drrngrvy - Slashdot User

Re-Inventing Hotwheels 216

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday July 17, 2006 @09:32PM from the fun-bits-of-plastic dept.

garzpacho writes "BusinessWeek has an interview with Gary Swisher, Mattel's Vice-President of Wheel Design, who talks about the challenges of designing new toys for today's tech-savvy kids. In addition to discussing 'the challenge of stewarding an old-school brand like HotWheels in our tech-driven age, the emerging technologies that will affect the toy industry, and Mattel's Web strategy,' he also talks about the effect that video games have had on toy design, and argues that exciting the imagination is the most important role that a toy can fill."

Comment Re:Neither new nor useful (Score 1) 186

by drrngrvy on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:49AM (#15690679) Attached to: New(?) Anti-Fraud DNS service

I think the typo-fixing only refers to the top-level domain, not anything else. I'm guessing that's the only way they can avoid blocking valid sites. See how the examples on the site don't imply any intelligent typo-fixing? So, slashdo.torg would probably just be redirected to slashdo.org (and maybe you'll even be lucky enough to get some FREE advertising out of it?!)

Head Rush Ajax 122

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 03, 2006 @02:10PM from the dizzy-programming dept.

barryhawkins writes " Programmers are flooded with choices about which technologies to pursue in order to maintain a marketable skillset. Even in a particular area of programming like web applications, one must choose carefully where to invest time. Ajax, to the regret of some and delight of others, has emerged as a means of providing rich, responsive web applications that are highly cross-platform. However, when arriving home after a 10-hour day at the office programming, who has the energy to plow through yet another new facet of emerging technology? If a developer is going to invest their free time in self-driven career development, should it not be at least remotely enjoyable? Judging from the content of O'Reilly's new release Head Rush Ajax, their answer is yes." Read the rest of Barry's review.

Spirit Rover Reaches Safety 147

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 10, 2006 @05:28PM from the go-little-buddy-go dept.

dylanduck writes "Good news for rover fans - Spirit is safe for the winter. It had been heading for a north-tilting spot to make sure its solar panels got enough sunlight during the imminent winter to survive, when a sand trap appeared. But, despite its busted wheel, it scooted round and is now sitting pretty. From the article: 'We've got a safe rover,' says principal investigator Steve Squyres. 'That's huge news for us.'"

Guitar Hero Hacks 42

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 10, 2006 @03:47PM from the really-extreme-programming dept.

Edge Online has a short blurb mentioning a project at the University of California turning the Guitar Hero guitar into a real instrument. From the article: "For the final project of their Computer Audio course, University of California students Travis Chen and Sunny Chan have created Guitar Hero Hack, a plugin for sequencing software Max/MSP that lets players assign switchable banks of samples to each of the controller's buttons, utilizes its tilt switch as a way to clear current audio on any given track, and, the two hope, might be on its way to a fully functioning live instrument." His incredibly impressive demo video is well worth watching.

The .EU Landrush Fiasco 259

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 10, 2006 @02:05PM from the yeehaw dept.

googleking writes "Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com, has blogged about the .EU landrush fiasco. During the landrush phase for names which opened last Friday, established 'big name' registrars got exactly equal chances of registering names as did anyone who chose to bill themselves as a registrar. Bob asserts that hundreds of these new 'registrars' are actually fake fronts for a big name US company." From the article: "Here's how it works: All the accredited registrars line up and each registrar gets to make one request for a .EU domain name. If the name is available, the registrar gets the name for its customer. If the name is not available, the registrar gets nothing. Either way, after making the request, the registrar goes to the back of the line and won't get to make another request, until all the registrars in the line in front of it make their requests. This continues until all requests have been made and the landrush process is over ... The landrush process on the surface seems very fair. But there was something wrong with the process -- very wrong."

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