fame

Talk about a pivot.

When I last talked to SherLabs in March, CEO Satjot Sawhney was busy getting his TapFame product into the hands of game developers. TapFame was a sweepstakes engine that any developer could drop into a game with the aim of raising awareness and loyalty.

But after a recent chat, Sawhney said the company had changed directions yet again, this time turning TapFame into a networking business that connected developers with companies looking for talent in app design.

Sawhney had built a vast network of both brands and strong developers in his effort to push the sweepstakes … Read more

The people have spoken and the machines are immortalized.

More than 17,000 humans voted online for the 2012 inductees to the Robot Hall of Fame, and they chose a mixture of friendly and terrifying bots, depending on your perspective.

Come on down, Wall-E, BigDog, Nao, and PackBot. You've earned a place among the stars.

Although the 12 nominees were selected by robotics experts, it was the first time that popular votes chose the inductees to Carnegie Mellon University's hall of immortal robots. … Read more

Tuesday's tech news roundup honors our future robot overlords:

AT&T is being accused of data-plan discrimination and breaking FCC rules regarding new iPhone FaceTime options. AT&T recently announced that iPhone customers could use FaceTime video chat service over a cellular network if they have the new shared data plan. (Previously, FaceTime was limited to Wi-Fi.) But several groups have spoken out about the limit and questioned if it follows FCC guidelines. AT&T responded saying it does not believe this breaks any FCC rules, since FaceTime was offered to all customers over Wi-Fi and … Read more

If robots could run for president, which would you vote for?

Nobody doubts that machines would make better leaders than meatsack politicians, but there are so many to choose from. Carnegie Mellon University is helping out by letting us humans elect inductees for its Robot Hall of Fame.

The prestige has been awarded to real robots such as Honda's Asimo, as well as characters like C-3P0 and R2-D2 from "Star Wars." The unprecedented public participation in choosing the members follows years of inactivity at the hall, which was created in 2003 but last added new robots in 2008. … Read more

The Internet Hall of Fame officially kicked off today, inducting big tech names like Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, Mitchell Baker, and Brewster Kahle. This was the inaugural award ceremony sponsored by the Internet Society to celebrate more than 30 pioneers, innovators, and global connectors of the Web.

"This historic assembly of Internet visionaries, innovators, and leaders represents an extraordinary breadth of vision and work," Internet Society president and CEO Lynn St. Armour said in a statement. "While the inductees have extremely diverse backgrounds and represent many different countries, each individual has an incredible passion for their work.&… Read more

People love prizes. And that's the core belief animating a start up called SherLabs.

Through a product called TapFame, the company offers game developers the ability to drop an instant sweepstakes or leaderboard contest into their apps, which presumably would drive interest and downloads.

It's a unique take on the issue of app discovery, which I've written a lot about -- and which continues to be an issue for the middle and lower tiers of developers. Developers want their apps to be noticed, but the market is so crowded, it's hard to stand out without spending … Read more

The inventors of the digital camera, the industrial robot, public-key cryptography, and the barcode are just some of those being inducted into this year's National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Today, the National Inventors Hall of Fame announced its latest selections of the people responsible for some of the key technologies that we use and rely on today.

In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built a device that was able to capture an image, convert it to an electronic signal, and then digitize and store that image, leading to the world's first digital camera, according to the … Read more

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.--For a lifelong baseball fan like me, visiting this little town on the edge of Otsego Lake in upstate New York for the first time is like a political junkie's first-ever trip to Washington, D.C.

It turns out, of course, that my Road Trip 2010 project has afforded me both of those opportunities, and where my initial journey to D.C. earlier in the journey was a chance to finally see, firsthand, places like the White House and the U.S. Capitol, my first-ever passage through the doors of the Baseball Hall of Fame here … Read more

If you play video games, use a GPS in your car, or go scuba diving, you can thank some of the people inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame this year.

To honor those whose inventions and discoveries have changed the world for the better, the National Inventors Hall of Fame inducts key scientists and inventors into its ranks each year. Announced at Wednesday's induction ceremony in Washington, D.C., some of this year's honorees designed or paved the way for several of the technologies we use today.

As an early pioneer in video games, Ralph Baer invented … Read more