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Plinko Poetry hands-on (video)
Don't lie, you love The Price is Right. There's no shame in it. Maybe you don't watch it religiously, but you get a thrill every time you see them break out the Plinko game. Now, what if you could combine that visceral thrill, with the absurdity of magnetic poetry, while juxtaposing the conflicting political perspectives of Fox News and the New York Times. That's exactly what Inessah Selditz and Deqing Sun did with Plinko Poetry, an installation on display at the ITP Spring Show. Operating it is as simple as dropping a red plastic disc, but the tech behind it is decidedly more sophisticated. It starts with a script that harvests headlines from the Twitter accounts of the New York Times and Fox News. Those streams of words then scroll across a screen dotted with yellow pegs. A simple webcam with a polarizing filter tracks not only those pins, but a red disc that you feed through the top of the display. As it tumbles, the words it passes over are selected to create mashups of the days top stories that are sometimes unintentionally hilarious or accidentally beautiful but, more often than not, predictably gibberish. Once the Processing script on the controlling computer constructs the new phrases, they're fired out into the digital ether via the @PlinkoPoetry Twitter account, which you can monitor on the iPad mounted next to the Plinko itself. To see the art in action, head on after the break.
Peggle: WoW Edition released as a standalone download
There's Peggle the original PC game, Peggle the XBLA game, Peggle the iPhone game, Peggle: Steam edition, and Peggle the WoW addon, and so when I heard rumblings of "Peggle: WoW edition," I just figured people were talking about one of the many, many already-released versions of PopCap's popular Plinko-inspired pasttime. But no -- the folks at PopCap have released another version of Peggle: Peggle World of Warcraft edition is a standalone, free (PC-only) download that allows you to play a WoW-related version completely outside of World of Warcraft.All that make sense? It sounds like PopCap realized that there was a call for a brand new version of Peggle (including new stages, WoW-related backgrounds, and even a secret easter egg between Arthas and Bjorn the unicorn) that was different enough to stand as its own PC game, so they worked their coding magic and put it all together into a downloadable standalone. And much to the lament of Mac gamers everywhere, it's PC-only.But then again, it's free, it's Peggle, and so if you haven't gotten your Peggle fix through any of the aforementioned channels yet, here's the hit you've been waiting for. If you do the math (and chart the number of Peggle versions over time), we're pretty sure that, soon, all games will be Peggle. And strangely enough, we're kind of OK with that. Peggle is really fun.
Peggle now available for iPhone
We told you everything you needed to know back when it was announced. When it got delayed, we were bummed, but only a little, because we knew we'd soon have it in our hands. And now, it's finally here.55 levels and 40 challenges of some of the most addictive gameplay there has ever been. Controls feature a "precision wheel" on the side of the screen that will let you line up your shot perfectly. All of the Peggle masters and powers in the regular version made it to the iPhone as well. If you've ever played Peggle, you probably already know that at $4.99, this is a steal, and if you've never played Peggle, we can almost assuredly tell you it's more than worth the price (though there is a free trial for the Mac just in case you're not 100% sure).Peggle for the iPhone is out. Your free time's days are numbered.
