July 31, 2012
Kinect is a motion sensing input device released by Microsoft in 2010 for the Xbox 360 game console, and in 2012 for Windows PC. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral, it enables users to control and interact with software without the need to touch a game controller (through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands).
The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360’s audience beyond its typical gamer base. Kinect competes with the Wii Remote Plus and PlayStation Move with PlayStation Eye motion controllers for the Wii and PlayStation 3 home consoles, respectively. After selling a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days, the Kinect holds the Guinness World Record of being the ‘fastest selling consumer electronics device.’
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July 31, 2012
The Dreameye is a digital camera released for the Dreamcast in 2000 in Japan only. It was designed to be used as a webcam and a digital still camera, and there were plans for games to involve the Dreameye. The Dreameye was only released in Japan, and Dreameye functionality was absent in non-Japanese versions of the games it could be used with. It came with the Divers 2000 Dreamcast (a rare all-in-one console unit developed by Fuji, intended as a video communications and gaming device for the consumer and hospitality markets) but was also sold separately. The DreamEye can be seen as the first use of a digital camera on a video games console.
The Dreameye came with a microphone headset, a stand, batteries, software, a cable to connect it to the Dreamcast, and a Dreameye microphone plug card. The Dreameye takes pictures at approximately 0.3 megapixels (640×480 pixels), but in order to send them via e-mail the pictures in question had to be first saved to a Dreamcast memory card. Upon transferring the pictures off of the card they resized to a resolution of 320px by 240px.
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July 31, 2012
The Game Boy Camera is an official Nintendo accessory for the handheld Game Boy and Super Game Boy gaming consoles and was released in 1998. It is also compatible with all of the Game Boy platforms (with the exception of Game Boy Micro). The camera can take 256×224 (down scaled to half resolution on the unit with anti-aliasing), black & white digital images using the 4-color palette of the Game Boy system.
It interfaced with the Game Boy Printer, which utilized thermal paper to print any saved images, making a hard copy. Both the camera and the printer were marketed by Nintendo as light-hearted entertainment devices aimed mainly at children. The Game Boy Camera was used to take the photographs for the album cover of Neil Young’s album ‘Silver & Gold.’
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July 31, 2012
A SuperBall or bouncy ball is a toy, invented in 1964 by chemist Norman Stingley by compressing a synthetic rubber material under high pressure. It is an extremely elastic ball made of Zectron, which contains the synthetic rubber polymer polybutadiene, as well as hydrated silica, zinc oxide, stearic acid, and other ingredients, vulcanized with sulfur at a temperature of 165 degrees Celsius and at a pressure of 3,500psi.
The Super Ball has an amazingly high coefficient of restitution. Dropped from shoulder level, balls snap nearly all the way back; thrown down by an average adult, it can leap over a three-story building. Toys similar to SuperBalls are more generally known as bouncy balls, a term which covers other more or less similar balls by different manufacturers with different formulations.
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