Common Paradox Tech Blog

There’s been some great classic gaming on the iPhone already—Monkey Island comes to mind—but now the platform is getting a huge injection of gaming cred with Final Fantasy 1 and 2. Try to control your squealing.

We don’t know the big details of the release, namely date and price, but it has been officially confirmed by Square Enix on their Twitter and Facebook. The iPhone just got a whole lot more respectable on the gaming front. [RedmondPie via Kotaku]

I wish there was a closeup image of this poster so that I can actually read it, but I guess I’ll have to get one to figure out what I need to know to prepare for my SpaceShipTwo trip.

Actually, I’m gonna get one of these posters simply because it feeds my fantasy of being a superhero spacegirl who goes wherever she spots the batsignal. But either way, looks like it’s available for $10 and a heck of a lot of fun.

Ed. note: Plus, if you buy it, it benefits a very worthy charity that promotes literacy. For more geeky gifts whose proceeds go to great causes, have a look at this gift guide. [Greenwood Space Travel Supply via Datavis]

Aside from one obscure little game whose name escapes our memory at the moment, WarCraft has been out of action since WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne’s release back in 2003. Don’t take this world without WarCraft to mean that Blizzard’s completely iced the idea of a fourth entry in the popular fantasy RTS series, though. Just be prepared to wait a tick before scratching your orc-commanding, night elf-outsmarting itch.

"Warcraft 4 is certainly something that gets talked about on a pretty regular basis," Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack said in an interview with AusGamers. "While I think we’re all excited about a Warcraft 4, in concept, [the WarCraft 3 team is] going to finish up StarCraft 2, and then they’re going to work on the two StarCraft expansions that we’ve announced, so they’re booked for the next few years."

And though he stopped just short of nailing the team to the project, Brack did say that "it does sort of make sense."

Another Blizzard game, another tremendous wait. But at least we can while away the, well, years until Diablo III’s launch with Torchlight. As for WarCraft 4, though… hey Runic, ever think about making an RTS?

This DIY Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator instantly reminded me of a comment a dear reader left when I shared a Star Trek fantasy. He was right: Bluetooth is the ruin of Star Trek. But this is a fun quick-n-dirty project.

Basically you’re cramming a Bluetooth module and a microcontroller into a toy Communicator and then pairing everything with your phone. As long as you’ve got voice dialing, you can leave your phone out of sight and be the snazziest Trekkie on the streets. Just don’t come crying to me if someone stuffs you into a locker, trashcan, or wormhole. [Make]

Nikon’s S1000pj projector camera was obviously the result of some Japnese engineer’s crazed wet dream, but ripping it out of mere fantasy and into reality was no small feat, requiring Nikon to design and build a whole new projector system.

A major problem was the heat put off by the projector, which was fashioned into an L-shaped module so it’d fit inside the case. They wound up having to move the CCD image sensor to a different part of the camera to isolate it from the heat, while also figuring out a way to focus scattered light emitted by the LED powering the projector. The result is that the camera doesn’t burn the crap out of your hand, even though there’s a full-fledged projector inside of it (which was surprisingly bright when I checked it out the other day).

It’s still absolutely bonkers. [TechOn via About Projectors via Engadget]

If we lived in a world so sweet that anything artists could draft was instantly a functional product, you still couldn’t drive the “Peugeot” ELA.

Powered by a diminutive solar panel on the roof, the car glides over air without the hindrance of friction thanks to electromagnetic propulsion, like you might might see in a high speed rail.

And herein dies the fantasy, as our infrastructure is one of pavement and concrete, not awesome magnet tracks of The Future.
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But we’d still accept a gift of this non-functional car of tomorrow, if only to park it in the driveway, wax it every Sunday and obsessively open/close the front hatch until the hinge broke. [Yanko Design via ubergizmo]