The Smidgen

Image Credit: Edge Online

Martin De Ronde, not a name that you might be immediately familiar with, was co-founder of the games studio Guerrilla Games before it was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2005 and now best known for their Killzone titles.  He’s also the man behind the OneBigGame mini-publishing platform that aims to be the Band Aid of the games industry.

What the hell does that all mean?  It’s a charity, or rather, a non-profit organization with the goal of getting well-known game developers to create titles to be sold under the OneBigGame label having the proceeds go to charity, much like Band Aid.  And it’s working.  The first title Chime has already been released on Xbox Live Arcade.

Edge Online has a very nice, three-page article detailing the history of the OneBigGame project that you can check out in the source link but I’ll just summarize the whole deal here.  OBG (as I’m going to call it because I’m lazy) gets developers to donate their time and creativity to making games to sell with the proceeds going to charity, rather than asking companies to just fork over cash directly.

Why would developers want to spend their precious time creating a game instead?  Well first of all, the license with OGB only ranges from 4 to 12 months (flash games near the latter, XBLA games the former) after which the developer will receive the revenue.  Additionally, the developer retains the IP, it’s fully theirs and after the OBG exclusive period they are free to create a new title or an enhanced version of the first.  They can use OBG as a proving ground of sorts for new and radical ideas.

The way De Ronde has it worked out right now some larger and well known game studios are working with indie studios on projects.  In this way the big name guys act as creative consultant taking less of their time while the indie studio builds relationships, experience and a portfolio based off what the larger studio’s creative team came up with.  This concept actually allows big name houses to come up with some more creative and risky titles and in the end, the charities win with a quarterly check from the revenue.  Other games are coming from academia where students can use the game as a class project and then in the end, actually have something to release into the world.  Lot’s of wins all around.

At the moment OBG’s charity partners are Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation.  De Ronde hopes the one day give them more than just money too such as a game that’s tailored to give Starlight help to their children with problems.  While that will have to wait for later, here’s wishing De Ronde and OBG lots of success.  Now that the games industry is on par with movies, music and television, it’s nice to see a desire to give back in some way.

Source: Edge Online

Despite the fact that I have yet to really find a good reason to use Twitter (yes I use TweetMeme, no I don’t think it’s cool) the cover letter on their latest TPS report (that’s tweets per second, didn’t you get the memo?) is showing around 600 microblog babbles per second.  That comes in at over 51 million per day which is no small feat.

For comparison’s sake so 50 million has some meaning, in 2007 Twitter averaged about 5,000 per day, jumping to 300,000 per day in 2008 and then up again to 2.5 million in 2009 with about 35 million a day by the end of the year.  That’s some impressive numbers there especially considering that they supposedly do not include tweets from accounts labeled as spam.

Well, good onya Twitter, now please go away as I prefer complete sentences.

Original Post: AppScout

iPhones ... I mean Brains ...

Straight out of the land of “Someone Got Paid to Do This” comes the mathematical apocalypse known as When Zombies Attack!

A team of mathematicians from the University of Ottawa have taken the time (and money) to calculate how fast the spread of undead will occur should the popular doomsday scenario outbreak begin (finally!).  It’s not all bad news though as they have also determine a possible solution to stave off certain doom.  Turns out it’s quick, aggressive attacks, just like I keep saying.

In an attempt to make this sound like something more scientific and less like they are just pissing away money, the Ottawa team feels that this research can teach us something about the spread of infectious diseases.  You know what else teaches us about the spread of infectious diseases?  The study of infectious diseases … the real kind.  Go figure.

The paper’s subtitle is “Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection” changed shortly before publishing from the more accurate “How to F–k Off And Get Paid With Mathematics”.

Paul Teutul Sr. and the gang at OCC have created an electric chopper for the Siemens company.  While it’s not the first electric bike by far (both the Zero and the Brammo are publicly available if you want one) it might be the first ever electric chopper style bike and it’s also probably the coolest looking electric motorcycle I’ve ever seen.

The 27hp electric motor gives the bike a top speed of over 100mph and a range of 60 miles per charge.  The green ‘cred’ doesn’t stop there though as the bike also sports LED lighting and parts made from recycled material.

The episode of American Chopper showing the build of this bike will are on TLC October 22nd at 9 PM ET/PT if you’d like to check it out.  Or you can read the rather boring details from Siemens.

Star Trek, and science fiction in general, is very accustomed to strange license tie-in’s and merchandising but the latest in Genki Wear’s spring collection,  known for its licensed science fiction jewelry and perfumes,  is just awesomely hilarious.

Genki Wear Star Trek Perfume  – A trio of scents from the final frontier
There are three fragrances planned for 2009 with the monikers “Tiberius” “Red Shirt” and “Ponn Farr.”

As if the names weren’t enough, it gets better.  “Tiberius”, named after the mirror universe version of James T. Kirk, challenges wearers to “Boldly go” with “notes of freshness and sensuality.”  Genki Wear states that “[Tiberius] … has sweet citron zest, black pepper, and cedar as its top notes (top notes refers to those scents that are noticeable first) and warm vanilla, white musk, and sandalwood as its base notes (scents perceived last, usually about a half hour after application).”  Personally I loved the caption under the image of the nice looking custom crafted box, “Command your essence with Tiberius, the cologne,” classic.

As much as I love the thought of “Tiberius” cologne I think I’d have to go with “Red Shirt” myself, if for no other reason than it’s tag line is “Because Tomorrow May Never Come.”  I have to give Genki Wear credit for keeping the campy humor of the show in tact while providing what looks to be an actual quality product (unlike the Star Trek First Contact travel set from 1996 – though it also had a wallet and soap!)  The caption for “Red Shirt”?  Live every day as if it could be your last, with ‘Red Shirt’ cologne. Simply fantastic.

The final product in the “trio” of scents is a perfume titled “Ponn Farr” making it clearly the most risqué of the group as it’s named after the, once every seven year, Vulcan mating ritual learned about in the episode “Amok Time”.  The perfume promises to “drive him wild” and lets face it, if Spock can’t remain calm, cool and collected during “Ponn Farr” what chance do we have?

If you’re looking to add these items to your collection they will cost you between $30 and $40 for a 3.4oz bottle.  On the plus side, this is one of the very few Star Trek collectibles that actually has a functional purpose and the company believes it’s fragrances are comparable to Chanel or Cartier.  I guess that’s why they didn’t make “Bones” or “Old Scotch Drunk”.  Maybe next year.