Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Shopping for the Baby
As my wife shops online in search for the perfect wallpaper to adorn our soon-to-be baby room, I was also compelled to begin the search for those baby necessities, like wallpaper.
Check out this sweet pacifier I found on the interweb, got a good deal on that sucker too.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Future of video game industry taking shape at GDC
Posted by Daniel Terdiman @ c|net News.com
If ever there was a time for a famous futurist to be giving a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference, this is it.
When Ray Kurzweil, the author of The Singularity is Near and one of the most noted futurists around, takes the stage at GDC 2008 in San Francisco on Thursday to talk about "the next 20 years of gaming," he'll be weighing in at a moment in the industry's existence when the lines between games and Hollywood and advertising are blurring, when the term "gamer" encompasses 75-year-old grandmothers and when the barrier to entry to being a developer has never been smaller.
"I think the Kurzweil keynote should be very interesting," said Ron Meiners, community manager for the virtual world platform developer, Multiverse Network. "He's a very original thinker, and I'm curious as to his take on the gaming industry, how games fit into people's lives, (and) how games are changing people's lives."
One thing that strikes me about how video games are intersecting with people's lives in 2008, and it was made abundantly clear over the Christmas holidays, when it was simply impossible to find a Nintendo Wii for sale anywhere, is that finally, the medium is truly mainstream.
And while there will always be a significant segment of the industry that caters to and is serviced by hard-core gamers, what's becoming evident is that there's almost no one who is left out of what video gaming is today. And for those who are left out, that may not be true as the years progress. I suspect that that is something Kurzweil will touch on, at least briefly.
"It's a very exciting time in the game industry, in that we have this growing recognition of the important of casual and family-oriented content," said Jamil Moledina, the director of GDC. "You're seeing it in the $60 packaged (games) and in the $10 downloads. It's a perfect storm of factors poised to really expand the game industry."
One example of that, Moledina suggested, is the explosion of gamer-created content and social networking in online gamer communities like Microsoft's Xbox Live.
That rationale may well be why GDC's first keynote speaker, on Wednesday, will be Microsoft corporate vice president John Schappert, who will give a talk titled, "A future wide open: Unleashing the creative community."
For Moledina, organizing what is almost certain to be the biggest GDC ever--last year's event drew 16,000 people, he said, and it is expected to grow this year--is a huge job. There are hundreds of panel discussions scheduled, a huge trade show and, as always, GDC will actually be made up of several different events that are linked together throughout the week.
On Monday and Tuesday, the events will include several "summits," such as those on casual games, independent games, game outsourcing, and virtual worlds. As well, there's GDC Mobile, which focuses on games for mobile devices.
GDC: "Now there's a circus that goes on"
But with the demise of E3--formerly the world's biggest video game show--as a major event, GDC is now taking on an increasingly important role to publishers as a place to showcase their games, even if they do it outside the auspices of the conference itself.
"It used to be that GDC was just about going and listening to developers talk about the craft of making video games, said Brian Crescente, the editor of the influential video game blog, Kotaku.com. "That still happens, but now there's a circus that goes on, a halo, that surrounds GDC. It's essentially like a mini-E3."
That means many publishers and hardware developers are scheduling events in venues near GDC's home at San Francisco's Moscone Center that are unofficial but hard to ignore for game journalists or analysts who need to keep up on the latest and greatest.
"They're contacting me and saying, 'You're going to GDC,' they know journalists are going to be there, and they're taking advantage of that," Crescente said. "From my perspective, it's nice, because I get to see these things, but it also waters down the message of GDC."
For its part, he added, GDC organizer "CMP is sort of fighting to prevent that from happening, but it's hard."
Another interesting phenomenon, at least to longtime GDC attendees, is how the conference's now-permanent move to San Francisco has affected the social dynamics of the event.
For years, GDC was held in San Jose, Calif., at that city's convention center in the heart of its downtown. For the last few years, the conference has bounced back and forth between San Francisco and San Jose, but is now settled in the former.
"It still feels transplanted and uprooted after leaving San Jose," said Michael Steele, vice president of product development for C3L3B Digital (pronounced "celeb"), a start-up working on online games for the entertainment industry. "It will be a few more years until the new social patterns are established or settled. That makes it a little more exhausting and harder for the social connections to happen. (There's) no Fairmont (hotel) lobby, multiple buildings are far apart, multiple hotels are far apart, (and the) hustle-bustle of downtown (San Francisco) versus the relative quiet of San Jose."
And that's vital because GDC is always as much about the relationships and deals struck in the hallways and hotels as about what goes on inside the convention itself.
The Hollywood angle
Still, to Steele--who in addition to being a longtime GDC attendee is also among the guiding forces, as an advisory committee member, of the Austin Game Developers Conference, which is held in the fall--the content at GDC is very much indicative of the state of the video game industry.
"I see a trend that is continuing," he said, "the maturation of the game industry, and the cross-pollination with other industries as our target markets evolve...We used to have a lot of cross-pollination with Hollywood. It's still there, of course, but now we're seeing (that) with Madison Avenue...As games achieve more cultural relevancy in the West, we're getting the ad folks stepping in and learning about how we do things--e.g., how they can reach our audience. So GDC tends to be a nice place to see where those bellwethers are going."
To Moledina, two of the major industry bellwethers these days are Nintendo and Harmonix, the companies behind the Wii and Guitar Hero, which have both introduced new game controllers that have lured in huge new audiences.
"During the (recent Hollywood) writers' striker, we saw late-night hosts playing Guitar Hero," Moledina said. "There's certainly a greater knowledge and understanding that games can be a much more diverse art form. And that's the thing that the Wii has so successfully demonstrated....Harmonix and Nintendo are changing the perception of what hardware and casual accessories can do."
Yet some of the most impressive innovations on display during this year's GDC are likely to be aimed at the hard-core gamer market.
The one I think I'm most excited to see is LucasArts' forthcoming Star Wars: Force Unleashed, which is said to feature several ground-breaking technological advances that herald a future in which video games are more realistic than ever. Among them are technologies that make physics more life-like, as well as artificial intelligence that makes game play different every time.
As always, I'm also excited about this year's Game Design Challenge, a panel during which leading developers face off with concepts for a new game based on an unusual topic. This year, the topic is an "inter-species" game, that is, one that could be played by humans and another species. Past topics have included games about love, games that could win the Nobel Peace Prize and games based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
In some ways, it's hard to know before heading to the conference what will be the best events and content, as there is simply so much. This will be my fifth GDC, and I'm always excited to talk to the friends I've made during the event in years past, and to attend the best panels.
Of course, it is nearly impossible to attend everything, as many of the best sessions are scheduled against each other, and then there's the small matter of eating--and sleeping, since some of the best get-togethers are in the evening.
But as thousands and thousands of game industry people flow into San Francisco this week, there can be little doubt that the ideas that will dramatically change the way people the world over interact with games--and entertainment in general--will be in evidence. And that makes GDC among the most relevant conferences still going today.
Still, as the industry prepares to head to GDC, there's one well-known member of the community who won't be there.
To Peter Moore, formerly the head of Microsoft's Xbox division and now president of Electronic Arts' EA Sports division, GDC, while a vibrant event for industry innovation, is hardly the place for executives like him.
If ever there was a time for a famous futurist to be giving a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference, this is it.
When Ray Kurzweil, the author of The Singularity is Near and one of the most noted futurists around, takes the stage at GDC 2008 in San Francisco on Thursday to talk about "the next 20 years of gaming," he'll be weighing in at a moment in the industry's existence when the lines between games and Hollywood and advertising are blurring, when the term "gamer" encompasses 75-year-old grandmothers and when the barrier to entry to being a developer has never been smaller.
"I think the Kurzweil keynote should be very interesting," said Ron Meiners, community manager for the virtual world platform developer, Multiverse Network. "He's a very original thinker, and I'm curious as to his take on the gaming industry, how games fit into people's lives, (and) how games are changing people's lives."
One thing that strikes me about how video games are intersecting with people's lives in 2008, and it was made abundantly clear over the Christmas holidays, when it was simply impossible to find a Nintendo Wii for sale anywhere, is that finally, the medium is truly mainstream.
And while there will always be a significant segment of the industry that caters to and is serviced by hard-core gamers, what's becoming evident is that there's almost no one who is left out of what video gaming is today. And for those who are left out, that may not be true as the years progress. I suspect that that is something Kurzweil will touch on, at least briefly.
"It's a very exciting time in the game industry, in that we have this growing recognition of the important of casual and family-oriented content," said Jamil Moledina, the director of GDC. "You're seeing it in the $60 packaged (games) and in the $10 downloads. It's a perfect storm of factors poised to really expand the game industry."
One example of that, Moledina suggested, is the explosion of gamer-created content and social networking in online gamer communities like Microsoft's Xbox Live.
That rationale may well be why GDC's first keynote speaker, on Wednesday, will be Microsoft corporate vice president John Schappert, who will give a talk titled, "A future wide open: Unleashing the creative community."
For Moledina, organizing what is almost certain to be the biggest GDC ever--last year's event drew 16,000 people, he said, and it is expected to grow this year--is a huge job. There are hundreds of panel discussions scheduled, a huge trade show and, as always, GDC will actually be made up of several different events that are linked together throughout the week.
On Monday and Tuesday, the events will include several "summits," such as those on casual games, independent games, game outsourcing, and virtual worlds. As well, there's GDC Mobile, which focuses on games for mobile devices.
GDC: "Now there's a circus that goes on"
But with the demise of E3--formerly the world's biggest video game show--as a major event, GDC is now taking on an increasingly important role to publishers as a place to showcase their games, even if they do it outside the auspices of the conference itself.
"It used to be that GDC was just about going and listening to developers talk about the craft of making video games, said Brian Crescente, the editor of the influential video game blog, Kotaku.com. "That still happens, but now there's a circus that goes on, a halo, that surrounds GDC. It's essentially like a mini-E3."
That means many publishers and hardware developers are scheduling events in venues near GDC's home at San Francisco's Moscone Center that are unofficial but hard to ignore for game journalists or analysts who need to keep up on the latest and greatest.
"They're contacting me and saying, 'You're going to GDC,' they know journalists are going to be there, and they're taking advantage of that," Crescente said. "From my perspective, it's nice, because I get to see these things, but it also waters down the message of GDC."
For its part, he added, GDC organizer "CMP is sort of fighting to prevent that from happening, but it's hard."
Another interesting phenomenon, at least to longtime GDC attendees, is how the conference's now-permanent move to San Francisco has affected the social dynamics of the event.
For years, GDC was held in San Jose, Calif., at that city's convention center in the heart of its downtown. For the last few years, the conference has bounced back and forth between San Francisco and San Jose, but is now settled in the former.
"It still feels transplanted and uprooted after leaving San Jose," said Michael Steele, vice president of product development for C3L3B Digital (pronounced "celeb"), a start-up working on online games for the entertainment industry. "It will be a few more years until the new social patterns are established or settled. That makes it a little more exhausting and harder for the social connections to happen. (There's) no Fairmont (hotel) lobby, multiple buildings are far apart, multiple hotels are far apart, (and the) hustle-bustle of downtown (San Francisco) versus the relative quiet of San Jose."
And that's vital because GDC is always as much about the relationships and deals struck in the hallways and hotels as about what goes on inside the convention itself.
The Hollywood angle
Still, to Steele--who in addition to being a longtime GDC attendee is also among the guiding forces, as an advisory committee member, of the Austin Game Developers Conference, which is held in the fall--the content at GDC is very much indicative of the state of the video game industry.
"I see a trend that is continuing," he said, "the maturation of the game industry, and the cross-pollination with other industries as our target markets evolve...We used to have a lot of cross-pollination with Hollywood. It's still there, of course, but now we're seeing (that) with Madison Avenue...As games achieve more cultural relevancy in the West, we're getting the ad folks stepping in and learning about how we do things--e.g., how they can reach our audience. So GDC tends to be a nice place to see where those bellwethers are going."
To Moledina, two of the major industry bellwethers these days are Nintendo and Harmonix, the companies behind the Wii and Guitar Hero, which have both introduced new game controllers that have lured in huge new audiences.
"During the (recent Hollywood) writers' striker, we saw late-night hosts playing Guitar Hero," Moledina said. "There's certainly a greater knowledge and understanding that games can be a much more diverse art form. And that's the thing that the Wii has so successfully demonstrated....Harmonix and Nintendo are changing the perception of what hardware and casual accessories can do."
Yet some of the most impressive innovations on display during this year's GDC are likely to be aimed at the hard-core gamer market.
The one I think I'm most excited to see is LucasArts' forthcoming Star Wars: Force Unleashed, which is said to feature several ground-breaking technological advances that herald a future in which video games are more realistic than ever. Among them are technologies that make physics more life-like, as well as artificial intelligence that makes game play different every time.
As always, I'm also excited about this year's Game Design Challenge, a panel during which leading developers face off with concepts for a new game based on an unusual topic. This year, the topic is an "inter-species" game, that is, one that could be played by humans and another species. Past topics have included games about love, games that could win the Nobel Peace Prize and games based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
In some ways, it's hard to know before heading to the conference what will be the best events and content, as there is simply so much. This will be my fifth GDC, and I'm always excited to talk to the friends I've made during the event in years past, and to attend the best panels.
Of course, it is nearly impossible to attend everything, as many of the best sessions are scheduled against each other, and then there's the small matter of eating--and sleeping, since some of the best get-togethers are in the evening.
But as thousands and thousands of game industry people flow into San Francisco this week, there can be little doubt that the ideas that will dramatically change the way people the world over interact with games--and entertainment in general--will be in evidence. And that makes GDC among the most relevant conferences still going today.
Still, as the industry prepares to head to GDC, there's one well-known member of the community who won't be there.
To Peter Moore, formerly the head of Microsoft's Xbox division and now president of Electronic Arts' EA Sports division, GDC, while a vibrant event for industry innovation, is hardly the place for executives like him.
Game creators look to the future
By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website
The developers of some of the world's most popular video games are in San Francisco this week to discuss the future of the industry. They will look back on one of their most successful years and discuss tackling the challenges ahead.
Jamil Moledina, director of the Game Developers' Conference said: "We had an incredible banner year in 2007 with games like Bioshock, Halo 3 and Uncharted.
In the US the industry's revenues grew 43%, with software sales up a third on the previous year.
Speaking to BBC News, Mr Moledina said: "It's often dangerous to make predictions about the future but the industry has taken on a sense of casualisation."
In this sense casual games are those that people can play and complete in minutes rather than hours and are aimed at children, women and older people. Many of the titles prepared for Nintendo's Wii are casual games.
He added: "There's definitely an increasing interest in approaching that larger audience of media consumers."
New markets
Traditionally the games industry has concentrated on its core audience. Titles like Halo 3, which pulled in the biggest ever earnings for an entertainment release in a single day, showed that the hard core gamer remained a potent market.
FROM THE DOT.LIFE BLOG
How on earth will the games industry surpass last year's commercial and critical high?
Darren Waters, technology editor BBC News website
Read Darren's thoughts in full
"But the success of the Wii, RockBand, Guitar Hero and casual games point to new areas of growth," added Mr Moledina.
For instance, he said, Guitar Hero games made more than $820m at retail, a record for any single franchise in any one year.
Mr Moledina added: "The Wii has re-proven the point that five to 95 year olds like playing games."
Veteran game designer Sid Meier will speak at the conference to shed light on "the key things you need to capture the interest of the public at large".
"We have Facebook here talking about how they have managed to get so many eyeballs playing games in such a short space of time," he said.
Developers and publishers were looking at this area very closely, he added.
But, he said, these new developments would not change everything. "Not all games are going to be casual. There's still going to be a huge market for the core base which drives everything."
One of the games aimed squarely at the core audience in 2008 is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which will be demoed at the week-long conference.
Gaining control
The event will also feature talk about the future of the human computer interface.
"Game worlds are a fairly complex universe, however the controllers we have are often a bit intimidating," said Mr Moledina.
Emotiv systems will be showing off its latest headset that uses sensors to detect brain waves to allow gamers to control characters and objects in a game world.
Mobile gaming is starting to be taken seriously
Israeli firm 3DV will be demonstrating its camera technology that can detect depth of movement.
Gamers can swing an imaginary golf club or interact with a 3D world just by using their hands and arms and without the need for a controller.
"A lot of people experiment with different ways to get into the game; to convert a fairly complex way that humans think and behave and have that map in a natural way to a complex game world," explained Mr Moledina.
The conference also features a strong mobile gaming element.
"We are seeing more and more big game companies take the space seriously. The sea change is that traditional game developers are less snarky about mobile and casual than they were because of the power of phones today."
Microsoft's head of Live services, John Schappert, will give one of the conference's keynotes, where he is expected to unveil new features for the Xbox Live service.
"Microsoft hasn't delivered a keynote for two years so it will be interesting to see what they have for us," said Mr Moledina.
Technology editor, BBC News website
The developers of some of the world's most popular video games are in San Francisco this week to discuss the future of the industry. They will look back on one of their most successful years and discuss tackling the challenges ahead.
Jamil Moledina, director of the Game Developers' Conference said: "We had an incredible banner year in 2007 with games like Bioshock, Halo 3 and Uncharted.
In the US the industry's revenues grew 43%, with software sales up a third on the previous year.
Speaking to BBC News, Mr Moledina said: "It's often dangerous to make predictions about the future but the industry has taken on a sense of casualisation."
In this sense casual games are those that people can play and complete in minutes rather than hours and are aimed at children, women and older people. Many of the titles prepared for Nintendo's Wii are casual games.
He added: "There's definitely an increasing interest in approaching that larger audience of media consumers."
New markets
Traditionally the games industry has concentrated on its core audience. Titles like Halo 3, which pulled in the biggest ever earnings for an entertainment release in a single day, showed that the hard core gamer remained a potent market.
FROM THE DOT.LIFE BLOG
How on earth will the games industry surpass last year's commercial and critical high?
Darren Waters, technology editor BBC News website
Read Darren's thoughts in full
"But the success of the Wii, RockBand, Guitar Hero and casual games point to new areas of growth," added Mr Moledina.
For instance, he said, Guitar Hero games made more than $820m at retail, a record for any single franchise in any one year.
Mr Moledina added: "The Wii has re-proven the point that five to 95 year olds like playing games."
Veteran game designer Sid Meier will speak at the conference to shed light on "the key things you need to capture the interest of the public at large".
"We have Facebook here talking about how they have managed to get so many eyeballs playing games in such a short space of time," he said.
Developers and publishers were looking at this area very closely, he added.
But, he said, these new developments would not change everything. "Not all games are going to be casual. There's still going to be a huge market for the core base which drives everything."
One of the games aimed squarely at the core audience in 2008 is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which will be demoed at the week-long conference.
Gaining control
The event will also feature talk about the future of the human computer interface.
"Game worlds are a fairly complex universe, however the controllers we have are often a bit intimidating," said Mr Moledina.
Emotiv systems will be showing off its latest headset that uses sensors to detect brain waves to allow gamers to control characters and objects in a game world.
Mobile gaming is starting to be taken seriously
Israeli firm 3DV will be demonstrating its camera technology that can detect depth of movement.
Gamers can swing an imaginary golf club or interact with a 3D world just by using their hands and arms and without the need for a controller.
"A lot of people experiment with different ways to get into the game; to convert a fairly complex way that humans think and behave and have that map in a natural way to a complex game world," explained Mr Moledina.
The conference also features a strong mobile gaming element.
"We are seeing more and more big game companies take the space seriously. The sea change is that traditional game developers are less snarky about mobile and casual than they were because of the power of phones today."
Microsoft's head of Live services, John Schappert, will give one of the conference's keynotes, where he is expected to unveil new features for the Xbox Live service.
"Microsoft hasn't delivered a keynote for two years so it will be interesting to see what they have for us," said Mr Moledina.
Navy Scores Direct Hit on Spy Satellite
Navy Scores Direct Hit on Spy Satellite
Feb 21 07:01 AM US/Eastern
By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writers
HONOLULU (AP) - A U.S. Navy cruiser blasted a disabled spy satellite with a pinpoint missile strike that achieved the main mission of exploding a tank of toxic fuel 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean, defense officials said.
Destroying the satellite's onboard tank of about 1,000 pounds of hydrazine fuel was the primary goal, and a senior defense official close to the mission said Thursday that it appears the tank was destroyed, and the strike with a specially designed missile was a complete success.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the shootdown, which came late Wednesday as he began an eight-day, around-the-world trip on which he likely will face questions about the mission.
The elaborate intercept may trigger worries from some international leaders, who could see it as a thinly disguised attempt to test an anti-satellite weapon—one that could take out other nation's orbiting communications and spy spacecraft.
Within hours of the reported success, China said it was on the alert for possible harmful fallout from the shootdown and urged Washington to promptly release data on the action.
"China is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at news conference in Beijing. "China requests the U.S. to fulfill its international obligations in real earnest and provide to the international community necessary information and relevant data in a timely and prompt way so that relevant countries can take precautions."
While Pentagon officials stressed that the satellite strike was a one- time incident, it certainly will spin off massive amounts of data and research that can be studied by the military as it works to improve its missile defense technologies.
Officials had expressed cautious optimism that the missile would hit the bus-sized satellite, but they were less certain of hitting the smaller, more worrisome fuel tank.
In a statement released after the satellite was shot, the Pentagon said, "Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours." But a short time later, several defense officials close to the situation said it appeared the fuel tank was hit. One said observers saw what appeared to be an explosion. Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the results had not been formally documented at the time they spoke.
Because the satellite was orbiting at a relatively low altitude at the time it was hit by the missile, debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately, the Pentagon statement said.
"Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days," it said.
Gates approved the missile launch at about 1:40 p.m. EST, while en route from Washington to Hawaii. Within nine hours—at 10:26 p.m. EST—the USS Lake Erie, fired the SM-3 missile originally designed to knock down incoming missiles rather than orbiting satellites.
It hit the satellite about three minutes later as the spacecraft traveled in polar orbit at more than 17,000 mph.
The Lake Erie and two other Navy warships, as well as the missile and other components, were modified in a hurry-up project started in January. The missile alone cost nearly $10 million, and officials estimated that the total cost of the project was at least $30 million.
The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Gates—not a military commander down the chain of command—made the decision to pull the trigger.
Gates had arrived in Hawaii less than two hours before the missile was launched. His press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said Gates had a conference call during his flight with Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command, and Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They told him that "the conditions were ripe for an attempt, and that is when the secretary gave the go-ahead to take the shot, and wished them good luck," Morrell said.
At 10:35 p.m. EST, Gates spoke to both generals again and "was informed that the mission was a success, that the missile had intercepted the decaying satellite, and the secretary was obviously very pleased to learn that," said Morrell.
Adm. Timothy J. Keating, chief of U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters shortly before the strike that he made calls to a number of international leaders to alert them to the mission. He said none said they had concerns, but he acknowledged he did not speak to the Chinese.
China and Russia both expressed concerns about the shootdown in advance, saying it could harm security in outer space.
The government organized hazardous materials teams, under the code name "Burnt Frost," to be flown to the site of any dangerous or otherwise sensitive debris that might land in the United States or elsewhere.
Also, six federal response groups regularly positioned across the country by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were alerted but had not been activated Wednesday, FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said before the missile launch. "These are purely precautionary and preparedness actions only," he said.
President Bush approved the shootdown mission last week, deciding it was important to destroy the toxic hydrazine fuel to prevent any possible injuries if the satellite came down in a populated area.
The three-stage Navy missile used for the mission has chalked up a high rate of success in a series of tests since 2002, in each case targeting a short- or medium-range ballistic missile, never a satellite. Modifications to the missile for the mission were completed in a matter of weeks, and Navy officials said the changes would be reversed once this satellite was down.
The government issued notices to aviators and mariners to remain clear of a section of the Pacific Ocean beginning at 10:30 p.m. EST Wednesday.
Having lost power shortly after it reached orbit in late 2006, the satellite was out of control and well below the altitude of a normal satellite. The Pentagon determined it should hit it with the missile just before it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, to minimize the amount of debris that would remain in space.
Left alone, the satellite would have hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft was expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would have scattered debris over several hundred miles.
___
Robert Burns reported from Washington, Lolita C. Baldor from Honolulu. Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Emotiv Company Overview
Emotiv Systems was founded in 2003 by four award-winning scientists and executives: internationally recognized neuroscientist Professor Allan Snyder, chip-design pioneer Neil Weste, and technology entrepreneurs Tan Le and Nam Do. These founders all shared the same inspiring vision: to introduce the immediacy of thought to the human-machine dialogue. Together they have developed a technology that utterly transforms the way we interact with computers.
While Emotiv is currently focusing on the electronic gaming industry, the applications for the Emotiv EPOC™ technology and interface span an amazing variety of potential industries -- interactive television, accessibility design, market research, medicine, even security. Plans for introducing Emotiv into these and other broad realms are already in the works.
It's an ambitious plan, and to back it up, Emotiv has assembled an outstanding group of people for its Board, Advisors, and Staff.
Brain-Reading Headset to Sell for $299
Wednesday February 20, 5:25 PM EST
NEW YORK (AP) — Hands cramping up from too many video games?
How about controlling games with your thoughts instead? Later this year, Emotiv Systems Inc. plans to start selling the $299 EPOC neuroheadset to let you do just that.
The headset's sensors are designed to detect conscious thoughts and expressions as well as "non-conscious emotions" by reading electrical signals around the brain, says the company, which demonstrated the wireless gadget at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The company, which unveiled a prototype last year, says the headset can detect emotions such as anger, excitement and tension, as well as facial expressions and cognitive actions like pushing and pulling objects.
The headset will be sold with a game developed by Emotiv, but it can also be made to work with existing PC games, the company said. Users will also be able to access an online portal to play more games, chat or upload their own content such as music or photos.
Emotiv plans to work with IBM Corp. to explore applications beyond video gaming. The "brain computer interface" technology could transform not only gaming, but how humans and computers interact, said Paul Ledak, vice president of IBM's Digital Convergence business.
Santa Barbara View
price was 1.8M. Woah. Maybe one day.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Record Number of Entries Judged for Nebraska ADDY® Awards
2008 Nebraska ADDYs
OMAHA, Neb. (December 26, 2007) A record number of 1,124 entries submitted for the 15th Annual Nebraska ADDY® Awards Competition have been judged, and the results will be revealed during a black-tie dinner gala on February 2, 2008, at the Hilton Omaha (1001 Cass St., across from the Qwest Center). The annual competition recognizes advertising creative excellence in all media, including print, broadcast, interactive, out-of-home and public service advertising.
Mark Carpenter, partner, senior copywriter and producer at SKAR Advertising, and co-chair of the 15th Annual Nebraska ADDY® Awards, commented on the recent judging: “To say the judging was tough is an understatement. Our three judges were probably the most qualified the Nebraska ADDY® Awards have ever seen.”
Judges for this year’s competition were: Mick Sutter, Group Creative Director, Arnold Worldwide-McLean, Va., Robin Fitzgerald, Associate Creative Director, TBWA/Chiat/Day-Venice Beach, Calif., and Miguel Hernandez, Copywriter, Ogilvy Chicago-Chicago, Ill.
More about the Nebraska ADDY® Awards
The ADDY® Awards Competition is a three-tiered national competition, conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation. The ADDY® Awards Competition is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition for creative excellence. For more information, contact Mark Carpenter at 402-330-0110 or e-mail info@nebraskaaddys.org.
Monday, February 4, 2008
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