Research: November 2007 Archives

TI have just finished hosting a successful 3 days of seminars which had 2nd level students designing their own console game for the PC and the Xbox 360. As part of science week lectures TI opened their doors to 510 students from 2nd level schools. The response and enthusiasm was over whelming,

Students worked in one of 3 groups to create their own game. The creation of a video game traditionally involved three disciplines: Audio, Graphics and Programming. The students designed their own graphics, recorded their own audio and decided how the characters and game would behave using programming skills.

The results were 5 different version of the classic game Space Invaders (Copyright Taito Corporation) using the Microsoft XNA developer framework.

A science week quiz was also held and hosted by the multi-talented Bernie Goldbach. I will be using feedback from both the quiz and the game design event to assist me in designing the Internet Technologies modules for semester 1 and 2 of our new Bsc Hons in Creative Multimedia

As part of my job I analyse and use several gadgets on a daily basis. Science Week Ireland as promoted by Damien Mulley are wondering what gadget I would buy next. This is a tough question as I seldom buy them personally, I am usually more interested in examining them and discussing with my students how these gadgets work, the protocols they use and the platforms that they are built on.

The one gadget that I would consider buying is the 3 Skype Phone as I consider it to be disruptive and a natural progression in communication. The ability to make free calls to other Skype users (There's about 240 million of them) is very attractive. If you have relatives in Europe or Australia on Skype you can ring them for free. From a technical point of view I am hearing conflicting reports on whether it will work over a GSM signal. I hope that it will as it may force me to reconsider my decision.

Initially the Skype service is being launched on prepay phones. I will wait however for the service to become available on pre pay services such as Talktime 100.

Science week takes place this week. Damien Mulley alerted me to the fact that they are running a competition each day.

Todays competition focuses on what invention you would want to see most in the future. Having grown up reading Michael Crichton and William Gibson I would love see a device that would analyse your DNA, detect illnesses and cure them. This would take place in the space of 1 hour and would be creative commons/ open patent so that it would be made freely available to all people and nations.

This may in the long run cause problems with longer life etc but it would help to cure horrific diseases like bowel cancer.