moods
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Waze lets drivers display their moods in the app
Waze is rolling out a brand refresh and app update that lets users share their mood.
This wearable for dogs claims to reveal their mood
Despite spending the last 32,000 or so years adapting and evolving to become our most loyal companions, a dog's mood can still occasionally prove inscrutable to their human's understanding. Is Fifi yipping because she's excited or scared? With the help of Inupathy's upcoming device, you'll soon be able to tell.
Habu tracks playlists to match your mood
Genius playlists are great for picking out music you like, but if you want a set of songs to match your mood, you should take a closer look at Habu. Habu is an iOS app that creates playlists based upon the mood conveyed in a song. Habu is powered by Gracenote, a music database company that licenses music and video metadata information. The app scans your music library and groups songs into moods and emotions like cool, rowdy and brooding. Not only does the app create mood-based lists, it also gives you some insight into your personality. You can see whether your library is dominated by energetic or sensitive songs. You can even share your mood map with friends via Facebook. Similar to other music tools, Habu lets you discover new music based on the mood of your library. According to TechCrunch, the developers behind Habu have a lot more planned for the app. Among other features, they hope to make the app more aware of your surroundings by tapping into other data on your phone. This would let the app serve up soothing music while you walk to a lecture and energetic music while you drive to the gym. You can download Habu from the iOS App Store for 99 cents. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Ten things to do in Star Wars Galaxies before it's gone
When SOE announced that Star Wars Galaxies would be sunsetted by the end of the year, many players despaired. They gave up. They saw their long years (eight years!) of play turn to dust. But others looked on the impending closure as incentive to do all those things they'd been putting off, all the activities they just hadn't gotten around to. There hadn't been time. The game is too big for anyone to do it all. And that's precisely why Star Wars Galaxies is a legend among sandbox fans despite the NGE disaster. It's a living museum of great MMO ideas from the past, of player-driven economies, of open-world housing, of high-end, game-supported roleplay, of roaming in a game that lets you dictate the terms of your play. It's a rare relic you should see in the flesh, today, right now, before it's gone. You can pick up a weapon and fight in any MMO (excepting A Tale in the Desert, that is), but there are so many things you can do in Star Wars Galaxies that you can't do anywhere else with the same level of immersion. And I'm going to tell you which 10 you should do first... before it's too late.
The moodiness of the US, as told by Twitter
Twitter, of course, isn't the be all and end all for tracking the mood of a population (not yet, at least). Still, it's worth studying, and if nothing else, it produces interesting observations. A team of researchers from both Northeastern University and Harvard collaborated to analyze some 300 million tweets from September 2006 to August 2009. Using geographical data and past work in word / emotion association, the group has produced preliminary results and (arguably just as important) pretty graphs. The findings are presented by cartogram evolving over time -- weekends and weekdays are currently lumped together but will be separated later. Unsurprisingly, west coast moods follow the same pattern as the east coast, only three hours behind, but it is interesting to note that they also don't hit the same lows. Consider it some food for thought, and if you take offense, maybe you should spend more time looking at the bright side of life and gloating about it online. Hit up the source for more data and after the break for video.
Massively Hands-on: Creating superheroes in Champions Online
This last weekend, press had the opportunity to spend my time within the Champions Online beta. After playing more than I would safely recommend, I bring you my personal takeaway in an effort to get out as much crunchy information goodness on the upcoming MMO as possible.Do you like options? I really hope you love options, because you're going to get smacked upside the head with so many options when you first encounter Champions Online's character creation, that your mind -- much like my own -- is going to be reeling with all the possibilities.Each and every time I made a thematically new hero, the creation process ate up more time than I ever thought possible. Let me explain why this happens, and what you can expect when you first sit down to make your very own creations.
Lila Dreams blog posts an interview with Jason McIntosh
Lila Dreams is a tiny little MMO that we've been following somewhat closely here at Massively -- from the descriptions we've seen so far (of an entire virtual world set inside the dreams of a little girl), it seems like an intriguing experimental departure from your standard online game. And now, over on their blog, they've got an interview, translated from Portuguese, that sheds even more light on this innovative little online game.Unfortunately, there's not too much new here, but the interview does follow some familiar and interesting news about the game: players will be able to actually change Lila's moods using game mechanics, and the setting of the game will change based on whatever mood she has at the moment. While there probably won't be the videogame standbys of swords and plasma guns (though apparently there will be "a mix of modern, medieval, and future stuff"), we are told that players will be able to wander instanced areas with groups, so there will be some MMO conventions in there, tweaked as they may be.Lila Dreams remains a unique little blip on our radar for now -- the game, as we've said before, will eventually be hosted on Kongregate as a 2D Java and Flash game. There's a long way to go until release -- at least a closed alpha, beta, and then an open pre-release period, but we continue to look forward to it.
SHOJI to detect the mood of a room for about $3,000
If you're someone who can easily read other people's emotions, then you probably won't be getting a SHOJI (Symbiotic Hosting Online Jog Instrument) anytime soon. For the rest of us, we'll have to rely on this latest invention from our friends at the University of Tokyo and GS Yuasa. The SHOJI apparently can sense the "mood" of a room by monitoring light levels, temperature, humidity, infrared, ultrasonic waves, the "presence and movement of people," (not unlike that Mitsubishi air conditioner we saw recently) body temperature, and "the nature of activity in the room," whatever that is. All of that data is then compiled and computed to output to an LED flask sort of thing which displays red for anger, blue for sadness, yellow for happiness and green for peace. Apparently Japanese managers and hospitals are willing to pay a hefty price for this privilege, given that it'll cost between ¥300,000 and ¥400,000 ($2,500 to $3,300) when its released in April 2007. Still, the SHOJI is no KotoHana flower, that's for sure.
