KickMoji Sneaker fiends will love these stylized images of a wide variety of hightops and other cool kicks. Mr. Feels We’re a little past Valentine’s Day, but these stickers featuring a heart character are adorable and work all year long. CUTEsy CAt Maybe it’s just me, but cats seem to be taking the lead...
Twitter Utilities
Birdbrain Birdbrain is an easy way to track basic Twitter statistics over time. When you launch Birdbrain, it syncs with Twitter to provide data on how many people you follow and block, as well as the number of your followers, tweets, mentions, and retweets. The default view has the latest numbers for each...
Marshmallow Run Kickstarter Seeks to Teach Girls Programming and Design
Design Code Build and Girl Scouts San Diego are developing a curriculum to teach girls programming and design by building a game called Marshmallow Run. It’s an ambitious program to bring Marshmallow Run to life through Scratch, the web, iOS, and Android as a way to reach girls of all age levels and provide opportunities that will appeal to a wide variety of interests. To make the program a reality, Design Code Build and Girl Scouts San Diego launched a Kickstarter campaign to cover the cost of computers, meeting space, developer accounts, and other overhead.
What’s unique about the Marshmallow Run campaign is its breadth. The project isn’t constrained by the programming platform chosen or other structural decisions that might limit its appeal. Design Code Build has developed the characters for Marshmallow Run, but the rest is up to the girls who participate in the program. The participants will have the opportunity to learn to program physics into a game, design levels, set timers, detect collisions, along with everything else that programming a platformer game entails. Girls will also learn graphic design, storyboarding, audio design, and much more. The result is a curriculum designed to foster imagination and creativity in a fun way that teaches new skills.
The project’s campaign has just 3 days left to reach its goal of $25,000. As of publication, pledges are just over 50% of that goal. If Marshmallow Run is funded, backers will receive a variety of rewards depending on their pledge levels including stickers and t-shirts, but the reward that’s most interesting is a programming starter pack for backers who pledge just $25. The starter pack includes character sprites and other game elements for building Marshmallow Run in Scratch. At higher pledge levels backers receive beta access to the web and mobile versions of the game. The starter pack and access to the betas are a terrific way that Design Code Build and Girl Scouts San Diego are sharing what they hope to create beyond their local community.
I have three boys and have experienced the frustration of trying to find opportunities for them when they wanted to learn to program. There just aren’t enough good programs available for kids in general, and even fewer for girls. Marshmallow Run is a chance to start fixing that, foster the next generation of programmers and designers, and make a difference in addressing the gender imbalance in tech fields.
If you want to make a pledge, you can do so on the Marshmallow Run Kickstarter page.
Apple Park Slated to Open in April
Apple announced this morning that Apple Park, its 2.8 million square foot, 178 acre campus that will house 12,000 employees will open in April. The process of moving so many people to Apple Park is anticipated to take around 6 months. In addition, work will continue on portions of the building and grounds throughout the summer.
Apple Park includes several notable features including:
- the world’s largest curved glass panels;
- a 1000-seat auditorium with a 20-foot tall, 165 foot diameter glass cylinder entrance with a metallic carbon-fiber roof;
- a 100,000 square-foot employee fitness center;
- over 2 miles of walking and jogging trails;
- over 9,000 native and drought-resistant trees;
- a 17-megawatt rooftop solar facility that will supply all of Apple Park’s power needs; and
- a visitor’s center with an Apple Store and café.
The theater, which is one of the new facility’s marquee features, is named the Steve Jobs Theater in honor of Jobs who would have turned 62 this week. Tim Cook had this to say about Apple Park and Steve Jobs’ legacy:
Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come. The workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We’ve achieved the most energy-efficient building of its kind in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy.
Lauren Powell Jobs commented that:
Steve was exhilarated, and inspired, by the California landscape, by its light and its expansiveness. It was his favorite setting for thought. Apple Park captures his spirit uncannily well. He would have flourished, as the people of Apple surely will, on this luminously designed campus.
Apple’s press release is accompanied by a short video of workers putting the finishing touches on Apple Park, which provides a sense of the scope of this enormous project.
Pad & Quill Introduces a Leather Grip for the Apple Pencil
Apple device accessory maker Pad & Quill debuted the Leather Apple Pencil Grip that does more than just help you grip your Pencil. The grip, which is made of American full-grain leather, comes in three colors: Whiskey, Chestnut, and Galloper Black (think brown, dark brown, and black) and features a ‘hand finished baseball stitch closure’ that uses parachute-grade nylon stitching.
Pad & Quill’s accessory consists of two pieces. The first is the grip part, which slides over the barrel of the Apple Pencil near the point. The second sits near the top of the Apple Pencil and incorporates a clip and tethered holder for the cap. So, in addition to presumably making the Apple Pencil more comfortable to grip, the top portion of the grip lets you clip your Apple Pencil to a pocket or notebook and should keep it from rolling off tables. Also, the leash means the cap will stay nearby when you are charging the Apple Pencil, making it harder to lose.
Pad & Quill’s leather grip aims to solve three of the most common complaints I’ve heard about the Apple Pencil. If you find the Apple Pencil uncomfortable to grip, don’t like how it is prone to rolling off tables, or worry about losing the cap, Pad & Quill’s Leather Apple Pencil Grip is worth considering. The grip is available for pre-order only from Pad & Quill for $49.95.
Game Day: Causality
There is a certain amount of ‘trust me, just play this game’ involved with recommending Causality by UK-based Loju because it’s such a brain-meltingly complex puzzle game that it’s hard to explain in writing. In many respects, this game has to be experienced to understand it.
Causality blends time manipulation with a familiar grid-based puzzle game in a way that transcends other games in the puzzle genre. The result is a fresh, compelling game that stands out from the pack.
Apple Launches New ‘We Hear You’ iPad Pro Ad Campaign
Apple released four 15-second commercials each promoting different features of the iPad Pro. All four open with an actor holding up a large image of a tweet. ‘Better Than a Computer’ opens with the snarky tweet: ‘An iPad Pro is not even close to being a computer.’ The narrator agrees explaining that it’s not a computer because it’s faster, has LTE, and a touchscreen you can write on, concluding that the tweeter is ‘kinda right.’
‘Don’t Hunt for WiFi’ features a young woman stuck studying at a gym because her home WiFi is slow. The narrator explains that with LTE, that’s not a problem for the iPad Pro.
‘Do More with Word’ answers the question ‘Is Word on the iPad?’ The narrator shows how to download Microsoft Word and highlights its Apple Pencil integration.
The final spot called ‘No PC Viruses’ highlights the fact that the iPad Pro doesn’t suffer from PC viruses in response to a woman who complains on Twitter that her PC is infected.
What’s best of all about these spots is that the tweets are real. For example,
You can watch all four videos after the break:
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Question: I’ve been going back and forth between Copied and Clips for iOS on my iPhone. Do you have a strong preference for one over the other? If so, why? (Chris Meisenzahl, @speedmaster)
FedericoI like Copied for a couple of reasons. First, it offers a ton of advanced features (including custom JS scripts and...
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Ragga Muffins Every week there’s a sticker pack on the iMessage Store that makes me think ‘Huh, I never thought I’d see that.’ This week it was this fun assortment of muffin monsters. Oh My Goats! I didn’t know I needed these goat stickers until the first time I sent a goat standing on...