Project for Kids

This kid looks less than pleased (skip to 2:37). The goal of  Swarm-bots is to show how many small robots can work together to achieve a larger task (such as dragging a little girl's body across the floor): "The goal of this project is the study of a novel design approach to ...more

Take a tour of the ISS (International Space Station), just posted on YouTube this week. The ISS is an international project, including the five participant space stations: American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA), th ...more

Welcome to another Community Byte announcement! In the past two sessions, we have coded an IRC bot in Python capable of issuing commands. Since it can issue commands and most of you are new to programming, that project will stay idle for a while. Other commands such as voice a ...more

To most gamers, video games are largely devoid of place. In the post-arcade era, the only real world locations most associate with video games are GameStop and the couch. But there's so much more to them than that! Games have been around for more than half a century and have ...more

The Australian government has a dysfunctional history with video games. Any regular Yahtzee Croshaw follower can attest to that. The Parliament has established a series of unfortuante regulations that make games both highly taxed and overregulated in price. Bringing any goods ...more

Localizing a game is a task many do not fully understand. Not only do localizers have to translate the games they work on into a different language, but they have to translate it into a different culture as well. Oftentimes art assets, plot elements, and menu systems are chang ...more

Back in the '80s, I was just a kid with a LEGO hobby. I remember building castles and floating boats, spaceships and monster trucks, even a working LEGO train powered by battery, lights and all. But I wasn't aware of the advancements underway in the educational department—lik ...more

Paper is something we use everyday. Whenever we think about paper, mostly nothing comes to our minds more than reading and writing on paper! However, that's not all. There are lots of things that may come out of papers. Hundreds of ideas and uses that paper can MAGICALLY provi ...more

As a kid, my favorite thing to do at the Natural History museum was a midday stop, when my family strolled past an antiquated looking vending machine in the museum's musty basement. The Mold-A-Rama machine was oddly shaped, George Jetson-esque, and spewed out made-to-order, br ...more

When children's book author Aaron Zenz took his family to see the highly acclaimed Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, his 10-year-old daughter Gracie was immediately inspired to become a street artist. Aaron quickly explained that "while the art was fun and the st ...more

The Lost Thing is a lovely short written by Shaun Tan and co-directed by Tan and Andrew Ruhemann (executive producer of the fantastic doc My Kid Could Paint That). Based on the award-winning children’s book of the same title (also by Tan), the piece was created over a span of ...more

Here's a fun little hack you can try at home with your kids. The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you how to make this fun toy gun. It's a very simple and economical project. Tools and Materials: You will need the following: 1 glue gun (you can purchase these at your loc ...more

Elvis died a painful death in 1977. But his spirit lives on in the oddest of places. Paul Richie is hell bent on breaking the Guinness Book of World Records "for the most Elvis impersonators in one location (currently standing at 147) by training children up to a minimum stan ...more

It's been almost a century since we've last seen Kid Icarus start in his own game! The result of Project Sora, Kid Icarus will be released for the Nintendo 3DS! The 3DS was unveiled at the conference: Analog Stick Sensors Graphic update 3D Slider (decide how much 3D you want ...more

Three Haitian brothers, with no training of any kind, have constructed a working, flying helicopter. Total cost? 45,000 Haitian dollars, which comes out to approximately 1100 American bucks. Their chopper is the first helicopter to every be produced in Haiti. Inside Disaster ...more

Last week, I started a weekly feature on Scrabble World called Scrabble Challenge, where you can solve a few (hopefully) challenging word puzzles. Normally, these will be on Fridays, but today I have a potentially unsolvable puzzle for you to try and solve, in addition to the ...more

University video game design programs have been spreading like wildfire around the world over the last ten years. They allow students, researchers and game developers to work on their craft in an academic environment away from the harsh realities of the market, and have led to ...more

Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago ...more

(Difficulty Level: from Newby to Expert) Digital cameras can produce freaky sharp images—it’s one thing that sets them apart from film cameras. A DSLR doesn’t have grain, it has noise—and that sounds a lot less charming for a reason. If you shoot at a low ISO, high f-stop and ...more

Welcome to the Google+ Insider's Guide to all things Google+. We're dedicated to keeping you updated with all the latest news, tips and tricks on Google+, and this official index will serve as a one-stop catalog of all our How-To articles, as well as all the news & updates we' ...more

If you're like me, you were always jealous of the kids with rich parents who got to ride around in their own Power Wheels cars. Now that I am tall enough to sell my body and time, I find myself attaining childhood dreams like buying my own Power Wheels car. I would not have ch ...more

Everyone dreams of having super powers. Flying, invisibility, and x-ray vision are popular, but my favorite is fire power! I've always wanted to be Wheeler from the Captain Planet kids show, and now I can with these handheld fireballs of awesomeness. The fireballs burn at a lo ...more

Introduction I will not go into some time-waster of a story about how I came to build this app. It was a prerequisite in a bigger project I am still tinkering with from time to time. What are QR Codes? No doubt you have seen these all over the place in recent years. Origina ...more

If you haven't had a pile of pipe and fittings to play with before, it's hard to see what is so cool about a plain, plastic pipe. All it does in the house is carry the poop away. Really, who cares? It's hard to even decide where to begin here. The first chance I personally ha ...more

Video games are one of the best non-medical things that have ever happened to sick children. They are stimulating, entertaining and require very little physical strength to play, which makes them perfect for those suffering physical maladies. In 2003, the ambitious and creati ...more

Halloween just isn't Halloween without Jack O'Lanterns. Below, anything and everything you need to know on the art of pumpkin carving. 1. Prepare a Pumpkin for Carving Serious Eats' video demonstration is for true novices: "This video is for you unlucky souls who never got t ...more

Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our tutorials, post to the community corkboard, and come play on our free server! Functioning bathrooms seem like a stretch in Minecraft, but with redstone, they're not that far out of reach! This past workshop focused on creating a fully ...more

A century ago there wasn't much life available for quadriplegic people. Handicap accessibility was barely even a concept, and lacking medical technology kept any semblance of independence out of reach. Today those unfortunate enough to be paralyzed from the neck down have brig ...more

Leave it to to channel lust into a dance hit all about f-ing. The Spanish singer just has this impossible-to-pinpoint, irresistible charm that excuses his chauvinistic qualities and makes him radio gold.But at least he knows he's a pig, and this is the second song where he imp ...more

What happened to please and thank you? When did asking someone to come look at your build degenerate into COME NOW or FOLLOW or sending out teleport requests to any and all currently on the server without asking? Phillip Chan, a yahoo network contributor wrote this back in 20 ...more

A game labeled as 'educational' usually spells its death among hardcore gamers. The educational game genre is mostly intended for children, and games that appeal to children often lack the sort of widespread appeal that makes them commercially successful. Many people play gam ...more

Hi there Dolls, I just got done putting the children to bed for the night. Fed the husband, made a little love, and took a bubble bath! I lathered up my body with a Gardenia lotion and have thrown on my amazing silk robe. I smell and feel wonderful as I sip on my Cantaloupe ...more