Category Archives: kids

The Hasbro my3D is pretty cool, it’s like an interactive View-Master!

I saw the Hasbro my3D at the store yesterday and just had to have it. It makes for an interesting interactive 3D experience. Hasbro 362190000 my3D Viewer for iPod Touch and iPhone - White Hasbro CEYou need an iPhone or iPod Touch to use it and I think it works better with the newer ones that have the gyroscope built-in. But there are a half-dozen my3D apps you can get from the Apple App store for free and a few you can pay for; as of today five my3D apps are free and one is 99 cents and another is $4.99 (both have free “lite” versions). A few months ago, they were giving all the games away for free, so I grabbed them while they were free(!)

Sector 17 is the space game, looks pretty cool and is fun for the bit that I played with it. The image below is the two halves of the image that I was looking at alternating; if you can alternately wink at three-tenths of a second, it probably looks 3D to you.

sector-17-ani.gif

All the games have no more than two buttons to play (where your thumbs stick into the device), but you do a lot of head tilting and spinning around to make some of the games work. Sector 17 and 360° Sharks really require standing. Sector 17 has a “couch mode” but it’s a lot harder to play; I believe not having a gyroscope model if the iDevice is like playing in “couch mode”. My old first generation iPod Touch (I think it’s 1st gen) works with the few games I tried.

shark-360.jpg

They’ve got a pretty good thing going here, $35 for a hunk of plastic and a few games, plus they’ll charge you for more games in the future. At 99 cents, I’d probably buy most of them to try it out, at $4.99 I’d probably try the lite version until I was bored (for $4.99 the space game does look pretty cool).

There is a Teleport L.A. game (that is more for kids) on a pier in Los Angeles which is all 3D 360° that you can pan around, this would be cooler if it were the Grand Canyon, the Moon or the Pyramids! And there is another more kid-like game called Bubble Bolt that you can roll around in a hamster ball collecting points. The iamge below is how is it looks on your iPhone screen.

teleport-la-both frames.PNG

A game called ShatterStorm is like the classic Tempest, but I thought it was a little hard to control. Spinning my head around like I did the controller back in the ’80s just doesn’t work for me.

There are separate snap on trays trays for different iDevice models (they could be labeled better) and there is a open cutout for the camera on my iPhone 4, so some interactive 3D VR type games are a possibility!

Pluses:

  • I don’t need my (reading) glasses to use it.
  • It’s 3D and 3D is cool!

Downsides:

  • I have to remove my iPhone from the case to use it.
  • Lots of game load times, these programs are very large (one was 500 MB!) and they have lots of loading time between levels and menus.

  • The default volume for the music in the background is very loud (it drowns out the game sounds), but it’s all adjustable (and so is the sound effects volume).
  • The games seem to work better if you have the model with the gyroscope, it’s more intuitive; you just look verses tilting your head. Although some games like the Tempest clone are just tilting your head left or right.

It’s actually cheaper shipped on-line (via Target at Amazon) then at the store (I paid $35), I asked at the counter but they wouldn’t match their own price (“that’s just to compete with other on-line services”), but I guess it didn’t matter, I bought it anyways. The plastic part will come down in price, they actually have a unique code on the viewfinder you need to input (one time) into a game before you play it.

UPDATE: And as of the update a few minutes ago, my3D Sector 17 started working with Apple’s Game Center. Also, this app has shrunk in size (from 434MB to 270MB).

One of the best game deals at Target ever…

This is one of the best deals for games at Target that I’ve seen in ages:
Hasbro Games Monopoly Deal Card Game Hasbro Games
Monopoly Deal (card game) and Bop It for $1.00; that’s Bop It for $14 ($5 manufacturers coupon and a $3 Target coupon) with the free (Hasbro purchases over $10) Monopoly card game (and also using a $5 off Monopoly manufacturers coupon). Need 3 coupons total.
or
Connect 4 and Monopoly Deal (card game) for $2.00! That’s Connect 4 for $14 ($4 manufacturers coupon and a $3 Target coupon) with the free (Hasbro purchases over $10) Monopoly card game (using a $5 off Monopoly manufacturers coupon). Need 3 coupons total.

So in essence, they’re paying you $5 to take the free Monopoly Deal card game (which is rated 5 stars at Amazon).

Here’s a link to the coupons over at SlickDeals.net. Just so you know, you actually print these coupons come from Coupons.com and Target.com so they are legit and if you’ve never used either coupon site, they will want to install some kind of coupon printer application (for your Macintosh or Windows PC).

I went downhill (both ways) to get to school

I was actually looking for something else on-line when I stumbled onto this. Kids riding a zip line to get to school!

It sounded like the village name is Los Pinos in Columbia.

Direct link is here

No Candy to Children if their parents support Obama

The video shows it all.

Here’s the original Detroit Fox video. Or try here.

Shouldn’t this be illegal since she’s buying votes?

Only 12 more hours to get your laptop….

You can still Get 1 Give 1 through December 31st, 2007, they extended the date. I don’t know what availability is going to be after that, but you’ll have to take your chances after that…

As of JANUARY 1, 2008 they still have the G1G1 order form on-line.

200Laptop The only way to get one is to donate one, so you actually get one for yourself and a tax deductible laptop that is donated to a developing nation. The Get 1 Give 1 (G1G1) program ends today (December 31st, 2007) so order now.

This is nifty little machine (and a good cause) I’ve mentioned the XO laptop before and I’ve been talking more about it more in depth over at the XO Experiment.

More Alpha-Bits….

So after my box of yummy Limited Edition Alpha-Bits (now with the sugar back where it belongs) I hadn’t seen it anywhere but Meijer’s so I started feeling anxious that they might stop making it again (it is “limited”). But then I was at Target the other day walking out with my arms were full (I had paid back in the electronics section) and they had just opened (I needed stuff for work) I passed all the employees standing in the aisle having their morning meeting I spied an end-cap with the Limited Edition Alpha-Bits 3 boxes for $7. So I checked the expiration date and managed to stack up 8 boxes in my arms (in addition to my bags and the water, this was all I could hold), this will give me about 1 box a month until expiration, but that’s probably not enough sugary letters for me, I should probably get another 8 or 10 boxes while they’re still on sale today.


Long live Limited Edition Alpha-Bits!!!

Limited Edition Alpha-Bits

So about 18 months ago I mentioned that Post removed all the sugar from Alpha-Bits cereal. Not only that, they removed all the flavor! They were awful!!!

So someone e-mailed me last week about the new “Special Edition” dark blue box that was out. Here’s the thing, the box says “special edition” but not what’s “special” about it. THe box does say it’s sweetened but that’s it. Very strange.

It’s like the old Alpha-Bits are back. Very yummy! The last box I bought was the un-sweetened kind and I didn’t even finish the first bowl. I hope these last a while. I which there was a place to vote or something they should never return to the awful bits they’ve been trying to peddle for the last year…

That’s gotta hurt!!