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bloxes

GoldieBlox: Construction toy gets girls into engineering early

Stanford engineer Debbie Sterling has seen a boy bias in toys like Lego and Erector sets. Lego's recent attempts at appealing to girls seem to be a little off the mark. So how do you get girls interested in engineering toys?

Sterling's answer: a Kickstarter project called GoldieBlox. It's a construction toy paired with a storybook, "GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine."

The main character is Goldie, a kid inventor. She is joined by a cat, a dolphin ballerina, a sloth, a bear, and her dog Nacho. The construction set has a pegboard, wheels, axles, blocks, a ribbon, a crank, and washers.… Read more

Spielberg, EA score with Boom Blox

Boom Blox is the first game to result in the collaboration between filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Electronic Arts. When we first got a look at the title back in February, we were impressed with the game's accurate rendering of real-time physics and unique gameplay. Now that we've had a few days to explore the final retail version of the game, we're proud to say that we're officially hooked.

The game has you use your Wii remote in a variety of game modes that involve everything from careful blox removal (essentially virtual Jenga), to smashing blox with a variety of different projectiles. Each mode has an "adventure" campaign you can play through, each level more challenging than the last. The game presents a list of goals in which you are awarded gold, silver, or bronze depending on your efficiency. All the levels vary and are quite satisfying and addictive--you'll even find yourself retrying them to reach a gold medal. There are close to 400 puzzles, so forget about blowing through the game in a weekend.

Boom Blox is certainly a technical achievement as its physics, while somewhat floaty, are dead on. Much effort has gone into the realism-factor, guaranteeing you'll never see a level play out the same way twice. But perhaps what is most attractive about Boom Blox is… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 719: Yotta yotta yotta

There's a lot of storage headed your way in the coming years. A lotta, in fact. We'd even go so far as to say it's a yotta. Byte. In other news, no one in the tech industry will be taking a vacation between June 15 and July 12, due to the second coming of the iPhone, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu is getting behind a more democratic music industry. Try that one on for size, RIAA. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 719

Comcast mulling metered access, 250GB monthly bandwidth caps http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080507-comcast-mulling-metered-access-250gb-monthly-bandwidth-caps.htmlRead more

Where 320 people can't be wrong

EPISODE 94

Libe Goad joins the guys of the 404 to talk about how the Wii gets hacked, GTA IV gets a lot of cash, get in shape with Wii Fit, Boom some Blox and some silly-ass stop signs. We also make fun of her husband, but shh...don't tell him.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EA launches Steven Spielberg's 'Boom Blox'

Electronic Arts on Tuesday officially launched Boom Blox, the long-awaited first game under its partnership with Steven Spielberg. It is now available in North America, and EA plans to have it on shelves in Europe on May 8, in Asia on May 13, and in Japan on May 22.

The first details about the game, which is from EA's casual games unit, were released in February. Now, the game, which will be available only on Nintendo's Wii and on major carriers' mobile phones, is out and the world can finally see what happens when you put someone like Spielberg together with top-level game designers at a company like EA.

Boom Blox will task players with navigating nearly 400 levels of "strategic destruction."

In addition, players will be able to use the game's editor to craft their own levels. The best part of this sounds like it will be the way the editor lets players take existing levels and elements from the game--props, characters, blocks, etc.--and incorporate them into all-new levels. … Read more

Sports fans: Belly up to the virtual bar

Numedeon, the 9-year-old company behind kids' virtual world Whyville.net, is taking a leap into producing simulated environments for adults, starting with a sports theme. Called SportsBlox, the site launched in beta this week as part of March Madness.

Created by scientists from Cal Tech, Numedeon is also growing up in another way. For the first time in its history, it has taken money from an institutional investor in a series B round of financing.

In a sign that investors are particularly excited about virtual worlds, the company plans to raise between $1 million and $2 million, according to Numedeon'… Read more

Cardboard key to a 'green' office space

A start-up launched on Friday aims to make furnishing an office as simple as assembling a cardboard box.

Bloxes are the latest option in cardboard furniture (see photo gallery), which is gaining a toehold in the world of 'green' design. The corrugated cardboard puzzle pieces lock together to form sturdy shapes such as chairs, walls, and play forts.

Bloxes founder Aza Raskin turned to his childhood for the idea, toyed with as an art project by his father Jef Raskin, known as the "father" of the Macintosh computer.

The junior Raskin is using Bloxes to furnish the lofted … Read more

Hands-on with EA and Spielberg's Boom Blox

EA was showing off its slate of upcoming releases to NY-based press last night. In addition to a peek at Spore, we were treated to a one on one with the Steven Spielberg and EA collaboration known as Boom Blox.

The game is primarily a puzzle-based physics simulator in which you partake in a variety of "blox" maneuvering modes. We learned how to play the game in a stage where you throw a baseball at different pieces, relying on real-world physics to knock over and blow up blox while accomplishing goals. While most of our time was spent understanding the basic fundamentals of the game, we learned that the original concept spawned mostly from Spielberg.

His idea was centered on the fact that children love to use building blocks to construct large structures, only destroy them. Boom Blox is essentially this but without the mess. The game is definitely the most physics-intense experience we've seen on the Wii. It looks a lot more accurate and complex than games that have tried to tackle physics simulation before, such as Elebits. Boom Blox may have a cartoony style, but its effects are much more in the vein of technical achievements, such as Crysis.

In the different gameplay modes in Boom Blox, we were able to try out a Jenga-like mission in which we had to carefully remove a number of pieces from a large construction, making certain not to harm the little cow creatures balancing at the top.… Read more

Where all your Valentine are belong to us

EPISODE 36

Today, we talk about Valentine Day's best and worst dates with ace reporter Caroline McCarthy. Also, Time Warner and Viacom are coming to Hulu, Spielberg's new video game Boom Blox, and EA's GameShow. We also hear from some our loyal listeners about Optimash Prime.

Listen now: Download today's podcast