Hasta La Gadget!

So Dong Nguyen has pulled Flappy Bird from app stores. If you weren’t able to download the highly addictive but simplistic game that has caused thousands of users to throw their phone against the wall in frustration, then you might want to check out the myriad of alternatives and rip-offs that it has inspired, starting with Flappy Bert.

Flappy Bert features none other than Bert from Sesame Street looking particularly grouchy as a bird lifts him by his hair with every tap or click of your mouse. Like the original, you’re supposed to guide Bert past the space between tunnels. Hit one and he’ll flop to the ground, calling out for Ernie.

You can play Flappy Bert here.

[via C|NET]

Need to tell someone something but can’t risk having the message saved or shown to anyone else? Then send it using Confide. It’s the latest in a string of apps that makes privacy and confidentiality its priority.

Confide lets users send encrypted messages that self-destruct after they’re read. It even has a swipe-to-read function that effectively prevents screenshots (which was an area that Snapchat had a lot of trouble with) and sends a notification to the sender once their message has been read. You can alert users that they have private messages waiting via email or SMS – though they’ll need to download the app to read them, of course.

You can download Confide for free from iTunes. The company has future plans for an Android version as well.

[via Laughing Squid]

I was going to talk about a pixel art LED display that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter when I remembered that I already saw something much better: Al Linke’s PIXEL. It turns out he’s also raising funds on Kickstarter for PIXEL V2, an improved version of his display.

Like the original display, PIXEL V2 has 1024 LEDs arranged in a 32×32 matrix. After all, it’s designed to display low-res images and animations so increasing the displays resolution wasn’t necessary. What makes PIXEL V2 much better than its predecessor is that it’s more versatile and customizable, both in terms of software and hardware. For starters, you can now control it with an OS X computer and a Raspberry Pi via USB, in addition to the Android and Windows USB and Bluetooth connectivity that was also present in the original. Unfortunately, it still has no support for iOS though.

Aside from directly sending images to the display via a PC or an Android device, you can also store images on PIXEL V2′s onboard SD card in stand alone mode, after which it will keep displaying images and even animated gifs even if it’s not connected to any computer or mobile device. Another neat feature of PIXEL V2  are its mixed media overlays. As shown in the image below, the overlays allow you to display a drawing on top of the LED display.

PIXEL V2 comes with over 150 samples of pixel art, but as always you can send other images to the display. As shown in the video below, you can even make apps for PIXEL V2. Turn it into a message board, make it display the weather and more. It also has five sensor inputs and optional alcohol and proximity sensors for even more creative applications, although these sensors require an Android device to work.

Pledge at least $260 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a fully assembled PIXEL V2 display. Unassembled kits and partial parts are also available at lower pledges.

Last November we heard about VRcade, a virtual reality system that lets the user move around while wearing a VR headset, thanks to wireless wearable electronics and cameras. A company called Zero Latency is working on the Inversion Project, a very similar setup for VR poster child Oculus Rift.

Details are scarce about the Inversion Project, but I’m going to bet that it also requires cameras or motion sensors aside from the hardware that’s worn or carried by the user. The video below demonstrates the technology with the help of a simple zombie game disappointingly called Zombie Fort: Smackdown and not Rift 4 Dead.

Zero Latency will demo the Inversion Project on Feb. 16 at Melbourne Australia’s Pause Festival. Hopefully details will trickle out of the event soon after.

[via PSFK]

A few years ago we found out about mighty Roombas that were moonlighting as sumo wrestlers. Jose Julio’s RepRap 3D printer also has a sporting spirit. The robotics enthusiast unlocked his gadget’s potential and turned it into an air hockey player.

The robot has three motors: two for moving its mallet across the y-axis and one for movement along the x-axis. Jose Julio wrote the drivers for the motors in Arduino. He then color-coded the mallet and the puck, installed a PlayStation Eye camera and wrote a program in C to make his robot see. Finally he wrote another Arduino program that predicts where the puck will go so that its motors can react appropriately.

Another neat thing about Jose Julio’s setup is that the table uses two old PC fans to create a cushion for the puck to slide on.

Jose Julio knows that his robot still needs a lot of practice – and programming – before it’s ready for primetime. For instance, it doesn’t know where the goal is, though as you saw in the video it can already score even with that handicap. But Jose Julio says he can easily imagine RepRap enthusiasts making air hockey robots of their own, improving and refining its programming so that robots could have different difficulty levels and even different strategies.

Insert a token in your browser and head to Jose Julio’s blog for more on his project.

[via The Next Web]