Also today: Smash hit video game Legend of Zelda set to go mobile this year, and the patent on a key piece of music software comes to an end.
Breath of the Zelda App
If you’ ve been itching to play the new Legend of Zelda game but haven’ t been able to track down one of those new Nintendo Switch gaming systems, well then we have this small bit of good news: the Wall Street Journal says Nintendo will issue a mobile version of the hit game in the near future. How near is that future? It could be as soon as this fall, but so far there’s no exact date.
The Journal says Nintendo has a couple of other games in the pipeline for mobile players before Zelda arrives, and there’s no word on if it’ ll be a port of Breath of the Wild, or some new Zelda adventure. We’ ll keep tabs on any new details, but look for the game to appear on both Android and iOS platforms at least in time for the holidays, if not well before.
Lyft takes the wheel of Waymo’s self-driving cars
Big news in the self-driving car business: Waymo, Google/Alphabet’s robocar division, is teaming up with Lyft to further mature its self-driving tech. Both companies have confirmed the deal. It’s a big win for Lyft, which is in a tough battle with market leader Uber, which has had a few mis-steps as of late. The New York Times says Lyft had no self-driving car program of its own, while Uber’s robot car program has been underway for a while.
Waymo and Lyft have been in contact since last summer, according to the Times, and the partnership could be sign of other robot car and rideshare deals to come. Waymo is currently outfitting Chrysler minivans with self-driving tech and a deal with Honda is also likely in the works as well. Meanwhile, Waymo and Google’s legal flotilla is pounding on Uber in court in a stolen intellectual property case, so this may be Lyft’s big chance to take the lead.
Memories, 128-kilobit memories…
And finally, long live the MP3. The patent rights and licensing program for the little audio compression algorithm that could have officially expired, according to the folks that invented it. No, the MP3 isn’ t going away, although, in truth, it’s sorta been going away for a while as other audio codecs, notable AAC, have improved upon it. But we’ re sure you’ ve probably got a lot of MP3-compressed music on your hard drive. Oddly, the MP3 almost died back in the 1990s.
According to NPR, inventor Karlheinz Brandenberg says the MP3 codec almost failed for lack of users after development. But then came the internet, and some nerds discovered you could convert all your CDs to MP3s and trade them online – for free – using tools like WinAmp and sites like Napster. Then Apple made a player just for MP3s and figured out a way to charge money for those tracks, Napster got killed by the courts, and the rest is history.
NPR has a couple of great articles on the history of the MP3, go here and here to check ‘em out.
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