Netflix Hack Day project brings phone vibrations to action sequences

One of the newest projects that came out of Netflix’s recent Hack Day event lets you feel the action right in the palm of your hands. If you watch shows with a smartphone, that is. Hans van de Bruggen and Ed Barker created Project Rumble Pak, which explores how haptics can be used to enhance the Netflix viewing experience on smartphones. It reminds us a bit of what Sony did with a setting on its phone that caused the device to vibrate while playing games or watching videos. The creators made use of Voltron: Legendary Defender to demonstrate how this feature can work. Using technology from Immersion Corporation, they synchronized the content with haptic effects so that “every explosion, sword clank, and laser blast, you get force feedback to amp up the excitement.”

Hack Days at Netflix are a big thing at the company because it helps bring together employees from its different departments to “explore new ideas and experiment with emerging technologies.”

Google to offer up to US$2.7 million for people to hack Chrome OS at Vancouver conference

Care to earn some extra cash and in Vancouver this March? Google is opening registration for Pwnium contest this March at CanSecWest security conference to be held in the coastal seaport city. The tech giant uses the Pwnium contest to discover bugs in both the Chrome operating system and browser.

Google will be offering US$110,000 for each exploit satisfying the criteria “browser or system-level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page.” And $150,000 for those who can “compromise with device persistence: guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page.” There will also be “significant bonuses for demonstrating a particularly impressive or surprising exploit.” The hacks can be performed on the Intel-based Acer C270 or ARM-based HP Chromebook 11. Registration is open until 5pm Pacific Time on March 10.