Tiny Superheroes Don Capes and Do Good

Looks like we have some SuperSidekicks 2.0 in training! Feels like a lot of overlap between SuperGrover 2.0 and our target audience. Plus it's completely adorable. - j


"Super Cooper cannot sling webs. He does not pilot an invisible airplane, communicate telepathically with sea creatures or leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Super Cooper does possess a guileless enthusiasm, a proper red superhero's cape and an open-book approach to reporters not usually found in men of steel.

He readily told AOL News about his latest act of derring-do-good.

"We saw someone next door and we said hi. And we gave him flowers. And we tell him he could come to our school."

AOL News managed to extract the name of Super Cooper's favorite fellow caped crusader, Eliza, before Super Cooper handed the phone to his preschool teacher and returned to his toys.

Cooper Spataro, 3, and his classmates at Missoula Community School in Missoula, Mont., are "superheroes of kindness," performing weekly acts of good will that include cleaning school windows and delivering paper flowers to residents of an assisted living community.

...

"I was intrigued," Burns said. "We were talking about how wonderful it would be to teach the kids to do that. At the same time, we love superheroes and we want to be superheroes, but superheroes often hit and punch. Why don't we be superheroes of kindness?"

Check out the rest of the story

Gestures That Your TV Will Understand

via technology review:

"Thanks to Microsoft's Kinect, millions are casting aside their controllers and using their bodies to play games. Now the company that created the motion-tracking hardware for the Kinect wants to make waving your arms an accepted way to control everything from your TV to your desktop computer."


http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/27120/?p1=A1

Angry, badly written game review reinterpreted with animation and dramatic reading

via Boing Boing

'Here's an animated dramatic reading of "Axman13"'s angry, illiterate review of an RPG called Super PSTW. The reader really brings it to life.'

Sesame Street Science: Learn from Cookie Monster

via Wired:


esame Street have created a great little YouTube project which sees Cookie Monster and his friend Emma producing interactive science experiment games through YouTube. In this experiment called “Sink or Float?” viewers are asked to choose the items they think will sink or float in water.

It comes complete with what you’d expect from the producers of fine educational media – witty, engaging and full of great learning moments. If your kids are between 4 -8 years, show them this today!

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/sesame-street-science-learn-from-cookie-monster/

In the Bio-Arcade, Microorganisms Change Gameplay

Via FastCompany: http://www.fastcompany.com/1716831/the-bio-arcade-biotic-games-use-microorganisms-in-gameplay

 

"Forget Pac-Man--here's "PAC-Mecium." A Stanford researcher has designed what he's calling "biotic games." Instead of controlling pixels on a screen, you're controlling a paramecium."

 

 

HTML 5 Shooting / Typing game

Simple but addictive!
http://www.phoboslab.org/ztype/

Thunderstorms Create Antimatter

Via NASA

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms can emit gamma-ray flashes, called TGFs, and high-energy electrons and positrons. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Chinese Site Posts 61 Images of 'PlayStation Phone'

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375453,00.asp

"Sony has never acknowledged the existence of a PlayStation Phone, even though sites have been reporting leaked photos and videos of the device for months. Now a Web site in China claims to have new pictures—61 of them spread over 12 pages—of the mythical device."

What's new in 2011?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppets_%28film%29