Following 'Climax,' singer tells MTV News his latest single 'represents the other side' of Looking for Myself album. By Jocelyn Vena
Usher Photo: MTV News
Bumping beats, sexy lyrics and Usher's signature R&B bad-boy swagger can only mean one thing: the singer has once again hooked up with superstar pop producer Max Martin. Their latest collaboration, "Scream," picks up where "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love" left off back in 2010.
Usher used that track to convince us to go home with him after a dizzying night of partying, and for "Scream," he's got us back at his pad and he's rocking our world, one fist-pumping moment at a time. While he opted to slow it down on "Climax," Usher is back to large-scale dance tracks on Looking for Myself's second single. And, he told MTV News, both tracks reflect the sound of the album.
"This album has many different views and many different perspectives," he told MTV News while rehearsing for his one-night run as the lead in NYC's off-Broadway spectacle "Fuerza Bruta," which also served as a place for Usher to debut the album ahead of its release. "And me and Max Martin, we've had success together in the past, and this was a record I felt represented the other side of the [album]."
"Scream" and "Climax" truly are polar-opposite tracks. Where "Climax" sears and broods, "Scream" celebrates and dances. Usher is excited for the chance to show all those sides with the two lead singles from the June 12 release.
"Whereas the first song was a little bit more artistic and a little bit more soulful, and it has done everything, it probably exceeded my expectations, I mean, from the moment I was able to give it away. I was able to kind of be reintroduced in a way musically, and thank you to [producer] Diplo, but 'Scream' is really like the next step. It's just in time for summer and the type of experience that I want people to get out of the album."
But the Atlanta-bred singer notes that the album can't be defined just by "Climax" or "Scream." There's a lot there to keep fans tuning in. "It's a ton of other experiences and a ton of other walks ... as I've had this long journey over the last year [and] every bit of what I've experienced I've put into a creative, artistic way," he said.
As for the video, well, that still has to be shot, but he joked that "Fuerza Bruta" might serve as the perfect backdrop for the clip — or maybe not. "We might be shooting it while we're here," he laughed. "This is like a movie set, damn near — sh-- you don't normally see with the launch of an album. This is pretty spectacular."
What are you expecting from Usher's next album? Let us know in the comments!
Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This past week, we learned that ZTE intends to release a phablet of its own, and Samsung unseated Nokia as the world's largest supplier of mobile phones. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of April 23rd, 2012.
Following news of the first successful white space trials in Cambridge, UK, Nokia is now touting its research in the area with a demonstration of location-based services for the unlicensed spectrum. Traditionally, proponents of white space usage have positioned this unused portion of the airwaves as a viable, low-cost method of data transmission, but the Nokia folks have now demonstrated its ability to pinpoint one's location with much greater accuracy than either WiFi or cellular networks. Think of it as a counterpoint to NFC, if you will, but in the following clip, we're shown how an individual might move throughout a museum, and as they approach various exhibits, one's smartphone could provide supplemental information for the nearby artifacts. Beyond its use in museums, Nokia also foresees the technology as useful in the retail space, where businesses may provide consumers with promotions as they walk by. Currently, the necessary equipment to make this all possible is much too large to fit within a typical smartphone, but Nokia hypothesizes that the necessary chipsets and industry standards may be in place by 2015. Until then, you can dream of what might be with the following video.
It has been said (by the writers of Game of Thrones, among others) that someone is powerful when others believe that person powerful. But Out has a much more precise definition: According to the magazine's sixth annual list of the most powerful gay men and women in America -- powerful people are those who "influence the way others live -- either through their public personas, politics, or wealth -- and affect cultural and social attitudes."
Yep, we went way out for April's Engadget Show, taking our film crew to Asia this time out, to check out the markets of Taipei, Hong Kong and Shenzhen with our very own Richard Lai. We also scored interviews with Huawei's Chief of Design, HagenFendler and Michelle Hsiao of the ASUS Design Center. We'll be checking out the month's latest and greatest gadgets, including the HTC One X, S and V, Nokia Lumia 900 and the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, as well as a big ole pile of KIRFs -- some more convincing than others. We've also got a couple of performances by Brooklyn indie rockers Suckers and a whole bunch more.
Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater Guests: Hagen Fendler (Huawei), Michelle Hsiao (ASUS), Richard Lai, Guy Streit Producer: Guy Streit Director: Michelle Stahl Executive Producers: Brian Heater, Joshua Fruhlinger and Michael Rubens Music by: Suckers
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (MP4). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (MP4). [RSS MP4] Add the Engadget Show feed (MP4) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically. [HD RSS] Get the Engadget Show delivered automatically in HD. [iPad RSS] Get the Engadget Show in iPad-friendly adaptive format.
For the past 2 weeks I’ve been lucky enough to test drive a new car. The first car was a 2012 Mazda Mazda 3 and this past week it was a KIA Rio EX 5-Door. I loved the KIA Optima I test drove last year, so I was excited to try the smaller, more?economical?Rio. Note: [...]
Every week the editors at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week’s selections include apps a beautiful iPad weather
Wednesday's Indonesia earthquake was similar in magnitude to the devastating 2004 quake, but there was no tsunami. The difference? Location.?
A powerful earthquake and aftershock struck the Indian Ocean off of northern Indonesia Wednesday, triggering tsunami watches and evacuations throughout the Indian Ocean basin, from Australia to Kenya.
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The first temblor, a magnitude 8.6 quake, struck at 2:38 p.m. local time, along a segment of a fault on the sea floor some 269 miles southwest of the coastal city of Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh province. A second, 8.2 magnitude quake struck two hours later roughly 120 miles south of the first quake's epicenter.?
Both quakes occurred at relatively shallow depths ? 14 miles and 10 miles ? beneath the sea floor, according to data gathered by the US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.
So far, the quakes appear to have done little damage and caused no fatalities, although people felt the shaking as far away as the east coast of India. In Banda Aceh, many residents streamed into the streets when the shaking began, according to press reports from the city.
Memories of the disastrous December 2004 earthquake and tsunami remain fresh. The event left 230,000 dead throughout the Indian Ocean basin as?the tsunami in some locations reached heights of up to 90 feet.
Though both of Wednesday's large quakes join the magnitude 9.1 event in 2004 event as ?great? earthquakes ? the strongest of six categories ? the?initial temblor Wednesday reportedly pushed only a 30-inch-high surge of water onto Indonesia's west coast.
In addition, the 2004 event released nearly six times as much energy as the first quake that struck on Wednesday and some 22 times more energy than the second.
The difference? Location, suggests Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center.
The 2004 rupture occurred along the northern reaches of a subduction zone that hugs the west coast of Indonesia and defines the arc of Indonesia's islands.
The quake occurred in a section of the zone where a vast patch of crust known as the Indian plate is sliding beneath the much smaller Burma plate. Quakes along such subduction zones tend to generate the planet's most violent temblors because the surface areas sliding past each other are large.?
Researchers estimate that the patch of the subduction zone affected in the 2004 quake covered an area roughly the size of California. The amount of slip along the length of this patch was 50 feet.
Along the deep-sea trench that marks the subduction zone, the quake lifted the overlying crust several yards. The sudden upward shove along the length of the rupture zone generated the enormous tsunamis the region experienced.
Today's quakes occurred farther offshore and on a different type of fault, Ms. Vaughan explains.
The faults involved Wednesday are so-called strike-slip faults that sit squarely on the Australian plate, another of the plates forming the subduction zone off Indonesia. Strike-slip faults tend to be vertical cracks in the crust. This means that the plates usually slide by each other without radically altering the height of the sea floor.
By contrast, the thrust faults along a subduction zone run diagonally downward from the sea floor as one plate slips under the other. This increases the possibility of disturbing the height of the sea floor. It also means the area of the surfaces sliding past each other is much greater than during a strike-slip rupture.
?We've had a series of these occur since 2004,? Vaughan says, referring to undersea quakes on the Australian plate. The most recent occurred in January ? a magnitude 7.2 quake whose epicenter was only about 13 miles from that of the 8.6 quake on Wednesday.
The faults involved in Wednesday's quakes are oriented in the same direction as the general direction of travel the Australian plate itself is following, suggesting that the ruptures are tied to the plate's movement, although to some degree the event also may represent the crust's continued adjustment to the major change the 2004 event brought to the region, Vaughan says.
It's hard to believe it's been more than two years since we first met the venerable HTC Legend. HTC's angular, aluminum clad beast wowed us way back at Mobile World Congress 2010, with its impressive build quality and the then cutting-edge Android 2.1. Fast-forward two years and we finally have a worthy successor to the Legend's chinny mantle -- the HTC One V.
While nowhere near as flashy -- or expensive -- as the high-end HTC One phones, the One V aims to spice up the entry-level market with a solid hardware and software foundation, and some high-end treats. Inside that angled aluminum unibody there's a 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, ICS, Sense 4.0, Beats Audio and a 5MP ImageSense camera.
We've spent the past day or so getting to know the HTC One V, so join us after the break for some first impressions.
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Wayne State receives grant to assess road bridge conditions in MichiganPublic release date: 12-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Julie O'Connor julie.oconnor@gmail.com 734-748-4207 Wayne State University - Office of the Vice President for Research
DETROIT State officials have engaged a Wayne State University College of Engineering researcher in their effort to make roads and highways safer.
The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) recently awarded a two-year, $278,000 grant to Christopher Eamon, Ph.D., associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.
MDOT inspection reports have noted diagonal cracks near the supports of prestressed concrete girders on a few bridges in the state. Officials solicited proposals to analyze the significance of the cracks and develop a procedure to mitigate the issue, as well as to prevent such cracking from occurring in future bridges. Eamon and his fellow researchers will review inspection data on a sample of bridges provided by MDOT.
Diagonal cracks may indicate that allowable concrete shear stresses have been exceeded, Eamon said, and may or may not be significant. He noted that reinforcing steel and draped prestressing cables are placed inside bridge girders to carry a portion of the shear force as well.
"Clearly, you don't want the concrete cracking," he said. "That allows water to penetrate and deterioration to occur. It also indicates that previous design methods might not be properly accounting for the actual strength of or expected loads on the structure."
His team's job is to determine if the structures in question have significant shear cracks, and, if so, to determine the cause and make recommendations on how to repair them, as well as to make recommendations on design procedures. MDOT designs structures according to American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials specifications.
Researchers will visually inspect the bridges and document their findings with measurements and pictures. Then they will obtain the bridge construction documents and analyze the as-designed shear capacities using the latest modeling techniques. The team also will estimate loads over the bridges based on available MDOT records and MDOT legal truck loading criteria.
"Hopefully some pattern will emerge," Eamon said. "We'll look to see if the diagonal cracking is associated with a particular structure type, construction method or design procedure, all of which change over time as new procedures are implemented."
While early indications are that some structures may have some shear deficiencies, he said there's no cause for alarm from motorists.
"These structures for the most part are highly redundant," Eamon said, adding that bridge collapses are "extremely rare events."
He believes researchers are more likely to find cracking concerns that may set the stage for long-term maintenance problems.
"Ultimately capacity is an issue that we will investigate, but at this point we're not certain this is a structural capacity problem," Eamon said. "There are plenty of issues on any type of structure that have to be dealt with, and at this point we haven't concluded that these cracks are more troublesome than a variety of other undesirable issues that exist."
The purpose of his research is to maintain MDOT's commitment to the safety of the motoring public using the highway infrastructure. Department officials will review the team's findings in September of next year before planning any repairs or design procedure revisions, Eamon said.
###
Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Wayne State receives grant to assess road bridge conditions in MichiganPublic release date: 12-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Julie O'Connor julie.oconnor@gmail.com 734-748-4207 Wayne State University - Office of the Vice President for Research
DETROIT State officials have engaged a Wayne State University College of Engineering researcher in their effort to make roads and highways safer.
The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) recently awarded a two-year, $278,000 grant to Christopher Eamon, Ph.D., associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.
MDOT inspection reports have noted diagonal cracks near the supports of prestressed concrete girders on a few bridges in the state. Officials solicited proposals to analyze the significance of the cracks and develop a procedure to mitigate the issue, as well as to prevent such cracking from occurring in future bridges. Eamon and his fellow researchers will review inspection data on a sample of bridges provided by MDOT.
Diagonal cracks may indicate that allowable concrete shear stresses have been exceeded, Eamon said, and may or may not be significant. He noted that reinforcing steel and draped prestressing cables are placed inside bridge girders to carry a portion of the shear force as well.
"Clearly, you don't want the concrete cracking," he said. "That allows water to penetrate and deterioration to occur. It also indicates that previous design methods might not be properly accounting for the actual strength of or expected loads on the structure."
His team's job is to determine if the structures in question have significant shear cracks, and, if so, to determine the cause and make recommendations on how to repair them, as well as to make recommendations on design procedures. MDOT designs structures according to American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials specifications.
Researchers will visually inspect the bridges and document their findings with measurements and pictures. Then they will obtain the bridge construction documents and analyze the as-designed shear capacities using the latest modeling techniques. The team also will estimate loads over the bridges based on available MDOT records and MDOT legal truck loading criteria.
"Hopefully some pattern will emerge," Eamon said. "We'll look to see if the diagonal cracking is associated with a particular structure type, construction method or design procedure, all of which change over time as new procedures are implemented."
While early indications are that some structures may have some shear deficiencies, he said there's no cause for alarm from motorists.
"These structures for the most part are highly redundant," Eamon said, adding that bridge collapses are "extremely rare events."
He believes researchers are more likely to find cracking concerns that may set the stage for long-term maintenance problems.
"Ultimately capacity is an issue that we will investigate, but at this point we're not certain this is a structural capacity problem," Eamon said. "There are plenty of issues on any type of structure that have to be dealt with, and at this point we haven't concluded that these cracks are more troublesome than a variety of other undesirable issues that exist."
The purpose of his research is to maintain MDOT's commitment to the safety of the motoring public using the highway infrastructure. Department officials will review the team's findings in September of next year before planning any repairs or design procedure revisions, Eamon said.
###
Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Visitors to the exhibition can play a giant game of Super Mario Brothers (Image: Nintendo of America)
Masterpiece Mario, a new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, elevates Pac-Man and other beloved games to high art
DO VIDEO games count as art? The cultural stronghold of gaming - now a $25 billion industry - is undisputed, but the earliest game creators saw themselves primarily as computer programmers or engineers. And those among them who do see their work as art are seldom exhibiting on the gallery circuit.
An exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC may change that. The pixelated realms first brought to life in dark corners of convenience stores, pubs and bowling alleys are now on display in the same building as works by artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and John Singer Sargent.
In The Art of Video Games, museumgoers can admire images from 80 of the most aesthetically ambitious games in the industry's 40-year history. Those wishing for a fuller gaming experience can play 3-metre-high projections of Pac-Man or Super Mario Brothers.
The exhibition may mark a turning point. "The art world has never figured out how to deal with interactive work," says Ian Bogost, a video-game designer and author of Persuasive Games: The expressive power of videogames. "While you have lots of exhibits that use game technology, they're not games as such." He sidesteps the question of whether video games should be considered art, arguing instead that the medium is akin to fiction writing or cinema - some works earn the distinction of art, whereas others are simply meant as popular entertainment.
Curator Chris Melissinos, former chief gaming officer for Sun Microsystems, says that the growth and innovation in video games elevates them in public perception. "I think that's important to anyone who's ever been in their bedroom writing code or designing games and helped to get a message to the world." For the exhibition, he selected a pool of games and then the final cut was made by more than 100,000 online voters.
On the opening weekend, visitors to the exhibition sounded as though they were looking through old photo albums. "I used to build these beautiful cities," one person said before a display on SimCity. Museum director Elizabeth Broun says it is this interaction that sets games apart: "The great thing about video games is that the player completes the artwork."
Twelve-year-old Josh Scott said his favourite game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, is both "really fun" and a work of art. "It's a masterpiece."
The Art of Video Games, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, until 30 September
As a part of the BBC's run up to this year's Olympics, it is bringing new approaches to broadcast technology in a number of ways including 3D, online streaming, multiple HD channels and now, connected TV apps. Today it's launching a BBC Sports app for connected TVs that bring in new interactive features via the BBC Red Button which will first appear on Virgin Media's TiVo platform, along with a port of its BBC News app. First up for the interactive treatment? F1 racing, starting with the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend. In the app viewers can access live coverage of the race, highlights from previous races, and multifeed coverage of the race including in-car cameras and driver trackers. There's a video demo and press release embedded after the break (viewable in the UK only), and the Sports app is expected to hit more devices before the Olympics starts, although it's unclear which ones.
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Public release date: 12-Apr-2012
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