Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2011 > April
April 2011
The Linkdown for Thursday, April 28
I’m about to go on vacation (Vegas, baby!) but let The Linkdown be your end-of-week guide to what you should be reading online in my absence.
- Austin-developed “Wizard 101” has just released a new world, Wintertusk, to its test servers and it features a music score by “one of the hottest young musical talents in the music industry.” They’ll reveal the Mystery Composer sometime in May.
- Earlier this week, we ran a piece about an Austin-developed coaching app.
- In case you haven’t heard, Sony is having a security crisis with its PlayStation Network. Joystiq does a good job breaking it down on what this means for users.
- This weekend: area tech companies compete in the Austin Cup bowling invitational to benefit the Center for Child Protection.
- Tonight (Thursday): Austin High Tech Happy Hour at the W.
- Want to get an early peek at Twisted Pixel’s upcoming Kinect game “The Gunstringer?” You can check it out Sunday at The Highball. Can we tell you how much we love the name “Juegos Rancheros?”
- Qik Video Connect now allows Android and iPhone users to video chat with each other. But, wait a minute… what’s this? Fring is now offering free four-way video calling. Oh, SNAP!
- Speaking of Android, the new Google Docs app can snap a picture, recognize the text in the photo and save it to a Google Doc. That sounds like magic.
- Austin yearbook company Balfour is now incorporating QR Codes into annuals. One of the first schools to use it will be Saint Mary’s Hall in San Antonio.
- Telltale’s game “Jurassic Park” has been delayed, but the company is offering pre-order refunds and a free game for disappointed gamers. Classy!
- “Excitebike 3D Classic” will be offered free to Nintendo 3DS owners.
- Does your phone need an FM radio chip in it? This guy thinks so.
- Texas wildfire refugees get info online.
- 2012 will bring a new Nintendo console to succeed the Wii.
- The Barnes & Noble Color Nook is getting apps.
- Google Video videos have been saved (or at least YouTube’d).
- Michael Dell says Android tablets will eventually catch up to and surpass Apple’s iPad. We shall see.
- Children’s book app author signing in New York City.
- Austin Books & Comics presents a launch party Saturday for “Thor: God of Thunder” for the Wii.
- In Tech Monday, I’ll be writing more about AT&T’s new home broadband caps and what they mean for DSL and U-Verse customers.
- Whoah, monkey-tail beards! (via Tara Ariano)
- So long, old Friendster profiles and photos.
- Adorable Canv.as video game character meme. (via David Cole)
- Spike Lee iPad-cameras the president.
- WHAT?!
- Neat mixtape service that actually pays royalties to publishers.
Got a Linkdown item we should include in a future update? E-mail it to us with “LINKDOWN:” in the subject line.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Computers, Internet, Videogames
Reminder: AT&T home broadband caps start next week
This got lost in the shuffle a bit when it was announced in the middle of South by Southwest Interactive, but starting Monday, AT&T will begin limiting the amount of data home DSL and U-verse Internet customers use before they are charged overage fees.
The limits, 150 gigabytes for slower DSL users and 250 GB for U-Verse customers, will mean that if a customer goes over that amount of bandwidth per month, they’ll receive two notifications from AT&T, then be charged $10 for 50 GB of extra data.
To put that in context, a single HD-quality movie download from iTunes can typically be as large as one gigabyte. E-mail, light web surfing and music downloading doesn’t use lots of bandwidth, but movie streaming, video chatting using applications like Skype and transferring large files do. AT&T says that it expects 98 percent of its users won’t be impacted by the bandwidth caps and has offered a tool at myusage.att.com to monitor how much data is being used.
Of course, this might remind you of Time Warner Cable’s attempt to put bandwidth caps on its Road Runner service in 2009. That effort was eventually shelved when customers protested the move and said they would take their business elsewhere. The Road Runner bandwidth limits were much smaller, but of course use of online video services like Netflix and Hulu have exploded since then. Time Warner Cable has said it has no plans to reintroduce the capping idea.
We’ll have more on this in a piece I’m working on for the May 2 edition of Tech Monday. If you’re an AT&T customer and are concerned, let us know in the comments. One novel idea I’ve seen from the watchdog website Stop the Cap: switching to a comparably priced business DSL plan, which doesn’t appear to have the same bandwidth caps as home accounts will.
Update: 10 a.m., May 2: the Tech Monday column which elaborates on this issue has been posted and ran in today’s newspaper.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, Movies & DVDs
Facebook enters deals fray in Austin as foretold in couponing prophesies
As expected, Facebook has launched an initiative to expand into the daily deals online business currently dominated by services like Groupon and Amazon-backed Living Social. Austin is one of five cities — including Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta and San Diego — that’ll get the service first. Deals will be incorporated into Facebook pages, a much deeper integration of Facebook deals than the check-in deals that it announced back in November with partners including the Alamo Drafthouse.
One of the first major deals, detailed on a Facebook blog (and pictured above) is all-access passes for ACL Live at The Moody Theater.
An interesting bit about this: Facebook looks to be offering deals from other deal brokers like Austin-based aDealio in addition to its own.
So how about it? Are deals that appear on Facebook more likely to catch your attention than those that land in your inbox?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, Shopping
‘Darkspore’ tops a slow video game week
New video game releases this week:
“Darkspore.” — At one point, it looked as if “SimCity” creator Will Wright’s “Spore” was going to be the ultimate video game. That didn’t really happen once it was released in 2008. But the fun “Creature Creator” technology is still being put to good use. This spinoff game incorporates the tools to alow players to create a squad of defenders to fight against a rampaging group of space baddies. Rated T for Teen. $50 for Windows PC.
“The Ultimate Battle of the Sexes.” — Who knew that eons of intra-species gender battle would be decided on a game console like the Nintendo Wii? Sorry, sociologists. While this budget-priced game promises Facebook score integration and a collection of mini-challenges, we can’t say we’re too hopeful for a peaceful resolution when one of the product features is listed as, “Six different games using typical gender clichés.” Rated T for Teen. $30, for Nintendo Wii.
Also out this week: “IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover” (PC), “Stray Souls: Dollhouse Story” (PC), “Twisted Lands: Shadow Town” (PC), “Chronicles of Mystery: Secret of the Lost Kingdom” (PC), “The Egyptian Trilogy” (PC), “Deadly Secrets: Art of Murder” (PC), “Cargo: The Quest for Gravity” (PC), “Man vs. Wild” (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii), “Haunted” (PC), “Outland” (downloadable for Xbox 360 and PS3), “Sega Rally Online Arcade” (downloadable for Xbox 360), “Trouble Witches Neo!” (downloadable for Xbox 360), ““Hector: Badge of Carnage” (downloadable for PC, Mac and iPad).
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Shopping, Videogames
Review: ‘Bulletstorm’
If you a play a lot of video games you could be forgiven this year for getting burned out on first-person shooters. The “Call of Duty” games, the misfired “Medal of Honor” reboot and even the hotly anticipated recent “Crysis 2” continue to look and sound better and better, but with diminishing returns where it should count most: as fun and entertainment gaming experiences.
Into the crowded market for shooters enters “Bulletstorm,” guns blazing. What from the outset sounded like a crude, juvenile and bombastic shooting game arrives as… a crude, juvenile, bombastic game that is incredibly polished and fun to play.
In the meat of the game, the fast-moving, lively single-player campaign, “Bulletstorm” is potent. It mixes gorgeous vistas (it’s from the company that produces the “Gears of War” games and pioneered the Unreal graphics engine) with speedy action and a few new gameplay wrinkles that add immeasurably to the experience.
The story, written as it was by comics veteran, Rick Remender, is largely forgettable. Space renegades this, evil warlord that, cyborg teammate blah blah… But once the game gets past its set-up, two things become clear. The “energy leash” tool that allows you grab enemies and fling them toward you (you can also kick them away with your giant boot) is a marvel. It slows time down (strangely without affecting the pace of the game) allowing you to carefully aim “Skillshots” and rack up points for use toward weapon upgrades and ammo.
There’s also a slide your character can do that knocks enemies into the air with a similar effect, but you can also slide through levels to speed through them, making “Bulletstorm” an odd combination of “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Quake.” Gone is the lugubrious slog of most duck-and-cover shooters, replaced by gleeful, over-the-top mayhem that never feels so out of control that you can’t progress.
Add to this a lineup of great weapons like a controllable Godzilla monster, guided sniper bullets and typical big-blowup guns and you have a game that pushes silly, exciting moments over realism and immersion. And that’s perfectly fine. “Bullestorm” works nicely on its own terms and begs for downloadable content and a proper sequel.
As a bonus, owners of the Xbox 360 version of “Bulletstorm” get access to the “Gears of War 3” multiplayer beta, which recently launched and will be available through May 15. It’s almost worth the price of “Bulletstorm” to get the sneak peak. “GOW3” looks remarkable and plays great, though I found myself getting killed over and over again. An hour of that was enough; soon I was back to “Bulletstorm,” tearing through enemies with blissful abandon.
“Bulletstorm”
Rated M for Mature
For Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Videogames
Wii successor is real, but won’t be here until 2012, says Nintendo
Surprising absolutely no one, Nintendo has announced a successor to the popular Wii video game console… but it won’t be available until 2012.
Said to be code-named “Project Cafe,” the new game console will arrive long after the Wii has plateaued and as the Sony Playstation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 have gained ground with their own motion controls, which were influenced by the Wii’s innovation.
The console, Nintendo said, will debut next year, but the company will show off a playable version of it in June at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
Rumors have suggested its controllers could have large screens on them. It’s expected that Sony and Microsoft won’t release new consoles until long after Nintendo has debuted its new system.
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Don’t panic! It’s an Internet outage
As we come to rely more and more on cloud-based services (a fancy way of saying we put our digital treasures and junk online) it becomes more of a problem when those services become unreachable.
Just as Amazon, whose EC2 web-hosting service, which powers many popular websites, has been struggling to keep things together since yesterday. Add to that a two-day outage on the PlayStation Network (which might be caused by hackers with a beef against Sony), preventing gamers from downloading movies and accessing game updates (or playing certain games online).
So what should you do if you’re trying to reach a site that appears to be broken? First, check out this list of sites affected by the Amazon outage.
You can also visit Down for Everyone Or Just Me?, a website that tells you whether the outage you’re seeing is on your end or if a website is indeed down for the count.
If you’re an Austin company experiencing problems, let our business reporter Kirk Ladendorf know for a story he’s working on. You can e-mail him at kladendorf@statesman.com or call 445-3622.
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The Linkdown for Thursday, April 21
SXSW Interactive flashback! In the video above are some highlights from Ignite Austin that was recently posted on CNN.com.
What else should you be checking out online today (assuming Amazon’s servers haven’t taken your favorite site down). Allow us to help:
- About that Amazon thing… some of the web’s most popular sites have been down today due to an Amazon hosting problem.
- After word that production might stop on the PSP Go, Sony says that it will continue, at least in North America.
- Food companies are using online games to market to children.
- Google Videos are going to go offline soon. If you have videos there you’d like to preserve, go here and find out how to download them.
- An official Moleskine app has arrived, but you may want to hold on to the paper version.
- How to recycle your tech for Earth Day (on Friday).
- Don’t expect to see too many more Verizon Guy “Can you hear me now?” commercials.
- Marques Harper looks at some of the most stylish iPad cases you can buy.
- The Amazon Kindle app has been updated for Android tablets. Good thing because soon you’ll be able to use your Kindle or Kindle App to check out library e-books.
- Hey, I heard you like biking and you like playing Wii. What if you could do BOTH AT THE SAME TIME?!
- Texas.gov has an Android version of its app available.
- Tonight (Thursday), a UT fashion show will focus on innovation and tech.
- Also tonight, the CapMac group shares power user tips for iPhone and iPad.
- Next week: Austin High Tech Happy Hour at W Austin.
- It’s surprising, but the U.S. is apparently lagging on using communications tech.
- The early reviews for the new BlackBerry Playbook were decidedly mixed. It sounds like a solid piece of hardware that lacks key apps. Give it some time.
- Great piece from David Carr: “Keep your thumbs still when I’m talking to you.”
- Amazon offers the Wi-Fi-only Dell Streak 7 for $380. Also from Dell: new Alienware gear.
- Basketball on TV! Literally!
- Seagate snaps up Samsung’s hard drive business.
- Do cell phones cause brain cancer? The tricky business of researching the issue.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, SXSW 2011
Ten other things your iPhone knows about you
Image via O’Reilly Radar
Today, iPhone owners are getting a queasy feeling in their stomach as they learn that their device (or 3G-enabled iPad) is tracking their movements, writing that information to a file and uploading that file to their computer when they sync. (More information about it in this informative YouTube video.)
I know it’s a huge privacy faux pas on the part of Apple (and one I’m sure they’ll be forced to respond to soon), but for me, honestly, I can’t imagine a situation where this affects me. I’m a parent of two tiny children. I don’t go anywhere remotely interesting. I go home. I go to work. I go buy diapers and baby butt paste and sometimes, if I’m having a great week, I get to go eat BBQ at a nearby restaurant. The location data that my iPhone might track would bore Steve Jobs to tears.
Much more damning is other non-location related data on my phone and yours. Here are 10 other things your iPhone knows about you that would be worse for you if exposed:
- How many fart-related apps you’ve downloaded.
- How many times you’ve listened to songs by the 80s group Starship all the way through.
- The total number of Angry Birds you’ve carelessly killed.
- Number of phone contacts you have where you only remember the person’s first name and are afraid to ask for a last name to go with it.
- Total Justin Bieber YouTube video viewings.
- Multiple waxing appointments in the same week listed in your Calendar app.
- That private home movie you shot that is NEVER EVER EVER supposed to get out on the Internet EVER or you will be dumped by your significant other.
- Self-help iBooks you’ve downloaded that do not seem to have helped.
- Google Map routes that have ended at donut or cupcake shops.
- That time you got every single question wrong in “Qrank.”
What else are you worried your phone might reveal about you? Post it in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Gadgets, Internet, Phones, Videogames
Digital Savant Podcast #3: David J. Neff on video and nonprofits
On the third Digital Savant Podcast, we speak to David J. Neff, a high-profile person in Austin’s social media and nonprofit scenes.
David is the president of Social Media Club Austin, the chief operating officer at the start-up HelpAttack! and is one of the founders of VideoCamp Texas III, which is being held Saturday. He’s also got a book out next month on the future of nonprofits. (It’s called, surprisingly, “The Future of Nonprofits.”)
Download it in podcast-enhanced AAC format (includes images and links).
Show notes:
- VideoCamp Texas III takes place on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- The Flip camera was discontinued last week by Cisco.
- David Pogue on what might have been with the streaming Flip camera.
- Submissions are being taken for Lights. Camera. Help. The festival is in July.
- HelpAttack!, the start-up Dave’s involved with at Chief Operating Officer.
- “The Future of Nonprofits,” the book.
- You can find Dave on Twitter here.
- An early review of the book.
- Austin Social Media Club, where Dave is president.
What’s in the podcast:
0:05 — Introducing David Neff.
0:50 — VideoCamp Texas III.
2:50 — RIP The Flip camera.
7:15 — Lights. Camera. Help. and HelpAttack!
10:25 — “The Future of Nonprofits”
13:30 — Why some nonprofits aren’t approaching social media the right way.
16:12 — Social Media Club Austin.
18:48 — Wrapping things up.
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Monsters of YouTube hitting Emo’s on Saturday
On Saturday, a music show called “The DigiTour 2011” will play Emo’s promising some of the brightest (or at least most subscribed-to) musical stars of YouTube.
Featuring MysteryGuitarMan, The Gregory Bros. (formerly “AutoTune The News”; they performed at South by Southwest this year), DeStorm, Dave Days, David Choi, Wheeze Waiter, Nice Peter and Ricky Ficarelli, the show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $13 and doors open at 6.
It’s the first musical tour I’m aware of hitting Austin that’s completely focused on YouTube stars. Will their online videos translate to the stage? I’ve only seen Gregory Bros. live and I can say that they put on a fantastic show that incorporates video with great musicianship and stage presence.
Here are a few videos from those who’ll be performing:
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‘Portal 2’ and ‘Mortal Kombat’ top new video game releases
New video game releases this week:
“Portal 2.” — “This was a triumph. I’m making a note here: huge success.” The first lyrics to Jonathan Coulton’s closing credits song for Valve’s brilliant 2007 game “Portal” (voiced by the robot GLaDOS) still give gamers chills. The game was a clever, perfectly executed series of physics puzzles combined with humorously dark writing. In the much-anticipated sequel, Aperture Science’s GLaDOS is back and she’s brought co-op multiplayer modes, bigger test labs and new characters. In a unique bonus, the PlayStation 3 edition includes free codes to download the PC and Mac versions and the game can be played online cooperatively within those versions. Rated E-10+ for Everyone 10 and Older. $50-$60, for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC/Mac (sold together).
“Mortal Kombat.” — There may have been one (or three) too many “Mortal Kombat” games over the years, but the original developers of the long-running series are hoping this reboot, with an emphasis on bone-crunching 2-D fighting, more realistically violent blood and gore, and deeper storylines. Will it be enough to win back old-school “Kombat” fans? Rated M for Mature. $60-$100 for Standard and Collector’s Editions, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Also out this week: “SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals” (PS3), “Gem Quest: 4 Elements” (Nintendo DS), “Prince of Persia Trilogy HD” (PS3), “Remington Super Slam Hunting: Alaska” (Nintendo Wii, PC), “Conduit 2” (Wii), “Hidden Mysteries: Notre Dame” (PC), “Picture Puzzle Collection” (DS), “Triple Pack: LIMBO, Trials HD and ‘Splosion Man” (Xbox 360), “Super Sonic Racer” (Wii), “Seek & Find Adventures 2” (PC), “Chronicles of Mystery: The Legend of the Sacred Treasure” (PC), “Hyper Fighting” (Wii), “Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection” (Sony PSP), “Majesty 2 Collection” (PC), “Section 8: Prejudice” (downloadable for Xbox 360), “Mad Blocker Alpha: Revenge of the Fluzzles” (downloadable for PSP and PS3), “Arcana Heart 3” (downloadable for PS3), “Red Johnson’s Chronicles” (downloadable for PS3), “Puzzle Agent” (downloadable for PS3).
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Videogames
White House unveils secure online ID program
The White House today released more details about a national online ID program called National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. The program, which has been discussed since last June, is meant to protect the privacy of Internet users and to allow them to conduct business online without fear that their private data will be overly exposed. It’s mean to be a voluntary program that the Department of Commerce hopes businesses and web surfers will adopt.
Instead of logging into websites with the traditional login and password, a set of credentials would be accessible through participating websites.
You can get more information on it in the video below:
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, Shopping
Review: Apple 15” MacBook Pro (early 2011 model)
For the last few years, I’ve had pretty consistent advice for friends and family members shopping for a laptop: unless you’re a hardcore photo or video editor, you don’t need anything bigger than a 13-inch model. And unless you’re Richie Rich or a competitive video game player or graphic designer, avoid the expensive high-end Apple MacBook Pros.
After spending a month with a 15-inch MacBook Pro on loan from Apple and running it through the torture test of covering South by Southwest Interactive, I’m prepared to admit that my advice has changed.
The new MacBook Pros, refreshed in late February to add speedier processors, more advanced graphics capabilities (especially in the 15- and 17-inch models) and Thunderbolt, a new high-speed data transfer interface, are fast. Very fast. In fact, the 15-inch model I tested is among the fastest laptops you can buy at the moment.
The model I tested includes an Intel i7 quad-core processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM and AMD’s Radeon HD 6750M graphics card (in addition to Intel’s HD Graphics 3000 integrated graphics).
For the first few days, the laptop didn’t seem that much faster than my 3-year-old 13-inch Macbook, a computer that’s been reliable and fast enough. But during the crunch of covering SXSW, I came to rely on the MBP’s fast start-up times, its long battery life (as long as I wasn’t continually running Tweetdeck, or other Adobe Flash/Air apps that are a huge drain) and its durability. The MBP was stained, clicked against beer bottles, dropped (accidentally, I swear!) and jostled around in a laptop bag for days. A few wipes with a cloth and the aluminum-bodied machine looked brand new.
By the end of the festival, when I needed to edit some photos using Aperture (sold separately; I used my own copy) and edit videos with iMovie, the machine’s speed became much more apparent. Those apps are functional, but sometimes balky on my old machine. On the MacBook Pro, they were a breeze to use and lightning fast in rendering video or adjusting photo settings. Video games I later downloaded via Valve’s Steam service ran as fast or faster than on my Windows 7 desktop machine, which I primarily use for gaming and video editing.
The new Thunderbolt port, which offers much faster transfer speeds than USB or Firewire, is a moot point at the moment. There aren’t devices out there that use it yet, but a raft of external drives and other peripherals are due out by summer. And the MacBook Pro now has an HD-quality webcam built in, useful for the video chat FaceTime app that’s included.
One quibble with the hardware: the glass trackpad, which is one big unit with no buttons (it clicks with you press on it) seems almost too large. I constantly found myself changing the size of web pages and accidentally making other unintentional multitouch gestures in normal use. You can disable those gestures in the computer’s settings.
After a month of near-constant use, on the eve of sending the MacBook Pro back to Apple, I went back to the old Macbook and suffered a pang of upgrader’s remorse. My beloved machine now seemed sluggish and small by comparison. I’d gotten used to the MacBook Pro’s roomier display (though I’m not a fan of its high-glare glossy screen; there’s an anti-glare option available an extra fee). Sure, it’s a little heavier (it’s no MacBook Air, that’s for sure), but if I could make it through seven days of SXSW coverage with the machine strapped to my shoulder, it wasn’t an unreasonable amount of weight.
For the first time in my life, I’m considering buying a laptop that starts in price at $1,799. (As configured in the review unit it would be closer to $2,199). It seems like a ridiculous expense, an extravagance, really. But for those who spend a lot of time on their machines and don’t own a powerful desktop machine, it may be wise to go top-of-the-line. People who bought high-end MacBook Pros two years ago are missing a hardware feature or two, but they’ve still got fast, capable machines that can run all the latest Mac OS X updates and software.
There are cheaper options, of course. The 13-inch MacBook Pros start at $1,199. But they don’t have the processing power or 3-D gaming capabilities of the 15- and 17-inch models. Why not reach for the stars?
Maybe I’m just rationalizing. It’s hard not to when you’ve been test driving the fastest car on the lot and can suddenly imagine yourself permanently in the driver’s seat.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Computers, Gadgets, Shopping
City of Austin website is… uh… not there anymore
This illustration of what a black hole in the galaxy M87 might look like is not completely dissimilar from what it’s like to go to a website like the City of Austin’s and find that it has been sucked into a vortex where images disappear and links no longer work. Illustration via Gemini Observatory/AURA, illustration by Lynette Cook
This may be fixed by the time you read this, but as of this writing, the City of Austin website is no longer sitting less-than-pretty at its usual perch on http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/, the Statesman is reporting. What you get when you go there now is a domain parking page by a company called Neustar, Inc in Kentucky. (Is that really who hosts our city’s site? Huh.)
You can access the City of Austin page at austintx.gov, but it’s missing images and points to a bunch of dead links. Could it be an expired domain registration? A server move gone wrong? Sabotage from jealous city government hipsters in Portland, Ore.? Who knows.
You’ll recall sometime back in 2009 there was some discussion about redesigning the website. I guess a website that still needs redesigning is better than no website available at all. Maybe.
(Edited at 4:28 p.m. to add illustration.)
Update, 5:50 p.m.: things appear to be back to normal. Both URLs now work as they should.
Update, 8:30 p.m.: An explanation of why it happened.
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Gamification at AMD’s Game On! Texas 2011
Evan Smith and Sandra Day O’Connor. Photo by Jason Walker, provided by AMD
On Tuesday, an eclectic collection of educators, video game designers and marketers, politicians, nonprofit staffers and a former Supreme Court Justice gathered on the AMD campus to talk about the so-called “Gamification” of education and how the power of gaming can be harnessed by schools and businesses.
What’s “gamification?” A buzzword at South by Southwest Interactive, it was explained succinctly in a slide by Rodney Gibbs of Austin’s Ricochet Labs, the maker of the popular quiz game “Qrank”: “Gamification is a process of using game thinking and game mechanics to engage audience and solve problems.”
[Let’s not quibble about the spelling; I’ve also seen it as “Gameification.” We should make a game out of figuring out whether the “e” belongs in there.]
The day began with an upbeat, often hilarious keynote presentation featuring Texas Tribune CEO and editor-in-chief Evan Smith interviewing former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. In 2009, O’Connor helped launch iCivics (originally called “Our Courts”), a gaming-oriented website meant to teach the kind of information that the nation’s disappearing middle and high school civics courses used to impart. “Half the states have stopped teaching it,” she said.
O’Connor said that there’s a general lack of understanding about the way the courts work that led to its creation, but since then iCivics has expanded to also tackle the legislative and executive branches as well.
The free site has been enthusiastically received by students and educators, she said, but it’s been a struggle to get schools to adopt it. O’Connor said she was planning to focus on Texas because of its size and influence in the education industry. She said she hopes “It will have a widespread, contagious effect” if Texas schools begin using iCivics.
A separate keynote presentation in the afternoon featured Disney Interactive executive producer Starr Long interviewed by a witty and handsome American-Statesman reporter named Omar L. Gallaga.
In the presentation, Long, who is working on a major Disney project that he’s not yet able to discuss publicly, hinted that Disney is looking to create more online-originated properties and that they will likely have strong social and online elements, like “Club Penguin,” which the company acquired in 2007.
Long, who is not based on Los Angeles with the company, was a longtime fixture in the Austin gaming community. He worked on many projects at Origin System including the long-running “Ultima Online” (which is still active) and later worked with Richard Garriott at NCSoft on the ill-fated online game “Tabula Rasa.”
Disney Interactive recently restructured some of its business and laying off employees. Long said that despite the shuffling and the shift in the industry to so-called social gaming (like “Farmville”), the company doesn’t plan to abandon console game like last year’s Austin-developed “Epic Mickey.”
Other sessions through the day focused on ways that the state of Texas can work to spur more educational game development on the state, how schools are using game design courses, how to use games to train and inform and whether the state is educating enough game development talent to feed the industry. A set of sessions explored principles, rules and mechanics of game design as a group exercise.
At the start of the day, it was announced that Austin’s Girlstart was receiving a grant from the AMD Foundation to fund game design education programs for this year’s Girlstart Summer Camps. The camps, for 4th through 10th graders, are being expanded nationwide near AMD sites in Silicon Valley, Bellevue, Ft. Collins, Orlando and Boston.
A few common threads I heard throughout the day included frustration with the state’s education bureaucracy in adopting new technologies (which could include gaming-focused online tools or new kinds of e-textbooks), worry about whether making everything gaming-centric might be detrimental to helping kids learn for learning’s sake and, not surprisingly, concern over costs in a brutal budget environment.
The day concluded on a more positive note with a video showing off a National STEM video game design challenge that was sponsored by AMD, Microsoft, the Electronic Software Association and others. It featured kids winningly talking about their game design projects. You can see it below. Warning: it will fill your heart with hope. Curmudgeons beware.
One of the finalists, Manor 5th-grader Rhys Wynn Wilkinson (pictured above right) was awarded a laptop and will be receiving a letter from the White House.
On stage, Wilkinson revealed that the previously untitled game he designed now has a name. He’s calling it “Dinosaur Sustainability.”
Edited at 5:45 p.m. to add information about Girlstart.
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Cisco to end Flip camera line
In a surprise move, Cisco, the company that purchased the Flip camera company two years ago for $590 million, is shuttering the brand.
The Flip, a small series of typically HD-capable video cameras that were hailed for their low price and ease of use, was at one time touted by Oprah Winfrey. It wasn’t always the highest-quality camera for the price, but the push from Winfrey and its simple design made it a hot seller.
It would appear that Cisco couldn’t find a way to keep the Flip brand going against the rising tide of higher quality cameras being built into cell phones, tablets and other mobile devices.
A few weeks ago, a representative from Flip contacted me about a pre-briefing for what I thought was a new product or service from the company. That meeting was eventually cancelled as the representative told me the announcement was being delayed. Now, it turns out, Flip will be no more.
It’s also surprise given that in just a few short years, “Flip camera” became shorthand for a pocket video camera that can easily be used to shoot YouTube-style video. I’d argue that Flip probably has more name recognition among consumers than Cisco itself.
Want to say a few words about Flip or have any memories about the little cameras to share? Post it in the comments.
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‘Rio’ tops this week’s video game releases
New in video games this week:
“Rio.” - Maybe you don’t like your birds so angry. Maybe you prefer your birds to be cute, funny and based on a movie from the makers of “Ice Age.” In this video game adaptation of the animated movie (which hits theaters on Friday), you’ll find a collection of about 40 mini-games featuring the feathered fliers from the film. Rated E-10+ for anyone 10 and older. $30, for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS.
“Michael Jackson: The Experience.” - Previously a Wii and portable console exclusive, this surprise hit featuring music from the King of Pop comes to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with Kinect and PS3 Move support. It’s built for dancing with motion-captured choreography and has several difficulty modes, including one appropriate for younger players. Rated E-10+ for anyone 10 and older. $20-$50, for Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, DS and Sony PSP.
Also out this week: “LEGO Battles: Ninjago” (DS), “Patapon 3” (PSP), “Black Mirror 3: Final Fear” (Windows PC), “Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga” (Xbox 360), “Squinkies” (DS), “Fantastic Pets” (Xbox 360 Kinect), “Spongebob Squigglepants uDraw” (Wii), “Man vs. Wild” (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii), “Chronicles of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet” (PC), “DanceDance Revolution” (Xbox 360), “Puzzle Overload” (DS), “Girls Only” (DS), “TrackMania Turbo: Built to Race” (DS), “Aladdin Magic Racer” (Wii), “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3D” (Nintendo 3DS), “World of Tanks” (PC), “Elements of War” (PC), “Time of Fury” (PC), “Armada 2526: Supernova” (PC), “Magicka: Vietnam” (PC), “Escape Trick: The Secret of Rock City Prison” (DS).
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The Linkdown for Monday, April 11 (Catch-up edition)
The Linkdown, and this blog for that matter, were on vacation last week but you may not have even noticed because Brian Gaar pitched in a video game review and we had our regularly scheduled new games roundup on Tuesday. We’re sneaky like that and The Linkdown’s titanium work ethic fills with rusty shame at the thought of not keeping you informed.
So here’s where we catch up! Some links for you:
- This takes me back: the Commodore 64 gets an (inner) transplant, keeps retro look.
- 3.5 million Texans left exposed by a state server that wasn’t supposed to be publicly accessible. Whups.
- Steve Jobs is finally getting an authorized biography. Tragically, it will be titled, “iSteve: A Book of Jobs.” At least they’re not calling it, “Paid the iCost to be the iBoss.”
- UT is going to be straight-up digitizing fossils with help from a National Science Foundation grant. Got a problem with that?
- On Wednesday, the Pokémon Global Link goes live. Will we ever remember what life was like before it happened?
- Gowalla has partnered with the film “Win Win” and the soundtrack producers Mom + Pop Records to give you a free music track when you check in at the movies to see it.
- The Winklevoss twins were not Winklevictorious in court.
- A new web series, “Mortal Kombat: Legacy” will debut Tuesday on Machinima.com’s YouTube page.
- I’ll be interviewing Disney Interactive’s Starr Long Tuesday at the Game On! Texas 2011 Conference. There will also be a Game Investment Conference happening on Wednesday.
- Photoshop showing off the future of how desktop and mobile/tablet apps will interact with each other? Who knows, but this is pretty cool.
- Neat idea: a location-aware music album for Washington D.C. that changes dynamically based on where you are. Somebody should do that for Austin!
- Dell is really into mushrooms. (For PACKAGING. Get your mind out of the drug gutter!)
- Austin’s Food on the Table funded.
- Facebook has been sending cultural ambassadors to Austin.
- Happening Thursday: a presentation on bridging the digital divide presented by Cisco and Blue Knot relating to Central Texas as well as the Middle East. Registration deadline is Tuesday. It’s a free event.
- VideoCamp Texas III is on April 23. You can register here.
- Another food truck finder app, this one is called Roaming Hunger.
- Could Austin-developed Sony MMO “Free Realms,” which was recently released for the PlayStation 3 (in addition to its PC version), end up with 100 million users. Someone seems to think so.
- DISH is buying Blockbuster.
- Webby Award nominees are announced Tuesday morning.
- Austin’s Jodi Bart has made it to the finals of the Whole Foods Foodie Fantasy Contest.
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New karaoke ‘Glee’ and ‘Shadow Harvest’ games his shelves this week
New video games this week:
“Karaoke Revolution Glee: Volume 2.” — Hey, remember that time the teacher on “Glee” sang “Dream On” with Neil Patrick Harris or when New Directions did Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance?” You say you want to-relive those moments as video-game karaoke? You’re in luck: the new edition features 20 songs from the first season of “Glee” and includes exclusive footage, a new vibrato indicator and new characters. Rated T for Teen. $40-$50 for Standard or Microphone Bundle editions, for Nintendo Wii.
“Shadow Harvest: Phantom Ops.” — It’s the year 2025 and you’re tasked with helping a demolition expert, Aron Alvarez, and a stealth operator, Myra Lee, protect the world from evildoers. A stealth-action game with an international bent. Rated M for Mature. $50, for Windows PC.
Also out this week: “Hoard” (Mac), “Rabbids Travel in Time” (Nintendo 3DS, available Sunday), “Match 3 Madness” (Nintendo DS), “Carnival Games: Monkey See Monkey Do” (Xbox 360 Kinect), “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3D” (3DS, available Sunday), “Remington Super Slam Hunting: Alaska” (Wii, PC), “The Egyptian Trilogy” (PC), “Super Meat Boy Ultra Edition” (PC), “Fintastic Fishdom Collection” (PC, Mac), “Ultimate Jewel Quest Collection” (PC), “Chainz Galaxy” (PC), “Mole Control” (PC), “The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile” (downloadable for Xbox 360), “Anomaly: Warzone Earth” (Mac), “StarDrone” (downloadable for PlayStation 3), “A Fairy Tale” (DS).
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Review: ‘Pokémon Black/White Version’ for Nintendo DS
Let me start this review with two questions:
Have you played any previous version of the Pokémon games? Did you like them?
If so, you will probably enjoy “Pokémon Black Version” and ” Pokémon White Version,” their latest kin.
Despite some perceptions of Pokémon Black/White as a new imagining of the series, the new games don’t deviate too much from the standard playbook.
Yes, there are 150 all-new Pokémon, meaning the names and character models have changed — and have been animated. And you’re not fighting Team Rocket anymore; it’s Team Plasma.
Rounding out the new features are a new battle system that requires you to send out multiple Pokémon at once (and to position them appropriately).
But that’s about it. You’re still an aspiring Pokémon trainer walking around a retro-graphics world (in this case, the graphics are roughly 16-bit, as opposed to 8-bit). You spend most of your time collecting Pokémon, fighting opponents, gym leaders and whoever else. And you can trade and fight your Pokémon wirelessly (advances that were made in the last generation).
Even the music is pretty much the same.
Like I said, if this appeals to you, then you probably already own Pokémon Black/White, because at this point, the series is pretty review-proof. And it’s probably already one of the fastest-selling games for the DS.
But if you’re expecting a brand-new visioning of the iconic series, don’t believe the hype.
“Pokémon Black Version” and ” Pokémon White Version”
Rated E for Everyone
For Nintendo DS
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Day 2 at UT’s International Online Journalism Symposium
If the first day of the International Symposium on Online Journalism was about optimism about the future of news, Twitter and paywalls, Day 2 was about taking a look at global news trends, learning how even the biggest news organizations in the world are learning to engage with readers and viewers one-on-one. It was also about the goals and business models of nonprofit news operations like Texas Tribune and The Bay Citizen and upstart community ventures like Patch.com and Examiner.com.
The day started off with an energetic, fast-paced keynote presentation by Madanmohan Rao, editor of The Asia Pacific Internet Handbook. Rao discussed emerging news trends in emerging markets, the classifications of online news environments in Asia (from “Restrictive” to “Advanced”), categories of connectivity and more. It was a whirlwind with lots of information to absorb for a wide swath of the world. Rao concluded by proposing that attendees join him in helping create online news chronology/timelines for Asian countries, to help create benchmarking for news organization social media policies and to work on books and ebooks on global online journalism.
Next up was a panel on news nonprofits. Lisa Frazier of The Bay Citizen said partnerships have been critical for her organization and that running it has required time, money and experimentation. “It takes guts and stamina every day,” she told the audience. One of the most interesting items she presented was a crowdsourced bike accident tracker. Has the effort paid off? She said one of the best compliments she’s gotten from a reader was, “You’re the least irritating news source in the Bay Area.”
John Thornton, chairman of the board at the Texas Tribune, talked about the organization’s desire to wean itself from rich donors and to break even in 2012. Thornton said the Tribune’s goal is to help Texans make better decisions about their civic lives.
Later in the day, representatives from hyper-local news site Patch.com (owned by AOL) and Examiner.com spoke on a keynote and in a panel on neighborhood news about raising an army of journalists (or “editors” in the case of Patch) to cover their communities. “Is it really journalism?” asked Patch.com president Warren Webster, addressing a question asked by former NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller on Friday. “I say yes.” He detailed the company’s hiring of 1,000 journalists last year.
To no one’s surprise, the first question he was asked in the Q&A was how much they pay. Webster declined to give specific numbers, but said many of them are being paid more than they had been at community newspapers and other jobs in their markets. Patch is currently in 800 towns. To the amusement of audience members, Webster said Patch has also been responsible for helping find six lost dogs through its sites.
In the case of Examiner.com, the site posts 3,000 stories a day and sees itself as a supplement to mainstream news. “We’re not aiming to be the watchdogs or the conscience of the community,” said Examiner’s Mitch Gelman.
Amanda Zamora, a social media and engagement editor at the Washington Post (and former American-Statesman staffer) and Jennifer Preston, a New York Times reporter who was previously social media editor, both discussed strategies for more closely engaging with readers and doing real-time reporting and curation, often with the help of the audience. Zamora said that the Post has been learning to treat social data as narrative data.
The approach was reinforced by Jim Brady, a former editor at TBD.com, who likened the way news organizations engage with readers with giving them a speech in the backyard. Instead, he said, they need to invite the audience to come inside and more closely engage.
The Times and the Post have both had success with using meaningful content that the audience submits (for instance, 14,000 photo submissions the Times solicited in a “Moment of time” project).
The research projects presented included research on Egypt Internet use (which, interestingly, was a long-term project that was completed shortly before protests began in January), research on the “Newsfulness” of various news browsing devices, a study on reporting versus curation and how reporters directly engage with readers and sources, among others.
You can get more wrap-ups on the symposium on the official site and see research materials from many of the presentations on this page. You can also find the symposium’s new academic journal, “#ISOJ” in various formats here.
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Day 1 at UT’s International Online Journalism Symposium
Photo by Jay Janner / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
On Friday at the 12th International Journalism Symposium on Online Journalism, National Public Radio’s former chief executive and president Vivian Schiller spoke about seven things that are making her optimistic about the future of the news business. She only said of her March departure, “I never even thought for a second I wouldn’t come. Now I actually have more time to be here.”
On March 9, Schiller resigned after the high-profile firing of an NPR contributor and a video scandal involving an NPR fundraising chief’s remarks about the tea party movement.
Glenn Frankel, the director of the University of Texas School of Journalism, who introduced Schiller, was not so circumspect. In his introduction, he said Schiller was “forced out” at NPR and called the video scandal a case of deceptive entrapment with a hidden camera. “It’s a disgrace that NPR’s board caved in the face of that kind of shenanigans by an ideological thug,” Frankel said.
Schiller’s keynote presentation, which launched a two-day event at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, set the tone for several presentations that sidestepped gloom and doom about the future of newspapers and journalism to present a rosier view of the future, one in which new technology tools merge with old-school journalism skills.
She cited data from the Pew Research Center to suggest that news paywalls, such as one just launched by the New York Times, are finally ready to be given “A fair shake” by readers. Schiller also said that Twitter has emerged as a serious news-gathering and fact-checking engine, that apps for smart phones and tablets are generating more interest in news (she called them “The holy grail of audience engagement”) and that local news coverage is “Up for grabs.”
She praised NPR member station KUT for partnering with the non-profit Texas Tribune and for expanding aggressively on digital platforms. She also said KUT should be supported for its fundraising, audience growth and journalistic efforts, she said, “We should all watch carefully and we should support it. Austin is a test-bed … everything that is happening in Austin right now is exactly right.”
Despite the timing of her resignation, Schiller said that recent events have proven the value of online news in the face of unrest in the Middle East and disasters in Japan. “I am really, really hopeful, never more so than in recent weeks. News consumers had access… and an understanding of events like never before.”
That sentiment was echoed by a second keynote presentation in the afternoon, by Meredith Artley, vice president and managing editor of CNN.com. She revealed that CNN generated 75 million average page views, 1 million app downloads and 15 million “video starts” per day following the tragedy in Japan. Traffic for these stories, she said, broke all previous records for CNN.com except for the 2008 election. She said the company expects to be on track for more than 200 million page views for March.
Artley presented “Open Story,” a new CNN.com article format that combines crowdsourced “iReports,” data and traditional reporting. The first of these was created last month at South by Southwest Interactive. A separate mock-up showed how such an approach might work with reports from the ground during a political protest like the ones in Egypt that began in January. CNN.com also plans to give online reader the option to record and upload video response comments to their site starting this summer.
(Disclosure: I’ve done work as a technology-reporting contributor for both National Public Radio and CNN.com.)
There was lots of talk about Twitter (in fact several research projects presented in the afternoon focused on how newsrooms are using it), about apps and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces that some news organizations are using to encourage app and tool development), and about the value of good journalism in an era of abundant, cheap tools to get information out to readers.
Other discussions on Friday also focused on paywalls, the effort by news organizations to begin charging for content that was previously accessed for free by readers. Mark Medici, a director of audience development at the Dallas Morning News, said that the company’s paywall, which went in March, helped generate 2,200 new Sunday subscriptions for the publication in the week it launched.
There was also talk about whether the future of news reading will be on the web, in splashy apps like News Corp.’s “The Daily” for the Apple iPad (which was developed by Austin’s Chaotic Moon Studios) or in some combination of the two. John Kilpatrick, vice president of design for “The Daily” and Filipe Fortes, CEO of the more cross-platform Treesaver project presented vastly different strategies for wrangling readers.
Fortes maintained that news organizations should focus on the web (“[HTML]” he showed in his presentation) instead of rushing to develop for the hottest new tablet or mobile platform. Kilpatrick, on the other hand, said “The Daily” is focused on providing the best possible presentation on the iPad, but hinted that his group will inevitably expand to other platforms and play to their strengths.
The journalism symposium, which began in 1999, this year is also presenting sessions on social media, hyper-local news coverage, non-profit journalism and international news trends. In his opening remarks, Rosental C. Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journal in the Americas at UT and organizer of the event, said an academic research journal called “#ISOJ” was launching. It can be found at online.journalism.utexas.edu/ebook.php.
Two research sessions, one on newsroom innovations and another on how news organizations are using Twitter (often not well enough), were also presented. You can find the research papers those presentations were based on at this page.
The event continues on Saturday and will be live-streamed starting at 9 a.m.. You can view it on the official site or in the embedded video below.
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