Hasta La Gadget!

A new online service called Greeting Games lets you attach a mini-game to a digital greeting card. The hilarious thing about the service? The recipient has to beat the game before he can read your message. Which means you can send Greeting Games to both loved ones and sworn enemies.

The mini-games involve the usual suspects, including match 3, Sudoku, word hunting, mahjong as well as Fruit Ninja clones, just given a different coating. The games are playable over any fairly modern device, including tablets and smartphones.

According to Polygon, aside from the prize message you’ll also be able to “add in-game messages as well as set the difficulty level, customize any attached messages within the card’s email and link their Facebook profile picture to the card.”

Greeting Games is free to use until the end of January. After that you’ll either have to pay an as yet undisclosed amount per card or sign up for a subscription to get discounts and other bonus features, such as “the option to send the same Greeting Game to several people.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes a hit, but I think it would be much better if the games were intentionally silly, easy to beat and ripped off game titles and aesthetics for more laughs. Like, there could be a Card of Greeting: Birth Ops 2. As it is I’d rather send an actual game to my loved ones.

[via Polygon]

The CSX Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal is not a film set from the next Star Trek, but a logistics hub through which nearly 50 million tons of freight passes every year.

Read more…

Apple is certainly a company that holds plenty of patents, as patents happen to be the new “firepower” for companies. Having said that, Cupertino has a particular patent that could very well pave the way to a new generation of advertising. In a new Apple patent that was published today, it pointed to a mood-based advertising system which will tailor ads to users depending on their existing mood, now how about that? The thing is, emotions can be pretty difficult for something as cold and calculated as a computer to figure out, but the system would rely on a range of pointers to figure out your current “baseline mood profile”, where among them include the likes of blood pressure, adrenaline level, and body temperature, and existing apps that you are using.

(more…)

Apple Patent Points To Possible ‘Mood-Based’ Advertising original content from Ubergizmo.

I got my first real Guitar Wing
Bought it at the Kickstart thing
Played it ’til my fingers bled
It was the winter Jay Smith and Travis Redding introduced their new $149 guitar rig

The team and some guys from Austin
Had a band and were into tech.
“Guitar Wing is a wireless controller covered in sensors designed for electric guitars and basses,” said rep Mike Fratamico.
It connects right below the neck.

Oh, when I look at their Kickstarter page
You see they want $45K
And they’re planning on shipping
In probably early May
And there are 30 days in the campaign

Ain’t no use in wonderin’
About how it works because we can ask Mike:
“We are including WingFX with the hardware that acts as a standalone application or a plugin for existing DAW’s like Garage Band, so users who have never used any kind of MIDI controller can start playing with it right away. As with all of our controllers, we have an idea for how they will be adopted but the truly exciting part is seeing what our users end up doing with it. Usually, these are things we never imagined,” he said.
And it’s covered in shiny lights.

Want to set off fireworks?
The Guitar Wing can control lights and effects.
Vernon Reid of Living Colour
Says this is the best gear for his gigs.

I asked the team if they’d call it “bitchin’”
Mike said “Yes I would.”
Can you play it in the kitchen?
Presumably there it will also sound good.

“We are small enough to take chances and put out unprecedented products,” said Mike.
“We often have little way of knowing how well one of our products will truly perform in the market since our releases are often the first of their kind.”
The team made lots of cool instruments
And this is the latest in their line.

(With apologies to Bryan Adams)

Are you guilty of texting while moving around, especially when you are walking? Australian researchers who happen to be in possession of movie special-effects technology have managed to scientifically determine that texting walkers pose a danger not only to themselves, but to others around them as well. Relying on motion-capture technology that is not different from that used in films like “The Hobbit,” University of Queensland researchers realized that pedestrians who text while walking will see their balance and the ability to walk in a straight line affected, in addition to damaging their posture in the long run.

(more…)

Researchers: There Is Danger In Texting While Moving original content from Ubergizmo.