Episode 347 – Thankscrolling

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Thanks written on a rolling security door
Photo by Matt Jones on Unsplash

Gratitude, Thanksgiving parade balloon NFTs. Games: Cards Against Humanity, rats playing Doom, Kö-øp, Minecraft.  Music: Rock Band in Fortnite, Ed Sheeran in Pokemon Go, sosumi and other sounds in MacOS that were definitely not music.

So many things to be thankful for in this episode!  Andy, Michael and Michael get together on this US holiday week to talk technology, gaming and more.  Let’s have an NFT parade to start things off for this episode.  The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a household tradition in many parts of the United States, and one of the innovations for this year is a charity auction of NFTs.  Iconic balloons from past parades make the content for the NFTs, and the auction site is listed in the show notes below if you want to get in on the action.  At the time of this writing, the auction amounts span from $14k for the fireman balloon to a whopping $310k for the dragon.  Will be interesting to see how much these NFTs go for when the auctions close! 

Black Friday, as the major shopping day immediately after Thanksgiving, drew quite a bit of attention from all the retailers.  The team over at Cards Against Humanity had something else in mind, and they flipped the script, offering $5 (and more!) for people who gave them what they wanted for Black Friday.  Check out the amazing and silly things people did for $5 via the link in the show notes.  

Games, games and more games! 

Doom is a favorite game for the Games At Work co-hosts, and this time around, it’s not played on something interesting, rather by something interesting: rats.  And another fun game called Kö-øp is in the works via a Kickstarter campaign, based loosely on assembling furniture from a famous Swedish manufacturer.  Next up is a significant update to Minecraft, allowing for much taller construction and deeper mines.  This is followed by a story about Epic purchasing Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band in order to build more musical content into the Fortnite platform.  Sticking with the music theme for a moment, the co-hosts discuss the Ed Sheeran crossover into Pokemon Go.  Last up, Andy introduces the Microsoft Xbox Museum, as an online and personalized virtual world experience celebrating 20 years of Xbox.  If only the consoles were more readily available, even more people could celebrate and give thanks for their digital accomplishments in the Microsoftverse.  

After a quick martial arts visualization experience and discussion of network connectivity issues, the Games At Work team enjoy an article about the music connections in the Macverse, and stories about how the sounds in MacOS had to have nothing to do with music because of an appeasement between competing teams of lawyers.  This resulted in one sound being named “Sousumi”, which according to the interview, was just to make fun of the lawyers.  

Rounding out the show this week, includes such diverse topics as Windows 11 emojis (welcoming back Clippy, but apparently saying goodbye to Ninja Cat), a super-cool Rube Goldberg device and how Dodge will phase out the Charger & Challenger to make way for new EVs.  

What have you been Thankscrolling this week?  Bid on any NFTs yourself?  Let us know over at @gamesatwork_biz ! 

Thanks for listening!

Wall Street Journal article: Macy’s Turns Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons Into NFTs — https://www.wsj.com/articles/macys-turns-thanksgiving-day-parade-balloons-into-nfts-11637626701 

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade NFT auction — https://www.macys.com/social/macys-parade-nft/ 

Cards Against Humanity Pays You $5 Sale — https://getfivedollars.com 

PC Gamer article: Rats named Carmack and Romero are playing Doom — https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/rats-named-carmack-and-romero-are-playing-doom/ 

Kickstarter: Kö-øp — https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offcut/ko-p 

The Washington Post article: The world of ‘Minecraft’ is getting taller (and deeper) with its latest update — https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/11/17/minecraft-update-release-date/ 

Kotaku article: Epic Buys Rock Band Creators To Make ‘Musical Journeys’ For Fortnite — https://kotaku.com/epic-buys-rock-band-creators-to-make-musical-journeys-1848111406 

The Gamer article: Ed Sheeran In Pokemon Go Is The Worst Type Of Crossover — https://www.thegamer.com/ed-sheeran-pokemon-go-ariana-grande-fortnite/ 

Screenrant article: Pokemon Go: How To Claim Free Ed Sheeran Avatar Item — https://screenrant.com/pokemon-go-free-ed-sheeran-avatar-item-guide/ 

Microsoft Xbox Museum — https://museum.xbox.com/en/map 

Screenshot of the Microsoft Xbox Museum experience

Abakus article: The Physics of Kung Fu — https://abakcus.com/video/the-physics-of-kung-fu/ 

Six Colors article: Display network quality in your menu bar — https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/11/display-network-quality-in-your-menu-bar/ 

Disney+: The Beatles Get Back — https://www.disneyplus.com/series/the-beatles-get-back/7DcWEeWVqrkE 

iDropNews article: How Apple’s Most Iconic Sounds Came Out of the Beatles Lawsuit — https://www.idropnews.com/apple-history/apples-most-iconic-sounds-came-out-of-the-beatles-lawsuit/174111/ 

Wikipedia entry: Sosumi — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi 

Ars Technica article: Next Windows 11 update brings back Clippy, along with other redesigned emoji — https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/adorable-redesigned-emoji-including-clippy-included-in-latest-windows-11-update/ 

Emojipedia article: Ninja Cat: The Windows-only Emoji — https://blog.emojipedia.org/ninja-cat-the-windows-only-emoji/ 

Niklas Roy article: Smart Fairy Tale — https://www.niklasroy.com/smartfairytale/ 

The Verge article: Dodge will phase out gas-powered Charger and Challenger in 2024 to make way for EVs — https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/22/22797134/dodge-challenger-charger-phase-out-production-2024

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Episode 346 — Skittish Repairs

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Games At Work space on Skittish.com
Games At Work space on Skittish — Nov 2021

Skittish, right to repair, metaverse(s), accessible design, a Meta VR glove and bionic exoskeletons.

Andy, Michael and Michael start off this episode from Skittish, trying out a space replete with trees, velvet red roped off areas and coconuts among many other objects.  Blog posts from New World Notes launches further discussion on the metaverse, with the attempts by some companies to create their “own metaverse”.  In an interview with Neal Stephenson referenced in the blog post, Neal speculates that the broader use of the metaverse term by multiple companies is to ensure that none of them can establish a trademarkable position.

The co-hosts are all intrigued by Apple’s latest move to provide repair kits, with tools and parts to allow consumers to self repair their Apple products, starting with iPhone.  Michael, Andy and Michael then turn their thoughts to accessibility, and the benefits to all when inclusive design is applied.  In the case of the Apple Watch, there are several gesture controls that may be invoked when one cannot tap the touchscreen.  And AirBuddy is another example of great design for MacOS that allows easy connection to AirPods.  Michael R uses his positive experience with Apple and AirBuddy as an example to give a public service announcement for how to best deal with production support for users. 

After briefly discussing the new Meta VR glove experience (and somehow not referencing the Nintendo Power Glove last mentioned in e318 back in May), Andy notes that the Infinity Gauntlet could not be used to snap.  Check out the show notes for the physics of snapping for all the details.  

Bionic exoskeletons are what round out this week’s episode with the kickstarter for the Sportsmate 5.  This reminds Michael R of the exoskeleton pants developed by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Nebraska, Omaha, first discussed in episode 241.

Seen another interesting metaverse you’d like to have an in depth discussion?  Have an idea for an exoskeleton you’d like to self repair?  Let us know over at @gamesatwork_biz ! 

Thanks for listening!

Skittish — https://skittish.com

Games at Work world on Skittish — https://live.skittish.com/event/jdR78j 

Six Colors article: Apple Launches a Consumer “Self Service Repair” Program, Starting with iPhones — https://sixcolors.com/link/2021/11/apple-launches-a-consumer-self-service-repair-program-for-iphones/ 

Ars Technica article: Apple will soon send parts and tools to users who want to repair their phones — https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/apple-will-soon-send-parts-and-tools-to-users-who-want-to-repair-their-phones/ 

The Verge article: How to control your Apple Watch hands free — https://www.theverge.com/22778189/apple-watch-assistive-touch-accessibility 

Interaction Design Foundation post: 3 Reasons Why Accessible Design Is Good for All — https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/3-reasons-why-accessible-design-is-good-for-all 

AirBuddy v2 — https://v2.airbuddy.app 

New World Notes blog post: Neal Stephenson Speculates New Metaverse Hype Partially Driven By Turf Protection — https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/11/neal-stephenson-metaverse-snow-crash-facebook-disney.html 

New World Notes blog post: With Disney Announcing “Our Own Metaverse”, Prepare For An IP Bloodbath Across Competing Platforms — https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/11/marvel-disney-metaverse-roblox-vrchat.html 

Boy Genius Report article: This new glove from Facebook lets you feel objects in VR — https://bgr.com/tech/this-new-glove-from-facebook-lets-you-feel-objects-in-vr/ 

Smithsonian Magazine article: If Marvel Obeyed Physics, Thanos Couldn’t Have Snapped While Wearing the Infinity Gauntlet — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/inspired-by-avengers-infinity-wars-scientists-investigate-the-finger-snap-180979081/ 

Episode 318 — Virtually Floating: https://gamesatwork.biz/2021/05/03/episode-318-virtually-floating/ 

Nintendo Power Glove — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove  

Kickstarter Sportsmate 5 — https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1485648715/worlds-first-exoskeleton-for-consumers-sportsmate5 

MIT Technology Review article: These bionic shorts help turn an epic hike into a leisurely stroll — https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/15/238703/these-bionic-shorts-help-turn-an-epic-hike-into-a-leisurely-stroll/ 

Episode 241 — Smarty Pants: https://gamesatwork.biz/2019/08/19/episode-241-smarty-pants/

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Episode 345 – Icelandverse

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Reykjavík, Iceland
Photo by Evelyn Paris on Unsplash

Icelandverse, metaverses, NVIDIA Omniverse, getting FRKE with LEGO, AirTags new functionality in iOS 15.2 beta, thoughts to text and more.

The full compliment of co-hosts start things off with a metaverse world so real, you can actually go there on a plane.  Icelandverse by Visit Iceland is a very funny take on the recent announcement video by Meta.  There are several additional metaverse articles in the show notes.  The co-hosts also discuss Nvidia’s new platform for creating interactive AI avatars called NVIDA Omniverse. 

Next up, Michael, Andy and Michael talk about the sale of Weta Digital’s VFX division to Unity and marvel at the high purchase price.

Then, an Inc article about LEGO’s customer service captures the attention of the co-hosts.  The mnemonic from LEGO is FRKE, which stands for fun, reliable, knowledgeable and engaging. Michael R says that he’s taken advantage of the customer service to request a missing part of his space shuttle build.  And speaking of big builds, LEGO is offering some exciting and expensive builds such as the Creator Expert LEGO Titanic and the Star Wars AT-AT.  

Following up on an earlier episode’s AirTags discussion, there’s an update in the most recent iOS 15.2 beta that allows the user to discover items that can track you via Find My.  Also in the Apple ecosystem, Vanarama imagines what an Apple Car might look like based on the patents Apple has filed.  

Following an intriguing tweet on thoughts to text, the co-hosts cover a couple of upcoming movies and a game to close out the show.

Seen another interesting metaverse you’d like to have an in depth discussion?  Let us know over at @gamesatwork_biz ! 

Thanks for listening!

Visit Iceland — https://www.visiticeland.com 

The New York Times article: Are We in the Metaverse Yet? — https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/style/metaverse-virtual-worlds.html?referringSource=articleShare 

Quartz article: The metaverse will mostly be for work — https://qz.com/2083099/the-metaverse-will-mostly-be-for-work/ 

The Atlantic article: Hey, Facebook, I Made a Metaverse 27 Years Ago — https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-was-always-terrible/620546/ 

The Verge article: Nvidia wants to fill the virtual and physical worlds with AI avatars — https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/9/22770165/nvidia-omniverse-avatar-technology-virtual-agents 

NVIDIA newsroom: NVIDIA Announces Platform for Creating AI Avatars — https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-platform-for-creating-ai-avatars

Collider article: Peter Jackson Selling Weta Digital’s VFX Division to Unity for $1.625 Billion — https://collider.com/peter-jackson-selling-weta-digital-unity/ 

Inc article: Lego Customers Lose Millions of Pieces a Year. The Company’s 4-Word Response Is the Best I’ve Ever Seen — https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/lego-customers-lose-millions-of-pieces-a-year-companys-4-word-response-is-best-ive-ever-seen.html 

The Verge article: Lego’s new $800 AT-AT is practically big enough to conquer a real-life Rebel base — https://www.theverge.com/22772264/lego-star-wars-at-at-ultimate-collectors-edition-ucs-price-release-date-bricks 

LEGO Titanic — https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-titanic-10294?ef_id=8f136bf39ed318a131350a620477453a%3AG%3As&s_kwcid=AL%21790%2110%2181707550309898%2181707663550274 

Trusted Reviews article: Apple iOS 15.2 to add new shield from AirTags stalking — https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/apple-ios-15-2-to-add-new-shield-from-airtags-stalking-4178831 

MacRumors article: iOS 15.2 Beta: How to Use Find My to Locate Items That Can Track You — https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/iphone-find-items-that-can-track-you/ 

Vanarama experience: The Apple Car — https://www.vanarama.com/car-interiors-created-by-tech-giants/#intro 

The Verge article: Merry Cringemas, here is a bad trailer for a worse movie about Nintendo — https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/4/22763449/8-bit-christmas-trailer-neil-patrick-harris-hbo-max-movie 

The Verge article: Elden Ring Hands-On: An Open World So Pretty You Won’t Mind Dying A Lot — https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774836/elden-ring-fromsoftware-hands-on-preview 

Slashfilm article: Dungeons & Dragons: Release Date, Cast, And More — https://www.slashfilm.com/658391/dungeons-dragons-release-date-cast-and-more/

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Episode 344 – Car Play Diem

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toy car
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Seizing the day with multiple reboots, including the metaverse, Meta, Mercedes, Macs, and even Babylon 5.

Michael, Michael and Andy seize the day to start off this episode with a discussion on the merits of action games and learning effectiveness.  The article makes an interesting comparison between action video games and and “non-action” games played by a control group.  Such non-action games included Sims 3 and Zoo Tycoon.

Turing from one meta-analysis to an analysis of Meta, the co-hosts consider the newly named company, Meta (formerly known as Facebook).  The co-hosts were quick to point out that Meta plans to implement several of the ideas raised on prior Games At Work episodes, such as having a work Meta account for business users that is separate and distinct from personal accounts.

As a practical, but expensive, use of mixed reality, Michael, Michael and Andy take a look at the Mercedes augmented reality experience in the new EQS.  Wayfinding using the AR HUD in this automobile superimposes arrows so you know precisely where to turn to get where you’re going.  And as a visual indicator of the EQS radar and camera tracking vehicle in front of it, a green orb appears under the car.  It is simple to draw an analogy to a video game with this AR HUD, and clear to see the influence of games.

Other topics covered in this episode include a clear decision tree for the new Apple MacBook Pro laptops with their recently announced silicon.  A Kickstarter by Throwboy for some software (pillow) versions of iconic Macs gets the attention of the co-hosts, as does teenage engineering’s mini-ITX PC.  There’s progress in the right to repair in the United States, Palms new earbuds are announced, and Slashfilm has some top tips for those new to the Babylon 5 franchise in preparation for the reboot.

Hope that everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! 

Seen another interesting company, automobile, computer or television show reboot?  Let us know over at @gamesatwork_biz ! 

Thanks for listening!

Kotaku article: Want To Learn More? Take A Break And Play An Action Game — https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/10/action-game-learning-to-learn/ 

communications biology article: Action video game play facilitates “learning to learn” — https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-02652-7 

The Verge article: Facebook’s Oculus Quest will soon be called the Meta Quest — https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/28/22751220/facebook-portal-oculus-quest-meta-horizon-renaming 

The Globe and Mail article: Augmented-reality changes how you drive in the all-electric 2022 EQS from Mercedes — https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/reviews/article-augmented-reality-changes-how-you-drive-in-the-all-electric-2022-eqs/ 

Podfeet Podcasts article: M1 Pro and M1 Max Decision Tree — a Diagram of Every Configuration — https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2021/10/m1-pro-max-diagram/ 

Kickstarter: The Iconic Pillow Collection 2 by Throwboy — https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/throwboy/the-iconic-pillow-collection-2-by-throwboy 

Input article: Teenage Engineering’s jaw-dropping ‘computer—1’ PC case sells out in minutes — https://www.inputmag.com/design/teenage-engineering-computer-1-mini-itx-pc-case 

teenage engineering — https://teenage.engineering 

The Verge article: The US Copyright Office just struck a blow supporting the right to repair — https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/27/22747310/us-copyright-office-dmca-section-1201-exemption-rulemaking-report 

The Verge article: Palm’s brand resuscitated again for true wireless earbuds — https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/26/22745711/palm-buds-pro-announced-pricing-features 

Slashfilm article: Babylon 5: What New Fans Need To Know Before The Reboot — https://www.slashfilm.com/643265/babylon-5-what-new-fans-need-to-know-before-the-reboot/ 

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