This crazy playground stucture is shaped like something called a “Klein Bottle,” a mathematical model with only one surface, and no inside or outside. Designed by artist and architect Vito Acconci, it’s going to be coming to a neighborhood in Miami in 2014. More »
How was your week? We got to spend a couple of days trekking around the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh, PA to check out some of the latest projects from the school’s world renowned Robotics Institute — a trip that culminated with the bi-annual induction ceremony from the CMU-sponsored Robot Hall of Fame. Given all the craziness of the past seven days, you might have missed some of the awesomeness, but fear not, we’ve got it all for you here in one handy place — plus a couple of videos from the trip that we haven’t shown you yet. Join us after the break to catch up.
Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The interesting thing about research into video games is that depending on which side you listen to, video games either turn players into insanely violent criminals or video games can make you a better person. One of the latest bits of research performed using a video game comes from Boston Children’s Hospital.
In the study, researchers used traditional treatments with children ranging from age 9 to 17 that had anger control issues. The traditional treatment involved cognitive-behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, and social skills. One group of 19 children only received the standard treatments.
A second group of 18 children received the same standard treatments and played a video game called Rage Control for the last 15 minutes of their session. The video game, which sounds rather like Space Invaders, required the children to keep their heart rate under a preset limit or lose the ability to destroy enemy spaceships. The researchers found that the group who played the video game were significantly better at keeping their heart rates down and showed clinically-significant decreases in anger scores on standardized tests.
The study appears in the October 2012 issue of Adolescent Psychiatry.
Message from Me isn’t the only way Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Labis helping kids communicate. The lab’s Hear Me team has come up with Can Pals, a clever twist on the tin can phone that helps students share their stories with the world. Kids record their non-fictional tales on computers or via mics brought in by the Hear Me team, who will edit and upload them to the site and transfer them onto the electronic cans. Afterwards, kids can draw a picture or add some text to a label, which is adhered to the outside.
The Hear Me team then brings them to another school, where the stories are shared with other students, who can pull off the labels and respond to the speakers. The group has also designed CanEX displays that are already at some businesses around town, letting customers catch a glimpse into the lives of local children. CREATE calls it an “empowerment tool for advocacy” — we can’t help but refer to it as This American Life or The Moth for kids. Either way, pretty cool.
Continue reading Can Pals help kids get their voices heard (video)
Filed under: Cellphones
Can Pals help kids get their voices heard (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We can’t all be like the superheroes we love to watch in those movies, but once in a while, a couple of human beings rise up to the occasion to become real-life superheroes – but of a different kind.
Ladies and gents, I present to you the superheroes from commercial window cleaning company American National Skyline.
On October 17th, a couple of window washers suited up (some in Spider-Man garb, while one donned a Captain America costume) and rappelled down the windows of the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis.
The employees wanted to do something nice for the kids, and what better way to lift their spirits than by letting them ‘meet’ face-to-face with the superheroes they’ve seen in movies and read about in comic books?
Kind hearts and genuine intentions. Now those are two things these superheroes have.
[via CNET]
Halloween is almost here, and if you’re looking for ideas to make your kid the coolest kid in the neighborhood, you might want to check out what illustrator/animator Ward Jenkins did for his kid last year.
Yep, little Ezra has been magically transformed into the most awesome pint-sized Tusken Raider ever. Ward achieved this costuming greatness using a variety of household items including torn up fabric, old belts for the bandoliers, and some highly versatile toilet paper rolls for the eye/goggle thingies. I think that toilet paper rolls are the new duct tape. And duct tape was the new hot glue.
Apparently the “deadly” Gaderffi (bet you didn’t know it was called that) is actually a cheap mom with colored paper and some slapped on it.
Yet again, another parent proving how great parents can truly be. If you’ve got kids, you’ve got a tall hill to climb to keep up with Ward and Ezra this year.
[Flickr via Boing Boing and Buzzfeed]
Kids these days, swiping and tapping away at iPads, have absolutely no idea how to fix a mechanical spindle. But until around the Great Depression, children were free to work in factories alongside adults. More »
Like Amazon, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble before it, Toys R Us is following the path of being a retailer distributing its own branded hardware (Tabeo, Nabi) with an accompanying app store, and then supplementing those offerings with a digital media service. ToysrusMovies.com is a Rovi-powered digital storefront currently available to PCs, Macs and other Flash compatible devices, with an app planned for the Tabeo soon, as well as Blu-ray players, HDTVs and other mobile devices including iOS and Android. The content consists of “more than 4,000” titles from big names like Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal and more, available for 24-hour rental starting at $2.99, and $5.99 for download or streaming. Right out of the gate its scored an early release of Madagascar 3 two weeks before the disc release, currently a $16 purchase with “unlimited” streaming to activated devices, with downloads to up to 5 devices. Now of course, all it needs is some compatible devices, but building an ecosystem is a process, and may be key to separating Toys R Us’ offerings from the competition. Check out more details in the press release after the break or at the site.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD
Toys R Us launches family-friendly internet movie service, plans Tabeo access, HD video and more originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 07:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
For all the enthusiasm Oregon Scientific put into launching (and naming) its MEEP! tablet, the company has been a bit timid about getting the kid-friendly Android device into the market — we’re just seeing it go on sale eight months after it was first shown to the world. Now that the slate is here, it may be worth the patience from parents. The 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 chip, 512MB of RAM, 800 x 480 screen and 4GB of storage won’t have the adults regretting their Kindle Fire purchases, but the MEEP! does come in a smash-resistant form with remote parental control and an allowance-based store that lets kids ‘buy’ apps with virtual coins. Oregon helps its case through the use of Ice Cream Sandwich, preloaded games like Angry Birds and a raft of accessories for games and music. The $150 asking price is just low enough that we can see a few families starting their youngest technophiles on a MEEP! before graduating them to bigger, badder tablets with less punctuation in the name.
Filed under: Tablets
Oregon Scientific MEEP! tablet ships for $150, gives kids a safe, exclamation-filled place to play originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Netflix’s Just for Kids portal may already be a parent’s ticket to saving money on endless Dora the Explorer DVDs without keeping a constant watch on the screen, but it has so far been left to consoles and the web. That’s not much help to movie-loving grownups who’d sometimes like to free the PC or TV for their own streaming sessions — so it’s likely a relief to many that the Just for Kids interface is now available on iPads. Like on bigger screens, the mobile app provides a safe zone for the under-12 set that organizes videos into sections that junior viewers will more likely appreciate, such as sing-alongs and talking animals. For now, Android tablet owners and those holding on to first-generation iPads will be left out. It still shouldn’t be too long before more adults can be sure their mobile-savvy kids are watching Curious George instead of Chasing Amy.
Continue reading Netflix Just for Kids comes to iPad, keeps Dora exploring beyond the TV (video)
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Netflix Just for Kids comes to iPad, keeps Dora exploring beyond the TV (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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