Oculus Rift announces it is shipping Q1 of 2016 with pre orders later this year

The much anticipated and widely copied AR/VR headset Oculus Rift is slated to finally ship in Q1 of 2016 with pre-orders beginning at the end of the year. This means that competition has a window to get a jump on the Oculus Rift before it makes it out to consumers.

The Rift delivers on the dream of consumer VR with compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality. It’s a system designed by a team of extremely passionate gamers, developers, and engineers to reimagine what gaming can be. Intrested developers can find out more here.

Applebot is Apple's in-house web crawler for Siri and Spotlight

Apple confirmed its Applebot web crawler which is an in-house search engine crawler. Applebot is currently used to power services like Siri and Spotlight on iOS and OS X platforms but could very well evolve as a standalone search engine if Apple finds that necessary (i.e. as a default search in its Safari browser). Note that Apple did not renew an agreement with Google for search service and since Apple has been shedding Google services (Maps) for some time now, it may decide to re-enter search even for its own uses.

Apple has historically worked on search engine functionality for the web, Sherlock was a huge feature of OS 9.

PanaCast 2 is the world’s first panoramic-4K USB camera with natural human perspective

Altia Systems launched the PanaCast 2 video camera, the industry’s first Panoramic-4K Plug-and-Play USB video camera. With its 180° wide, 54° tall field of view and Panoramic-4K resolution, PanaCast 2 delivers exceptionally clear video with a human visual perspective. It helps people collaborate more effectively, improving productivity. The new product simply plugs into a computer’s USB port and works with popular web collaboration apps, like Skype and WebEx.

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Nonda's Hub + for new MacBook gains momentum on Kickstarter

Apple's exciting new MacBook is starting to show up and while it features one singular USB Type-C port, it has opened up a lot of opportunities for third-party companies to create solutions for this limitation. Hub+ offers 2 USB-C ports, 1 SDXC card reader, 1 Display port , 3 USB-A \ charging ports plus one built-in lithium ion battery to charge ANY phone which makes it a must-have accessory for any serious MacBook user.

Interested buyers can head over to Kickstarter and pledge US $79.00 (the price of an Apple adaptor) you get all the above ports in your colour of choice. Five of the 10 limited edition 24K Gold Plated unites (selling for US $3999.00 each) are already spoken for.  The three colors will only be available if we meet the stretch goal of $250k so for now its silver or super pricey Gold.