University of Texas at Austin
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Killing comments won't cure our toxic internet culture
2014 was a year of reckoning for online news media. Following increasingly fractious and aggressive behavior by users, a number of marquee organizations threw their collective hands up and shut down their comments sections. Within weeks of each other, Recode, The Week, USA Today and Reuters joined with Popular Science and The Chicago Sun-Times in announcing that they would be shuttering their public forums in favor of holding those discussions on other social channels.
Warren Spector gets a new job: Director of UT Austin's Gaming Academy
Deus Ex creator Warren Spector has been named director of The University of Texas at Austin's Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, a development-focused post-baccalaureate program that will launch in the fall of next year. Spector was one of the first industry veterans who signed on as part of the Academy, joining Blizzard COO Paul Sams, Ultima creator Richard Garriott, EA CCO Richard Hilleman, and BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk. Only 20 candidates will be selected for the program's first semester, and the first batch of incoming students will receive a tuition waiver and a $10,000 housing stipend. Spector's career shift follows up on the recent shuttering of Disney Interactive Studios subsidiary Junction Point Studios, a team that Spector co-founded. Prior to its closure, Junction Point developed the 2010 Wii release Epic Mickey and last year's Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.
University of Texas and Blizzard COO Paul Sams launch game design academy
If you're looking to go pro in game design, Blizzard COO Paul Sams has teamed up with the University of Texas at Austin to create the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy. The academy will be led and taught by gaming industry executives and the curriculum will be guided by industry veteran Warren Spector. The 12-month, post-baccalaureate program will guide students through creating a game from start to finish, giving them the experience they need to join the gaming industry when they graduate. "The University of Texas at Austin has a tremendous track record of building nationally recognized programs that generate the leaders and critical thinkers the gaming industry needs," Sams said. "The program will focus on building the skills required for students to lead teams and develop games from concept to completion, while growing talent for the gaming industry." The program starts in 2014, but with only 20 spots available, you probably have a better chance of getting into a competitive raid guild.
Warren Spector, Blizzard COO to lead University of Texas game program
Developer Warren Spector and Blizzard Entertainment COO Paul Sams will help oversee a new gaming academy being put into place at the University of Texas at Austin. The Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, named after co-founders Wofford Denius, Sams and his wife, will begin in 2014 with only 20 spots for students, and will award a postbaccalaureate certificate rather than a graduate degree, which the school says will help it remain industry-focused. Spector, the creator of Deus Ex and the Disney Epic Mickey series, will put together the curriculum, which will include a 12-month intensive program where students will make a game themselves. Students selected for admission will also get a tuition waiver and a $10,000 stipend for fees and housing expenses. The program will begin next fall.
Hume: the bipedal 'Parkour' robot (video)
A future threatened by wild robotic rottweilers with no humanoid dog-walkers to keep them in check? That must not happen. Fortunately, we'll have a fleet-footed droid named "Hume" to keep us safe: he's the work of engineers at Meka Robotics and the University of Texas at Austin, who want to be the first to build a bipedal robot with Parkour skills, aka rough terrain free-running or "Human-Centered Hyper-Agility". Sure, they still have some way to go, but watch the video after the break, then imagine it without the wobbly coat stand, and then re-imagine it from the POV of an angry pup.
Project Blox is like any other toy that comes with 300 pages of documentation (video)
If your kid (or inner kid) turns their nose up at those delectable Sifteo Cubes, it'll obviously be because they want open source smart building blocks instead. So oblige the budding geek with Project Blox, courtesy of electrical engineering students at the University of Texas at Austin. Every toddler-friendly block has its own LCD and touch panels, plus motion sensors and wireless comms that let it interact with other blocks in weird and wonderful ways -- like the maze game you'll see in the video after the break. Project Blox is still very much a project, unfortunately, but its creators have put all their code and schematics online so baby Einstein can have a go at building his own.
Gaming gets immersive thanks to union of pico projector and eye tracking camera (video)
Although in the earliest stages of development, this virtual reality gaming rig already looks pretty intriguing. Engineered by clever kids at the University of Texas at Austin, it hot-wires an eye tracking camera to a motorised pico projector with the result that the player literally can't take their eyes off the screen. Wherever they look, that is where their view of the gaming world is projected. The rig makes most sense in a first-person shooter, although the students have also tried it in a flight simulator where the player uses their head to roll and pitch the aircraft. Yes, it looks rather similar to the Microvision PicoP laser projection gun we wielded at CES, but there's a key difference: the player does not need to hold anything or have anything attached to their body. This unencumbered Kinect-esque approach could potentially allow a greater sense of freedom -- except that, for it to work, the player is forced to sit directly in front of the eye tracker. Find a way to fix this, dear Longhorns, and you could be onto something. Video after the break.
Texas researchers aim to solve wireless bandwidth bottleneck, hopefully before SXSW 2012
As anyone attempting to stream high-quality video on any major metropolitan subway has likely found, doing so often requires the patience of Job and a willingness to spend more time 'buffering' and less time 'enjoying.' It's a problem that's particularly evident at crowded events like the never-ending South by Southwest, and it's probably no coincidence that a team from The University of Texas at Austin are now spending their waking hours attempting to solve the looming wireless bandwidth crisis. Five faculty in the school's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department have been selected to receive a $900,000 gift from Intel and Cisco to "develop innovative and novel algorithms that could improve the wireless networks ability to store, stream and share mobile videos more efficiently." Their work is part of a five university tie-up, seeking to solve quandaries such as tower interference, selective compression (read: pixelating the areas you don't pay attention to in order to squeeze more out of the existing infrastructure), cell tower intelligence and data output redundancy. Hard to say if any of the major carriers will be implementing proposed solutions in the near future, but we can think of at least one company that's crossing its fingers in hopes of that very outcome.
Microwave process could cut cost of lithium-ion batteries
While there's plenty of folks out there focused on making lithium-ion batteries safer and longer-lasting, there's also thankfully some dedicated to making 'em cheaper, which is especially welcome when we're talking about the expensive batteries powering cars. Among those in the latter camp is University of Texas at Austin professor Arumugam Manthiram, who has devised a method of using microwaves to heat a concoction of commercially available chemicals, which ultimately results in the Rorschach test of rod-shaped particles of lithium iron phosphate pictured above. While the use of lithium iron phosphate instead of the more commonly used lithium cobalt oxide apparently cuts back on the total amount of energy the batteries can store, it is apparently particularly well-suited to delivering large bursts of power, which should make the batteries ideal for use in hybrid vehicles. What's more, while the actual cost of the materials may not be much cheaper than other solutions, the sheer speed at which Manthiram's process works could allow for higher production rates from the same amount of equipment, which should result in cheaper batteries by the time they roll off the assembly line.[Via Daily Tech]
