Hey everyone, happy 30th anniversary. O, and by the way, you're all fired.

I too am dreading iGoogle going. We should make a petition for iGoogle as well. Though, sadly, I don't think it has the same level of usage as Reader.

I didn't like Google Video being closed but it wasn't a biggy (thanks to Youtube and its Google integration).

I used and saw application with Google Wave. I think Wave has the potential to be gradually (or slightly) integrated into Google Docs / Drive.

Disney

I agree. I have not purchased a Kinect, mainly for this reason. An always on camera system just seems a bit too much 1984 for me.

Here is a chilling thought: what if those proprietary smart phones we use provide a back door to allow others to listen in while they are in our pockets, in a purse, on a desk nearby... (yikes, scary!).

Perhaps the approach is not yet ironed out. Consider how we use multi-touch today, as opposed to mono-touch (think single mouse and cursor). I was seeing and was interested in multi-mouse / cursor interface projects WAY before the iPod / iPhone.

There is no reason why this technology can't be used to enhance our already mouse / touch driven world. I actually see it having more application to be auxiliary to mouse input, largely because of the points you make.

People wonder why the shooter in Connecticut did what was done. Just the same, people wonder why the hell the US went to war in the middle east.

All these kids these politicians and lobbyists that "worry" about kids playing violent video games should realize that these same kids have grown up in the post 9/11 Bush terms fraught with publicized and accepted war in the middle east. Certainly, they are not witnessing REAL violence on the television; it's those pretend video games that teaching them that killing real (and innocent) people is acceptable. Hypocrites!

My Wii is a not as cheap Netflix box. I don't do anything else with the thing.

When the HTC G1 with Android hit the scene, many people doubted the chance of success of Android against the market dominated iPhone.

Recently, I came across a review of the Ubuntu phone initiative. The review author signs off by saying that he / she is uncertain of its ability to make him / her put down their Android phone. It made me laugh, I remember the exact same statement ending in "iPhone".

Next, we install identification chips into hunting game and criminals. Your guns' sights will merely add them as blips. May the games begin!

If it's just me developing. No testers and no current user base--purely personal:

Pencil and paper.

This device will be slow to adopt and I think that is alright. I don't have NFC on my phone, but I bet in a year or so, my phone will have it. Google doesn't want to wait for NFC to be common place before attempting to have applications and solutions for it (Google Wallet/Pay). I suspect Google is implementing this device/system as a means to eventually see us paying for groceries, dinners, bus fare, etc with our Android based phones rather than simply making playlists.

Most every responder is missing the point of the question asked in the original post: it wants people to give ideas on what will help the poster (or anyone else who reaps the feedback) to create a version of Pong that will add ~100K to their wallet.

I think the best kind of remakes are ones that still look like the original but have improvements from modern technology that the original authors would have used in the game to make it better (not just add !@#$).

Always good to be cross-platform, but I think the device version that will shine here is the iPad (and any other tablet). Because Pong is a multiplayer game--I don't think anyone would have given a crap about Pong had it not had the same two player feel of tennis (wall ball
Keep the blocky look. Maybe add effects for each level that apply effects to the blocky look to give it variety (color, glowing, strobe effects, disco. Provide background effects at time, but don't let it distract from the game--make it make sense (like when a score is made). Apply CRT emulation, for sure (trails, fuzzy, bleeding).

Again, 2+ multiplayer is key. I think it would be a cool improvement for 4+ player play to have it to where the paddles bend around the corners of the board. Or maybe not necessary--but have players on the side line, keeping the ball from going outside horizontal bounds. 'Doubles' was a classic upgrade to Pong--that could be done as well with some interface creativity.

Lastly, I wouldn't get too hung up on the iOS only contest criteria. I suspect its a minimum requirement. If you make a version that will also be sellable on the Android market, the judges will see extra $$$. And it appears as though they already see that money enough to drop 100K.

I grow tired of developers crying that the Android landscape is too vast for them to support. This diversity is not unlike PCs over the last 20-30 years. IBM compatibles could have any combination of memory, graphics & sound cards, with either a mouse/joystick or just a keyboard. Back in the 8-bit days, sure most of the machines were either 6502s or Z80s, but the per machine specs (Atari, Commodore, NES, Apple, Spectrum, etc) varied greatly and the developer had nothing like abstraction layers/libraries like OpenGL, Coco, or a VM. Particularly in the 8-bit days, individual or small team indie developers flourished.

What the developers didn't have what we do today is the Internet and massive online outlets like Android Marketplace and the App Store. Meaning, the real advantage of both platforms are the same--massive publicity.

So, let whatever developer who wants to cater to a single audience do so while the truly passionate and skilled developers reap the benefit of targeting nearly every platform simultaneously. There are good ways of tackling the bear of supporting multiple hardware, but it involves practices that, although proven to be effective, are seemingly undesirable to coders with too much pride.

Yes. I agree with this notion. Even a note evoked from a piano has a micro-level set of patterns. It not only would take a mathematician to create this music, but it would also require a computer and a software engineer to create pattern-free waveforms. Then I figure it would break the definition of music altogether--it wouldn't be ugly music; it'd be noise.

It's pretty common these days for companies to outwardly claim they do not subject their customers to automated phone tech support, because most people despise dealing with it. Suddenly, Apple 'invents' voice recognition and we are supposed to think it's cool now.

The truth is voice recognition is cool and it is the future, but it's not the end all be all--not any more than automated doors or toilets. There are plenty of situations where voice recognition can't be used because you either need to be really quiet or silent or there is simply too much sound around you. Not every door or window or light or appliance is automated (although they could be) these days because there are inherent risks and human-error related downsides to having everything automated. Voice recognition is handy, but it won't be used to even do a small majority of our computing.