Filipino, Philippines "Dancing Inmates" from Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), a maximum security prison, were treated to a visit by Michael Jacksons long-time choreographer Travis Payne and dancers Daniel Celebre and Dres Reid to learn performances from THIS IS IT.
Artist websites
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Facebook's virtual farm game attracting millions
ST. LOUIS – Even while calling Chicago home, Laura Hawkins Grimes is a country bumpkin. Her scenic rural spread has three dairy farms, two ponds and a log cabin, all skirted by a white picket fence as scarecrows stand sentry over her blackberries.
And the best part is the 40-year-old sex therapist never has to leave her computer to tend to it all.
She's one of tens of millions of occupants of FarmVille, a near-utopian, wildly popular online fantasy game where folks rush to another neighbor's aid, ribbons readily come as rewards, plants don't get diseased and there's never a calamitous frost, flood or drought.
Since its launch last summer, the cartoonish simulation game seeming to meld "Leave it to Beaver" and "Green Acres" has become a Facebook phenomena, luring in everyone from urbanites like Grimes to actual farmers while gently nudging people to think more about where their food comes from.
"It's kind of what you don't see every day," Grimes said of FarmVille by Zynga, a San Francisco-based developer of games widely played at online hangouts such as Facebook. "I have to say, living in Chicago, what appeals to me about FarmVille is it's not urban."
FarmVille _ with more than 72 million monthly users worldwide, the most talked-about application in Facebook status updates _ heads a growing stable of simulated agriculture that also includes SlashKey's Farm Town on Facebook and PlayMesh's recently launched iFarm for the iPhone.
Purposely simplistic, FarmVille lets players build and trick out their farms, starting with a tiny parcel they till and seed with a range of crops including berries, eggplant, wheat, soybeans, artichokes and pumpkins. Players can add pigs, cows and chickens and accouterments such as barns, chicken coops, windmills and greenhouses.
As is the case on real farmland, attentiveness in FarmVille is vital. Players who diligently tend to their crops see their farms flourish and their bank balances balloon. Those late with their harvests may see their crops _ and their investment _ shrivel and die.
Neighbors get rewarded with points and gold for scaring away pests, fertilizing or feeding chickens on another player's spread.
"One thing we feel we got right is it has extremely broad appeal," said Bill Mooney, Zynga's vice president and general manager. "Everybody likes farming, whether you're a gardener, whether you grew up on a farm or your grandparents did. It's literally something everyone can relate with."
And with FarmVille, "there's an appeal that's just cute, with the amazing ways people take the farms and develop them out as their own."
In the end, he hopes, "people will see this as a fun little escape."
Grimes sure has. The transplanted Oklahoman who detests video games and has no farm background razzed her FarmVille-loving friends before her sister successfully prodded her to join.
Now, she admits, "I'm a total FarmVille freak."
A mother of a 3-year-old daughter and the wife of a paramedic, Grimes squeezes in simulated farming between appointments and parenting. She devotes less than an hour each day "in little bitty spurts" to eventually max out her FarmVille spread to resemble a whimsical menagerie _ black sheep, pink calves, penguins, reindeer with flashing Christmas lights in their antlers.
"It was completely mindless and just mine," she said. "I could decide where everything went, I could decide when it happened. I got to move things around. I got to make it look nice."
She loves getting rewards at every turn, often for helping a neighbor. And she credits FarmVille with hastening her reconnection with old friends, including a fourth-grade schoolmate who's now living next door to her in this online agricultural experience.
"I don't know anything about her life except she's a really nice neighbor _ she leaves me little posts, she sends me nice gifts, harvests my crops. And it makes me feel better about people in my life," Grimes said. "What's so nice about this is it's really about camaraderie, like you depend on people to do things for you."
"I really would have never thought this would have been something I do," she said.
Even actual farmers are digging it. In his central Illinois farmhouse near Windsor, 31-year-old bachelor Darin Doehring started playing months ago with the game he credits with helping him wait out sogginess that hampered harvesting of his 2,000 acres of real corn and soybeans.
"There were more times this past fall I was doing my crops more on there (FarmVille), than I was in the field because of the rain and mud outside. I enjoy it," Doehring said, noting that he wished the fantasy game posed more challenges mimicking real-life ones farmers face, including weather events.
Mooney of Zynga says that isn't likely: "We don't want it to be a punishing experience. We want this to be a positive."
To John Reifsteck, a corn-and-soybean grower in Champaign County, Ill., there are parallels between virtual and actual farming. "Success at FarmVille requires foresight, persistence and a willingness to help others _ just like farming in the real world," he wrote in an online column last month.
And while he doesn't play FarmVille _ "I work in the fields for a living" _ he understands those who do and welcomes FarmVille's popularity.
"It's a healthy sign for agriculture _ but only if players don't come to think that running a farm is as easy as FarmVille makes it seem," he wrote. "If FarmVille was as difficult and complicated as actual farming, probably no one would play it."
___
On the Net:
FarmVille, http://www.farmville.com
Zynga, http://www.zynga.com
SlashKey, http://www.slashkey.com
PlayMesh, http://playmesh.com
And the best part is the 40-year-old sex therapist never has to leave her computer to tend to it all.
She's one of tens of millions of occupants of FarmVille, a near-utopian, wildly popular online fantasy game where folks rush to another neighbor's aid, ribbons readily come as rewards, plants don't get diseased and there's never a calamitous frost, flood or drought.
Since its launch last summer, the cartoonish simulation game seeming to meld "Leave it to Beaver" and "Green Acres" has become a Facebook phenomena, luring in everyone from urbanites like Grimes to actual farmers while gently nudging people to think more about where their food comes from.
"It's kind of what you don't see every day," Grimes said of FarmVille by Zynga, a San Francisco-based developer of games widely played at online hangouts such as Facebook. "I have to say, living in Chicago, what appeals to me about FarmVille is it's not urban."
FarmVille _ with more than 72 million monthly users worldwide, the most talked-about application in Facebook status updates _ heads a growing stable of simulated agriculture that also includes SlashKey's Farm Town on Facebook and PlayMesh's recently launched iFarm for the iPhone.
Purposely simplistic, FarmVille lets players build and trick out their farms, starting with a tiny parcel they till and seed with a range of crops including berries, eggplant, wheat, soybeans, artichokes and pumpkins. Players can add pigs, cows and chickens and accouterments such as barns, chicken coops, windmills and greenhouses.
As is the case on real farmland, attentiveness in FarmVille is vital. Players who diligently tend to their crops see their farms flourish and their bank balances balloon. Those late with their harvests may see their crops _ and their investment _ shrivel and die.
Neighbors get rewarded with points and gold for scaring away pests, fertilizing or feeding chickens on another player's spread.
"One thing we feel we got right is it has extremely broad appeal," said Bill Mooney, Zynga's vice president and general manager. "Everybody likes farming, whether you're a gardener, whether you grew up on a farm or your grandparents did. It's literally something everyone can relate with."
And with FarmVille, "there's an appeal that's just cute, with the amazing ways people take the farms and develop them out as their own."
In the end, he hopes, "people will see this as a fun little escape."
Grimes sure has. The transplanted Oklahoman who detests video games and has no farm background razzed her FarmVille-loving friends before her sister successfully prodded her to join.
Now, she admits, "I'm a total FarmVille freak."
A mother of a 3-year-old daughter and the wife of a paramedic, Grimes squeezes in simulated farming between appointments and parenting. She devotes less than an hour each day "in little bitty spurts" to eventually max out her FarmVille spread to resemble a whimsical menagerie _ black sheep, pink calves, penguins, reindeer with flashing Christmas lights in their antlers.
"It was completely mindless and just mine," she said. "I could decide where everything went, I could decide when it happened. I got to move things around. I got to make it look nice."
She loves getting rewards at every turn, often for helping a neighbor. And she credits FarmVille with hastening her reconnection with old friends, including a fourth-grade schoolmate who's now living next door to her in this online agricultural experience.
"I don't know anything about her life except she's a really nice neighbor _ she leaves me little posts, she sends me nice gifts, harvests my crops. And it makes me feel better about people in my life," Grimes said. "What's so nice about this is it's really about camaraderie, like you depend on people to do things for you."
"I really would have never thought this would have been something I do," she said.
Even actual farmers are digging it. In his central Illinois farmhouse near Windsor, 31-year-old bachelor Darin Doehring started playing months ago with the game he credits with helping him wait out sogginess that hampered harvesting of his 2,000 acres of real corn and soybeans.
"There were more times this past fall I was doing my crops more on there (FarmVille), than I was in the field because of the rain and mud outside. I enjoy it," Doehring said, noting that he wished the fantasy game posed more challenges mimicking real-life ones farmers face, including weather events.
Mooney of Zynga says that isn't likely: "We don't want it to be a punishing experience. We want this to be a positive."
To John Reifsteck, a corn-and-soybean grower in Champaign County, Ill., there are parallels between virtual and actual farming. "Success at FarmVille requires foresight, persistence and a willingness to help others _ just like farming in the real world," he wrote in an online column last month.
And while he doesn't play FarmVille _ "I work in the fields for a living" _ he understands those who do and welcomes FarmVille's popularity.
"It's a healthy sign for agriculture _ but only if players don't come to think that running a farm is as easy as FarmVille makes it seem," he wrote. "If FarmVille was as difficult and complicated as actual farming, probably no one would play it."
___
On the Net:
FarmVille, http://www.farmville.com
Zynga, http://www.zynga.com
SlashKey, http://www.slashkey.com
PlayMesh, http://playmesh.com
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
PHP Web Development - Flex Application development: Integrate Magento for robust ecommerce site
Magento Developer - Magento ecommerce is an open source solution for those who want to conquer the online world.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
“Google” Is Word of the Decade
The American Dialect Society has named “google” the word of the decade and “tweet” the word of the year.
This comes after BingBing said that “TwitterTwitter” the most popular word of 2009, and the Oxford dictionary declared“unfriend” (to remove someone as a FacebookFacebook friend) the word of the year.
Notably, “google” is lowercase. It’s not the name of the company; it’s a catch-all term for searching the Internet, whether you use GoogleGoogle, Bing or another search engine. One member of the panel of judges said he thought “blog” would become the word of the decade, but “google” won out in the end.
Characters in TV shows regularly talk about googling one another, and the word is ubiquitous enough that it’s already been stolen as a brand name for toilet paper, among other things.
“Tweet” is society’s word of the year, but Twitter didn’t begin using that word officially until a few months ago. It was used unofficially by most everyone, though. Unlike “Google,” it’s not trademarked.
Read more: http://mashable.com/2010/01/11/google-tweet-word/
The 50 Best Inventions of 2009
From a rocket of the future to a $10 million lightbulb, here are TIME's picks for the best new gadgets and breakthrough ideas of the year
Full List
THE BEST INVENTIONS
1. The Best Invention of the Year: NASA's Ares Rockets
2. The Tank-Bred Tuna
3. The $10 Million Lightbulb
4. The Smart Thermostat
5. Controller-Free Gaming
6. Teleportation
7. The Telescope for Invisible Stars
8. The AIDS Vaccine
9. Tweeting by Thinking
10. The Electric Eye
11. The Mercury Probe
12. The Personal Carbon Footprint
13. The Solar Shingle
14. The Handheld Ultrasound
15. The YikeBike
16. Vertical Farming
17. The Planetary Skin
18. The $20 Knee
19. A Watchdog for Financial Products
20. The Electric Microbe
21. The Bladeless Fan
22. The Custom Puppy
23. The Cyborg Beetle
24. The Biotech Stradivarius
25. The Nissan Leaf
26. The Robo-Penguin
27. The Universal Unicycle
28. YouTube Funk
29. Dandelion Rubber
30. Wooden Bones
31. The Living Wall
32. The School of One
33. The No-Punt Offense
34. The Human-Powered Vending Machine
35. The Handyman's X-Ray Vision
36. Meat Farms
37. Packing, Improved
38. The Foldable Speaker
39. The Levitating Mouse
40. The Edible Race Car
41. The High-Speed Helicopter
42. The Supersuit
43. The Eyeborg
44. Spiderweb Silk
45. The Sky King
46. The Smart Bullet
47. The Fashion Robot
48. The 3-D Camera
49. The Newest Cloud
50. The World's Fastest (Steam-Powered) Car
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1934027,00.html#ixzz0cZXyD8SZ
Full List
THE BEST INVENTIONS
1. The Best Invention of the Year: NASA's Ares Rockets
2. The Tank-Bred Tuna
3. The $10 Million Lightbulb
4. The Smart Thermostat
5. Controller-Free Gaming
6. Teleportation
7. The Telescope for Invisible Stars
8. The AIDS Vaccine
9. Tweeting by Thinking
10. The Electric Eye
11. The Mercury Probe
12. The Personal Carbon Footprint
13. The Solar Shingle
14. The Handheld Ultrasound
15. The YikeBike
16. Vertical Farming
17. The Planetary Skin
18. The $20 Knee
19. A Watchdog for Financial Products
20. The Electric Microbe
21. The Bladeless Fan
22. The Custom Puppy
23. The Cyborg Beetle
24. The Biotech Stradivarius
25. The Nissan Leaf
26. The Robo-Penguin
27. The Universal Unicycle
28. YouTube Funk
29. Dandelion Rubber
30. Wooden Bones
31. The Living Wall
32. The School of One
33. The No-Punt Offense
34. The Human-Powered Vending Machine
35. The Handyman's X-Ray Vision
36. Meat Farms
37. Packing, Improved
38. The Foldable Speaker
39. The Levitating Mouse
40. The Edible Race Car
41. The High-Speed Helicopter
42. The Supersuit
43. The Eyeborg
44. Spiderweb Silk
45. The Sky King
46. The Smart Bullet
47. The Fashion Robot
48. The 3-D Camera
49. The Newest Cloud
50. The World's Fastest (Steam-Powered) Car
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1934027,00.html#ixzz0cZXyD8SZ
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