While users of the recently past generation of gaming consoles could very well be (rightfully) worried about the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 taking away support from their precious Xbox 360 and PS3 units this season, Microsoft appears to be keeping scares at bay. What the company is doing instead is reassuring the public […]
If you’re as enamored with this gorgeous vintage skeeball game as we are, finding space for it in your home won’t be a problem. Because you’ll happily ditch your dining room table, your living room sofa, even your bed to make room for this piece. It basically turns your home into your own private Chuck E. Cheese’s minus the screaming kids and disgusting layer of grease.
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There is big money to be made on games and other apps for mobile devices around the world. There has been a change at the top of the most profitable countries for apps with Japan taking the top spot. Previously, the top country for mobile app revenues was the US. Japanese consumers spent 10% more […]
I mentioned yesterday when I came across those the sweet Game of Thrones house sigil snowflakes that I had just started watching the series. I’m quite hooked now and I think it’s great news that a video game based on the epic HBO series is coming. The game is coming from Telltale Games, the company behind the episodic game The Walking Dead, and the Sam and Max adventures among others.
Telltale isn’t offering up much in the way of details, other than to say it is partnering with HBO on the game. That means the game will be official, and it better be good. Telltale had great success with the episodic game based on The Walking Dead, hopefully the Game of Thrones game is just as good.
If that video game isn’t enough to get you excited, Telltale has also announced an episodic game based in the Borderlands universe. The game is called Tales from the Borderlands. It will follow characters we know from Borderlands 2 and new characters.
Both games are landing sometime in 2014, and will be available on PC, Mac, mobile, and game consoles.
There’s no way ’round the fact that scanning millions of lines of software code for vulnerabilities is a chore. But now DARPA is keen to get volunteers helping out—by turning it into a game.
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If we’re going to prepare future generations for an increasingly technical world (and workforce) ahead, then we need to teach them computer science and engineering. To some, that may sound like a no-brainer, but to the American educational system, where nine out of ten schools don’t offer programming courses, it not. Of course, to really get students engaged and inspire that lifelong love of computer science and technology — just as it is with learning a new language — education has to start early. And it has to be fun.
Learning how to code takes time and is a difficult proposition for adults, so asking kids to sit down and write a line of code (let alone learn the laws of computer science) almost seems absurd. It’s this problem that led Vikas Gupta, the former head of consumer payments at Google, to create Play-i and a couple of kid-friendly, educational robots.
Joined by co-founders Saurabh Gupta, who previously led the iPod software team at Apple, and Mikal Greaves, who led product design and manufacturing for electronics and toys at Frog Design, to make programming and engineering concepts accessible to kids, who’d rather be outside digging in the dirt. The team knew that whatever solution they designed would need to be something kids would want to play with, so they created Bo and Yana, two programmable, interactive robots that look and act a lot like toys.
The team raised $1 million from Google Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and others last year to build the prototypes, and today, though it’s still tinkering with details, the learning system is nearly ready for lift-off. When it comes to market next year, kids will be able to play with Bo and Yana right out of the box, controlling them through Play-i’s companion app designed for the iPad.
The app presents visual sequences of actions and simple commands on the iPad that kids can then perform — like clapping, waving their hand or shaking one of the robots — that compel the robots to perform certain actions. Young programmers can get three-wheeled Bo to scoot around the room, blink his light or play a xylophone, shake Yana to roar like a lion, or have them interact with each other. Through actionable storytelling, play and music, younguns start to learn the most basic concepts behind programming, like causation.
The coolest idea behind the interactive learning system is that, as kids get older, they will start to find that the commands are recorded on the app in a variety of programming languages, like Java and Python, so that concepts become more challenging as they progress. The idea is for Bo and Yana to be accessible to all ages, the level of learning is as simple or challenging as you want it to be.
While the gamifying of coding and teaching programming through toys isn’t new and, as Eliza pointed out, Play-i is entering a market already inhabited by products and startups like Cargo-Bot, Move the Turtle and Bee-Bot, this kind of computer science education is still relatively new. The demand and the market for it is also just beginning to develop, and as education reform pushes STEM education into more schools and, in turn, schools begin to look for novel ways to teach these concepts at younger and younger ages, the opportunity will continue to grow.
Although the co-founders think they’re onto something with Bo and Yana, they wanted to test the level of interest and demand among consumers. So they launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Play-i website in mid-November, and have since been pleased to find that not only was there interest, but that interest wasn’t just limited to the U.S.
Over the course of its 31-day crowdfunding campaign, Play-i raised $1.4 million, five-times its goal, and $26K of that total were contributions towards robots that the company will give to schools and organizations that work with underprivileged children. The campaign saw contributions from the U.K., Canada, Germany, Australia, India and France, among others, with over 30 percent of contributions coming from outside the U.S.
With over 10,000 pre-orders and plans to ship next summer, the team will spend the next six months finalizing manufacturing and distribution partnerships. Gupta tells us that they plan to sell the robots through their website and through both online and brick-and-mortar retailers, though he says those deals are still in the works.
For more, stay tuned, find Play-i at home here and Eliza’s interview with the Play-i founder below:
This article was written on August 08, 2008 by CyberNet.
The OpenOffice.org team makes a great productivity suite, but the developers behind the famed open source project have also tucked away a few enjoyable Easter Eggs. Several of them are your typical run-of-the-mill Easter Eggs that show the credits, but one in particular is a lot of fun.
First you’ll want to fire up OpenOffice.org Calc, and enter the following code into one of the cells:
=GAME("StarWars")
After entering that in press Enter to start playing Space Invaders! Make sure you capitalize the “S” and “W” in StarWars otherwise it won’t work.
I got a little addicted to the game once I started playing it, and managed to get to level 16 as seen in the screenshot below. Once you get to level 14 it gets a little more difficult since there are “ghost” bombers that are only visible when they’re dropping a bomb on you. So they can be rather difficult to attack.
Let us know in the comments how far you manage to get, and if you close the window you’ll need to restart OpenOffice.org Calc before being able to play again. Otherwise you’ll get a “oh no, not again” message in the cell.
More OpenOffice.org Easter Eggs [via LoCo About Ubuntu]
Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com
Actor Lindsay Lohan has instructed her lawyers to sue Rockstar Games for the alleged use of her likeness in its blockbuster video game Grand Theft Auto V. The news comes by way of gossip website TMZ. The charges are related to two gameplay scenarios and possibly the cover art. According to TMZ, the charges revolve […]
Connect Four might be a game that triggers childhood flashbacks, but it’s not simple stuff. In fact, Numberphile reports that there are more than 4 trillion unique ways to fill a standard board. But there’s only one way to guarantee a win every time.
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The simplicity of the Rubik’s Cube puzzle is what makes it so devilishly difficult to solve at times. It’s just a bunch of colored squares, but getting them to group together can be a life’s pursuit for many people. So who in their right mind thought that taking the Rubik’s Cube formula and adding mathematical patterns of numbers into the mix was a good idea? Clearly someone with a deep love of mathematics, or a sincere hatred for humanity.
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