What will they think of next? A few years after the Wii revolutionized gaming with its motion-sensing Wii remote, Microsoft has raised the ante with its Kinect Sensor for the Xbox 360. Think of the Kinect as a Wii on steroids. The idea behind the Kinect is that YOU are the controller. In fact, you don’t use a controller when using the Kinect. Instead, the Kinect detects your body movements to facilitate gameplay. But is it fun?
Minecraft is all kinds of insane. It’s called a computer game, technically, but it’s really more like Lego — Lego that you can use to build your own, well… pretty much anything!
For example, you might have heard about this one fellow that built the framework of the USS Enterprise D (Star Trek: The Next Generation). Yeah, he built it on a 1:1 scale. 1:1!! Do you have any idea how HUGE that is? If you don’t, not to worry — the builder’s words on the subject leave very little to the imagination. He put out a call on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, showcasing his creation and asking for people to help him out in creating the interior of every room on the ship. Pretty amazing, really, but I can’t imagine the time and patience required to build such a thing out of 1 metre cubed blocks.
A couple of other notable Minecraft creations, as posted by the site Teksocial, are a relatively scale model of the Empire State Building, and a model of the Earth. That’s right: somebody sat down at their computer and actually created the Earth, one block at a time. Nuts.
Have you tried out Minecraft? Let us know your thoughts!
3 Truly Amazing Minecraft Creations [Teksocial]
All but the last are free!
If you have kids from one to four and have an iPhone, you will want to take a look at the games below. They are great for simple play, as well as educational tools to help stimulate your child’s development in everything from numbers, letters, and shapes, to critical thinking, motor skills, reading, and imagination. Your curious child will gain some serious satisfaction from being able to play with mommy or daddy’s toy, either alone or with you, and you will be able to instill in them an early respect for your expensive technology (of which we all find more of in our lives these days). Except the last one, all of the iPhone toddler games in the list are free, and offer hours of educational entertainment for your budding baby!
Hit the jump for some great (mostly free) toddler games for the iPhone!
You may remember that the first generation PS3 allowed your system to be partitioned and function as a (limited) Linux computer. In fact, it was a major selling point of the PS3. However, if you haven’t heard, in version 3.21 of the Playstation 3 firmware, released on April 1st (and thought a poor joke by many), Sony has removed the capability to install or even access the OtherOS functionality of the original PS3 system. This will cause the gigabytes of data you have locked into your Linux installation to be inaccessible.
Not to worry though! It is a fairly simple process to backup your PS3, format your drive, and then restore your Playstation 3 with all save files, personal files, and system settings intact.
If you have a curious toddler — either your own or just a frequent visitor — then you know how much they truly enjoy pressing the buttons on your computer. Secretly, you are probably certain that the child is bent on pressing just the right combination of buttons at just the wrong time so that he or she can spend some time giggling while you cry for a change. Fight back against infant tyranny! Giggles Computer Funtime for Baby has a relatively inexpensive but powerful game suite that helps protect your work and whatever hair you might have left — and even teaches the kid stuff!
