Portent

Now this is quite ingenious. There are some (not me) who believe that RFID represents a grave threat to mankind. These devices are used to simplify the tracking of goods when being transported and on shop shelves.

Unlike a bar code which has to be scanned, an RFID responds to a signal and returns some useful information from a short distance away. No need to look for the code. But some people are concerned that rfid chips are easily hidden and can be used to spy on you. As the site says “Implantable RFID tags for animals allow concerned owners to label their pets and livestock. Verichip Corp. has also created a slightly adapted implantable RFID chip, the size of a grain of rice, for use in humans.”

So this device detects hidden rfid tags and lets you stops them functioning as long as you want by shielding them from being interrogated.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

As you can see, although it looks ok, my first go wasn’t a total success. There are 5 questions, each with three choices so that means a possible 3^5 = 729 different versions. On my second go I got hands up but I’m not saying how until I’ve sold it for a lot of money.

This isn’t too serious- more for bright kids but it is interesting and lovely illustrated. If you really want to design a roller coaster , I suggest you get one of the “Roller Coaster Tycoon” game series. There you can design it to be ultra elaborate of different designs and as extreme or not as you like.

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Given that this occurs on a student humour and pranks website (zug.com), it’s perhaps not meant to be taken too seriously but it certainly looks good.

The idea is that credit cards are boring so why not jazz yours up with a new look. It’s perhaps better to try it first on an expired one (assuming you have one that hasn’t been chopped up for safety). Certainly the examples given look very good, if a trifle NSFW.

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Popularity: 12% [?]

This is a competition with the deadline of November 16th 2007 so you have three weeks. After that the winning team (there must be at least three of you) gets a couple of thousand pounds to complete the design and launch it with the full and not inconsiderable marketing muscle of Cancer Research UK.

Wikipedia as best sums it up. “An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.

The form is typified by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants’ responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game’s designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multiple media (such as telephones, email, and mail) but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.”

As a sometime games designer I’d love to have a go at this but am just a wee bit too busy.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

This has been around for years (hah appropriate!) and lets you select a year then postscript or pdf output, in a variety of languages and regular or rhombic shaped output.

It then generates a calendar kite (shown is one for 2008) which you print, then cut and glue together. You can see what one looks like (if you know 12 sided dice in Dungeons and Dragons then you know what a regular dodecahedron looks like).

It also works for any year so you can use it as a quick way to check what day of the week a given date was on.

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Popularity: 13% [?]

This is a pretty good resource. Every gadget, device, or appliance of anything more than the simplest comes with a manual which inevitably gets put in a drawer or lost. With safemanuals.com (I’m not sure if there are any manuals for safes!!!) you can go online and download the manual you need.

I tried it for my phone-a Nokia N73 and sure enough it’s there along with many other phones. You can access by brand, or by category (Domestic Appliance, Phone, Cell Phone, Digital Camera, TV, Car, Motorcycle, Car Player, DIY, Video Game, Software) and for example under mobile phones there are nearly 90 manufacturers and providers listed.
Highly recommended.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Logos fascinate me- the way that a compact graphic image can project a company’s essence and being. Over time logos get redesigned to reflect changes and not always for the best.

This site looks at 20 logos and gives them praise … or not! Excellent stuff.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

I bought a clock made from watch parts once, when I stayed in the Anjoa hotel in Leeds in 1991. The watch parts were arranged around the actual clock face i.e. decorative not functional. I think it cost me £35. The owner was selling them.

These 16 motorbike models are also made from watch parts. They are just exquisite.

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Popularity: 32% [?]

Once again I’ve combined two screens to give you a better flavour of what the game is about. The left screen is the Bot designer where you buy parts to build your bot- you need a body to start with then add armour plating and various guns. As your cash is limited to start with, so are the choices but as you improve and earn cash you can buy better parts and fight tougher bots.

The right picture is the arena where you fight other bots. As you can see, my bot got beat up by Bonnie and Clyde. I’m constantly amazed by the sophistication of some of these games. Speaking from experience, no one ever appreciates how much programming effort goes into game programming.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

The map shown was generated by Autorealm, a piece of open source software (for Windows). It is currently being rewritten to use a cross platform windowing library called WxWidgets so will eventually run on Mac and Linux.

It’s a credible piece of software, only a few MBs download and installation is very easy. There are a number of examples and it’s very easy to use. So if you’re a fantasy author needing to draw maps or a role playing game designer doing dungeons etc, or even just a game designer this is excellent. It even generates names.

To give you some idea of the power- consider the humble grids- ie the type of paper you would have drawn this on. There are Square grids, Hexagonal grids, Triangular grids, Diamond grids, Polar grids, Rotated Hex grids, Half-Diamond grids or none. The grids can be of any colour or size and are fully scalable and designable with secondary grids. Styles for the grids as well for the secondary grids. Grids can be drawn on top of objects. There is a list of features as long as your arm

The present version is 2.21 - but use the downloads link for 2.00, not 2.1 as that’s broken.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

It’s less than a month since I was on a couple of roller coasters at Blackpool pleasure beach and a fortnight since the same on Clacton-on-sea so this is kind of topical. You’ll need Java installed. It takes a few seconds to load and the programmer obviously enjoys writing ‘Please wait’ type messages!

This isn’t meant to be Roller Coaster Tycoon but it is a fun diversion, and it has a serious side and lets you change speed, mass, the size of the hills, even gravity and friction! If there are 4 people in a car then I think I reached serial murderer status with 24 dead. Just be glad I’m not a real life designer!

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Popularity: 7% [?]