The NPD Group is a market research firm that issues the most trusted sales numbers for video games. They just released their second quarter 2011 report, and the trends it reveals confirm much of what we here have been speculating here at Indie Games Ichiban (and what we've been hoping for): downloadable games have risen, while full-box retail games have fallen—that is in the US, at least.
Japan has a tendency to produce things that boggle the Western mind. Its citizens are already responsible for without a question the weirdest music video in the history of the medium. With that said, here is a video reenactment of several Pokemon (Pocket Monster in Japan) games released by Japanese performance art troupe Kusarine Project: Kusarine Project and their amazing YouTube channel first became known through the Japanese video sharing site/meme originator NicoNicoDouba. Their white mas...
Where did PC games begin?
Have an HTC smartphone? Chances are that some of your stored personal data has been hijacked by malicious apps on your device. Android apps that have permission to access the Internet, which is pretty much every ad-supported app out there, can snag valuable information such as email addresses, location history, phone logs, text messages, and more.
The Google+ Venice Skate Park photo walk was a lot of fun. We got to hang out with +Brian Rose, +Dave Cohen, +Vincent Mo, and many other Googlers and photographers, taking pictures, learning all about Venice and its colorful history.
G+Me is one of our favorite Chrome extensions here at Google+ Insider's Guide. We love it because it's one of the most comprehensive extensions out there. It attempts to address the "noisy streams" issue, with list mode, and collapsible posts and comments. The creator, +Huy Zing, is very responsive to feedback, and he's been quick to address any issues that arise, including privacy concerns. He's even created a G+Me (Paranoid Edition) extension, for the extra careful Google+ user. And if you ...
The Wall of Death is an adrenaline-junkie's dream—a gripping, precarious balancing act of motorcycles racing in rapid circles around the interior of a creaky wooden drum. In today's world, the act appears in touring side shows and carnivals across the US, India and Europe. The performances in India are particularly thrilling (mostly due to the seeming lack of safety regulation). But the death-defying New Delhi boys shown above didn't invent this insane tradition. It was created in the old US ...
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
Web-spying technologies like FaceNiff, Firesheep and Newstweek are out there showing the world just how easy it is to see what you're doing online, but they're amateurish in comparison to what real hackers could do to you if they catch you browsing unsecured websites.
Video games and movies have a history of interaction dogged by failure. Video game movies and movie video games both tend to be terrible. There has never been a good feature film based on a video game franchise. Even documentaries about games, which should be rife given the rapid rise of games on the cultural stage over the last thirty years, have been few and far between. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is by far the best, and for several years now has been the only really stirring f...
Wheels of Steel is a virtual browser-based turntable emulator created by Scott Schiller, a Canadian developer who works on Flickr at Yahoo. This project will appeal to those who A) dig turntablism and B) are knowledgeable in web development. I know nothing of the latter, but from what I can tell, Wheels of Steel appears to be significant because unlike its predecessors, it employs CSS3 instead of flash. Since I'm not familiar with the topic, here's Scott on the history and technical details o...
Nintendo's Wii Remote came close, but never has a video game peripheral garnered such adoration from the hacker community than the Kinect.
As a kid, my favorite thing to do at the Natural History museum was a midday stop, when my family strolled past an antiquated looking vending machine in the museum's musty basement. The Mold-A-Rama machine was oddly shaped, George Jetson-esque, and spewed out made-to-order, brightly colored plastic dinosaurs. There was such joy in watching the liquid wax pour into the mold, and then eject a warm, custom toy—well worth the dollar or two demanded. A version of this tradition was recently elevat...
Below are a number of balloon artist related books that I have collected over the years. If you do not see a book that you own listed here, please feel free to let me know about it as I would love to add it to my collection. Additionally, I would be more than happy to share information on the books that I have here if you are interested in trying to find them for your own collection. Wishing you all the best in your balloon career...
How far would you go to be resourceful? Early Britons used each others' skulls as drinking cups and bowls. Recently, researcher Silvia Bello found human skulls with the top cut off laying in Gough's Cave, England. Skillful cut marks make it look like fellow humans scraped off the dead skin to clean the bone, and chips around the rim of the skull cup make it look like the edges were evened out for a better drinking experience. Researchers have found other skull cups in France and Germany, but ...
It may look like a modern take on Oliver Twist but, we assure you, this is for real. Before you get too alarmed, however, you should note that the headline reads "how to steal cars" and not simply "to steal cars." We are, after all, dealing with the fine people at Machine Project, a Los Angeles-based non-profit community space organized around the investigation of "art, technology, natural history, science, music, literature, and food."
The Writers at io9.com have been running through a fantastic series of blog posts, in which they're teaching their readers about the history of great 80s sci-fi and fantasy. Because so much of this is right up my alley, I though I'd aggregate their aggregations, so to speak, and write a little retrospective of my own.
Love this Rubik's Cube stamp with movable type Chinese characters by Shaun Chung. Chung laser-etched the characters from wood, and then adhered them to a regular Rubik's Cube to create verses from a traditional Chinese text.
How did we get to the age of smartphones, ereaders, laptops, and crazy touchscreen displays? Gizmodo covers Steve Wozniak's recent presentation of nine key gadgets that have deeply influenced the tech God's work. A few highlights below; click through for the full survey.
One of the common mistakes I see a lot of candidates make when they go to an interview is that they think it is a question and answer session. They approach the interview with a mindset that their role is to be prepared to answer a bevy of questions thrown at them. This puts you in a passive role, playing defense. A much more effective approach is to go into the interview with the mindset that you are a salesperson, and the product you are selling is you. You want to convince the employer tha...
A man going by the pseudonym of Ed Dante has written an illuminating account on his life as a career cheater. His clients include ESL students, hopeless dummies, and spoiled, lazy rich kids:
Every day of the week, WonderHowTo curators are hard at work, scouring the web for the greatest and most inspiring how-to videos. Every Friday, we'll highlight our favorite finds.
There are endless possibilities for eReaders, and lots of amazing things are already happening. But wow-worthy visual tricks aside, how can technology really change the way we consume books? In the video below design company IDEO presents three separate concepts for virtual consumption: Nelson, Coupland and Alice. IDEO groups their virtual experiences into three separate concepts: Nelson, Coupland and Alice. Core77 breaks down each concept:
Every day of the week, WonderHowTo curators are hard at work, scouring the web for the greatest and most inspiring how-to videos. Every Friday, we'll highlight our favorite finds.
Apparently the Canon 7D can (with a little help from GigaPan, of course). Via WonderHowTo World, Canon EOS 7D:
via Wired World's Largest Panoramic Photo is Bigger than 1200 Billboards
For those of you unfamiliar with Cometbus, I urge you to check out one of the many issues released since 1981 by Mr. Aaron Elliott... better known to his friends (and foes) as "Aaron Cometbus".
... Describing the style of John Bonham's drumming instantly conjurs up visions of the thunderous power he created. His contributions to rock music were revolutionary, and his talent unmatched and irreplaceable. You can only imagine Jimmy Page's reaction to first seeing him in 1968, ending his search for a new drummer to form a new band, the New Yardbirds (later renamed Led Zeppelin.)
Google has caught a lot of flack for various privacy infringements over time. Google Buzz was the latest uproar, when lack of proper prior testing allowed the tool to expose a slew of information users did not necessarily want shared, resulting in massive complaints. A Harvard student even went so far as to file a lawsuit (read more).
Copying and pasting is even more important on a phone since there's no mouse and keyboard. And like on a computer, copying is usually limited to one item at a time — but with the Samsung Keyboard app, you have the ability to copy multiple sets of text.
Most Android phones have a Google search bar somewhere on their home screen. But did you know you can replace this with a different widget that actually functions as the address bar in your Chrome browser?
For most of the iPhone's history, rearranging apps has been a giant pain. On the surface, iOS 13 seems to make things worse — with the new long-press gestures, it takes longer for iOS to know you want to move apps around. That might be true, but iOS 13 also introduced a way to make the process so much faster.
Chrome's Incognito Mode gives you a layer of privacy when browsing. While it's enabled, your browsing history, cookies, site data, and information entered in forms is not saved, making it perfect for, cough, more private web usage. With an Android smartphone, you can jump right into this mode.
If you're having issues with your Google Chrome browser, such as crashes, unwanted pop-up ads, or finding that your home page is now set to some search engine you've never heard of, give Google's Chrome Cleanup Tool for Windows a try.
Android may be one of the world's most popular operating systems, but the fragmentation of it between devices can cause some confusion. Known for their deliciously sweet names, Gingerbread, Froyo, and Jelly Bean are just of few of the many versions of Android your device could be running.
When downloading any application on an Android device, you will always be prompted by the following... Whether it's Angry Birds, Shazaam, or Chrome, every application will ask for permissions. If you try and deny these permissions, it won't install, leaving you with no other option but to accept. So what can you do?
Imagine a world where the Rococo period never ended, and it had a lovechild with Sid Vicious. Sounds unlikely? Well, it is. Still, historical accuracy wasn't the goal for this motley group of costumers.
As most of us know, men and women are (shocker alert) different. Not only are they different, but they view the world an entirely different way.
A rare textile woven from the silk of more than one million spiders is currently on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The incredible textile measures 11 by four feet, and is the largest piece of spider-woven textile in the world.
When President Obama mimics your move, it's gold. Beyoncé's iconic Single Ladies dance has made history in a bevy of ways. For months, it has hovered atop the Billboard charts.
