Geeks making the world a bit better.

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AudioSurf

Jonah sent a pointer to AudioSurf, a new game that lets you “ride your music”.

Audiosurf is a music-adapting puzzle racer where you use your own music to create your own experience. The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose. You earn points for clustering together blocks of the same color on the highway, and compete with others on the internet for the high score on your favorite songs.

It reminds me a bit of our, much simpler, SonicZoom. I think people will really go for the hook of basing the track on the music.

How should an accessible version of this game work?

Tiny PCs as ET appliances

The Koolu Works Everywhere Appliance and the fit-PC could make nice platforms for delivering ET applications as appliances (or toys) rather than scary computer programs.

Other machines in the same category include:

And lots of others.

Swinxs looks interesting for accessible games

Engadget has an article on Swinxs, a new game platform introduced at Toy Fair 2008. Its the size of a small drink cooler and comes with RFID bracelets the kids wear. It apparently has some lights and audio output. The included games encourage running around and include stories as well. The part that intrigues me is the promise of an SDK and the ability to develop and share games. Perhaps we could develop some accessible games for kids with various disabilities.

Raw Input API

Meg pointed out the Raw Input API for Windows. This would allow us to distinguish among multiple mice and keyboards. It might be interesting to use multiple numeric keyboards as specialized input devices, or multiple mice to provide 2 or 3 switches per hand.

PyCV

Minh-Tri Pham wrote with info on his PyCV package. This could be very useful for locating kid’s faces for games and therapy for kids who are motor impaired. His demo works fine on my Ubuntu system.

Using PSP video in school

Steve pointed me to an interesting article about using PlayStation Portables with children who are deaf.

Clever reinterpretation of Super Mario

This video shows a brilliant mechanical implementation of the old NES game Super Mario Brothers. I really enjoy seeing this kind of “out of the box” thinking.

Interactive maps of transport data

I saw Steve’s link to this very interesting work on transportation maps. All I can say is wow, this is great!

Literacy Bridge

Literacy Bridge, a $5 digital audio player and distribution system for electronic books sounds like a great idea.

Get involved in Gnome

Pete sent these links inviting more participation in Gnome accessibility.

http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility/GetInvolved
http://www.mail-archive.com/gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org/msg03017.html