Children create their own games and learn more skills Tech to Pixel Academy

Heard in the metro, the mother speaking with her eight-year-old daughter: "and what do you have at school today? "Uh, we wrote a song... told stories... and then we learned about Javascript and explored design app iOS." Repeat? Not what you were expecting to hear? OK, so this little girl could be attending an institution focused on technology in some future, near or... it could very well be a student at the Academy of Pixel.

Pixel Academy is a school where the teenagers and children learn more about digital media and programming. Students take specific courses and participate in workshops on topics they want to learn more about. The concept is to equip young people in the 21st century skills and demonstrate technologies that can trigger their imaginations but currently absent from more traditional classrooms.

Game video design3d printing3d scanningKinect hackingDigital embroideryArduinoElectronicsAdobe suiteWeb designAutocadHTML5CSSOSXMovie makingVideo compositingSpecial effectsComputer animationStop photographyGarage band motion3d creative

We know all that the children have an easier time to master the technology. It makes sense to give their support and the freedom to learn and play at any age. Pixel Academy provides a creative space and guidance that they cannot find elsewhere.

Member students, ages 8-18, can attend each time schedules of allow - after school for example, or on the weekend - and a decline in some workshops, they would like to one day given. Not only this flexibility, not to mention the laboratory - like atmosphere, to help put some cool back to school, but focus on the design and programming of literacy will no doubt students well be used in all future initiatives.

Startup entrepreneurs frequently notice that if they could just put technology in the hands of children, creativity would explode. Pixel Academy races to the difficulties of providing the latest equipment and software in the school system wide (not counting adjustments of training and curriculum of the teachers) and gives students an innovative learning environment.

Mike Fischthal used to design games for Nickelodeon. The enthusiasm and creativity of the children, he taught at the camp, the quest for the summer of Galileo, has encouraged to start to give private lessons to New York. Overwhelming demand led to recruit more teachers and put his energy full-time in the Academy of pixels more and more.

So far, classes were held in various places, such as museums, libraries and living rooms. This makes it more difficult for parents to find and difficult to carry expensive gadgets. Fischthal turned the fundable crowdfunding platform to raise funds to establish a permanent residence. Look closely at the Academy in action and see what that mean a more stable home for children by watching the video below:

Pixel Academy

Keith Liles is a freelance writer who loves travel, music, wine, hiking, poetry and little else. He trains to say 'yes' to life, rehearsing for the phone call when he was invited to tour with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

View the original article here

Olympic Games coverage: HD and 3D

IP is over the quota
IP is over the quota
17 July 2012 Last updated at 01:58 By Paul Rubens Technology reporter The BBC is the official broadcaster of the London 2012 Olympic Games in the UK Somewhere beneath the streets of London, four miles of fibre optic cables linking the Olympic Park to the BBC's Television Centre lie in darkness.

But when the Olympic opening ceremony starts on 27 July, data will flash through them as they transmit the highest definition pictures Olympic coverage has ever seen.

Technology has come a long way since the last Olympics in London in 1948, broadcast in black and white.

The cables will carry ultra-high definition video, which at a resolution of 7680x4320 is an astonishing 16 times the quality of HD television.

The video technology was developed and supplied by Japanese broadcaster NHK, and is known as Super Hi-Vision.

It will be sent to the world's first ultra-high definition production centre at the BBC, and then over high-speed data networks to four giant screens around Britain, two in Japan and one in the United States.

"When you see this type of ultra-high definition television, it's just like looking though a glass window," said Tim Plyming, the BBC's Super Hi-Vision project leader.

"This is the highest definition that the human eye can understand - it's the end of the story in terms of resolution."

Going 3D

But with only a handful of screens around the world capable of displaying ultra-high definition pictures, an estimated 4.8 billion sports fans will be turning to their televisions, computers, or mobile devices to catch the Olympic action.

London 2012 will be the first Olympics to feature live 3D television broadcasts, and 33 "true 3D" cameras will be used to capture more than 230 hours of 3D coverage.

Continue reading the main story

For moments involving British athletes, or major games moments, we have planned for a doubling of streaming capacity over the highest we have ever needed before”

End Quote Phil Fearnley BBC Future Media The BBC will broadcast the opening and closing ceremonies and the men's 100m final in 3D, and pan-European broadcaster Eurosport will also be providing 3D coverage.

The BBC will broadcast more than 2,500 hours (equivalent to almost four months) of high definition television over the 17-day period, covering every sport, from every venue, on every day.

To squeeze it all in, the corporation will use 24 Olympic channels, which will be available via the BBC Red Button or channel numbers in the electronic programme guides on cable and satellite services.

The same 24 television channels will also be available as 24 high definition online streams, tailored for viewing on connected TVs, PCs, tablets and mobile phones, and the BBC expects online viewing figures will be the highest ever.

Super Hi-Vision video equipment was developed and supplied by Japanese broadcaster NHK

"For moments involving British athletes, or major games moments, we have planned for a doubling of streaming capacity over the highest we have ever needed before," says Phil Fearnley, BBC Future Media's general manager.

The BBC has recently introduced a new video delivery technology called "chunked streaming " which makes it possible for a viewer joining halfway through an event to "rewind" the stream back to the start.

This technology will feature in the BBC's new Live Interactive Video Player, which is being introduced specially for the Olympics on its website.

It allows visitors to switch between the 24 live streams instantly, rewind to earlier parts of the action, receive alerts about big moments on other channels ("Tom Daley is diving now!"), and access real-time statistics and information about individual athletes or events.

"This is a knockout piece of technology," says Mr Fearnley.

Continue reading the main story Brings live HD video coverage to the desktopEnables audiences to switch between 24 simultaneous live streams effortlesslyGives the option to rewind live coverage, for audiences who missed the start of the actionProvides chapter markers, enabling simple navigation to those key moments within a session (e.g. the gold medal winning dive)Offers relevant live data, statistics and information, while viewers are watching, in a seamless and unobtrusive wayMobile experience For mobile users, a mobile site will mirror much of the desktop experience, adapted to the size of their device's screen.

Apple and Android users will also be able to access the 24 live video streams and highlights.

BBC Olympics apps for Apple and Android smartphones will include all the features available on the mobile browser site, plus the ability to read content even when disconnected from the internet.

There is also a BBC Sport app for Virgin Media's TiVo service, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung internet-connected televisions and Sony's PlayStation games console, which allows viewers to watch online streams, on demand highlights and news headlines on their TVs.

Around the globe

The BBC's streams are only available in the United Kingdom, but viewers elsewhere in the world will be turning to other sources of online coverage.

Getty Images, the official photo agency of London 2012, expects to shoot more than one million pictures during the Games

In the US, NBC will be adding to its broadcast and cable television coverage with streamed content delivered using technology provided by YouTube, and the International Olympic Committee plans to provide a live stream to sports fans in 64 countries across Africa and Asia using its own dedicated YouTube channel.

No Olympics would be complete without photographic imagery - and Getty Images, the official photographic agency, expects to shoot more than one million pictures during the games.

Continue reading the main story

From the moment an athlete crosses a finishing line, a photograph will arrive at a newspaper as far away as Australia in about 180 seconds”

End Quote Ken Mainardis Getty Images These will include 3D images - an Olympic first - and high resolution 360 degree panoramic photographs.

Some of London's Olympic venues, including Wembley and Excel, do not provide photographers with ideal vantage points, according to Getty Images' Ken Mainardis.

To get around this problem, Getty is pioneering the use of robotic cameras installed in the roofs of these buildings.

Photographers up to 200m away can see each camera's view on a laptop screen, adjust the camera settings using software running on a laptop, and move the camera and take photographs using a joystick.

Back in 1948, it took hours just to get photographs developed, but Mr Mainardis says fibre optic networks allow the best Olympic pictures to be made available across the globe in minutes.

"From the moment an athlete crosses a finishing line, a photograph will arrive at a newspaper as far away as Australia in about 180 seconds," he says.

View the original article here

Best in Blogs: Hunger Games Feeding Frenzy and Mad Men Mania

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Let the games begin! "The Hunger Games" movie opens this week on the heels of its novelization in a bestselling Young Adult book trilogy. "March felt SO far away," says fan site The Hunger Games Blog. "But guess what?! It's here! The Hunger Games will premiere on silver screens nearly everywhere this weekend!!" THR reported that by this Wednesday the movie "already had whipped up north of $15 million in ticket sales and cracked Fandango's all-time top five presellers, overtaking The Twilight Saga: Eclipseand Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1." Says fansite Mockingjay.net: "I can't wait to see the numbers next week! I've done my part for sure, since I'm going to the midnight premiere with my brother tonight and to an IMAX showing on Saturday!" (Gee, hope you like it!). But will The Hunger Games be even better than Twilight? "Given that The Hunger Games does not feature a spineless doormat in love with a controlling, condescending stalker, yes, I can almost guarantee that," says E! Live from the Red Carpet.

Ok, now breathe. Gawker asks a key question: "Seriously, What Are The Hunger Games and Why Should I Care if I'm Not 14?" They proceed to explain what it's all about in a detailed summary of the book, plus a glossary. Business Insider (which is always our go-to source for insight into 14-year-old girls) spills "10 things you need to know" about The Hunger Games story.

Apparently the whole thing involves much killing of kids, and making them fight each other and grovel for food. Penn Badgley, a celebrity of some kind who attended the L.A. premiere this week, likened The Hunger Games to Occupy Wall Street: "It's the one percent [killing the kids]," he told Vulture at the premiere after-party. "I think you'd have to be blind to not see that. I was shocked to see all that in there." (Can't we just leave anti-Wall Street sentiments to The Muppets and The Lorax?). There also have been comparisons to that Kony 2012 video about abuses of children in Udanga that recently went viral. Says NPR's Monkey See blog: "It's a coincidence that highlights the single truth at the heart of both nightmares: Children who live in poverty are easy prey." A campaign called "Hunger is Not a Game" is piggybacking on the popularity of the book and movie to spread the world about global hunger. Says the Imagine Better site: "In the world of the Hunger Games series, everything is controlled by the Capitol, which uses power and money to punish the districts...Katniss, Gale and the citizens of District 12 are forced to break the law to keep from starving, to maintain an informal and illegal market so that they can eat. Sound familiar?"

In what is probably a bad juxtaposition here, the fitness website Daily Burn came up with a Hunger Games diet, "so you can simultaneously slim down and gain the strength to 'be an archer like Katniss or a powerhouse like Cato.'," explains The Hollywood Blog.  And just in time for Spring there is this too: "Whether you're a bride-to-be, a maid of honor, or just a party planner, we've come up with some creative and fun ways to incorporate The Hunger Games in your wedding celebrations," says Tres Sugar. "The book series may be dark, but it is filled with romance."

Meanwhile, in the real world, Mad Men is coming back to TV for its fifth season, and if you haven't been inoculated against the nostalgia virus, get ready to become infected. Banana Republic introduced a Mad Men-inspired clothing line -- in a fashion show on a jet airplane! Says PSFK: "The items included cigarette pants and floral fitted dresses for women, and colorful polos and classic navy blazers for men." Estee Lauder is offering a Mad Men cosmetics line, "inspired by the bold lips, the rouge cheeks, and the general 1950s feminine put-together-ness that the show's leading ladies pull off so swell," says Allure's Daily Beauty Reporter blog. Bourbon Blog serves up a recipe for a Mad Men inspired cocktail. Not surprisingly, it's named the Old Fashioned. Newsweek is getting in on the old-school vibe by continuing to publish itself just like in the olden days, when $1 would get you a nice sandwich, not the the entire Newsweek publishing operation. No, actually, Newsweek is getting its vintage duds on by publishing its latest issue with a retro style cover featuring the Mad Men cast and ads inside designed to look like 1960s-era classics. Says AdFreak: "Some are original from the period, while others reimagine modern-day campaigns as they might have looked in the '60s." FastCoCreate has the complete portfolio of ads here.

View the original article here