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Jay McFarland's three top stories for the week will leave your head spinning like a windmill stuffed into a flight simulator. A videogame that may save brick-and-mortar arcades with its awesomeness. A little robot that is part Rhoomba, part printer. Windmills are widely used to generate power, and engineers are hoping to use wind technology to charge phones.
The age of video arcades seems to be coming to a close, but they may stick around if manufacturers continue to create arcade games using flight simulators. This is called War Thunder and it's simulator spins a player in every direction, even upside down. No news on when or where this game will appear next, but keep a few quarters handy.
Someone is finally disrupting the printer, which has remained the same, for the most part, since the days of dot-matrix. This new printer is more like a Roomba driving across the page, printing as it moves.
The Achilles' Heel of our mobile lives is battery life. An entire industry is devoted to extra battery packs and on-the-go charging devices, but this Kickstarter is developing a green charging option. It's called the Trinity and it is a foldable windmill that has an internal battery to store energy for later use.
