It’s kind of like they were contemplating re-inventing the wheel and instead came up with the mag-lev train.
Microsoft is dangerously close to stealing the cool factor away from Apple, not for its PC/Mac war of the ages, but because it is getting ready to shift the paradigm of the gamers’ UI experiences. What’s in the offing is Project Natal, introduced to reporters and VIPs on the eve of the E3 in Los Angeles.
Not being on the guest list, I can’t make any first hand observations, but one of the guys on our team is an avid gamer and Xbox 360 aficionado, as well as being versed in all things gaming, and he had to take a few days off to calm-down after viewing the video feed from the press conference on the Xbox Channel.
This demo and presentation is pretty crazy stuff. A lot of bloggers are disbelieving that Microsoft has really cracked the code on this, at least not to this level.
Here’s another video that shows more of the gaming experience vs. the artificial intelligence that Milo demonstrated above.
That’s enough of a difference that Wii and other gaming systems should be pretty nervous. Although Wii is much easier to master than the current Xbox, and PS3, there is virtually no learning curve with the controller-free gesturing in Natal. No “A” then flick your wrist while hitting “Trigger” style interaction here. Just do what you’d do normally if you were engaged in the activity and you’re playing. If the AI layer is anywhere close to Milo, we’re talking mag-lev trains, baby!
I guess some people still need training wheels to confidently navigate the Internet, at least OneClickMoms is counting on that.
Offering a free newsletter that is “a daily review of some of the newest, hottest sites called ‘One Click Daily’”, One Click Moms provides interested “moms” an easy guide to what’s happening on the web.
The site and the newsletter are pretty breezy and easy to consume, and cover social networks, virtual worlds, games and other sites moms might find of interest.
No advertisers or sponsors visible right now, so clearly still in the eyeball-gathering phase of development.
But if you’re a mom and interested in finding new sites both for yourself and your kids, and having some confidence in the appropriateness and safety of the content, this could be for you.
From DailyFill.com, as an Academy Awards promotion, it takes scenes from the award-nominated films and shows two seemingly identical images, only with one difference. By clicking on a grid superimposed on the second image, you indicate where you think the difference is and if correct, advance to the next set of images.
One of the people in our office sent me a link to www.poodwaddle.com recently, specifically to their world clock.
Very interesting stuff in that it showed statistics on the population, environment, energy, crimes and other interesting perspectives on the human condition.
This caused me to check out the entire site, which is filled with interesting tools, freeware, games, mp3′s, the world clock and earth clock, and a robust search tool across all these categories and more.
The home page is customizable and the tools are pretty sweet.
Definitely, they should lose the ladybug, however….
Even during the worst economic downturn of my lifetime, there’s money to be made. Evidence, Playfish, casual gaming site for the masses. They, and competitors, Zynga and SGN, took in a collective $75MM in funding over the past couple of months.
A social games company that develops and publishes video games on social networks like Facebook, Playfish is barely a year old, and already boasts over 10MM monthly active users.
Nothing real deep here, so you can lose the compression pants and bike helmet.
Still a pretty fun social profiling technique using only visual stimuli. I love the fact that at the end they let you grab the widget so you can post it to your Facebook or whatever page.
I’m not sure “dreamer” “thriller” “back to basics” “relaxed” is 100% on the money, but it’s not far off. Not sure how the outcome would have changed if I’d picked the dog turd picture for “that’s gross.”
My youngest son, Max, wants to be a pilot, a career which I always thought to be cool, but never wanted for myself. It’s good he’s getting into it now, because in a few years, the level of competition is going to be pretty fierce.
Gizmodo reported yesterday on a new flight SIM pitting real stunt planes and virtual planes competing with each other on the same course. The technical integration is pretty crazy due to the difficulty of exactly plotting the real planes position on the course in real time, but the experience if they pull this off will be unbelievable.
Conceived as a wide audience distributed sporting event, this would allow masses of people to tune-in, log-on and become part of the event from their living rooms.
PC World today released it’s top 100 best tech products for 2008. Their top 5 picks were Hulu, the iPhone, Facebook, Windows XP and the Lenovo Thinkpad X300.
Is it just me or are two of these old news and the Thinkpad a big yawn?
I totally agree with iPhone and Hulu, although it’s hard to put Hulu at #1 of 100 products and sites when considering the revolutionary nature of iPhone (#2) and Nintendo Wii (#16). There are lots of other arguably great brands on this list, but many of these are 3 – 5 years old. And some are repeats of last year. Wii for example was #3 last year.
This is really a popularity contest of the editors and readers of anything that’s on the market vs. a critical technical review and way of drawing attention to innovative new products from the past 12 months.
I guess that’s OK, but not what I would expect from PC World.
The headline in Ananova reads: “Teen Arrested for Virtual Theft”, and goes on to briefly describe the virtual world of Habbo Hotel, and a 17-year old who stole furniture valued at 2,500 pounds from members of the community.
Call it “Grand Theft Furniture.”
The furniture was originally purchased for game credits, but the credits are first paid for in cash, so it’s real theft. But the benefit to the thief is merely to spruce up their virtual hotel room and have a little more stroke in the virtual community.
I get it, but I don’t get it. Know what I mean?
I understand that peer esteem can be a powerful motivator, and might cause people to steal.
But for a virtual world to have this same influence, such that the kid in question would be motivated to build fake Habbo web sites and pfish identity information to then invade community members’ accounts and steal furniture is a bit tough to understand.
Maybe because the money is only pseudo-real, “coins” in the nomenclature of the game (that, in real money, cost about $.20 apiece), it doesn’t seem real. So then, it’s more of a prank than a theft.
But when you can’t outfit your hotel room the way you dream of because you don’t have enough real money to buy the game coins to in turn buy the furniture, you KNOW you’re commiting a crime.
So fine, it’s crime and should be prosecuted. My real conundrum, is how anyone can get so caught up in a virtual world to the point that they resort to real crime, make that FELONY crime, with nothing more than a “virtual” reward.
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