Crave

We're revisiting a long-standing tradition here on Crave with this one: a gadget in the shape of a penguin!

(Credit: DealExtreme.com)

It's been entirely too long since we've had aquatic-bird-inspired audio equipment. So herewith we present the Mini USB Rechargeable Penguin speaker. It stands just under 3 inches high, connects via USB to your computer, and has a 3.5-millimeter audio jack so it plugs into most MP3 players, CD players, or stereos. Your tunes of choice emanate from the back of the little guy.

DealExtreme has it for $9.90 with free shipping.

We Tell Stories is a new alternate-reality game that tasks players with finding their way through six story lines based on classic Penguin novels and a seventh story that ties them all together.

(Credit: Penguin Books/Six to Start)

The alternate-reality game genre has a new friend, and a new format, thanks to Penguin Books, the famous British publishing house.

On Tuesday, Penguin and startup Six to Start launched their new ARG, We Tell Stories, a new-style game that its creators say is a hybrid of traditional story-telling, Web 2.0-style mashups, interactive games and classic novels.

We Tell Stories is actually a seven-part adventure, said Jeremy Ettinghausen, the digital publisher for Penguin. It will begin with six weekly installments, each of which is based on a classic novel--and written by a different Penguin author--and which tasks participants with finding their way through the story using tools developed for the game.

After the six installments, We Tell Stories will continue with a seventh weekly piece that will be a game tying the six stories together.

"There is a seventh story, where the game element exists," said Etthinghausen, "and it links the other six stories."

Added Adrian Hon, the chief of creative for Six to Start, "the seventh story is a more traditional ARG, and it sort of feeds into the other six stories and binds them together. The seventh story gives you motivation to read all six stories, and explains why they're written."

Six to Start was founded by veterans of Mind Candy--a UK company that produced the well-regarded but ultimately financially unsuccessful ARG, Perplex City--including Hon and Mind Candy's former COO Dan Hon and

In the case of the first installment, which went live Tuesday morning, players will use a Google Maps mashup to work their way through a brand-new story line based on John Buchan's famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Ettinghausen explained that the story incorporates Google Maps in such a way that participants can work their way through the narrative not only through the text but also by using the map mashup.

"We knew when we came up with the idea that using Google Maps (would allow) lots of movements," said Hon, "like running down streets and driving down roads. It's a bit like The Bourne Identity."

Hon explained that the game's creators imagine players using Google Maps as a way of locating themselves in the larger narrative. So, for example, at a moment in the story arc where the protagonist finds himself locked in a shipping container and doesn't know where he is, a player could turn to the maps mashup and see dozens of points where he might be.

But while We Tell Stories uses Google Maps for its first installment and will continue to leverage Web 2.0-type tools in the following chapters, players shouldn't expect those tools to be the same.

Further, the entire body of work, while derivative, was created strictly for Web users.

"Each of the six stories has a completely different mechanism for telling them," Ettinghausen said. "But as a whole, these are stories that couldn't have been written (in the past). They're native to the Internet."

"What we tried to do here," Ettinghausen said, "is create a native Internet experience. The stories couldn't exist on paper. But it's not a gimmicky thing. We pushed our authors to look at how viewers and readers are going to view them, thinking about different points in the story, and about how the mechanism in the story is going to effect their writing."

At the end of the game's rainbow is a prize that any erudite player would certainly desire: Penguin's complete library of 1,300 books.

And while the game is based in England, the organizers expect thousands of players from all around the world. They said they expect a third of participants to be American, a third from the UK and a third from other countries. However, only UK residents are eligible to win the library grand prize.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I was walking around the Virtual Worlds conference here this afternoon when I ran into Jerry Paffendorf, the co-author of the Metaverse Roadmap report and the current co-founder of a stealth start-up called Wello Horld.

inDuality is a software front-end that will allow users to access multiple virtual worlds through a single Web browser-based interface

(Credit: Pelican Crossing)

Paffendorf knows all, and so I eagerly asked him what was the best thing he'd seen at the show.

Without hesitating, he pointed me over to a small corner of the expo floor and to the little booth of a skunkworks project called inDuality developed by a company called Pelican Crossing and another known as IBM.

Well, when I finally found my way over to the inDuality booth, I was duly impressed. This is a very cool alpha technology that lets anyone--well, anyone using Internet Explorer in Windows XP or Vista--run a Web browser-based front-end for a whole bunch of different virtual worlds.

This is a pretty nifty little application. The idea is that you wander into a courtyard and are faced with a bunch of kiosks, each representing a portal into its corresponding virtual world. So, you could walk up to one and suddenly you're in Club Penguin. Back out--with a back arrow, since this is all Web-based--and you can then walk to the Second Life kiosk. Bam, you're at the sign-in screen for SL.

Pelican Crossing CEO Clive Jackson told me that by using an OpenID identity, a user could pop around the various virtual worlds with a single login, and that the inDuality client takes care of the grunt work of downloading and installing all the various virtual world applications.

Here, Second Life is seen being used from inside the Web browser.

(Credit: Pelican Crossing)

In addition, Jackson explained that it's possible to build little controls into the various virtual worlds, or onto the Web interface that can launch different actions. So, for example, you could have a button in Club Penguin that would launch Second Life. Or vice-versa.

This is not interoperable worlds, however. Once you leave one for another, you're gone.

Anyway, this is very new technology, and it probably will be awhile before it has any measurable utility. But for now, at least, it's a pretty cool thing to be able to click through all these various environments without even needing to run a single piece of stand-alone software.

Thanks, Jerry.

(Credit: Swizz Style)

I suppose it's unofficially Modernist Monday here at Crave. Yes, I know that's not quite as thrilling as Party Friday, but you have to admit it's still kind of cool to learn about household items that resemble abstract art. With the surrealist power strip earlier this morning and now this wacky air filter, you certainly could say that we're on a bizarre-appliance kick.

A few weeks ago we looked at an air filter that resembles an iPod wrapped in wallpaper (in a good way), and now here's another one to add to the mix of haute purifiers. Meet Swizz Style's "Henry," who appears to be an incredibly complex air filter system encased in a sleek black exterior. It's slightly over four feet tall, and is available in both black and white versions. With a noise range of 18-26 decibels, it's pretty quiet. Henry also claims to be able to get rid of everything from unpleasant smells to soot to pollen and dust. And its appearance can only be described as...interesting. (No pricing information appears to be available quite yet.)

Personally, I think "Henry" looks like some kind of abstract depiction of a penguin. Then again, other Cravers would tell me that I'm biased in my pro-penguin sentiments. Even though I'm totally over that.

(Cool Hunting via MoCo Loco)

(Credit: TokyoMango)

There's another blogger here on Crave who is trying to convince all our readers that I am unhealthily obsessed with penguins. Not true. Yes, I think they're cute. Yes, I think the occasional penguin gadget is kind of cool. But come on, Mike. First, it's not an obsession. And second, the market has become so saturated with the penguin motif that I'm ready to say: I'm over it.

I mean, check out this penguin humidifier that's available in Japan. Way overkill, even though it would probably be easy to mod into a nice device for inhaling those controlled substances that you use for strictly medicinal purposes. Penguins are totally played out now. Let's move on to a new variety of cute animal gadget, shall we? Bunnies? Kittens? Prehistoric sharks? We've already seen plenty of squids.

In with the new

(Credit: Uber-Review)

Out with the old

We normally don't go out of our way to post items on animal speakers, but penguins have become an exception on Crave. (Thanks to fellow Craver Caroline McCarthy, not us, for the record.)

So out of obligation, we offer this pair of 'guins featured on Uber-Review. But make no mistake, these are no ordinary penguin speakers: Their eyes jump to the beat of your music. How creepy is that?

(Credit: Chip Chick)

Crave has been rather proud of being the only gadget blog on the planet that hasn't posted an item on the "i-Dog" or its offshoots. But out of respect for esteemed colleague Caroline McCarthy and her obsession with arctic waterfowl (however unhealthy that may be), we herewith make an exception.

Hasbro's "i-Cy" penguin, according to Chip Chick, not only waddles and flaps its wings to the beat of your music but also "communicates his moods to you through movement, musical riffs and blinking light patterns." It sounds as if Disco Duck may have grounds for a lawsuit.

(Credit: EDF)

Here's a bright idea that we found on The Gadgets Weblog: if people can't figure out how to conserve energy, maybe showing pictures of cute animals conserving energy would help them get the idea. Indeed, it's being implemented in an ad campaign by a French electricity company--see, the penguin is turning off a computer, and the meerkats are installing solar panels on the roof! As you may know already, I have a thing for penguins, so of course I think this is a cool idea. And seriously, how cute are those meerkats? (Bigger versions of all the ads are available here.)

(Credit: EDF)

(Credit: ChipChicks)

I think I've already made it clear on this blog that I like penguins. I was probably the only Craver who was pumped to hear that "Happy Feet" had beaten out "Casino Royale" at the box office, and despite what people may tell you, that wasn't because I bought out several theaters' worth of tickets. (I haven't seen the movie yet. I was busy with the Wii launch.) I was even more pumped to see that ChipChick featured these fuzzy penguin-shaped portable speakers that not only play your iPod or DVD player's contents, they're snuggle-able.

Would I buy them? Probably not. I'm still all about my Harmans. But it's nice to see the oncoming trend of Penguin Tech in action. Seriously, they're going to be making penguin-shaped robot vacuums soon. I can just feel it.