Today concludes our Gamer's Guide to Video Game Software (see Part 1 & Part 2). In our final installment, we will shift away from engines toward video games that allow you to make your own games within them.
Remember the firestorm SCRABBLE Trickster caused nine months ago? SCRABBLE enthusiasts across the world were outraged when Mattel created a game that would allow proper nouns to be acceptable words of play. Essentially, it was a dumbed down, youth-friendly version of the classic game they've all come to love. Luckily, it was just a spinoff game—not a replacement. The same can't be said of the new edition of Collins Official SCRABBLE Words.
The days of having to pay for video games are over. Generally, retail games are better because they're made with more effort and care than their free counterparts. But free browser-based game sites are insanely popular, specifically Kongregate, Armor Games, and the grandaddy of them all—NewGrounds. Despite not receiving funds directly from the players, they’ve become a profitable niche in the games industry. And that popularity has attracted more talent and money to the production of web game...
By Cal Ripken Jr. Let the players play and the coaches coach !
The famed chessmaster Capablanca was once asked how many moves ahead he saw when playing a game of chess. His answer? "I see only one move ahead, but it is ALWAYS the right move."
Take It On
DRUM! Magazine — the leading magazine for drummers and percussionists worldwide — has announced the biggest drumming event ever to take place in Northern California. On Friday, August 13, drummers will descend on the San Jose Repertory Theatre in the heart of Silicon Valley to witness three of the world’s most exciting drummers — extreme drumming sensation Marco Minnemann, Tower Of Power funk master David Garibaldi, and former Mars Volta wunderkind Thomas Pridgen — for an evening of mind-blow...
At the beginning of every class, or almost every class, we do a series of exercises. The Japanese word for this sort of calisthenic exercise isundo. These exercises derive from the Goju style of karate created by Miyagi Sensei in Okinawa in the early part of the 20th Century. In devising these exercises Miyagi no doubt borrowed liberally from the Chinese, whose influence on the southernmost island of the Japanese archipelago was immense.
Wedding themes are no rarity, but a SCRABBLE wedding? I never would have guessed, until I came across "10 Ways to Incorporate Scrabble Into Your Wedding" at CasaSugar. Now, I'm one of the biggest SCRABBLE nerds out there, but I could never see myself getting hitched amongst SCRABBLE tiles and SCRABBLE cakes and SCRABBLE cuff links. I'd also be afraid that none of my guests would actually come if they knew SCRABBLE was the theme. Hell, it's hard enough to get any of my friends to play a simple...
Sponge balls are a very cool magic effect. But you will have to master palming first. You will get very good reactions. The best part is that you can simply keep them in your pocket. Here is how to start.
Are you interested in selling your products at the local Farmers Markets? Many small mom and pop food crafters get started selling their artisan breads, homemade cakes, cookies, pies, biscotti, candy, seasoning mixes or regional barbecue sauces direct to customers who visit local farmers markets and farm stands. What better way to start than with those visiting the local farmers market; a captive audience expecting a wide variety of seasonal fruits and veggies; along with specialty products t...
It's somewhat funny that the HTC ThunderBolt smartphone would be released around the same time as Apple's new Thunderbolt technology. Mainly because HTC's smartphone isn't exactly something I would compare to a flash of lightning, which averages around 60,000 miles per second. But Apple's new interconnect surely deserves the Thunderbolt designation.
It's 1976. The hottest arcade game on the market is Blockade (or Blokade), an 8-bit maze game for 2 players. You and your opponent must move your characters around the screen in 90-degree angles, leaving a solid line behind them. Whoever runs into one of the solid lines first, loses. But soon you'll be able to play this fascinating game from the comfort of your own home—
Etching your own circuit boards is tons of fun, but etching requires strong chemicals to dissolve the copper plating on blank circuit boards. The normal ferric chloride solution works well, but can be expensive and leaves permanent stains. Luckily, we can whip up our own etchant at home with everyday chemicals! Better yet, our new etchant will turn an eerie green color rather than the dull brown of ferric chloride.
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most popular communities. Users can join and participate in any World they're interested in, as well as start their own community.
Are you exhausted from farming constant dyes to create colored wool? Are you looking for a quicker method to gathering colored wool, but don't know where to start? Are you still learning how to farm colored wool or how to make certain wool colors? This quick tutorial will go over how to find and create every possible colored dye in the game.
WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects.
If you follow the Anonymous, Occupy, and IT security scenes, you have no doubt heard about a dox release. What is it? How can it hurt you? And most importantly, how can you protect yourself from it? Some of these steps might seem common sense, while others will be an ah-ha! moment. Your private info is both your biggest weakness and your biggest weapon in your battle to remain anonymous. You must learn how to use it as both.
Since the internet is becoming more and more important all the time in regards to overall marketing plans for many companies, it’s imperative that the company website be up to the task of attracting visitors and converting them into customers. There are many methods and techniques to do this and for that reason it’s usually preferable to hire a company that focuses on online marketing or search engine optimization (SEO) to do this work.
Remember that scene in The Matrix when Trinity uses a realistic Nmap port scan, followed by an actual SSH exploit (long since patched) to break into a power company? Well, believe it or not, but that scene is not far fetched at all. If you want to exploit vulnerabilities and root boxes, you'll need to learn how to perform the necessary reconnaissance first. In fact, you will spend far more time researching your target then you will exploiting it. In this article, I am going to show you the fi...
In the first part of this series, we learned about darknets, as well as how they came about. But these patches of forgotten Internet are not the oasis of free information you might think. Despite being hidden—or just harder to come across—these networks are no more safe then anywhere else on the 'clear' Internet. The nature of networking and routing means your location is always known in server logs. It only takes one phone call to your ISP with your IP address to obtain both your physical ad...
This is a two-part series to locking down the computer to provide maximum protection. Even though this guide will sound intrusive, we are talking about reality here. Extreme measures must be taken to protect our computers, especially when we have confidential documentation or do internet banking, which many people do. We all have to use electronic devices at some stage, whether it be for business or personal use.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. Part 5 in Minecraft World's Ultimate Survival Guide is, for me, the longest article to write. Since I squeezed out a lot of information from other areas to put into survivability, its going to be a fairly long read. Of course, you can just skip to your topic of choice.
There’s a race on to see who'll be the Instagram of moving pictures. This makes sense, since many of our phones are clogged with video that, so far, no one is going to see. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a simple app that could take our video content, edit it for us, and then publish it to all of our networks?
Dungeon Defenders is the most exciting craft game on the Fall 2011 release schedule. I got a chance to play it at PAX in August and interviewed developers Trendy Entertainment last month. After more than a year of publishing difficulty and delay, the game finally came out on PSN, XBLA and Steam. I put about 20 hours into the XBLA version over the past weekend, beating all the campaign maps and racking up a huge pile of in-game money. It is not a perfect game. But it is a huge, challenging, an...
Welcome to Math Craft World! This community is dedicated to the exploration of mathematically inspired art and architecture through projects, community submissions, and inspirational posts related to the topic at hand. Every week, there will be approximately four posts according to the following schedule:
+Nik Cubrilovic discovered last week that Facebook could track your web activities even after you logged out of your Facebook account. After some blatant denials from Facebook spokespeople, Facebook decided to fix the logout issue, but not before +Michael Arrington, on his new Uncrunched blog, made a concise post revealing Facebook's dishonesty: Facebook submitted a patent application for "tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain...
Camera manufacturers release new versions of the same cameras, mostly point-and-shoot models, as frequently as Detroit's auto industry upgrades minivans. They also add new lenses regularly, upgrading previous models with adjusted zoom ranges or the image stabilization feature. The same goes for tripods, portable flashes and even camera bags.
Welcome to the Google+ Insider's Guide to all things Google+. We're dedicated to keeping you updated with all the latest news, tips and tricks on Google+, and this official index will serve as a one-stop catalog of all our How-To articles, as well as all the news & updates we've covered over time.
Culinary collective Studiofeast is known for thinking outside the box, especially when it comes to food. They've hosted inventive and spectacular events like the L Train Lunch, where a high-end meal was served to guests on a moving train, and the Datalicious Last Supper, where results from a survey of people's desired "last meals" informed the menu.
Mark Burnett is, financially speaking, perhaps the most successful television producer today. While I had launched America's Most Wanted and COPS a decade earlier, Mark exploded onto network television with Survivor, the glossy and fantastical innovation to reality television. With Survivor now entering its 11th year, I recently interviewed Mark at the Los Angeles public radio station KCRW, where the podcast will be made available. Below, Mark's 10 steps from soldier-to-nanny-to-premiere-Holl...
RESPECT - What It Means (in the picture above are my parents, both of whom I respect and cherish dearly)
Long-Term Strategies for FrontierVilleWhen you first start to play FrontierVille, after you’ve cleared a bunch of trees and brush and started to build a schoolhouse or a barn and you’ve added a few neighbors, you look up at the people around Level 90 or Level 100, and wonder how they play the game and how they got that far.There’s a book (or a series of four books) you may notice – FrontierVille Tycoon Guide – that promises to tell you the secrets of the high level players. You can buy it on ...
(This is a manifesto I wrote 2 years ago. I have never published it. It was a reaction to the ignorance I faced in graduate school from the modernist sculpture
The United States is a hierarchical country where the weak ones are at the bottom and the powerful ones are at the top. Garment workers are at the bottom of the list although they are the most important. Without them there would be no fashion industry. They sew and cut the garments that people buy, the raiment that models wear on the runways. After the garments are sewn, factory owners send the garments to contractors to get make the clothing. Contractors make sure the garment workers sew the...
It's been a long time.
or a prank on the cast member (johnnys eyes only)
We have no control on the weather yet it is a part of our lives which influence what we do, what we eat, what we wear and many times where we live. How did people predict the weather before there was the Internet, television, radio or the weatherperson with all of their gadgets?
Zynga has just released new ways to help your neighbors! You will have the opportunity to find more coins and give more useful gifts while visiting neighbors and even get to see your neighbors work on your own farm!
Have you ever forgotten your password and didn't know how to get back on your computer? Or ever had an annoying roommate you wanted to play a trick on to teach them a lesson? Or perhaps overly religious parents who think the internet is of the devil and won't let you read online articles about elliptic curve cryptography applications to C++? Well, then this article is for you!
