Lecture: Science of Hoverboards

"The Science Of REAL Hoverboards" by SciShow

Lecture: Rise of Game Economies

"The Rise of Videogame Economies" by PBSoffbook

Anyone know the current Rupee-Pokedollar exchange rate?

"While players of multi-player games are aware of their in-game economies, their growth and complexity would surprise many outside the world of gaming. With hundreds of millions of players around the world, MMOGs' in-game economies generate massive amounts of real dollars (i.e. MILLIONS), and real world economic theories can even be applied to these worlds. Many are now so big that game developers have hired real world economists to help them manage these complex systems. But with secondary economies, gold farming and other issues surfacing, are these systems in need of more attention, or even regulation?"

Short Film: ARK

"ARK" Directed by Grzegorz Jonkajtys

Created by Grzegorz Jonkajtys, a director who has worked on a number of full-length films, including Pan's Labyrinth, Ark explores the effects of aging on the human psyche.  The beautiful, yet deeply sad film is the tale of an unknown virus has destroyed almost the entire human population. The title refers to the attempted escape by the only remaining survivors in a flotilla of huge ships, in search of uninhabited and uncontaminated land.

Short Film: Dark Noir

"Dark Noir" written and directed by Rafael Grampá, animated by Red Knuckles

The short film Dark Noir combines 3D and 2D animation to immerse us into a visually distinctive world in which ideas are creatures that can be snatched away from their owners.  In the film, private eye Vincent Black goes in search of an elderly man's ideas in an attempt to recover the man's lost creativity.  But in the course of his search, Black discovers something about his own past.

In a particularly interesting twist on the theme of stolen ideas, the film's story was crowd sourced when Grampá took suggestions from Absolut's Facebook followers over the course of three weeks.  The captivating result are a sure sign that we'll be seeing more crowd sourced films in the future!

"Dark Noir, a co-created animated short film by Rafael Grampá, Absolut and Facebook fans worldwide.

The ambitious challenge invited people around the world to unleash their imaginations and transform their ideas into an animated film. During a live interactive three-week period, on Facebook/Absolut, Grampá encouraged consumers to take part and influence the action and storyline as he wrote it. To help him transform his 2D characters and script into 3D, Grampá teamed up with Red Knuckles animation studio.

Grampá, Rick Thiele and Mario Ucci and their team of animators then transformed the crowd-sourced suggestions into an animated short film which premiered at MADE Berlin March 2014."

Lego Creation: Rubik's Cube Solver

"Cubestormer 3" by David Gilday and Mike Dobson

This LEGO robot called CUBESTORMER 3 recently smashed the Rubik's Cube speed record.  It solved the cube in just 3.253 seconds at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, UK, two seconds faster than its forerunner, CUBESTORMER 2.  The previous record was 5.27 seconds.  It's time was verified as a new world record on March 15 by Craig Glenday, Editor-in-Chief of the Guinness World Records book. 

It took Gilday and Dobson eighteen months to build their Cubestormer, which uses an ARM-designed Samsung Galaxy S4 to analyze the cube and instruct its four robotic hands on how to manipulate the panels.

"The ARM-Powered CUBESTORMER 3 robot has smashed the Guinness World Record for solving a Rubik's cube, recording a time of 3.253 seconds at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, UK.

The robot employs an ARM-powered Samsung® Galaxy S4 smartphone powered by a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa application processor to analyze the cube and instruct four robotic hands to do the manipulations. ARM9™ processors also power the eight LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 bricks which perform the motor sequencing and control."

Lego Creation: Life-Size Car

"Life Size Lego Car Powered by Air" by SuperAwesomeMicroProject

This full sized Lego car, complete with an engine that runs on air is the brainchild of Melbourne entrepreneur and marketing guy Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida, a self-taught teenage technology genius from Romania who Steve met on the internet.  The black and yellow hot rod is composed of half a million individual pieces.  Car and Driver, ExtremeTech and Auto Week have more.  Someone asked StackExchange how it might work.

Installation: Caret 6

"Caret 6"

An architecture installation using digital software and fabrication technologies for the design of an innovative vaulting structure.

"The School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin is hosting an exhibition as part of TEX-FAB 5 SKIN: Digital Assemblies beginning January 2014. We are 17 students led by Assistant Professor Kory Bieg designing and building an installation to showcase the SKIN Design Competition. In the spirit of digital fabrication, we generated a project using parametric tessellations that simulate a three dimensional experience."