April Fool’s Pranks and Carrying Capacity

One of the goals in my Inform game is to right an April Fool’s day prank by switching salt which is in a sugar shaker and sugar which is in a salt shaker into their respective containers. I planned on doing this by giving the player a container called “Bowl”. When the condiments were put in their proper places the player receives a message of gratitude.  However, I ran into a problem when I realized that the player could simply pour the sugar into the sugar shaker already filled with salt (and vice versa) and receive the same positive message. I did some brainstorming and then, Light bulb! I realized that if I alter the player’s and the container’s carrying capacity they would be forced to complete the task properly.

The code goes as follows:

The Breakroom is west of the Men’s bathroom.

The table is a supporter in the breakroom.

The saltshaker is on the table.
The saltshaker is an openable container.
The saltshaker contains sugar.
After examining saltshaker:
Say “The salt shaker stands ever unassumingly at the edge of the table. Oh, wait, its lid seems to be amiss.”
After closing the saltshaker:
Say “Hmm, that’s better.”

The sugarshaker is on the table.
The sugarshaker is an openable container.
The sugarshaker contains salt.
After examining the sugarshaker:
Say “The lid seems to be loose here as well, odd.”

The bowl is a container on the table.
After inserting the salt into the bowl:
Say “Ah, I see where this is going.”

The bowl is a container on the table.
After inserting the sugar into the bowl:
Say “Ah, I see where this is going.”

Instead of inserting sugar into the sugarshaker:
Say “Well played!”

After inserting salt into the saltshaker:
Say ” Karma will thank you, I’m certain.”

The carrying capacity of the player is 1.
The carrying capacity of sugarshaker is 1.
The carrying capacity of saltshaker is 1.
The carrying capacity of bowl is 1.

Now I just have to get Inform to recognize sugar and sugar shaker as separate entities.

Hunch

Caterina Fake, Co-founder of the popular photo sharing site, Flickr, is launching a new site called Hunch. The site hopes to help with decision making using decision trees in an expert system. Hunch also relies on personality assesments from users and user content.

One of the most exciting aspects of the site as pointed out by Fake :

“There is, of course, an API, which will launch with the full site, so you can, say, write a program that figures out how special you are, or a Facebook Nemesis finder.”

User fueled:

“You can create topics — which are the “Super Questions” — edit topics, add questions, edit questions, add results, edit results — the bulk of the decision asking apparatus is user-changeable.”

I signed up for a Beta test invite and will follow up when I get a chance to test the site out.

The Mimi Switch

The Mimi switch is a new technology that uses an infrared sensor via headphones that sense inner ear movements in causation of various facial movements. The sensor reacts according to a set of programmed rules based on what facial movement has occured. The main example given by its inventor, thus far,  has been to control the play and pause functions of a music player when the user sticks out their tongue or blinks. However, the technology can be applied to switch on or off any compatible gadget and even measure how often its user is smiling or frowning to change to a happier or more melancholy song accordingly.

The invention and its uses are similar to the recent Okao Catch technology that measures how often a person is smiling. The system then gauges how big their smile is based on a number score (People not smiling get a zero and so on.) The Okao Catch system is hoped to be used to help androids decipher the mental wellbeing of medical patients.

3D(igital) Everywhere

Recently, when Dreamworks released its 3D trailer for Monsters VS Aliens on national television the US got a taste of what Europe may be enjoying full time by the end of this year via Sky TV. The TV boadcaster went on to add that the 2012 Olympics may very well be broadcast in 3D, as well.

In addition, yesterday,  Topps launched their line of 3D trading cards with players that come to life when the cards are placed in front of any webcam.  This all comes as Samsung, LG , Panasonic and many other leading companies promise 3D output devices of all kinds this year.

Galaxy Zoo: Crowdsourcing

Galaxy Zoo is a fascinating online project that is a mix of social media, citizen science and space exploration. The project’s goal is to document and classify Galaxies. People are an integral part of the project because computers are  inaccurate in identifying subtle differences  in galaxies and pattern recognition. The project’s website teaches basic Galaxy identification skills and then sends its users off into the great beyond to view and document previously taken images of space via robotic telescope.

In August 2007 the project announced having 80,000 (Now over 150,000) members that had analyzed and recorded over 10 million images of galaxies. The project has even lead to the discovery of unique space objects such as Hanny’s Voorwerp and has helped in the creation of over seven scientific papers about the collected data.

The project is a great example of a technique called crowdsourcing which is the act of assigning a task to a large group of people or community rather than an employee base to cut costs and achieve quicker results. Crowdsourcing is often powered by web 2.0 technology and contributes and enables a lot of the New Media world to exist.  Crowdsourcing can be observed in several popular web-based companies and organizations such as Threadless, Wikipedia, 99designs and Zeros to Heroes Media.