Don't just think about playing. Instead, think to play...

Mattel will soon release an updated version of its Mindflex toy named Mindflex Duel. Get this. By wearing a headset, your thoughts become the game controller. Different mental states control an air jet’s force and horizontal placement. Concentrate more intently, and a foam ball levitated by that jet of air rises. Relax and it falls. Move the ball through an obstacle course in one of several modes to play the game. This newest version allows players to go at it, um, head-to-head.

Note the foam ball in the center of the game space. It’s levitating… on thought. Think about unicorns and it sparkles.

One interesting option: Mindflex Duel provides a cooperative mode in addition to a competitive mode. Given the many styles of play not involving competition, I appreciate that Mattel stepped outside the box of competitive play. It would also seem this toy likely appeals as much to adults as to children (if not more so).

(via Engadget)

Domino Effect Made More Better by Esper Dominoes

An interaction design project by Jarashi Suki and the IAMAS Ubiquitous Interaction Research Group created electronic, wireless (ZigBee) dominoes. Each domino can be assigned its pattern of pips with a bump gesture. Each domino is also assigned an ID such that upon toppling, it will wirelessly trigger the next numbered domino to fall. See the video rocking the full domino effect [vimeo].

Like foods on a picky eater’s plate, note that these dominoes don’t touch

(via Engadget & Make)

Update: Playing the Game of (Your) Life

In Playing the Game of (Your) Life I covered the idea of technology eventually merging gaming with real-world, every-day activities like brushing your teeth.

Now, a year later, the startup GreenGoose has gone and developed just such a real-world gaming platform.

Green Goose sensors monitor your life, you earn experience points:

The five-person SF Bay Area startup has embedded custom 915MHz radios and MEMS accelerometers in a variety of tiny transmitters which you can mount to household objects — like a water bottle, bicycle, or the toothbrush above — which report back to the receiver with your actions and thereby increase your score. Brush your teeth on time, take your vitamins, or exercise repeatedly within a couple hundred feet of the receiver, and you’ll eventually level up.

Syyn Labs's League of Extraordinary Nerds

Syyn Labs’s League of Extraordinary Nerds:

Syyn’s first official project was to help build the complex series of chain reactions that performed simple tasks — known as a Rube Goldberg machine after the legendary cartoonist who devised the concept — at the heart of indie rock band OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” video. After it became a viral hit in the spring of 2010 (20 million views and counting on YouTube. Check it out — again. I’ll wait), corporate America came calling. Everyone from Google to Sears has tapped Syyn to build something that inspires wonder, gets their brand noticed, and is infused with the kind of unbridled joy that tends to get squashed out at most companies.

Syyn is discovering that the playfulness game can be a tough racket. Most clients just want what worked for the last guy, and Sadowsky, Syyn’s president and sole full-time employee, insists, “We’re not a Rube Goldberg company.” These guys can make a car-battery commercial beguiling, but it may take some beer and an all-nighter in the desert to do it…

Syyn is itself the embodiment of a Rube Goldberg machine: an eclectic cast of characters, featuring seven founders and some 50 volunteers, ages 24 to 40, whose assembled talents cause a domino effect of creativity. “I have a hard time categorizing them,” says Cristin Frodella, a senior product-marketing manager at Google who hired Syyn to build a machine to publicize its global online science fair, which was set to launch in January. “They’re fun, smart, geeky, and really plugged-in.” Gradman, who at times sports a red Mohawk, is a fire-juggling circus performer, rock musician, semiprofessional whistler, and software engineer. Bushnell is a video-game developer, serial entrepreneur, and Silicon Valley royalty (he’s the son of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell). Heather Knight, the only woman among the dozen or so regulars, has worked at both the MIT Media Lab and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and is earning a PhD in robotics at Carnegie Mellon while simultaneously starting Marilyn Monrobot Labs, a robot theater company. “It was cool and all, making things for space,” Knight says, “but I was looking for a creative outlet.”

(via Boing Boing)

Playing with your food: Projecting your cake and eating it too

Disney’s plan for ‘interactive cakes’ revealed in patent application:

Mmm, cake — no other confectionery can match its range, be it in the form of birthday, wedding, or bundt. But we never expected to see it integrated with a pico projector. Yet that’s exactly what the imagineers at Disney seem to be planning according to a US patent application lovingly titled “Projector systems and methods for producing digitally augmented interactive cakes and other food products.” The application includes a set of hilarious illustrations depicting over-sized cameras projecting images and video onto the surface of baked goods in order to promote storytelling and / or interactivity that is unique and individualized. Disney envisions images mapped to the 3D topography of the cake allowing it to sense, for example, when a slice is in the process of being cut (initiating a sword fight with Captain Hook) or removed (water rushes in to fill the void). While we doubt that you’ll find these in the aisles of your local Best Buy grocer anytime soon, you might want to check for availability the next time that you book a birthday party at a Disneyland resort…

It’s like a much (ahem) sweeter version of the projects SandScape and Illuminating Clay where interaction with a physical surface is simultaneously the input to a video system and its output.

See the link at the very beginning of this post or the original source for more details on Disney’s interactive cake technology concept including discussion of coded utensils to trigger events, a gallery of illustrations, and the original patent application.