Yes its true.  In 24 hours ‘Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere.’ kickstarter crossed the $1 million mark.  As of this writing its past $ 2.5 million and still climbing!  This is a great success for LeVar and his team in LA, but there is something larger here.  The understanding that reading is one of the core tools for betterment, entertainment, understanding.  So there is hope for us after all.

From 1983 to 2006, Reading Rainbow won 26 Emmys. In 2012, Burton brought the show back as an app for tablets, but what he really wants to do is bring reading to every child everywhere.  Not every child has a tablet,  so he turned to the Internet community through kickstarter to raise $1 million dollars to produce classroom content and give it away free!  And not only will he raise the $1M, its looks like it will be $4 or $5M  by the time the 33 days are done.  Check out their reaction when they crossed the mark.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-XHuNcSMLc

From the kickstarter…

Our goal is to cultivate a love of reading in all children, not just those that have tablets. To reach kids everywhere, we need to be everywhere: we need to be on the web.

(also), a resounding number of teachers have told me that they want Reading Rainbow in their classrooms, where they know it can make a difference. We will provide it, along with the tools that teachers need, including teacher guides, leveling, and dashboards. And in disadvantaged classrooms, we’ll provide it for free.

Every Home. Reading Rainbow’s digital collection already contains hundreds of books and video field trips… but with your help, we’ll be able to make the Reading Rainbow library available on more of the devices modern kids use to consume content. When we meet our initial goal of $1,000,000, we will launch a new version of Reading Rainbow on the single most-used digital platform: the web.

Every Classroom. Together, we want to provide Reading Rainbow to as many classrooms as possible FOR FREE! When we meet our initial goal of $1,000,000, we can put Reading Rainbow in over 1500 classrooms at no cost to the schools!

And that’s just the beginning. The first million raised will help us get onto the web and into 1,500+ classrooms… but now that we’re there (!), we’ve got some big ideas for stretch goals.

We’ll be sharing our new goals in the next 1-2 days, but we promise: every dollar you contribute will help us bring Reading Rainbow to more platforms, and provide for free in more classrooms.

We can make sure that millions of kids learn to love reading, but we can’t do it without you. That’s why I hope you’ll join me in making a difference!

 

Good Job LeVar!

I reasoned that what we need to is a ‘pod’ where the floor base was made of small wheels and the waist was restricted by a harness.  This will allow the subject to simulate walking and turning thus allow more of the bodies haptic feedback loops to agree with what was being seen in the HMD.  Although VOR gain adaption would still be needed, the adaption time would be greatly reduced, and the in VR sustainability time extended, as I discovered with my work on the chair and allowing free walking. However, I never could build such a device because of cost.   But now, someone has figured it out.

Originally starting out as a kickstarter project, the ‘Omni‘ is an improved version of what I designed back in the 90’s.  Instead of using rollers, a grooved curved plastic bowl is used with sensors. (older version uses an xbox sensor)  These sensors can translate movement and direction to the game. Paired with the new lightweight Oculus, the user walks normally and turns normally.  Admittedly it does take a little bit to adjust to your feet slipping instead of the force feedback with normal translational movement, but the connection between body mechanics and spatial perception is synced enough that adaption happens quickly. The rig itself is $499, quite affordable for most serious gamers. What is exciting about this we might be seeing the beginning of the next level of maturity around VR that was stunted in the 90’s. With inexpensive but capable HMDs and now inexpensive VR motion platforms, we can make that next leap in immersive gaming.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUkjaNQlZO8

______________

Excerpt for my Master Thesis: Spatial Perception in Virtual Environments:
Visual Cognition Gain with Head Mounted Displays (images removed)

VOR

Despite the commonality of simulator sickness, little is known about it.  The most common source of simulator sickness is Vestibulo-ocular Reflex (VOR); The vestibular apparatus is a small structure that exists in the bony labyrinth of the inner ear, whose function is to sense and signal movements of the head. This function is extremely important because it contributes to the coordination of motor responses for the body.  VOR is the fundamental eye-movement reflex that functions to keep images stabilized on the retina during movement of the head, thus helping to perform a very basic but important function, to allow sight during movement. The disagreement between what is seen by the body and what the vestibular apparatus senses can cause confusion, providing disagreeing signals to the brain and thus inducing sickness.  VOR can adapt its signal to the brain when the environment demands it, but not everyone has the same VOR adaptation ability.  This inability to resolve vestibular and ocular discrepancy is a major contribution to simulator sickness.  The greater lag time between screen position updates and vestibular sensation can accelerate simulator sickness even more.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

The biggest win is the fact you can hack the box all you want!  not jailbreaking or unlocking or rooting or anything else.  Its yours. You paid for it, you should be able to do what you want!  Nice.

the Ouya will come with a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of memory, 8GB of internal flash storage, an HDMI connection for your TV (with built-in support for up to 1080p HD), 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE 4.0, USB 2.0, and a wireless controller that has been described as the “the Stradivarius of controllers.”

Check out the Vid towards the bottom.  They spend too much time talking about how cool it is, but still worth watching.  Also, watch the names and faces all familiar to us in the gaming world saying they are behind it!

You can get in at $300.

Pledge $300 or more

EARLY RIFT DEVELOPER KIT + DOOM 3 BFG: Try the Rift for yourself now! You’ll receive a developer kit, perfect for the established or indie game developer interested in working with the Rift immediately. This also includes a copy of Doom 3 BFG and full access to our Developer Center for our SDK, docs, samples, and engine integrations! (Please add $30 for international shipping)

Est. Delivery: Dec 2012

Here is more from the site.

Even though the consumer version of the Rift is still a ways down the road, the early developer kit’s hardware design is cutting edge, with technical specifications above and beyond other consumer headset available today.

Technical specs of the Dev Kit (subject to change)
Head tracking: 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) ultra low latency
Field of view: 110 degrees diagonal / 90 degrees horizontal
Resolution: 1280×800 (640×800 per eye)
Inputs: DVI/HDMI and USB
Platforms: PC and mobile
Weight: ~0.22 kilograms

And we’re confident we can make the consumer version even more impressive, all without increasing price or sacrificing an ounce of quality.

The SDK makes integration easy.

We’re already hard at work on a robust Oculus SDK that developers can use to integrate the Rift with their new and existing games. Our team has built great SDKs before and we’re excited to do it again.

All of the Rift dev kits include access to the Oculus Developer Center, which provides the SDK, technical support, and serves as a community for Oculus developers.

The SDK will include clean well-documented code, samples, and tutorials to make integration with any 3D game or application as easy as possible. We’re also working on out-of-the-box engine integrations for Unreal Engine and Unity, so that anyone interested in working with the Rift, including indie developers, can get started right away!

And that is the part you need to check out.  Its a pretty good vid.  Not since the Best F**cking razor blade video have I’ve seen such a cool, fun video for a new product.  So check it out at the end of the post.

This is a kickstarted project so they are trying to raise money for the project.  Aside from the video being cool, the project its self is pretty great as well.  They are really trying to take HCI element of sword fighting to the next level, or first level for those of you who think we have not even scratched the surface.  They just crossed the $100k level but need to hit $500k.  There is 28 days left, so if they can keep this rate, they should make it.  Be sure to watch the ‘in the weeds’ video as well where they go into more detail of how this will work.

And be sure to check out ‘in the weeds’

Bluetooth 4.0 – inside every Pebble!

All Pebble watches will support Bluetooth 2.1 (as before) as well as Bluetooth 4.0 (Low Energy)

We’re limiting Kickstarter rewards to 85,000 Pebbles 

Just wanted to let everyone know that our current plan is to limit the total number of Kickstarter rewards to around 85,000 Pebbles. As soon as the total exceeds that, all rewards will change to being ‘sold out’. Right now you have claimed 75,000 watches, that leaves only 10,000 more before Pebble is sold out!

{ update:  I just bought it! }

There have been other smartwatches, remember the rumors that Apple is working on an iOS watch?  Well this is different because the watch it not trying to run an OS By using the phone do the processing, the watch is basically a semi dumb display that using your phone to get and process data. However, I say ‘semi’ because you can load simple apps that can execute basic programs; like displaying time of course, but you can use it as a bike computer, vibrate on alarms, control music on your phone and just recently announced, you can use iftt (if this then that) tools to make your own rules for when the phone sends messages to your watch.

Apps bring Pebble to life. We’re building some amazing apps for Pebble. Cyclists can use Pebble as a bike computer, accessing the GPS on your smartphone to display speed, distance and pace data. Runners get a similar set of data displayed on their wrist. Use the music control app to play, pause or skip tracks on your phone with the touch of a button. If you’re a golfer, feel free to bring Pebble onto the course. We’re working with Freecaddie to create a great golf rangefinder app for Pebble that works on over 25,000 courses world-wide. Instead of using your phone, view your current distance to the green right on your wrist. These apps will be the first, with more in the works!

Sweet eh?  This is listed on kickstarter and you can order one for $115.  Want to code an app yourself?  We for now you need to write in C, so this not for your amateur coder, but who knows?  Perhaps someone will write a Python or PHP layer on top.  Interestingly, Sony announced today that they are releasing a similar sony smartwatch that connects to Android only.  Based on the press release it takes the same approach the pebble is taking, however at $150, for Android only, and not quite as attractive, I’m still leaning towards the Pebble.
Now here is the Vid.

The case is not much bigger then other iphone battery cases I have seen, and since its kickstarter there is no way I can get my hands on it to try it myself, but it looks pretty nicely designed and should feel comfortable in your hand while in use. Now the only question I have is how hot will this get?  Hopefully not much since your phone is sitting in the case and we all know iphones and heat do not mix well.  Odds are it does not recharge at a super fast pace to avoid this problem.

Its a kickstarter project so if you get in early you can get a discount.  Here are the stats for the first two entry points.

Good Luck guys!!

It’s now been 24 hours since we launched the trailer and $35,000 Kickstarter campaign for the film.  What’s transpired has totally blown us away.

In just a smidge over 24 hours, we were able to reach our Kickstarter goal.  The campaign currently stands at $ 37,503 from a very generous, big-hearted crowd of 804 people.  Our first Kickstarter go-around (May, 2010) saw our initial goal of $ 15,000 raised in 48 hours.  We hit that mark in the first 9 hours this time.

We just wanted to say a quick word of thanks for all the coverage and support.  The articles, posts and tweets were invaluable, and we really appreciate every bit of it.

Also, it’s near-impossible to communicate how grateful we are to the fans and supporters of the film.  It’s quite clear that the community really wants to see this film made.  And we intend to do just that.

The total raised is already ear-marked for specific post production expenses, but money  raised beyond the goal mark will allow us to add to the production value and audience experience even further. We are going to be working on this thing and making it as good as it can be, right up until they pry it out of our still-editing fingers for the premiere

Over the past 24 hours, we’ve tweeted & emailed  hundreds upon hundreds of ‘Thank You’s’ but it still doesn’t seem to do the trick.  So, we are going to honour this fantastic demonstration of support the absolute best and honest way we know how…

…We’re going right back to work.

Thank you again for your support.  We have some information linked below, and if you’d like anything else, we are also up for chat/interview/whatever you may need.

Take Care,

James Swirsky & Lisanne Pajot

Useful Links

Indie Game: The Movie Home Page  – www.indiegamethemovie.com

Indie Game: The Movie Official Trailer from IndieGame: The Movie on Vimeo.