console release. Crytek will self-publish the digital release, while Deep Silver will co-publish a boxed copy for retail stores.
[Source: Crytek]
READ MORE: Microsoft Xbox One review
Wikipedia pulling in big donations via Bitcoin
Just last week, we heard that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was starting to dabble with accepting Bitcoin donations. Seems that Wikipedia did much the same, and now the company handling the non-profits transactions, Coinbase, has shared some early numbers.
Wikipedia pulled in more than US$140,000 worth of Bitcoin donations in just the first week, which amounts to about £83,000 – a small portion of what the knowledge base pulls to keep its servers running, but over time the move to accept the cryptocurrency could well make a serious dent in its regular expenses.
[Source: Coinbase]
READ MORE: I went to the zoo with Jimmy Wales
Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition coming to Xbox One and PS4
Square Enix and United Front Games’ 2012 open-world action game Sleeping Dogs – which began life as True Crime: Hong Kong until Activision canceled it late in development – will be making an appearance on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this autumn via a new Definitive Edition release.
The expanded edition effectively bundles in all of the downloadable content from the original PS3, Xbox 360, and PC release, and no doubt improves the graphics to some extent. News comes via the Amazon US listing, which pegs full US$60 price point for the port, which is slated to launch there on 14 October. No word yet on a UK release date or price.
[Source: Amazon]
READ MORE: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag review