Solar Plane Lands in New York, Completing U.S. Journey

An airplane entirely powered by the sun touched down in New York City late on Saturday, completing the final leg of an epic journey across the United States that began over two months ago.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An airplane entirely powered by the sun touched down in New York City late on Saturday, completing the final leg of an epic journey across the United States that began over two months ago.
The Solar Impulse, its four propellers driven by energy collected from 12,000 solar cells in its wings to charge batteries for night use, landed at John F. Kennedy Airport at 11:09 p.m. EDT, organizers said.
The experimental aircraft had left Dulles International Airport outside Washington for its last leg more than 18 hours earlier, on a route that took it north over Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.
The spindly aircraft had been expected to land in the early hours of Sunday, but the project team decided to shorten the flight after an 8-foot (2.5 meter) tear appeared on the underside of the left wing.
The condition of the aircraft was declared sufficiently stable to continue, and pilot Andre Borschberg was not in danger, the organizers said.
The Solar Impulse is the first solar-powered plane capable of operating day and night to fly across the United States.
With the wingspan of a jumbo jet and the weight of a small car, the aircraft completed the first leg of the journey from San Francisco to Phoenix in early May and flew later that month from Phoenix to Dallas.
From there it flew to St. Louis, stopped briefly in Cincinnati, then flew on to Washington, where is has remained since June 16.
Intended to boost support for clean energy technologies, the project began in 2003 with a 10-year budget of $112 million (90 million euros).
It has involved engineers from Swiss escalator maker Schindler and research aid from Belgian chemicals group Solvay.

8 Recognition Apps Work Almost Like Magic

In my Scientific American column this month, I noted that in consumer electronics the promises of magic sells. And one of the most important areas for magic simulation these days is recognition. That's when your phone or computer recognizes human speech, motion, visual cues and audio.
You've probably heard of some speech-recognition efforts, like Apple's Siri and the dictation program Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But the world is teeming with apps that recognize other sights, sounds and stimuli. Here's a taste.
Evernote (free; Android, iOS, Mac, Windows): Evernote is the popular notepad-of-all-trades app that keeps your notes synchronized across all of your gadgets. If you snap a photo of something that includes writing (or paste in such an image), even handwriting, its behind-the-scenes optical character-recognition algorithms decipher the writing as text. The accuracy isn't quite good enough to convert the writing into typed text, but it's good enough to let you perform searches on handwritten notes. That is, you can pull up the image of your scanned or photographed handwriting by typing a keyword into the search box.
Shazam (free; all smartphones): This app recognizes recorded songs—popular or not. You're sitting in some restaurant, bar, office or elevator; you let the app listen to the music for a few seconds and marvel as it tells you the song title, singer, album and so on. With another couple of taps, you're buying the song on iTunes or watching the music video on YouTube.
SoundHound (free; iOS and Android): This one is just like Shazam, but with one delicious added feature: you can also hum or sing into it. This is the app to use when something's running through your head and you wish you could remember the name of the song. Uncanny.
Bird Song ID (£3, about $4.60; iOS): It's Shazam for birdsong. Record a bird's warble—the cleaner the recording, the better the luck you'll have—and let the app tell you what species you're hearing. No Internet connection required for this task.
Leafsnap (free; iOS): Take a photo of a leaf (against a white background) and let the app's visual-recognition feature identify the plant it came from. An ingenious field guide, although it requires an Internet connection to perform its magic.
LookTel ($10; Mac, iOS): This company makes a pair of apps ($10 each) for people with vision impairments. Hold your phone over a bill—dollar, pound, euro, doesn't matter—and the app speaks: "20 dollars," for example. There's also LookTel Recognizer, which can identify and speak the name of precisely the kinds of things a blind person might have trouble differentiating: cans of food or soda, packages of food, money, videos and so on. The catch is that you first have to train it. You have to take a picture of each item and speak its name in your own voice: "Sprite Zero," for example, presumably with the help of a sighted person. Thereafter, the app briskly and confidently speaks the name of each item it's learned when the phone's camera sees it.
Color Identifier ($2; iOS), Color Reader (free; Android): Apps like this one (there are several) perform one simple, obvious function: they identify by name any color. Color Identifier lets you switch between simple color names ("pale green") and more exotic ones ("lavender rose"). If you're color-blind, this sort of app is of great help when you're trying to pick matching clothes in your closet. Or you can aim the phone's camera at, say, a shirt, and find out by name its color before you make an embarrassing fashion faux pas.

Biggest Cyber Attack in History. Cybersecurity Pioneer Narus Asks: "Are You Safe?"

It's funny how things work. Earlier this week I was interviewing the team at Narus. The company, an independent subsidiary of Boeing and more about digital, less about massive bodies of steel,  is a pioneer in cybersecurity. Cybersecurity, the practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack or damage.
I was asking the company's president, John Trobough, "As a consumer, why should I care?" I mean, these big companies have money to throw at this kind of stuff, so I'm sure they've figured it out. Besides, what do I care if some chicken nugget-producing enterprise gets hacked? Or if some big bucks mobile company has a security breech when a clever employee outsources his work and watches cat videos instead? Some of those videos are pretty good.
The very next day the world sustained what many touted as being the "biggest cyber attack in history."

It was, if fact, big. Mashable writes, "Kaspersky Labs, a leading security research group, called it 'one of the largest DDoS operations to date.'" It's origins were a conflict between Spamhaus, a European organization that keeps tabs on spammers and Cyberbunker, a Dutch hosting company accused of housing them. In the end, the attack severely affected the websites it was targeted at, and many Internet users in Europe and North America found the Internet suddenly slowed or ground to a halt.
On the whole, though, the global Internet as a whole was not impacted to the expected extent. You see, it's not necessarily a "massive," global cyber attack that we, as individuals should be concerned about. It's the potential smaller, personal ones. As a 2012 Norton Cybercrime report outlines, these consumer attacks are costing us.
"We are living in an interconnected world where lines are being blurred, from the personal to the digital," Narus' Trobough explains. "As consumers, we expect the same level of security in our digital world we've always had in our physical world."
In fact, the guarantees aren't the same.
A recent Financial Times article points to a new study that suggests automobiles could one day become the victim of cyber attacks that compromise electronic systems and endanger passenger safety. Cars already contain a huge amount of electronics controlled by thousands of lines of code, and mobile phones, internet access, Bluetooth connections all open doors for hackers. The risk to consumers is more than compromised performance or someone stealing your Twitter account; a cyber attack on a car could result in the loss of life.

BBC 3D programming 'on hold' indefinitely

The BBC is to suspend 3D programming for an indefinite period due to a "lack of public appetite" for the technology.

Kim Shillinglaw, the BBC's head of 3D, said it has "not taken off" with audiences who find it "quite hassly".
The BBC began a two-year 3D trial in 2011, broadcasting several shows and events in 3D, including the Olympic Games and Strictly Come Dancing.
A Doctor Who anniversary special in November will be among the final shows televised in 3D as part of the trial.
Half of the estimated 1.5 million households in the UK with a 3D-enabled television watched last summer's Olympics opening ceremony in 3D.
The BBC said 3D viewing figures for the Queen's Christmas Message and the children's drama Mr Stink were "even more disappointing", with just 5% of potential viewers tuning in over the Christmas period.
'Wait-and-see'
In an interview with the Radio Times, Shillinglaw said: "I have never seen a very big appetite for 3D television in the UK.
"I think when people watch TV they concentrate in a different way. When people go to the cinema they go and are used to doing one thing - I think that's one of the reasons that take up of 3D TV has been disappointing."
Shillinglaw will return to her main job at the BBC, as head of science and natural history, when the project ends at the close of the year.
"After that we will see what happens when the recession ends and there may be more take up of sets, but I think the BBC will be having a wait-and-see. It's the right time for a good old pause," she said.
"I am not sure our job is to call the whole 3D race," she said.
Last year's Wimbledon finals were the first programmes to be shown in 3D by the BBC. This year, the broadcaster will show both the men's and ladies Wimbledon semi-finals and finals in 3D.
The free-to-air 3D Wimbledon coverage is only available to viewers with access to a 3D TV set and to the BBC's HD Red Button channel on certain platforms, but not Sky.
Last month, US sports network ESPN announced it was to close its 3D channel in the US due to a lack of uptake.
Recent figures from the US suggest no more than 120,000 people are watching 3D channels at any one time

Broadband speeds at mercy of postcode lottery

Choice of internet provider, price and download speeds vary hugely for users living just yards apart.

Britain's broadband users are still suffering from a postcode lottery that sees some households paying twice as much for a slower service than others living less than 100 yards away.
According to a study of more than 1.7m UK postcodes by Broadbandchoices.co.uk , millions of homeowners could be paying as much as £60-£70 more a year for their service than their near neighbours.
The comparison website found that in Calverton, Nottinghamshire, users are paying £5-plus a month more than their neighbours who are just 65 yards away – and they can only download from the internet at a third of the speed.
It says the postcode lottery means 13% of internet users are being penalised as they don't have the choice of cheaper deals simply due to their address. They are also suffering from limited broadband speeds and download limits.
Geographical location plays a big part in the number of suppliers on offer. In some areas customers can choose from around 10 providers; others have just five options. It means that while some are paying as little as £2 a month for their broadband (on top of landline fees), others are being forced to spend £8 or more.
The service and price available is largely dependent on whether the local telephone exchange has been – to use the jargon – "unbundled".
The big broadband suppliers, such as Sky or TalkTalk, have, in recent years, been busy unbundling, putting their own equipment into local telephone exchanges that used to be the sole preserve of BT. Users linked to unbundled exchanges get cheaper deals and faster download speeds, and fewer caps on data usage.
As the big suppliers target the most affluent and residential areas, where they think they will get the most customers, a two-tier broadband service has developed with those whose exchanges have not been touched.
Those living in Scarrow Hill near Brampton, Cumbria, for example, find themselves forced to pay an extra £5 a month as well as receiving inferior download speeds and having too fewer providers to choose from when compared to people who live just down the road.
Herefordshire was revealed as the county with the worst overall service, where users have the narrowest choice of providers – an average of eight – and the slowest download speeds – just 12.3Mbps.
Users in the county also pay the second highest minimum costs in the country of £5.47 a month, second only to Rutland whose residents have to pay on average a minimum of £5.99.
Greater Manchester topped the study as having the best results in those categories: the lowest broadband costs were just £2.99, average download speeds were 28Mbps, and there is typically a choice of 12 providers.
The survey also revealed a north-south divide in the number of available providers.
Those in the south have an average of 10 to choose from, while those in the north have a pool of 11. Southern residents can take some solace in the fact they just nudge the north when it comes to average download speeds: 22Mbps compared to 21Mbps.
Dominic Baliszewski, a telecoms expert at Broadbandchoices, says: "It is amazing just how much the nation's broadband services vary from county to county, and especially street to street.
"Broadband has become a utility in the UK, not a luxury, and it is unacceptable that people are being penalised simply due to where they live."
He adds: "Providers must improve their coverage, and it will be interesting to see what measures are taken in the coming months."
To get a further idea of the price differences Guardian Money did its own quick comparison. We looked at Great Chishill, a village in south Cambridgeshire, and at the city of Cambridge itself.
The current cheapest broadband in Great Chishill is Plusnet's half-price deal at £6.49 for 12 months. This has a 10GB monthly download cap.
In central Cambridge, meanwhile, Tesco is currently offering an uncapped service for just £2 a month.

Rural fibre broadband scheme two years behind schedule, say auditors

Much-trumpeted plans to introduce superfast broadband to rural areas will be delivered nearly two years late, with taxpayers footing a greater proportion of the £1.2bn bill, the government's official auditors have said.
Fewer than a quarter of the projects will be ready by May 2015, the expected delivery date, and the scheme will cost the public purse an extra £207m, according to a report from the National Audit Office.
The government has already announced that superfast broadband will reach 95% of the population by 2017, two years after the original date for reaching that target.
Just nine out of 44 local projects are expected to reach the original target of 2015, according to the report, with the delay partly attributed to the EU state aid process taking six months longer than expected.
Auditors also said competition among suppliers had been limited, leaving BT as the only active participant. It is expected to win all 44 local projects.
The worst affected areas include Merseyside, Oxfordshire and Derbyshire, which are among those councils that have yet to sign a contract with BT. Residents in these areas have no idea when their broadband will be upgraded.
The findings will make uncomfortable reading for David Cameron, who in 2011 announced the latest stage of the scheme and said it would be "absolutely vital in driving the creation of the small businesses and growing businesses that will be so important to keep the growth of employment in our country".
Helen Goodman, the shadow media minister, said many in the countryside were being left without access to the internet at a time when the government was shifting essential services online.
"We are not a 'one nation' country with this digital divide, and that divide is being deepened by [the culture secretary] Maria Miller," she said.
The report has been seized upon by Tory opponents of the HS2 rail scheme as proof that the government has got its priorities wrong. The former cabinet minister Cheryl Gillan said: "This is disappointing and an example of how putting more resources into this type of operation would yield more immediate benefits to the wider economy rather than spending money on HS2."
Superfast broadband will be accessible to nearly two-thirds of the UK by next spring. Government support is needed to supply the final third in difficult-to-reach areas where telecoms operators will struggle to make a profit on their investment.
Significantly, the auditors said the government had "secured only limited transparency" over the costs in BT's bids. For reasons of commercial confidentiality, BT has told councils they cannot share information with each other to ensure they are getting a fair deal. Last year a whistleblower was dismissed by Broadband Delivery UK, the national broadband funding programme, after drawing up a spreadsheet to help councils share information.
His research suggested big disparities between contracts, and auditors have now confirmed this. Their checks showed the cost of connecting fibre to BT's green street cabinets, which link homes to telephone exchanges, varied between £19,600 and £51,000. The cost of cabinets is a major element in contracts, accounting for more than a third of costs.
Some areas, where cabinets are a long way from the nearest exchange or fibre trunk route, are clearly more expensive to connect than others. But the average cost in England is 12% higher than in Northern Ireland, where BT has already completed its work.
Checks made by civil servants have already identified over-charging. In one area BT was found to have inflated project management costs by £3m. BT refused to let civil servants inspect its books to confirm that the costs it charges to the public purse were the same as on its own commercial projects, the report said.
Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, said she remained concerned about whether BT was being transparent enough to allow parliament to follow the public pound. "Opaque data and limited benchmarks for comparison mean the [DCMS] has no idea if BT is being reasonable or adding in big mark ups," she said.
A BT spokesman said: "We have been very transparent from the outset and have invested hundreds of millions of pounds when others decided to ignore rural Britain."

Samsung shares fall despite forecasting record profits

Shares in Samsung Electronics fell on Friday, despite the company forecasting it would report a record quarterly profit for the second quarter of 9.5tn won (£5.5bn), up 47% on a year ago.
But the news fell short of analysts' expectations and the shares fell by nearly 4% on the Seoul stock market.
The company was preparing to announce 20m shipments of its new Galaxy S4 phone, two months after its release but analysts are increasingly concerned that Samsung, like its principal smartphone rival Apple, is facing saturated markets in the developed world as ownership passes 50% in many countries.
Average smartphone ownership in the US and Europe is heading towards 60%, leaving few new buyers to expand the business at the high end. Mobile network operators are also cutting subsidies for phones, making high-end phones more expensive.
South Korean networks cut subsidies for new phones this year, contributing to weaker Galaxy S4 sales in Samsung's home market and higher marketing spending for the handset maker, said Seo Won-seok, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities.
China is the fastest growth area in smartphones, but at low prices with highly competitive markets. Samsung has been releasing cut-down versions of the S4 to try to protect its market share from rivals such as ZTE and Huawei.
The saturation at the top end of the market seemed to be reflected in Samsung's Galaxy S4 figures. Though shipments of the S4 in the first month after release were twice as high as for last year's Galaxy S3, the time it took to reach the 20m mark suggested shipments were slowing to a rise of only 60%.
The company still dominates the smartphone and "featurephone" business, shipping about half of all smartphones and a quarter of all mobile phones worldwide. It is the biggest seller of phones running Google's Android software, taking about 95% of all profits in the Android space.
Samsung said total sales in its electronics division had grown 20% to 57tn won (£33.2bn). It will announce its full audited quarterly results this month.
Analysts suggested that high marketing costs – which exceeded those for research and development for the first time in three years – may have hit the profit figure, despite the strong first-month sales.
"Because of the marketing costs, the telecommunications business was probably weaker than expected," said CW Chung, an analyst at Nomura Financial Investment in Seoul. "Semiconductor and other businesses seem to have improved from the previous quarter."
Analysts cut their figures last month for the total numbers of S4 phones Samsung will ship this year from 80m to 60m.
"Apple is suffering from iPhone fatigue, while Samsung is suffering from Galaxy fatigue," Neil Mawston, executive director of Strategy Analytics, told Bloomberg before the financial announcement.
Samsung is increasingly reliant on its mobile business for growth. Samsung's division making and selling mobile phones, tablet computers and cameras contributed 75% of its operating income in the first quarter of this year. Analysts surveyed by FactSet said 60% of Samsung's second-quarter sales probably came from the mobile business.

Are the Google Play Edition smartphones worth it?

The Samsung GS4 Google Play Edition has a simplified lock screen (left) and notifications shade.

(Credit: Lynn La/CNET)

CNET's Marguerite Reardon helps a reader decide if the Google Play Edition of the Samsung Galaxy S4 or the HTC One is right for him. And she offers some advice about turning any Android phone into a "pure" Google phone.

There is something appealing about a Google Android smartphone running pure Android.
You don't have to deal with the added bloatware and unwanted apps from device makers and wireless operators, all of which can't be removed. And best of all you're guaranteed to get all of Google's Android software updates when they are released. There's no waiting months for an update or wondering if your smartphone will ever get the update.
So you'd think that the new Google Play editions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One, which Google is now selling without the layered-on manufacturer software, will fly off the shelves. While the idea sounds great in theory, the reality is that consumers have to give up some nifty functionality and they'll have to pay a pretty penny for the Nexus "pure" Google experience.
In this edition of Ask Maggie I offer some thoughts on whether the hefty price tag and the sacrificed features are worth it. I also advise another reader who is looking to turn his Samsung smartphone into a Google "experience" device.

Should I get a Google Play Edition smartphone?

Dear Maggie,
I appreciate the input you give your readers so I wanted to pick your brain about something. I am interested in getting one of the new "pure" Google phones: Samsung Galaxy S4 or HTC One. I like the idea of being able to get the latest Android software updates as they come out.
I am currently in the market for a new smartphone as I am using the iPhone 4 since it was released on Verizon. I'm well aware that these "Google phones" are only for AT&T and T-Mobile. I'm ok with that and was thinking about switching carriers anyway as well as switching from the iPhone to an Android phone.
But I have some concerns, specifically about getting a pure Google phone. I was hoping you could help answer them for me.
1) How do you think the camera will function on the Google version of the GS4 and HTC One as compared to the devices that are sold by the carriers?
2) Is having the benefit of knowing that my phone will get every Google Android update when it's released really worth it? Or is that idea overrated?
Thank you for taking the time to read my email!
Crazy Indecisive JB Dear Crazy Indecisive JB,
Let me start by saying that you are asking all the right questions. There are definitely some benefits to getting a pure Google experience phone, such as a guarantee that you'll get all the latest Android software updates. But it comes at price. Not only is the cost of the device a lot more, but you also have to sacrifice some key features of these devices.

A hefty price tag
The HTC One Google Play Edition and the Samsung Galaxy S4 One Google Edition are not sold through a wireless carrier, and therefore they aren't subsidized, which means they're expensive. The HTC One Google Edition sells for about $600 while the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition goes for $650.
At such a hefty price tag, it's important to make sure, you're getting the right device for you.
Of course, at the unsubsidized price, it also means the device is unlocked and there is no carrier contract to worry about. That said, since these are GSM phones, they will only work on two of the four major U.S. carriers, AT&T and T-Mobile. But it sounds like you're all right with switching from Verizon anyway.

If you think about it, these prices aren't outrageous considering that the prices are comparable to what most smartphones cost without a service contract. But it's still quite a bit more than Google's most recent Nexus device, the Nexus 4, which Google sells for $300.
But with a contract or some kind of payment plan, carriers are selling these devices for between $100 and $200. The Galaxy S4 is available on AT&T and Verizon for $200, while Sprint is offering it for $150 and T-Mobile is offering it for $99 down and $20 a month for 24 months. The HTC One, which is available on all four major carriers, except Verizon, is also reasonably priced.
What's the big deal about "pure" Google devices?
The Google Android operating system is open-source software for mobile devices. And because it's open source, handset makers can develop their own software "skins" on top of the Android OS. Samsung's "skin" is called TouchWiz and HTC has one called Sense.
This software not only changes the user interface of these Android devices, but the manufacturers have also layered in additional software features. In the new Samsung GS4, that includes things like the Air Gesture feature that allows you to control your smartphone with hand gestures or the Smart Stay feature that keeps the display lit when it senses your eyes looking at it. It also happens to include a lot of the nifty camera features on the HTC One.
Some Google purists hate the manufacturer skins on their devices. And to be honest, sometimes the user interfaces can seem cluttered. Also it means that the user experience isn't always consistent across Android devices from different manufacturers. This might annoy people who want to stay within the Android ecosystem but don't always buy devices from the same device manufacturer. That said, it often means that the experience is very similar among devices made by a particular phone maker.
One of the downsides of devices with this layered software is that it's the main reason why it takes so long for new Android updates to propagate through existing products. Because the new releases of Android must be tested and tweaked to work on devices sporting Samsung TouchWiz and HTC Sense, it often means it can take months before devices already in the market get updates. And often, the updates are further delayed, because wireless operators must also test how the new software updates will work on their networks.
Another issue with these devices is that carriers also load up smartphones with their own "bloatware" apps that cannot be removed from the device.
To help alleviate this issue and to make sure that new Android updates are pushed out as soon as possible, Google started its Nexus program. These phones sport the pure Google Android software sans any additional software or apps from manufacturers or wireless operators. Google's Nexus devices are not built by Google per se, instead Google works with manufacturers to design products from the ground up.
In this sense, the Google Play Editions of the Galaxy S4 and HTC One are not pure Nexus devices. They were not designed with Google's input. But they are running the Nexus Google Android software. And as a result, the interface on these devices looks just like any other Nexus smartphone, such as the Nexus 4.
There are certainly benefits to getting the Google Play Edition of either the Samsung Galaxy S4 or the HTC One. And unlike the Nexus 4, these devices sport the line hardware and operate over 4G LTE wireless networks. Except for the software, these devices are exactly like the ones that the carriers are selling.
The HTC One has been praised for its all-aluminum casing and sleek design. The device also sports 32GB of onboard storage for apps, photos, videos, music and other media. It also has a 4.7-inch LCD screen that CNET Reviews editor Brian Bennett has described as "arresting" offering a sharp1080p resolution (468 ppi) along with vivid colors.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 also sports some terrific specifications too, including a quad-core processor and a 5-inch 1080p screen, and 16GB of storage space with a SD card slot for even more storage. Both devices operate on 4G LTE networks.
So first and foremost, you are getting topnotch hardware. And because it's pure Google, you'll get the new Android software updates without delay.
Another benefit, especially for GS4 users is that by ditching Samsung's TouchWiz software, you will actually be able to get use more of the device storage on your Google Edition GS4 as compared to the Samsung version.
When CNET Reviews editor Lynn La tested the Google Edition Samsung Galaxy S4, she found that instead of only having 9.10GB of available storage on the 16GB version of the Samsung GS4, you can get 12.65GB of storage space on the Google Edition model.
The reason is simple. All the bells and whistles that Samsung has packed into its TouchWiz based GS4 take up a lot of storage capacity on the phone, which means there is less available storage for your apps, music and photos. This has been a contentious issue for Samsung Galaxy customers, especially those on Verizon, who only have the option of buying the 16GB version of the device. AT&T sells the 32GB version.

5 Depressing Facts About Your Favorite Childhood Games

Few things beat being 12-years-old and staying up all night playing board games with your siblings. But have you ever wondered about the origins of some of your all-time favorite games?
While most of today's popular board games deal with seemingly tame concepts, a lot of the classics have darker beginnings than you might expect.

Prepare to be super bummed out by five depressing facts about your favorite childhood board games.

1. The original version of Guess Who? seriously lacked diversity.

 

According to a video from Cracked, the original version of this childhood favorite featured only one black character, Anne, in a sea of white characters.
A few editions later, Anne was redrawn as an older white woman, making every single character in the game white. Hasbro has since redesigned the board to feature a more racially diverse set of people.

2. Surprise! Chinese Checkers also has a racist history.

As it turns out, there is absolutely nothing Chinese — or even Asian — about the popular strategy game. According to HowStuffWorks, the game was first published by a German company, before J. Pressman & Co. brought it to America.

Pressman named it Chinese Checkers as a marketing ploy to tap into America's fascination with the Asia and the Middle East sparked by the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. The original version of this game featured insensitive and stereotyped depictions of Chinese culture, a design that has since been retired.

3. Chutes and Ladders is a lot heavier than you think.

Before it was marketed in the U.S. as Chutes and Ladders, this game was known as Snakes and Ladders (it is still known by that name in certain parts of the world). According to eHow, the game originated in India, and was meant to teach children the value of good deeds and the negative impacts of bad deeds. Ladders represented sound morality and snakes represented vices and poor judgement. Ponder that next time you're looking to play a relaxed game of this childhood favorite.

4. Monopoly let Depression-era Americans pretend they were rich.

 

When Milton Bradley introduced Monopoly to the public in 1935, it gave people a much-desired diversion from economic turmoil. As the Washington Post explains, Depression-era folks enjoyed pretending to be rich and successful for an afternoon. This would explain why the game sold a quarter-million sets by the end of 1935 and 2 million in its first 18 months on the market.
Kind of a bummer, right? But worse than this is the suspicion that Monopoly's concept was stolen from an already-patented game called The Landlord's Game. According to Businessweek, the game, created by Elizabeth Magie about 10 years earlier, also featured property owenership, railroad lines and renting.

5. The original version of LIFE featured suicide.

While today's version of The Game of Life is generally pretty cheery, its original version featured some pretty dark gameplay options. These included, most notably, suicide.
According to the Roy Rozenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the game — originally titled The Checkered Game of Life — was invented during the Civil War and became immensely popular. This is despite the fact that the original board featured a suicide square, which meant an immediate loss for the unlucky player.
Do you know any other depressing facts about board games? Share them in the comments.

 

 

How this purple panda is inspiring games for girls — and angel investors, too

The heroine in Suzanne Xie’s first interactive game for kids is no damsel in distress.
Xie [above] settled on a fearless, adventure-seeking purple panda with a big group of friends — both male and female — as her lead character in Pan: The Fearless Beribolt. “She’s feisty and not a princess,” said Xie, the twentysomething founder and the CEO of its parent company Hullabalu.
The panda protagonist, “Pan,” is an amalgam of Xie, her close friends, and the inspirational women she’s known throughout her life.

 

The New Yorker could not have dreamed up Pan at a better time, given the push for more strong female characters in games. Xie was able to convince some high-profile tech investors to support her vision, raising a $1.8 million seed round from YC partner Garry Tan, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, SV Angel, Rothenberg Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, Time Inc. president Fran Hauser, and more. About half of the funding came through angel network AngelList.
Pan: The Fearless Beribolt debuted today on iTunes for $3.99. Similarly to competitor LaunchPad Toys, Pan’s design is a “constructionist learning framework,” meaning that kids can learn by both doing and creating. It’s ideal for kids between the ages of 3 to 7.
The player can decide when the plot moves forward, so kids feel like an integral part of the game. Text appears alongside narration, which sets the stage for early reading success. The interactive elements are tailored to kids based on their age and reading levels. Just for fun, Pan features a camera booth so kids can take pictures of Pan and save them in the iPad gallery.
One thing parents will like about Pan: It has no purchases for virtual goods.
Parents have plenty of games to choose from, but Xie claims that hers has an edge as the plot was designed for young children in mind (not teens, like Harry Potter). In addition, she spent hours watching kids play on tablets, detecting subtle differences in how they hold the device. Pan’s designed to capture kids’ attention, so she expects it will be a lifesaver on long plane and train rides.
“It’s amazing to watch kids play the game and feel as if they are really in this world,” said Xie.

 In Pan’s world, boys and girls are just friends (no Disney Princess-like pining for the perfect prince), and it’s cool to work on logic and reasoning problems together.
Entrepreneurs like Xie are part of a growing movement in Silicon Valley to set girls on a trajectory so they grow up with an appreciation for science and math. In the past year, women formed toy companies such as Maykah and Goldieblox through highly successful runs on Kickstarter to make playthings not only suitable for girls but also that encouraged a love for math and science.
Research has shown that only about 15 percent of female first-year college students intend to major in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math). But there is no scientific evidence that girls are any less capable of  mastering these subjects.
But Xie doesn’t consider herself an ed-tech entrepreneur — the mission goes beyond the classroom. “We’re not just teaching kids how to add and subtract,” she said. “It’s educational attendance, it’s an appreciation for story-telling and logic. Really, it’s life-learning.”

Games to keep teenage girls enthralled with math, science

A group of Seattle-area educators and electronic-game developers have started working on a game to keep teenage girls engaged in math and science.

Consider, for a moment, the possibility of a completely addictive electronic game that had a more noble objective than destroying pigs with slingshot-flung birds or traveling through post-apocalyptic wastelands.
What about a game that was geared toward teen girls — a free game that kept them engrossed in math and science, nudging them toward careers in those fields, at that very time in their lives when they start to lose interest?
“You’re right, it’s a huge order,” said Karen Peterson, principal investigator of the National Girls Collaborative Project. “But I think we can do it.”
On Friday, some of the best gaming and education minds in the area gathered at the Northeastern University-Seattle campus to kick off an ambitious, long-term project to create just such a game.
G.A.M.E.S. — short for Girls Advancing in Math, Engineering and Science — includes participants from Northeastern, the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science, the private DigiPen Institute for game developers, and game companies such as Big Fish and Her Interactive.
The idea is the brainchild of Tayloe Washburn, dean of Northeastern-Seattle. He thinks a successful game could underscore the advantages of a career in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields for young girls.
Why a game? Research shows that children spend about two hours a day playing electronic games. “This is the medium they’re on; it’s where they are,” Washburn said.
Peterson, of the National Girls Collaborative Project, said girls often lose interest in math and science around fifth or sixth grade, not because they lack the ability but, for some, because their confidence lags. They don’t take challenging math or science classes in middle school and later find it hard to catch up.
Peterson said only about 26 percent of employees in computer and mathematical sciences are women, with half that many in engineering. The numbers are even lower for minority women, who make up fewer than 1 in 10 employed scientists and engineers.
Prototypes
The game idea “is not about fixing girls, or changing girls — it’s about finding a better way to portray all the exciting things you can do if you go into STEM,” she said.
Washburn thinks it will take three to five years to create about 20 test games. He hopes the group can get assistance from professional game designers as well as university researchers who study game science.
He wants to test the prototypes’ effectiveness exhaustively, then pick the best and roll them out in some easy-to-use platform, for little or no cost to the gamers.
If the ideas are good, he believes the necessary funding will follow from sources such as private foundations or the National Science Foundation.
A few girl-centered games have been wildly successful.
Seattle company Her Interactive, for one, has sold more than 9 million copies of a detective game built on the Nancy Drew book series.
Megan Gaiser, chief creative-strategy officer of Her Interactive, is joining the effort to create the new game.
“One of the reasons I’m so excited about this initiative is that we can do this on a much broader scale,” Gaiser said. “The Nancy Drew series is great, but there can be so many different types of content that haven’t been imagined yet. It’s possible to create games around anything.”
Solving puzzles
Kate Fisher, community manager for the UW’s Center for Game Science, said educational games have come a long way in recent years.
“We’re fusing the idea of fun and education in a much more sophisticated way these days,” Fisher said.
For example, the Center for Game Science’s Foldit game has gotten hundreds of thousands of players all over the world to solve protein-folding puzzles.
The key, Fisher thinks, is to have great incentive structures built in.
“If it’s not fun, and it doesn’t incentivize students to continue playing, you’re going to lose them and you’re going to lose them fast,” she said.
Peterson — herself a gamer — said the incentives will need to go beyond just scoring points or reaching new levels. They must show girls that in math and the sciences, they may need to try, and fail, many times to get something right.
And the game also needs to show that women from all walks of life can be successful in STEM careers.
“It’s like the supergame, isn’t it?” Peterson said, laughing. “Well, we can dream right now.”

Command & Conquer Deep Impact

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

 

With the end of the Zero Hour conflict Europe was left with 3 things: social and political collapse, a deep economic crisis and a crippled army. From the highest military or political mind to the common citizen, Europe wanted independence and security. This however meant refusing any Chinese aid and making a lot of changes in social and economic areas. By 2019 the European Union project failed, and countries with a primitive economy were literally kicked out of the whole united Europe idea. Europe needed a fast recovery and failed economies were only dragging it down. As a result, most countries from central and Eastern Europe were now once again on their own. Meanwhile, Western Europe was consumed by panic and mass hysteria, and there was a huge sense of insecurity in almost every citizen. The GLA ‘supporters’ witch hunt that followed helped reducing the fear, but also helped military leaders to establish as some of the most powerful voices. In the eyes of the communities, the army succeeded where the incompetent politicians and men of words failed. It was at this time that the basis for a future military rule started to be laid.
When the Solar Furnace project started, Europe was already changing, step by step. An obscure law here, a bit of propaganda there and the overall panic and paranoia, fueled these changes. By 2029 when the Solar Furnace crisis started, Europe already had the foundations laid to become a military hegemony. All it needed was a final spark. And that spark was the Impact event.
In the aftermath of the meteors impacts, the European Federation was formed. With a military doctrine and the interest of preserving its energetic and technological superiority, Europe’s freedoms were now replaced with a police oriented policy. But with the Creation of the WEA, came a whole new problem. Isolationism can produce a small economic boom on a very short term, but on a medium to long term in meant a huge lack of resources and as a direct effect a devastating new economic crisis. To solve this, Europe turned its eyes towards Japan, a country that had a history of being isolated with very limited natural resource. And the answer was creating new and highly advanced ways to recycle everything. Recycling became WEA’s main economic wheel, and within a decade since the Impact event, Europe became the central hub of world recycling. Like the alchemists of the old ages, Europeans managed to develop the ‘philosopher stone’ of recycling. Large recycling center were built all over the coastlines of Western Europe, where non-radioactive/non-biological wastes were recycled with the help of highly advanced nanotechnology into new and useful materials. This form of subatomic manipulation, offered WEA a stable and strong economy.

Indie Developers: The Forgotten Link In Gaming

Developers for Indie games don’t have a place in PC gamers’ hearts and thoughts anymore. Indie developers are only noticed by real PC gamers and some regular PC gamers who seek games that are really made for the people and their gaming dreams.
Indie game developing began around the 70′s and 60′s time period; at that time there were no big gaming companies that dominated and competed for the best company title. After nearly 30 years, Indie developers started looking for big companies to publish and distribute their games or share the games with family members and friends to decide whether or not the games were going to be recognized.
Other Indie game developers during that time period shared their completed projects on shareware to places that were dedicated to games like BBS. These places distributed games to many companies that were, back then, small and thriving like Apogee Software (now 3D Realms) , Epic Megagames (now Epic Games), Ambrosia Software and id Software.
This gave consumers the chance to play the game before investing money in it, and it also gave them exposure that some products would be unable to get in the retail space.
Moving on to this date and time (the year 2013), Indie developers are rarely talked about or encouraged by supplying them with staff experts, funding their project or even advertising it non-profitably (which is rarely seen these days). There are some websites who are still trying to keep this small branch in the gaming industry alive and nearly growing like Indie DB and IndiePub.
These websites try to revive the Indie developers by making their games known to the public. Almost every Indie game is free to download from sites like the ones listed above.
I have enjoyed several new Indie games, and one I have really enjoyed is Game Dev Tycoon by GreenHeart Games. The game is brilliant and takes you into the role of a gaming company where you have to face every challenge a real gaming company manager faces on a daily basis. I don’t want to ruin it for those who are going to think in playing it after reading this article, so if you would like to see more on the title.
There are many other games like this out there that are really great, but they are unknown due to not enough publicity and advertising. The Indie gaming industry is really a wonderful part of the gaming business, and I wish people would try to play these games that are sometimes much more fun than huge company games.

PC vs Console: Where lies the future of gaming?

It’s undeniable – The future of console gaming is looking promising. The constant increase in the exchange rate makes maintaining and upgrading of a PC less obtainable. To be more specific, costs are rising and there is no end in sight. The launch of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PS4 are going to offer specs in gaming that is usually reserved for PC gamers. Or that’s what they say. So let me delve into the logic here and give my input as to what the experts and developers are saying.

 

But first let me give you a little price comparison on PC vs Xbox One vs PS4. My latest PC’s graphics card is considered a mid range card, but with very good capabilities. It cost me what I could expect to pay for a new PS4 or Xbox One, which should be around R5,5k – R7k depending on exchange rate at the time of release to South Africa. However, when you upgrade your PC graphics card, you don’t buy something mid to high range without upgrading other components as well, such as your CPU, GPU, RAM and motherboard. Then you have your gaming peripherals, a mouse, keyboard headset etc. Even at mid range these peripherals could set you back at least R2k. Yet the constant demand of PC gaming ends up limiting the lifespan of your components, whereas a console places no such demand on your pocket. Yes I know that console games are more expensive, but if you do the math, the cost does actually outweigh the benefits of PC gaming. At least in my opinion it does, and I am a PC gamer first, and console gamer second.

Bioshock 2 creative director quits to form indie studio

Jordan Thomas has departed 2K Marin to create his own games and open an independent game studio; The Bureau: XCOM Declassified unaffected by departure.

The creative director of BioShock 2, Jordan Thomas, has left 2K Marin after more than five years with the developer.

Speaking to GamesIndustry International, Jordan Thomas revealed that a few key moments during the development of BioShock Infinite inspired him to branch out on his own.
A designer on the original BioShock and creative director on BioShock 2, Thomas realised his true calling whilst working on Infinite, saying, "It cemented for me that while BioShock spoke to me, it'll never be for me what it is for Ken [Levine]. I've expanded that legacy here and there, but I could never have created it from scratch.
"I need to build something that is, to me, what BioShock is to Ken. No matter how long it takes, I have to start now."
Thomas has plans to start up a two-person independent game studio with an unrevealed partner, and work on a project that draws upon immersive simulation games such as Thief. The former creative director did not share specific details about his immediate plans.
2K Marin is currently working on upcoming tactical third-person shooter The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. The game's development should not be impacted by the departure of Thomas, who left the project in early 2012.
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified was first announced in 2010 as an untitled first-person shooter set in the XCOM universe. The game underwent an overhaul, and was revealed in its current state in April this year. It is currently scheduled for release on August 20 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.