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ICYMI: Surviving an island disaster and self-bagging stores
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: The National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo created a game called Everscape to both study and teach people in a gamified world who are trying to escape a tsunami following an earthquake. The goal is to use the gamers' playing style to figure out how people will try to survive similar events in real life. Meanwhile, the Panasonic and Lawson store team up in Japan should roll out machines that can determine what products are in a shopping basket, then automatically bag them for an easy check-out experience. If you're looking for the propane soap bubbles video, that's here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Panasonic checkout machine also bags your items
The rush to automate manual labor jobs has reached new heights in convenience stores. Self-service checkouts are hardly new, but Panasonic and Lawson are taking them one step further in Japan. They've developed a new basket system which can detect the items you've placed inside and then, once you've reached the till, bag them up automatically. It's an elaborate concept -- the bottom of the basket slides out, allowing your chosen goods to carefully fall into a bag underneath. The basket then slides away from you, creating a space to pick up the bag and walk out.
Jerry Lawson, creator of cartridge-based video game consoles, dies at 70
Gerald "Jerry" Lawson, the man who invented the video game cartridge, died Saturday morning of a heart attack at a Mountain View, California hospital at the age of 70. His brainchild, the Fairchild Channel F Video Game System, more commonly referred to as the Channel F, came out just one year before Atari's cartridge-based console, the VCS, opening the floodgates of modern gaming. His earliest foray into consumer electronics began early on, but it wasn't until he joined Fairchild in 1970 that he really made his mark on the tech industry. During that time, he became the only black member of the infamous Homebrew Computer Club that counted Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as members. He was honored at this year's GDC for his monumental contribution to modern gaming.
