Marksman Training Systems' £30,000 ST-2 is touted as the first simulator for demanding shooters needing an off-field training system. Putting aside the cheesy appearance (Mad Dog McCree jokes that write themselves are forbidden forthwith from the comments) the sim incorporates a complete ballistics model, allows you to use any gun thanks to patented tracking technology, and gives detailed feedback on exactly how you managed to miss a 700lb Kodiak Bear at 8 feet with a ...

Ian Bogost has an interesting essay up on Gamasutra, this one on the performative aspects of video games. The beloved word of anthropologists and linguists the world over, the concept of something being 'performative' is when something has the ability to do something itself when it is thrown out in the big bad world. So, what does this have to do with games?: Video games often face a challenge: what does playing a game do ...

MySpace was the first of the Big Three to announce tools for third party sites to integrate MySpace user data into their services (called, collectively, Data Availability). A day later Facebook announced Facebook Connect, then came Google Friend Connect three days after that. Today MySpace is fully launching Data Availability (look for it this afternoon at developer.myspace...), and any third party developer can now build applications using their APIs. Google’s product remains in a test ...

Ian Rogers, the former GM of Yahoo Music, has finally taken music startup TopSpin Media out of stealth mode. The new company will offer a marketing software platform for music artists to maximize their fanbase and brand exposure. Rogers, who was the GM of Yahoo Music until April 2008, is one of the few beacons of common sense in a digital music industry seemingly intent on shoving bad products down consumers’ throats. In October 2007 ...

Have just finished two food books back to back, something I don't normally do--I spending most of my days currently writing about food so I like to read away from it. But these two I did truly enjoy. Julian Barnes, The Pedant in the Kitchen, is a collection of short essays about his forays in the kitchen with his nose in a cookbook. His kitchen disasters can come off a little whiny (I am sure ...

EA has launched Sims Carnival, a collection of Flash-based games that can be played, modified, and shared with friends. Users are free to play pre-designed games, or to create their own. To celebrate the launch, Sims Carnival has also opened a “Galactic Game Challenge” that will award the best designer a cash prize. The site offers a number of options that allow users to build their own games using tools that require no programming experience. ...

I’ll just go ahead and put this out there for those of you that many not know–I’m a SIMS junkie. So I’m pretty excited about the Sims Carnival launch. I play SIMS 2 every chance I get, which typically amounts to about 15 minutes per week, but that’s beside the point. EA Games has been doing a lot with SIMS (and even some of those other games it makes, too) in order to retain as ...

3 year old seed fund Y Combinator has funded over 80 companies and seen a handful through to Series A round funding or successful exits. Given the amount of money that Y Combinator invests in each startup (in the order of $10-20k), it would be hard to classify their oft emulated model anything but a success. Though many of Y Combinator's alumni have blogged about their experiences, what it's like to be one of the ...

“It’s certainly not as steep a trend as my iPhone’s devaluation, but it’s significant. In the year since I bought my first iPhone, AAPL has gained roughly 50% in value. If I’d spent that original US$599 on Apple stock instead, I’d be able to buy a new iPhone 3G and have about US$599 in assets to my name. Oh well.ll.” Investing Strategies for iPhone Customers)

Homer (not the slouch of Springfield heralding the end of Western civilization, but the blind, semi-mythical poet at the dawn of Greek history) was seen by Strabo and the Stoics as the father of geography. His overarching geographic concept was of the world as a flat, round disk of land, completely encircled by Okeanos, the world sea. All this was enclosed by the fixed dome of the Heavens, filled with cloud and mist close to ...

Social media is all about sharing, and the latest release from Add to Any, the bookmarking and sharing widget, makes it that much easier for users to share content across their favorite websites. Called Smart Menus, this Add to Any upgrade automatically adjusts to individual users, placing the most used services first in the expandable Add to Any widget. For example, if you often share web content on Digg, Facebook, Netvibes and iGoogle, these four ...

The recommendation engine Strands has released a new “Plug-and Play” product recommendation service that will allow online retailers to generate Amazon-like recommendations. eCommerce providers can implement the service through either the site’s API or with a widget plug-in, and Strands says that setup should take as little as 30 minutes. Earlier this month Strands launched its flagship site, Strands.com, which sets out to “help people discover new stuff”. The new plugin aims to do the ...

For Barack Obama, the wisdom of crowds carried risks, but ultimately rewards.

As print circulation continues its slide at most newspapers, one of the United States' most respected newspapers, the New York Times, is taking steps to boost online readership. The paper is already the third most cited web site on Techmeme, and the first on Memeorandum, proving that bloggers at least pay attention to its reporting. Now, the Grey Lady is working on an API that aims to make the entire newspaper "programmable." In addition to ...

Amar Sagoo has posted a fantastic summary of 1997's Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction... specifically its sections on optimal keyboard design. Sagoo supplements this with many of his own observations. It's a fascinating dissection of the qualities that contribute to the perfect keyboard, jettisoning vague complaints about keyboard "smooshiness" in favor of highly objective haptic terminology like "clickiness:' One of the most-cited criteria for keyboard aficionados to prefer a certain keyboard over another is “clickiness”. The ...

The new GZ-MS100 is a 35x optical zoom camcorder with built-in software to limit and convert 10 minute videos for easy upload to YouTube. Sadly, this new Everio doesn’t have a Wi-Fi feature, which could have made things considerably easier for the n00bs. It weighs .6 pounds and records to an SD card — not included — and costs $349.99. It will be available next month. CamCorderInfo has a hands-on and we should have one ...

We've shown you lots of weird and wonderful gizmos that DIY electronics fans have made using the powerful Arduino board, and now there's a new option: the Nano. It's not very much bigger than a stick of gum, and comes with full USB support and almost the same functionality as the bigger Diecimila board: immediately I start to think of the potential uses that makers will put this to. Its diminutive size means it'll fit ...

Recently we discussed some of the problems plaguing mobile social networks. These problems include location, marketing strategies and compatibility issues. Our readers also contributed their thoughts on hardware compatibility and GPS. While no network is perfect, in this post we profile some of the key players in the market. Here's a look at four mobile social networks that may have what it takes. Brightkite We've already profile Brightkite as a winning mobile social network in ...

The Pirate Bay is the second BitTorrent site that has managed to get a spot among the 100 most visited (97) domains on the Internet. The BitTorrent tracker has good company in this prestigious list, as it brushes shoulders with sites such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia. Of all BitTorrent sites, Mininova is currently in the lead, ranked 52thnd according to Alexa’s new and improved statistics. The Piratebay comes second, before isoHunt, Torrentz.com ...