Category Archives: Tech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7P0dmV_AXM

We like Redwind Software.

On top of being the only company we know of that is using Job Bridge properly, they also really are at the forefront of the much touted ‘smart economy’.

This week they launched their latest game Draw-it, Push-it.

It’s a Pictionary style game where you use the iPad to draw your word and the other players buzz in using their iPhones/iPod touches.

This is the first game of its kind in the Apple App Store making it a pretty impressive  technical achievement by this small indie developer.

Okay, so you inevitably end up with the usual sweary/shouty slagging match as people accuse you of drawing badly and you must have an iPad and 2 iPhones to play but once you’re over these hurdles it’s a devilishly fun game to play.

In fact you could say we’re strangely drawn.

Drawn.

Nevermind

Redwind Software – Draw-It, Push-It

Draw-it, Push-it

Push-it

Do you have an Irish app? Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

No favours, cuddles, pints or free versions of the app were given for this post.

It’s the time of year when parents have the ultimate sanction of a Naughty or Nice list to make their children behave.

Broadsheet code monkey web master Karl’s partner recalled to him a time when a lump of coal on the mantle would send children into an apoplexy of fear, regret and temporary good behaviour.

So rather than fixing theBroadsheet app in a few moments of his spare time Karl whipped up Santa Report.

Then kids’ mums from all around looked for their own copy and so up onto the iPhone app store it was thrown.

Since it is Christmas apparently we have 10 free copies available – just tap on one of the links on your iPhone

 

And yes, it is iPhone only, because, sez Karl: “those elves that make the toys can’t code”.

The Santa Report is available on the iPhone App Store for the Scrooge-friendly sum of 89 cents.

Have you a new app you would like to share?  Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie

Gamification has been a bit of a marketing buzzword over last year or so. Normally applied to things like forums and coupon sites.

The idea is to reward returning users with badges and achievements to drive the user interaction and repeat site visits.

It can be a bit twee and silly but it doesn’t really mean anything.

Until now.

The Israel Defence Forces Blog has decided to gamify its website during an ongoing operation where real people are dying.

Unbelievable! The IDF Has Gamified Its War Blog (Readwrite)

[via Joseph Dana, Retweeted by Graham Linehan]

The One Laptop Per Child project, a non-profit outfit that has so far delivered 2.4 million XO laptops to children in the developing world, reported recently on their efforts in Ethiopia.

Rather than give out laptops (they’re actually Motorola Zoom tablets plus solar chargers running custom software) to kids in schools with teachers, the OLPC Project decided to try something completely different: it delivered some boxes of tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, taped shut, with no instructions whatsoever. Just like, “hey kids, here’s this box, you can open it if you want, see ya!”

At MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said:

“We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”

dvice/MITtechreview

Irish developer Brian Kenny recently launched his labour of love, Spots.io – a mashup of two hipster favorites: Instagram and Foursquare.

By combining mapped photos from Instagram users with places from Foursquare, it dynamically creates galleries from the publicly shared images.

So what? Well since Instagram pictures tend to be quick snapshots (when not of food/coffee/beer/fixies) you can get an interesting informal view of places you’d not normally get in this world of managed media.

A perfect example of this comes from the gallery of the Playboy Mansion. While there are the typical shots of women standing around in their underwear, you also get they utterly mundane example of people standing around taking touristy shots in front of the house. What ever little mystery the mansion had evaporates with every badly filtered image.

For a less salacious example, there’s always the White House Bowling Alley.

Your thoughts welcome below.

Thanks Des Traynor

No favours, etc were given for this post

Facebook has bought Instagram for $1 Billion.

So how do you get your pictures out of it now it’s gone all mainstream and evil?

Enter the talented Über-developer James Whelton (of CoderDojo fame) with GramGrab which allows you to grab your photos before deleting your account while maintaining your hipster credentials.

Related: Instagram’s Founder Had No Programming Training. He’s A Marketer Who Learned To Code By Night (The Next Web)