I Art You

Researchers in England have finished work on the first ever video game museum/archive. Although the industry is only 46 years old the researchers want to make sure they avoid losing historic artifacts by not acting early enough to preserve them. Besides games the museum will include game artwork, advertisements, and other relevant artifacts.

The archive was formed by academics at Nottingham Trent University, in cooperation with the National Media Museum in Bradford. The archive will, in fact, be located at the National Media Museum, and managed by Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play. Interestingly, along with games and consoles, the archive will also include a wide swath of game-related media, such as advertising campaigns, artwork, and “the communities that sustain them”

Source

Part two of the big week in tech travel news. This post has a much more gamer friendly feel to it.

1) North Korean Arcade?

Uk Resistance had a big story on a North Korean arcade that was picked up by Gizmodo. Some mysterious person by the name of Justin. I have never heard of anything like this in North Korea. The photos of the decrepit arcade and game names do seem to suggest that this arcade is indeed North Korean.

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2008/09/inside-north-korean-arcade.html

http://gizmodo.com/5055198/north-korean-arcades-are-incredibly-sad

2) Soviet Arcade Museum I imagine there would be a deccent amount of cross over between the North Korean and Soviet machines, they even could have been made in the same factory! The Soviet arcade museum has been open for awhile now, but given the info on the arcade it seems relevent today. http://www.15kop.ru/index_en.htm

3) Buyers Guide to Anime FIgurines io9 had a great post on buying figurines in Tokyo. A great tutorial for those on thier way to the land of the rising sun. Where to buy figurines in Akiba: - Robots: Tsukumo Robot Kingdom, Tsukumo Pasoko Honten 3F, 1-9-7 Soto Kanda, Chiyoda-ku Phone: 03-3251-0987 3 minute walk from Akihabara Station. - Manufactured figurine sets: Asobit Character City, 1-2-9 Soto Kanda, Chiyoka-ku. Phone: 03-3257-2590 - Fan-made figurines: Radio Kaikan, one minute walk from the Akihabara Electric Town exit.

http://io9.com/5055031/how-to-buy-figurines-in-tokyo-an-illustrated-guide

There was so much more tech travel news then usual this week that I decided to summarize it all in one big post rather then slowly publishing it.

1) High Tech Tables
A new restaurant located in Soho, London is offering it dinners a new interactive experience with every meal. Patrons of Inamo will be seated at what is essentially a giant table top computer screen. You can order your food, a taxi, play games, change the appearance of the table, and even pay the bill. Read more.

There is even a similar resturant in the United States created by one of Ataris founders.

In the U.S., the uWink franchise allows diners to order food and drink via touch screens, as well as play games and watch movie previews. There’s a place on the table for swiping your credit card when you’re ready to pay the bill.

The brainchild of Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari Inc., the first franchise opened in Woodland Hills, Calif., in 2006, with restaurants also in Hollywood and Mountain View.

“UWink is the only touch-screen restaurant in the United States,” said Alissa Tappan, a spokeswoman for the Van Nuys, Calif.-based company. “On our touch-screen terminals are short games, word puzzles, trivia quizzes, horoscopes and a wide variety of activities.”

Restaurant featured on Engadget

2) Market Fresh Micropocessors

The birthplace of the semiconductor is now a small fruit market. Only a small plauqe marks the historic home of its inventor, another historical marker had been placed at the market but has since been removed. Read More.

The Fiesta Super Market located at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View, Calif., sprang to life about three months ago…William Shockley, the famous (some would say infamous) physicist who started a semiconductor laboratory on the site and hired many of the chip industry’s founding fathers.

http://gizmodo.com/5048923/silicon-valleys-birthplace-of-the-semiconductor-now-a-fruit-and-vegetable-stand

3) Gadget Filled Bridge

Last year a bridge in Minosota collapsed taking the lives of 13 people. The tragedy highlighted the growing problems in the United States infustructure. Hoping the avoid the terrible tradgey that occured the bridge built to replace the previous one after the collapse has been loaded with all sorts of high tech features. Read More.

The $234 million bridge is wired with hundreds of sensors that collect data on everything from how the bridge handles loads and vibrations to corrosion levels from road salt—and its redundant design ensures that the bridge will stay up even if a section should fail. The sensors will also work together with a camera system that will monitor and collect data on traffic flow. There are even sensors that can activate a de-icing system when necessary. All of this data will feed into a control room near the bridge where it can be analyzed by DOT workers and researchers.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/18/minneapolis.bridge.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech

Ever wonder what the deepest hole every dug was? OK well maybe you never have thought about it, but it is interesting to know nevertheless.  During the cold war the Soviets decided to dig a hole as deep as the possibly could, given their geographic location digging a hole to China would have been out of the question. They started digging their hole in a remote mining community named Pechenga, the goal was to beat an American scientific team to something called the ‘Mohorovicic Discontinuity’ (Moho), the heavily disputed boundry between the earths crust and magma filled mantle. The Russians continued to dig for over fifteen years eventually reaching a depth of 40,226 ft, the current world record.

There is loads of space junk right here on planet earth! Oobject has put together a great list of various Space Junk that has been abandoned and forgotten since the dawn of the space age. The lists look at abandoned space junk from both NASA and the Russian Space Agency. There is everything from a Russian shuttle that was never completed to a NASA rocket launch trailer full of equipment left out in a dessert. Gizmodo also went through the list and provided their take on all the space junk.

Star City is Russia’s own Cape Canaveral, all of Russia’s cosmonauts where trained in this once secretive facility. These days the center is more open and can even be visited as a tourist (for aprox $500), or if you have deeper pockets you can follow in the foot steps of the worlds first space tourists who trained for their flights to the ISS at Star City.

Richard Garriott a video game designer is the next space tourist to fork over the $30 million dollar ticket price to take a ride on a Russian rocket and spend a week and a half on the ISS. Before he can leave Garriott must spend eight months training at Star City. Wired has written a great article about him along with some fantastic photos of the facility.

Although widely available in East Asia, the Talk Man language translator for the Sony PSP is difficult to find in North America. I ordered mine from the Asian game exporter Play Asia. The Talkman comes with a UMD disc full of language games and a USB microphone that plugs into the top of the PSP is provided. The user can speak words or phrases into the microphone and the Talkman will translate from English to Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin. It can also work backwards translating any of those languages to English. Just speak into the microphone and you will be given a list of phrases the game thinks your trying to say.
The whole process is moderated by an animated bird named Max. Luckily the game is not as lame as the bird, or the pathetic yet humorous video on the website. The video shows some Japanese guy picking up these ugly bottom of the barrel English teachers in Japan. As most devices marketed in Japan, classy is not in the Talkman’s vocabulary.
Don’t throw away your electronic dictionary just yet. The Talkman is only a game, and meant to be used to learn a language or navigate a foreign country. It is incredibly useful for asking directions and making some small talk, and although its vocabulary and range is impressive it is still only the equivalent to a small phrase book.
The Talkman is a great toy for anyone learning the languages it uses. It presents the language in a fun way, and is very big on proper pronunciation. I would also recomend it for someone traveling in Korea, China, or Japan with no knowledge of the local language, it can be a big help getting around. However, it takes a long time to get into the translation section from the time you turn on your PSP drasticly slowing its effectiveness as a translator.

Comcast has installed a 10 million pixel screen in the lobby of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia. The $22 million dollar set up was created by Barco and serves up a ten minute long video in resolution that is five times HDTV’s resolution.
Its hard to imagine something with resolution like that, personally I am still blown away when when I watch a hi-def sports broadcast or Bluray movie. It would be great to get to a point where this technology was affordable for the home. I would use it to cover up my windows during the winter, playing high resolution shots of what the view looked like in the summer would hopefully chase away the winter blahs.

Over the years Yangshuo County, China has been growing as a tourist destination. The county has always been popular with backpackers for it beauty and nature oriented outdoor activities.

Some of the most popular active activities in the area include rock climbing, mountain biking, as well as exploration of the elaborate system of caves in the area. Besides the great activities the main draw to the area is its scenic beauty. Beautiful mountains flow into rivers and picturesque Chinese country side, miles away from modern concrete dominated China Yangshuo offers a look back at a peaceful simple time.

Esquire reporter Colby Buzzell has a great in depth article about China’s economic miracle city Shenzhen. Although the article is a little on the longer side it paints a nice picture of the city and the ex pats as well as the Chinese who have made it there home.

There are a lot of interesting little facts about Shenzhen that even those who have traveled there would find interesting. For example the first McDonald’s in China was built in Shenzhen. The city which is just across the boarder from Hong Kong has been the industrial heartland for China’s rapid economic growth. Anyone who has visited the city realizes there is something special about Shanzhen and Buzzell does a good job of capturing that spirit.