Scratch 2.0 - programming for kids

Scratch is programming for kids - with LEGO-like building blocks. Program your own Story, make a Game. 

There are millions of projects to try, and investigate. 

Links: 1min tutorial, TED-talk, Related-LittleBits

'Secret Agent', the 24th CGChallenge

The mission for 'Secret Agent', the 24th CGChallenge, was to depict characters and events involving espionage, gadgets, guns and evil geniuses, via a still image or video. The field of almost 1,200 undercover artists who took up the challenge did not disappoint.

"Entrants once again astounded us with the quality and breadth of styles of their work. The CGChallenges offer a chart for the evolving excellence, imagination and capability of today's digital artists to produce world class entertainment and art.

Next, the Winners

Don't miss the Videos: Video1, Video2, Video3

Trackmania

It's old but still fun to show



More: 1
Official page

And the Winner is .... the European Union

The European Union won most medals in the Olympic games and Paralymipic summer games 2008.

In the Olympics, EU won 2-3 times as many medals as China and US.
In the Paralympics, EU won 2-3 times as many medals as China and 5 times more than US.
Compared per inhabitant China is far behind and US is slightly behind.

Now the interesting is when the media use this information. Will this trigger Euro-nationalistic feelings? The "We won" syndrome.
Does this say anything about Several countries compared to Several states compared to One large country?

New way of fishing

Other videos.

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report is a self measurement of Nicholas Feltons life.
"I began documenting my week equipped with the stopwatch on my mobile phone, a digital cooking scale, a set of daily survey sheets I made for the assignment, and the notepad application on my phone. "

The PRINT Magazine has made an interview with 4 people who all share the same type of obsessive curiosity. In the article The Obsessives, the four artists explain how they documented a week of consumption in their own visual medium. The Print magazine managing editor Emily Gordon asks about their work and the connection between consumer culture and their art.


So should this be call interesting or fun?

Flash Applications for Free

Flash-gear is a no name website that helps you add flash applications to you blog. If you want to add a poll to your blog. Here is a small flash application that can do the job.



Other sites not yet sorted:
FlashKit, Kirupa.com, flashmo.com, ffiles.com, Adobe,

Ig Nobel Award

The awards, founded in 1991, mark achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

Pioneering research into a "gay bomb" that makes enemy troops "sexually irresistible" to each other has scooped one of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes.

Other winners included work on treating hamster jetlag with impotency drugs, extracting vanilla from cow dung, and the side-effects of sword swallowing.

Video: Chicken, Chicken, Chicken: Chicken, Chicken

Real research

The awards, now in their 17th year, are intended to "celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology".

Marc Abrahams, the editor of AIR, told the BBC News website: "When I became the editor of a science magazine, suddenly I was meeting all kinds of people who had done things that were hard to describe, and for the most part, nobody had ever heard of.

"For some of them, it seemed a great shame that nobody would give them any kind of recognition, and that was what really led to the birth of the Ig Nobels."

Like their more sober counterpart, the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobels are split into several categories and all research is real and published.

2007 Ig Nobel Winners

Medicine - Brian Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.

Physics - A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.

Biology - Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.

Chemistry - Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.

Linguistics - A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.

Literature - Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the", and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.

Peace - The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops.

Nutrition - Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup.

Economics - Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.

Aviation - A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.

Source: BBC

We feel fine

The 2006 Pixel Award, winner of the category, Weired is "We feel fine". It's an exploration of human emotion, in six movements. Yes it is creative.

Jonathan Harris - one of the creators - has a website worth exploring.
Source: juiceanalytics

How popular is your name?

How popular is your name? The Baby name wizard can tell if you your kids name is trendy or unique. Select boy/girl and type the name in the upper left corner (see where the O is).

Eavesdropping - Tjuvlyssnat

En typisk 'må bra site', trots en del elakheter. Här kan man hitta många underbara vardagshändelser som får en att skratta högt.

Spore

I just saw a gameplay demo of Spore, the next big hit being produced by Maxis and published by EA. I not a gamer but this looks really promising. Basically they wrap up all game concepts you ever heard of in one huge game (except maybe car racing and kung fu). The video is a cut-out of a presentation held at the Game Developers Conference 2006. See the links below for a link the the whole presentation and a nice flash.

Twingly screensaver

The global blogg community can now been seen in real time 24-7. Twingly screensaver from Primelabs makes it possible.

Animation software could integrate

The next step will be integration.

Alice: Video demo
Alice provide students with the first exposure to programming interactive 3D graphics; students ranging from middle schoolers to college.










Google Sketchup
Google SketchUp is a deceptively simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily. Google SketchUp was developed to combine the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today's digital media.
Plugins: 3D PDF exporter, PDF sample









Blender: Galleries
Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.

I was a long time since I visited a pet store

Animals you probably never knew existed.
Read more

Neave.Tv

Welcome to the playground of one Mr Paul Neave, serial Flash fettler and interactive designer. Paul says hello. Hello!

Neave is the man who gave us Flash Earth and now he is back with Neave.Tv

Strange statues

How I love to see creativity made possible. Here is a link to a great collection around the world.

Blufr - Trivial pursuit

What is blufr? blufr is a new trivia-type game that hopefully gets people of all ages addicted to learning obscure facts. There's no evil agenda. Just play and keep playing. Added: And don't miss the BlufBusters.

It's all about finding the lines

Michael Turner explains "Sex Appeal". (Or what he thinks sex appeal is.) Incidentally it also illustrates the meaning of "overposed".
Oh, so you want to see more...Then click on the picture.

And watching the moves.

Diet Coke + Mentos video

Google’s first “Sponsored Video” had its debut. Titled The Domino Effect, it’s Diet Coke and Mentos part II from the guys in white lab coats - EepyBird. This video clip is from their original video.
On their site you can also find out what happens when you eat Mentos after you drink Diet Coke.