Fully Charged: Star Wars infiltrates Disney Infinity, plus let Microsoft guess your age

Disney Infinity: Star Wars leaked

Seemingly confirming earlier rumours and plenty of speculation – especially after last year’s Marvel Super Heroes game – a leaked product image points to this year’s Disney Infinity game being set in the Star Wars universe.

No huge surprise there, given Disney’s acquisition of the franchise and its roaring revival in advance of December’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Based on the box shot, which leaked from German retailer Saturn, the box will have Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka figurines, along with a play set piece and a USB base for transferring it all into the game.

Also on the box, we see images of classic trilogy characters, prequel trilogy pod racing, and characters like Darth Vader, Yoda, Leia, R2-D2, C-3PO, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. No doubt, Disney will release as many figurines as it thinks it can sell (a lot, probably). An earlier leak suggested that Disney Infinity 3.0 will also bring in Mickey Mouse, Mulan, Olaf from Frozen, and a couple of Tron characters. We’ll surely hear a lot more about it all very soon.

[Source: Saturn via Polygon]

Microsoft’s age-guessing website

If you spent any time on Twitter or Facebook yesterday, you probably saw a bunch of photos with floating numbers above their faces. That’s because Microsoft launched How-Old.net, a website that harnesses the power of its Azure cloud computing platform to determine someone’s age and gender based on a photo.

Many of the results we’ve seen posted seemed decently accurate (it tacked three years onto this writer’s age, but eh, close enough), while others are significantly off-base. It just launched, however, and it seems to be little more than an amusing tech demo, so it’s worth trying out.

[Source: How-Old.net]

See inside the Apple Watch’s S1 processor

How impressive is the S1 system-on-a-chip processor seen in the Apple Watch? Well, a device that tiny is powered by a ton of technical knowhow, as uncovered by a teardown of the S1 by ABI Research.

That’s not a shocking revelation, but just look at how many components Apple has crammed into a roughly inch-tall board. It’s wild. And it turns out the Watch has as much RAM as an iPhone 4S. Hit the link for more on that and other discoveries within the wearable.

[Source: ABI Research via Cult of Mac]

The Internet of Things… in your trash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wAbFWam01o

Of all the “smart” items infiltrating our homes these days, do we really need a smart garbage can? That’s the proposition made by GeniCan, an attachment for your trash and recycling bins that scans the UPC code of any object – or lets you speak the name, for non-coded items – and creates a shopping list in the cloud for you to refill your pantry at the grocery store.

You can back the crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, and as of now, and reception seems a bit cool: just 27 funders pledging about US$4,000 (~£2,600) after a couple of days, with a total goal of US$50,000 (about £32,500). Units start at US$119 (~£78) as of this writing.

[Source: Indiegogo]