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Sep 10

Wii Balance Board-controlled robot a hit with toddlers in Ithaca (video)

How could we resist a story involving robot-powered babies? The Ithaca College Tots on Bots project aims to mobilize infants with physical disabilities by setting them atop a “mobile robot” equipped with a Wii Balance Board to let the young operator steer by leaning — which, it turns out, works pretty well. Additionally, the vehicle uses sonar to avoid nasty crashes and a remote control that an adult can use to take control. Further study has to be made before any long term developmental benefits can be ascertained, but in the meantime it does look like a lot of fun.

…How could we resist a story involving robot-powered babies? The Ithaca College Tots on Bots project aims to mobilize infants with physical disabilities by setting them atop a “mobile robot” equipped with a Wii Balance Board to let the young operator steer by leaning — which, it turns out, works pretty well. Additionally, the vehicle uses sonar to avoid nasty crashes and a remote control that an adult can use to take control. Further study has to be made before any long term developmental benefits can be ascertained, but in the meantime it does look like a lot of fun. See it in action after the break….

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Wii Balance Board-controlled robot a hit with toddlers in Ithaca (video)

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Sep 10

Microsoft shows off new controller, with transforming D-pad

The D-pad on the existing 360 controllers is, to put it mildly, utter garbage. If you want to play any games relying on precise movements, such as fighting games, buying a third-party controller is a requirement. Microsoft hopes it has this problem licked, however, and is releasing a controller with a new, updated D-pad on November 9. The catch?

…The D-pad on the existing 360 controllers is, to put it mildly, utter garbage. If you want to play any games relying on precise movements, such as fighting games, buying a third-party controller is a requirement. Microsoft hopes it has this problem licked, however, and is releasing a controller with a new, updated D-pad on November 9. The catch? You won’t be able to buy the controller…

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Microsoft shows off new controller, with transforming D-pad

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31
Aug 10

How Non-Profits are Exploring Augmented Reality Tech

Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.Augmented reality promises a new level of interaction between people and data. Now, even the newest for-profit applications can turn heads by utilizing this new advanced technology.The non-profit sector has started to experiment with augmented reality. One of Sunlight Labs early entries is their Recovery.gov mashup. Another example is Amsterdams Allard Pierson Museum, which highlights virtual reconstructions of Satricum and the Forum Romanum

…Do you like this story? Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007.Augmented reality promises a new level of interaction between people and data. Now, even the newest for-profit applications can turn heads by utilizing this new advanced technology.The non-profit sector has started to experiment with augmented reality. One of Sunlight Labs’ early entries is their Recovery.gov mashup. Another example is Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum, which highlights virtual reconstructions of Satricum and the Forum Romanum. But while there are early leaders, non-profits generally lag behind in market experimentation. Several technical non-profits are currently experimenting with augmented reality, said Nathan Makino, Chief Executive Officer of Immersive Tech, a non-profit focusing on the adoption of immersive technology. Other non-profits support and participate at the International Symposium for Mixed and Augmented Reality…

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How Non-Profits are Exploring Augmented Reality Tech

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31
Aug 10

The zombie game you’ve been waiting for: Dead State, a zombie RPG by DoubleBear

submitted by BJ_Blazkowicz to gaming [link] [17 comments]

…[-]This is what I’ve been waiting for!!!

Let’s hope it sees the light of day
permalinknotliam 0 points1 point2 points 37 minutes ago[+] (0 children)notliam 0 points1 point2 points 37 minutes ago[-]No, you are thinking of Dead Island. This looks promising also, though.
permalinkbrwilliams 0 points1 point2 points 16 minutes ago[+] (0 children)brwilliams 0 points1 point2 points 16 minutes ago[-]I read this as “Dead Skate” and I was like “FUCK YES! A zombie skateboarding RPG?!?”

Still cool but tempered by my disappointment in the lack of skateboarding zombie action.
permalinkmrfurious2k 0 points1 point2 points 12 minutes ago[+] (0 children)mrfurious2k 0 points1 point2 points 12 minutes ago[-]I have serious doubts this will ever be released. I feel better having read that that the developers made Arcanum/Kotor/Vampire/etc but this is still a relatively new Indie studio. My concern grew when I noticed the dated graphics, non-specific release date, and how ambitious the project was. The death of most projects…

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The zombie game you’ve been waiting for: Dead State, a zombie RPG by DoubleBear

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31
Aug 10

The Rise of the Anti-Facebooks

Facebook is dominating social media in almost every country where it hasn’t been banned, and the six-year old site shows no signs of slowing down. It’s creeping across generations, replacing things like the phone book and introducing tools the masses had no idea they needed. It’s also indoctrinating the world into adopting the Mark Zuckerberg Values of “openness,” “sharing” and “living your whole life on the Internet.” Those values have lead to a cultural movement. But here comes the resistance: a wave of social networking sites that define themselves in opposition to Facebook.

…Maybe age or school-affiliation isn’t important, but exclusiveness still is. ASMALLWORLD is an invitation-only social network for “sophisticated” and “influential” people. “Trusted and loyal ASW members who meet certain criteria have the privilege of inviting a limited number of their friends to the network. If you know someone with this privilege, you can ask them to invite you. If not, please be patient and continue to ask around in your own personal and professional circles,” the site says.

Multiple personalities

Facebook does let you target what you upload to specific friends. But Facebook doesn’t want you to splinter your identity. Throughout its history, Facebook has encouraged users to use their real names, upload their real birthdays and use their real identities to log on to other sites.

Hibe is a yet-to-launch social network based around controlling which personality you project to whom, a concept its creator calls “Social Web 3.0.” “We are opening the way for a new social networking experience…

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The Rise of the Anti-Facebooks

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31
Aug 10

Twitter Moves to OAuth: The OAuthcalypse Is Nigh

Twitter is killing support for basic user authentication in third-party apps on Tuesday morning. Instead, Twitter will now require all third-party app developers to use OAuth for user authentication.

…Twitter is killing support for basic user authentication in third-party apps on Tuesday morning, the company says. Instead, Twitter will now require all third-party app developers to use OAuth for user authentication.
This is a planned move Twitter first announced in December, and the company has posted a help page on its developer site with some resources meant to ease the transition to OAuth.
The Twitter API team has been dialing down the number of requests an app can make using the basic authorization method. That number will hit zero at 8AM Pacific time Tuesday.
Some bloggers have given the event the catchy name, OAuthcalypse a bit of a mouthful, but so is user authentication protocol the implication being that when basic authentication is switched off, it will break old software and leave users in the dark. But since Twitter has given developers ample warning of the change, the switch will only lock out a small number of apps.
Twitter’s move mirrors a broader trend on the social web, where basic…

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Twitter Moves to OAuth: The OAuthcalypse Is Nigh

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30
Aug 10

Turn that frown upside down! [SA]

submitted by YuriBotWar to pics [link] [55 comments]

…[-]Why would you expect someone to give you their home address? I know I’d be curious. Also, if people don’t see these awful pictures, they will forget. They have short memories. People’s anger should be stoked, so they don’t forget these atrocities, so people as a whole may act to make sure this never happens again. Anger is necessary. Giving these pictures a sarcastically funny caption? Brilliant. Humor’s a way of keeping our anger in check. Because anger is also dangerous.
EDIT: Now whether this is actually funny or not, that’s a different story…
permalinkparentcometparty -2 points-1 points0 points 3 hours ago[+] (1 child)cometparty -2 points-1 points0 points 3 hours ago[-]The only thing this will teach people is that we should laugh at environmental destruction.
permalinkparentcontinue this threadanonymousanimal -1 points0 points1 point 3 hours ago[+] (2 children)anonymousanimal -1 points0 points1 point 3 hours ago[-]It’s called Google. Use it.
permalinkparentcometparty -5 points-4 points-3 points 3…

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Turn that frown upside down! [SA]

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30
Aug 10

Cartoon: So Sue Me

If you own a big tech firm, you aren’t Microsoft, and you weren’t named in the patent lawsuit filed this week by Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing, well… you’re probably looking deep into your soul today and asking where it all went wrong. If you aren’t a defendant - which includes AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google and Yahoo! - why not? After all, the technology in dispute is, according to Interval, “fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today.” Dammit, you say to yourself.

…Craig, click on the legal status tab for something perhaps even more intriguing: if I’m reading it correctly, that patent appears to be collateral, put up by AOL and currently held by the Bank of America. (Bear in mind that I have precisely zero legal expertise in this area. In fact, I have what I would describe as negative legal expertise: I am capable of reducing the net legal knowledge of a room simply by walking into it. It’s my admittedly meh superpower.)

Doug, that’s an interesting but unintended read of the first one-third of the sentence. (Anyone else reach the same conclusion?) If you grasp the nettle, steel your nerves and follow the sentence all the way to the end, though, then:

1) you should be sure to rehydrate after the long journey (my old J-school profs would flay me for writing such a lengthy lead), and

2) you’ll probably realize that these are three conditions followed by a conclusion: if (a) and (b) and (c) then (d). You apparently read it instead as “If (a) then (b) and (c), and Error:…

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Cartoon: So Sue Me

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30
Aug 10

Digg User Rebellion Continues: Reddit Now Rules the Front Page

Reddit has taken over the front page of Digg. If Kevin Rose and the rest of the Digg team thought that a long weekend would be enough to calm the furor over the latest changes to the popular site, they were clearly mistaken. Not only did Digg’s users declare today “quit Digg day,” but in order to protest Digg’s new auto-submission system, users are now upvoting every Reddit story on the site. These stories are being submitted to Digg by Reddit itself through the auto-submission system

…It’s not unusual for a site to experience a significant user backlash after a major redesign. By announcing the redesign during the big Digg party at SXSW in Austin earlier this year, the company tried to soften the blow. Over the last few weeks, Digg also opened up the beta version of the new site to a very large number of testers. By the time the site finally went live for everybody last week, though, the backlash was almost immediate.

When we talked to Digg’s then-CEO Jay Adelson at SXSW, he noted that Digg was quite aware that some of its users would not be too happy with the new submission system. Not only does this new system take away power from Digg’s most active users, but in the eyes of many of them, it also currently favors big publishers like the BBC, Engadget, Wired and College Humor. Digg invited a number of well-known publishers (including ReadWriteWeb and most of our direct competitors) to submit their feeds early on during the beta test….

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Digg User Rebellion Continues: Reddit Now Rules the Front Page

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Aug 10

F1 2010 - Game/Real Life Comparison … Actually looks pretty good

submitted by xmlrobot to gaming [link] [11 comments]

…permalinknaixn 0 points1 point2 points 14 hours ago[+] (0 children)naixn 0 points1 point2 points 14 hours ago[-]And not bright enough either.
permalinkparentuwjames- 15 points16 points17 points 20 hours ago[+] (0 children)uwjames- 15 points16 points17 points 20 hours ago[-]The painful lesson I learnt here is that throwing a turtle shell into the car in front does not work as expected. I’m down about $50 dollars and have been banned from 3 pet shops so far, plus the littering ticket I got for those bananas…
permalinkEpyo 22 points23 points24 points 19 hours ago[+] (27 children)Epyo 22 points23 points24 points 19 hours ago[-]I honestly could not tell which one was the real one (especially because the caption is ambiguous). I thought it was the right one for most of it, now I think it’s the left one.
permalinktwitch135 20 points21 points22 points 19 hours ago[+] (7 children)twitch135 20 points21 points22 points 19 hours ago[-]The right one is real, but I could only tell because of all the HUD. Definitely my…

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F1 2010 - Game/Real Life Comparison … Actually looks pretty good

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