Related sites:
Space Inviders Site
Space Invaders Pattern
Monday, March 19, 2007
Space Invaders Rebirth... on the Socks
Space Invaders was designed and programmed by Toshihiro Nishikado for Taito, Japan in 1978 and remains one of the most popular arcade games ever made. Years laters Space Invaders appear... on the socks.
Related sites:
Space Inviders Site
Space Invaders Pattern
Related sites:
Space Inviders Site
Space Invaders Pattern
Saturday, March 17, 2007
The Best Mice And Keyboards You Ever Seen
Introducing Russian Mouse company. The concept is simple, they take Logitech mice and keyboards and hand paint them.
Each painted item is exclusive. While putting a part of his soul in his work, the painter gives each item a feel of uniqueness and originality thus making it easily distinguishable from huge amount of ordinary mass-produced items. Besides, working with the painted mouse or keyboard feels much more aesthetic and pleasant, than with regular ones.
The craftsmanship is great, and they are reasonably priced, with many in the $30-50 range. Portraits can be as high as $100, and they will do custom jobs.
Russian Mouse
Russian Mouse
Each painted item is exclusive. While putting a part of his soul in his work, the painter gives each item a feel of uniqueness and originality thus making it easily distinguishable from huge amount of ordinary mass-produced items. Besides, working with the painted mouse or keyboard feels much more aesthetic and pleasant, than with regular ones.
The craftsmanship is great, and they are reasonably priced, with many in the $30-50 range. Portraits can be as high as $100, and they will do custom jobs.
Russian Mouse
Russian Mouse
Shocking Alarm Clock
For those people who having trouble getting up in the morning, here is the perfect solution, introducing the Shocking Alarm Clock (can you guess what it does?)
Yes that’s right, picture the morning with the light coming through the curtains the birds singing and the alarm clock ringing, you reach across to turn it off and SHOCK!!! it gives you a mild electric shock (it certainly got the boss out of bed this morning)
Perfect for playing a practical joke on a friend or loved one.
Warning: Not suitable for people with epilepsy or pacemakers.
Purchase Shocking Alarm Clock for £12.95
Apple wins 10 International Design Forum awards
Apple walked away with no less than ten design plaudits at the International Design Forum awards in Germany this week.
No recent design event would be complete without the obligatory nod to Apple. The company scooped seven golds, mostly for its family of iPod gadgets. The jury unanimously praised the designs that make complex technology seem within everyone's reach. "Apple's product appeal transcends sex and age because it keeps things simple," says Frenkler.
It took Gold Awards for the
The company's Wireless Mighty Mouse, Apple Remote, and second-generation iPod Shuffle all took home Product Design Awards after Judges examined 487 products from 32 countries.
One judge at the event made a statement about Apple's portable player: "The iPod is simply fantastic," adding that the device is "a perfect product."
Related:
International Design Forum
CeBIT
No recent design event would be complete without the obligatory nod to Apple. The company scooped seven golds, mostly for its family of iPod gadgets. The jury unanimously praised the designs that make complex technology seem within everyone's reach. "Apple's product appeal transcends sex and age because it keeps things simple," says Frenkler.
It took Gold Awards for the
- iPod
- 2G iPod Nano
- MacBook Pro
- MacBook
- iPod Hi-Fi
- iPod Radio Remote
- iPod Leather Case
The company's Wireless Mighty Mouse, Apple Remote, and second-generation iPod Shuffle all took home Product Design Awards after Judges examined 487 products from 32 countries.
One judge at the event made a statement about Apple's portable player: "The iPod is simply fantastic," adding that the device is "a perfect product."
Related:
International Design Forum
CeBIT
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Buddhist video game aims to teach morals
Outbreak of kindness expected in Thailand
We hear a lot about violence in video games being to blame for all the ills besetting the youth of today. Now, a Thai games developer has decided it is time to right the balance and has developed a snappily titled Ethics Game to teach youngsters about being good, decent and teetotal.
The game is based around the five precepts of Buddhism: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, and do not drink alcohol.
It follows three children on a pilgrimage with a wise old monk. The players have to deal with problems and obstacles along the way, but in a way which is consistent with the teachings of the Buddha. Normal game playing behaviour - shooting stuff, hurting animals, and so on - will cost the player points.
Pakorn Tancharoen, a senior officer in Thailand's Religious Affairs Department, explains that he became concerned about the moral impact of gaming when he heard about a boy who attacked his mum when she wouldn't pay for an online gaming session for him.
He told Thai paper The Nation: "It is impossible to stop kids from playing games or flocking to online-game arcades. So, let them play, but play good games."
Faced with a shortage of "good games", he set about developing his own. He worked in his spare time at first, hanging out at game arcades after work and watching what the kids were into.
Then he involved the kids in designing the characters who would go on the pilgrimage he devised.
When the project was approved, he found a gaming firm to develop and launch it. He said: "They said they had been hired to produce so many violent games, they saw this as a chance to make amends."
The game can be downloaded here. Being able to read the Thai language will be an advantage, and is not one we have, so we can't vouch for it actually being any fun.
Original Article: Buddhist video game aims to teach morals
We hear a lot about violence in video games being to blame for all the ills besetting the youth of today. Now, a Thai games developer has decided it is time to right the balance and has developed a snappily titled Ethics Game to teach youngsters about being good, decent and teetotal.
The game is based around the five precepts of Buddhism: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, and do not drink alcohol.
It follows three children on a pilgrimage with a wise old monk. The players have to deal with problems and obstacles along the way, but in a way which is consistent with the teachings of the Buddha. Normal game playing behaviour - shooting stuff, hurting animals, and so on - will cost the player points.
Pakorn Tancharoen, a senior officer in Thailand's Religious Affairs Department, explains that he became concerned about the moral impact of gaming when he heard about a boy who attacked his mum when she wouldn't pay for an online gaming session for him.
He told Thai paper The Nation: "It is impossible to stop kids from playing games or flocking to online-game arcades. So, let them play, but play good games."
Faced with a shortage of "good games", he set about developing his own. He worked in his spare time at first, hanging out at game arcades after work and watching what the kids were into.
Then he involved the kids in designing the characters who would go on the pilgrimage he devised.
When the project was approved, he found a gaming firm to develop and launch it. He said: "They said they had been hired to produce so many violent games, they saw this as a chance to make amends."
The game can be downloaded here. Being able to read the Thai language will be an advantage, and is not one we have, so we can't vouch for it actually being any fun.
Original Article: Buddhist video game aims to teach morals
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Eyetracking: men tend to focus on private anatomy
When photos do contain people related to the task at hand, or the content users are exploring, they do get fixations. However, gender makes a distinct difference on what parts of the photo are stared at the longest. Take a look at the hotspot below.
Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.
This image of George Brett was part of a larger page with his biographical information. All users tested looked the image, but there was a distinct difference in focus between men and women.
Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.
Full article: Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design
How to Embed FLV Flash Videos in your Blog ?
Video Sharing Sites like Youtube or Google video provide simple HTML code for embedding their video clips in your web pages. But sometimes we want to add raw Flash Video files like SWF animations or FLV [streaming or progressive] which are frequently used by News or media websites.
Now to embed flash video files, you can either download the flv or swf flash video to your hard drive, convert it to avi, wmv or mov format and then upload it to your Youtube account. Then you can use the Youtube supplied HTML code to embed that video in your webpage or blog. The video will play wrapped inside the Youtube or Google Video player skin.
The above approach works but is clearly not the best way to do things. What if the original video is updated - then you will have to revisit the whole encoding-decoding cycle again. Secondly, there will be considerable loss in video quality when it is converted from one format to another and Youtube is definitely not the best place to see high resolution video clips. They will degrade it to 320x240 size clip.
So here's a very easy way for embedding flash videos in your website without loosing any quality. Also you won't have to download the video to your own server - you can embed the flash video player in your site and it will stream the video [or play directly] from the source website [you might want to obtain permission from the content host since you will be consuming his bandwidth]
<object width="Width in Pixels" height="Height in Pixels" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0"> <param name="salign" value="lt"> <param name="quality" value="high"> <param name="scale" value="noscale"> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> <param name="movie" value="http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvplay.swf"> <param name="FlashVars" value="&streamName=FLV_Video_URL&skinName=http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvskin&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true"> <embed width="Width in Pixels" height="Height in Pixels" flashvars="&streamName=FLV_Video_URL&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true&skinName=http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvskin" quality="high" scale="noscale" salign="LT" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://geekfile.googlepages.com/flvplay.swf" wmode="transparent"> </embed></object>
Incase you would like the video to start only when the site visitor hits the play button, replace autoPlay=true with autoPlay=false. Once the video track finishes playing, the cue marker would return to the original position. You can disable this by setting autorewind=false.
Here's a real world example - this flash video is hosted on an external news website in flv format but has been embedded in this site using just the above HTML code. See the video player skin is non-branded and looks more sleek and professional.
How to Embed FLV Flash Videos in your Blog ?
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