The team at Google’s Quantum AI Lab have recently done something rather exciting with the immensely popular block building video game Minecraft: they’ve added quantum physics. qCraft, as it’s called, is a mod that adds blocks which exhibit a number of theories present in current-day quantum physics.
When the news first leaked about Google Glass a few years ago, it
was pretty hard to imagine that such a device would turn out to be more
than an entertaining gadget. But now that Google Glass is being tested
by prospective users, medical professionals are taking the device very
seriously and, if you become a patient needing heavy-duty medical care,
you will be taking it seriously too.
The Datawind Aakash tablet made headlines when it promised to deliver a full-featured Android device for just under $50 a couple of years back, and now the company and the device have shared some new info regarding their progress at Wired’s 2013 London event. Datawind CEO Suneet Tuli revealed that so far, the company has shipped around 1 million low-cost tablets, with plans in the pipeline that could see them increase that number exponentially both in India and in other developing markets around the world.
Part of those plans include introducing its low-cost hardware in the west for the first time, via retail sales to kick off in the UK by the end of the year. Four different models of the Aakash (called the UbiSlate now per official trade dress) will be available to UK buyers, starting at £29.99 for the UbiSlate 7Ci (Aakash2), and ranging up to £99.99 for the UbiSlate 3G7. Tuli told me via email that the company’s upcoming Aakash4, which has a processor and RAM that actually exceeds the current iPad’s on paper (with a 1.5GHz dual-core A9 processor, and 1GB of RAM), will be available as well, and will be branded as the UbiSlate 7CZ.
The Aakash4 represents a major technological leap forward for the Aakash, made possible by continued downward pressure on the pricing of components used in smartphone and tablets, and by Datawind’s ownership of its own LCD panel and touch screen production, when its original supplier unfortunately had to close up shop. Tuli said that, in fact, they found that the margins on manufacturing touchscreens were much better than those on their device business, but rather than switch which business they were in, they used that price advantage to drive down the overall cost of their products.
That’s been to their lasting advantage, and after some initial hiccups (including shipping delays and potential government disinterest in the product, which Tuli previously addressed), the company seems to be on track to starting to make good on its vision of a world where even some of the poorest people in the world can get online with a smart, connected device. Datawind has also been criticized by some for focusing too much on Aakash hardware, but Tuli says the company is more focused on delivering Internet to those that lack it. Accordingly, they’re working on deals that should allow them to ship Aakash tablets with free basic browsing connections by year’s end, which solves the other half of the equation between devices and service for getting those typically unplugged online.
Halloween costumes for babies are their first initiation into the one
holiday of the year that requires them to be someone else. Yes, even though
your baby don’t even ‘what’ they are, let alone ‘who’ they are, this
doesn’t stop parents from wanting to confuse them even more, by dressing them up in a
clever disguise.
Do you like type? Did you go see the movie Helvetica and break out in tears of joyful satisfaction at the end credits? Do you have a graphic designer cousin who taught you what sans serif meant, and did you think it was fascinating? You’re going love Type:Rider.
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If you’ve seen the likes of the Apple Volume Purchase Program in the past, you’re likely part of an Education or Enterprise-based organization, and you’ve likely wished they had the same program for Mac Apps as well. While this program had only worked with iOS-based apps and books in volume in the past, Apple has […]
Google’s Chromebooks are now being used in 22-percent of all K through 12 school districts in the United States, according to Google’s Vice President of Product Management for Chromebook Caesar Sengupta. Likewise, Chromebooks now represent 3-percent of the back to school PC market share, having achieved that figure in a one year time span, something […]
Sometimes I see the kinds of toys being sold in stores today and I worry. Baby dolls with a diapered monkey pet, pole dancer dolls (apparently, these exist), shopping spree board games… Don’t get me wrong, these toys are probably fun and your kid will probably love them.
But I’d love to see more toys with better educational values on the shelves, because that way, they have tons of fun and actually learn something – like with the Robot Turtles board game.
Thought up by Dan Shapiro, Robot Turtles is a board game that teaches your kids the basic language of programming. The premise of the game is simple: the kids get a stack of action cards, while an adult reads the instructions and moves the turtle for the on the board. When they want to move the turtle in a certain way, they have to pick a card and lay it on the table.
Don’t you wish you played something like this growing up before you enrolled at, say, MIT or the University of Management and Technology, to take up some IT course so that basic programming would’ve been at least one of your first languages? Yeah, I bet you do.
Dan sums the entire game up pretty nicely: “The little programmers put instruction cards down, driving the turtles through the maze, but the grownup is the computer, executing commands on the board. At its heart, Robot Turtles is a game about bossing around adults. Just like programming is about bossing around computers.”
A lot of people think Robot Turtles is a good idea, because it raised over $630,000 on Kickstarter, which is many times over Dan’s $25,000 project goal. If you didn’t have a chance to make a pledge to get the game, then you can join the mailing list on the Robot Turtles website to find out when it becomes available again.
Funny thing is, this isn’t the first time turtles have been used to help kids learn how to program…
[via Dvice]
Paul Allen – "The Idea Man" – has some lofty ideas brewing. The Microsoft co-founder’s latest venture is an institute which he hopes will expand the frontiers of artificial intelligence; this will also help him to explore his own fascination with the human mind.
A worthy cause, if ever I heard one.
Avid users of Babbel’s iPad apps, feel free to give your tablet a rest. The full versions of the Spanish, English and French learning apps have arrived on the iPhone, with more languages to follow. If you’d rather not shell out the $22 fee for a three-month subscription, however, you’d better download the free basic apps soon, as they’ll only be around until October. Meanwhile, linguaphiles running Android hardware will get their chance to compare the service against rival offerings when the apps hit Google Play later this year.
Source: iTunes
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