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Inductees to 2013 Internet Hall of Fame revealed, class includes 32 new members
Over the course of the past 12 months, the internet has witnessed negotiations between big-name sites, taken us inside the minds of social media innovators, and even given us a front row seat to what could be the biggest privacy-related story of the decade. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Internet Society decided to debut its Internet Hall of Fame in April of last year, bringing on influential people like Vint Cerf and Al Gore as part of the first set of inductees. Now, it's time for the Class of 2013 to shine, one which ushers in 32 new members who will join the Father of the Internet and former US Vice President in the list of illustrious names "instrumental in the early design and development" of the web. This year's individuals include the late Aaron Swartz under the Innovators category and more than 30 others spread across the Pioneer Circles and Global Connectors sections. President and CEO of Internet Society, Lynn St. Amour, tells us this is a way to celebrate the accomplishments of these visionaries, adding that she and her organization are always working with the utopian belief of everyone wanting to "participate fully in making the internet a platform that will continue to encourage innovation, communication, commerce, and social interaction for the benefit of people all around the world." The 2013 Hall of Fame ceremony's due to take place August 3rd in Berlin, Germany, but since we have the inductee list in the PR after the break, that means you won't have to wait until then to find out who made it in.
Robot Hall of Fame inducts Big Dog, PackBot, Nao and WALL-E (video)
It's the sort of ceremony that's so magical it can only occur on even-numbered years. Inventors, educators, entertainers, college students and media folk gathered at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA tonight for the 2012 inductions to the Robot Hall of Fame, a Carnegie Mellon-sponsored event created to celebrate the best of our mechanical betters. This year, the field included four categories, judged by both a jury of 107 writers, designs, entrepreneurs and academics and the public at large, each faction constituting half the voting total. The show kicked off, however, with the induction of 2010 winners, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the da Vinci Surgical System, iRobot's Roomba, the Terminator and Huey, Dewey and Louie, a trio of robots from 1971's Silent Running. The first 'bot to secure its spot in the class of 2012, was the programmable humaoid Nao, from Aldebaran Robotics, which beat out the iRobot Create and Vex Robotics Design System in the Educational category. The PackBot military robot from iRobot took the Industrial and Service category, beating out the Kiva Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System and Woods Hole Oceanographic's Jason. Boston Dynamic's Big Dog ran over some stiff competition in the form of Willow Garage's PR2 and NASA's Robonaut to win the Research title. And WALL-E triumphed over doppelganger Johnny Five and the Jetsons' Rosie in the Entertainment category. Relive the festivities in four minutes after the break.
Robot Hall of Fame voting begins for class of 2012, Johnny 5 learns where BigDogs sit
It's that time again: time for Carnegie Mellon to roll out the red carpet and welcome the crème de la crème of the robotics world into its halls. Since 2003 the school has been selecting the best of the best and inducting them into the Robot Hall of Fame. Past honorees have included everything from LEGO Mindstorms to the Terminator. This year's list of nominees is no less impressive, with celebrity bots Johnny 5 and WALL-E pitted against each other in the entertainment category, while NASA's Robonaut takes on the PR2 and BigDog under the banner of research bots. There will also be two other inductees awarded a spot in the hall in the consumer and education category and the industrial and service field. Best of all, for the first time ever, Carnegie Mellon is letting the public vote on the inductees. And, while PETMAN was snubbed yet again, he's not letting that get him down -- the Boston Dymanic's biped just keeps on struttin'. Hit up the source link to cast your vote before the September 30th deadline and check back on October 23rd to see who's granted a podium speech.
Internet Hall of Fame gets first inductees at inaugural event in Switzerland
Major League Baseball has Cooperstown, Robots have their HOF in Pittsburgh and now we finally have a Hall of Fame to call our own. Today marks the inaugural set of Pioneers, Innovators and Global Connectors inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, having taken place at an Internet Society conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The web HOF is part of an initiative by the nonprofit organization to "celebrate the advancements of 33 talented people who have made significant contributions to the design, development, and expansion of the internet." Among these are folks such as the Father of the Internet Vint Cerf, ARPANET engineer Paul Baran and the 45th US Vice President Al Gore, just to mention a few names. Between the 2012 inductees there were nine different countries represented, 11 PhDs, 11 published authors and a winner of an Academy Award and Nobel Prize. Interested in knowing who else made it in? The full list of inductees can be found at the source below.
Ultima Online inducted into new MMO Hall of Fame
Did you know there's an(other) MMO Hall of Fame? We first heard of its launch a few months ago, but thought it was a bit of a joke, considering the Geocities-era site design and strangely familiar logo. Oh, and the owners decided to induct Ultima Online -- a game for which we have something of a soft spot. In any event, the site features an MMO timeline, a World of Warcraft timeline, and a listing of UO releases, expansions, and special editions. You can also view the site's voting committee, which includes Blizzard, Sony Online Entertainment, and Wizard101 developers as well as MMO writers and fans. [Source: MMO HoF press release]
Epic's Tim Sweeney being inducted into AIAS Hall of Fame
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced the 16th inductee to its Hall of Fame, a catalog which already contains literal game-changers like Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier and Will Wright. To be added to that list during the Interactive Achievement Awards at the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit in February: Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney. You've almost certainly heard of him -- if not, you've definitely heard of the Unreal Engine, which he helped create. If you haven't heard of that, what is wrong with you? The Interactive Achievement Awards, which will be presented February 9, will see Epic VP Mark Rein bestowing the honor upon Sweeney. We anticipate that his speech will include humorous jabs at one or more of Sweeney's lesser-known idiosyncrasies, as well as a heart-touching stanza about how he's not just a good boss, but a great friend. We're getting a little choked up just thinking about it.
EverQuest joins Ultima Online in GDCOA's Hall of Fame
EverQuest may not be the recent hotness that everyone's talking about, but its impact on the MMO genre continues to be felt to this day. As such, it's great to see this classic game reaping its reward, as the Game Developers Choice Online Awards inducted EQ into the Hall of Fame yesterday. EverQuest was chosen for its lengthy advancements in MMO gaming, including it's focus on raiding and guild improvements. It now joins old-time competitor Ultima Online as the only other title in GDCOA's Hall of Fame. Sony Online Entertainment's John Smedley graciously accepted the honor: "When we set out to create EverQuest, many felt it was an unattainable stretch of the imagination. As it turns out, EverQuest exceeded even our wildest expectations. Twelve years later, we are about to release its 18th expansion, and have big plans for its future. We are incredibly proud of its impact on the industry and the community we have built. Tonight's honor is a testament to the hard working individuals who have contributed to EverQuest -- both past and present."
Game Developers Choice Online Awards announces finalists, EQ to be ushered into Hall of Fame
It's not quite to the prestigious level of the Academy Awards -- yet -- but the Game Developers Choice Online Awards is fast becoming one of the more well-known and highly respected award ceremonies in the MMO world while only being in its second year. With October 12th's ceremony coming soon, the field has been narrowed by 400 industry leaders into a competitive pool of nominees in a dozen categories. The categories include Best Online Visual Arts, Best Social Network Game, Best Online Game Design, Online Innovation, Best Online Technology, Best Community Relations, Best Audio For An Online Game, Best New Online Game, and Best Live Game. Several popular MMOs, including RIFT, DC Universe Online, World of Tanks and Wizard101, are up for a possible award. In addition, the awards will recognize Kesmai Corporation founders John Taylor and Kelton Flinn for the Online Game Legend Award. EverQuest, too, will be getting its long-overdue kudos as it is ushered into the Hall of Fame. We'll be anxious to see which games grab the gold this fall, but until then we're just going to grouse that we weren't tapped to be one of the judges.
Madden 12 adds a Hall of Fame Edition to the roster
Marshall Faulk is the first athlete who has graced a Madden cover and is being inducted into the Hall of Fame. To celebrate this marketing opportunity, EA is releasing a Hall of Fame Edition of Madden NFL 12, replete with bronze, embossed cover, an autographed Panini trading card (inedible) and a Madden Ultimate Team Platinum Pack -- in-game collectible cards for Madden NFL 12's supplementary mode, Madden NFL Ultimate Team. Oh, and if you're a Peyton Hillis fan, you can hit the jump to check out the official Madden NFL 12 cover. If you're not a Peyton Hillis fan, then don't sweat it: you can still daydream about how the curse will get him this season (if there is a season). [Thanks, Matt]
148Apps creates an App Hall of Fame
Jeff Scott of 148Apps has finally revealed his App Hall of Fame project -- he started it up about a month ago, and asked a number of personalities around the iPhone/iPad app scene (including yours truly) to nominate and then vote on a few App Store apps, with the eventual goal of inducting them into a Hall of Fame. We made our nominations and voted a little while ago, and the first inductees into the store are now listed on the site: Angry Birds, Flight Control, Doodle Jump, Shazam, Evernote, Plants vs. Zombies, Pandora, Simplenote, the official Twitter app, Instapaper, Homerun Battle 3D, and Fieldrunners. You've probably heard of all of those already, but that's the point: the Hall of Fame aims to honor "the very best mobile applications and games." There will be 12 inductees honored every month going forward, so the collection should grow bigger pretty fast. The nomination process is all done by the selection committee (not the public), but if you want to follow along, you can sign up on the mailing list (and have a chance to win some of the nominees for free every month). It's a fun project -- the App Store has been around long enough now that some super popular apps have risen to the top, and this is a good way to keep track of the absolute cream of the crop over the App Store's whole life. At the same time, I'm sure we'll see some interesting decisions in the months to come, so stay tuned for that.
Marble Madness creator Mark Cerny to be inducted into AIAS Hall of Fame
It may have been a quarter century since Mark Cerny's groundbreaking arcade game Marble Madness was first developed, but this year the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences will give the influential developer an induction into its Hall of Fame. On February 18 in Las Vegas, Cerny will become the 13th member of the AIAS' small club -- a club that includes development bigwigs like Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto, among others. For those of you who don't know, Cerny's been hard at work behind the scenes of some of our favorite games throughout the years. The developer's had a hand in everything from Sonic 2 through God of War 3, with his influential "Cerny Method" of tenacious development being passed down to modern day big boys like Insomniac's Ted Price and Naughty Dog's Evan Wells. "Mark has left an indelible mark on all of the games he's been a part of, the developers that he's collaborated with, and most importantly the individuals that he's worked along-side of," Wells said in the press release (warning: PDF link). For Cerny's part, he said he's "thrilled to accept this award" and humbly offloaded some respect to past colleagues that he's "had the pleasure to work with over the years." We're looking forward to witnessing the "Cerny Method" in action during his acceptance speech, wherein he only allows himself 30 seconds to catch our interest before reevaluating the entire thing.
Robot Hall of Fame expands to include Da Vinci, Terminator, Roomba
Forget those "sporting" Halls of Fame -- the real HOF is right here. Since 2003, the Robot Hall of Fame has been honoring robots and creators at an exhibit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and now we're seeing the latest handful of noteworthy creatures take their rightful place in history. For those unaware, the Robot HOF is maintained by Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Science Center, and an international jury of researchers, writers, and designers has just selected five new bots to join the cast: Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the T-800 Terminator (yes, that Terminator), the Da Vinci surgical system, iRobot's Roomba and 'Huey, Dewey, and Louie' from the 1972 sci-fi flick Silent Running. Could you have imagined a more fitting five? If so, sound off below!
City of Heroes Issue 14 open beta has begun
City of Heroes has announced the open beta phase for Issue 14: Architect, which allows players to customize their own missions, at long last bringing player-created content to the superhero (and supervillain) MMO. The NCsoft announcement reads: "Now is your chance to play and give feedback on one of the most in-depth player created mission systems in an MMO to date! Your story/mission masterpieces will be available in-game for all your fellow gamers to play and rate - and the higher the rating, the more YOU benefit!" They also announced that they'll be handpicking the best player-created content as 'Developer's Choice' stories. Those missions will be identified by a unique icon and the creator will receive a Dev's Choice badge. The devs aren't the only ones who get to rate the best missions. There will be a Hall of Fame where the highest peer-rated stories can be recognized for being a cut above the rest. As with the Developer's Choice missions, these stories receive a Hall of Fame icon and badge, but these rankings established during open beta won't carry over once Issue 14 goes live.%Gallery-45908%
The Guild visits Blizzard HQ
The cast and crew of The Guild got invited by Blizzard to come take a tour of the new facilities the other week, and they have a writeup on their website right now (written by Jeff Lewis, who plays Vork on the show) of their trip. Sounds like a lot of fun -- they got to tour the place, obviously, checking out the Hall of Fame, the gym and cafeteria (including the official "Blizzard Trays" area -- that sign makes me laugh), and the main offices. They also got to sit down and each lunch with Mike Morhaime, and then got to play both Starcraft 2 and some Rock Band with the staff. No Wrath?Blizzard sent them home with lots of swag, too. I was under the impression, especially given the comments on our last Guild post, that we weren't really sure that the game these guys were playing was World of Warcraft -- they've never said the name, as far as I know, and we've never seen any character shots. But Blizzard disagrees, apparently -- they've very sure The Guild is playing WoW, and they gave them a super nice tour for being a part of the game and the community.
Atari 2600 enters Strong National Museum of Play's Hall of Fame
We know that the Atari 2600 doesn't really need more accolades, but it's always nice to see the system get propers from the man upstairs. In this particular case, the man upstairs happens to be the Strong National Museum of Play's Toy Hall of Fame (that's a mouthful). To date, the museum has only added 38 toys to its list, so Atari's old pixel pusher joins the ranks of luminaries such as G.I. Joe, Barbie, the Slinky, Hula Hoops, and the Kite. In addition to being the newest entry, the console also has the distinction of being the most recently invented toy in the Hall of Fame, though we understand that claim was nearly edged out by Silly Putty. Congratulations, 2600, you've come a long way.[Via Next Generation]
Blizzard puts Hall of Fame in the Armory
Well it's not quite a row of statues, but, as Elizabeth mentioned the other day, Blizzard has created an Arena Hall of Fame over at the Armory. They've compiled, from season one, a list of all the teams that finished in the top .5% of their team bracket, and they're all browseable by battlegroup or realm.Unfortunately, they don't show many overall stats-- I'd like to see, for example, the numbers of teams from each battlegroup or realm (checking my own realm shows me that no teams made it, but you'd have to check every single realm to see numbers across the board). Do you think PvP realms turn out more successful Arena teams? I'd also like to see the average rating of the teams that made it-- just a random browse across realms shows that you'd have needed at least a 2200 rating in 5v5 to get in. The highest teams hit around 2500, it looks like, and here's an interesting point: The arena rating is based off of chess' ELO system, and in that system Gary Kasparov, the best player in the world, was the first to break the 2700 rating. So my guess is that we'll see generally higher ratings than these in season two, and so on.Anyway, a nice little tribute to players who were successful in season one. Hopefully, we'll see better insights coming out of these numbers than Blizzard has provided here, but in the meantime if you want to see who on your realm is a heavy hitter, the HoF is the place.
This week in the Arena
Players participating in Arena PvP get more than cool prizes -- the top 0.5% of participating teams are also going to be immortalized in Blizzard's Hall of Fame. And the top teams from season one have just shown up.Also, the second qualifying round for the 2v2 Championship Gaming Series has begun. The live CGS tournament will be taking place at BlizzCon in August -- and everyone here at WoW Insider wishes the competing teams the best of luck.And finally in Arena news for the week, we've got stats on the top 20 US Arena teams compiled by Caster. The data, as always, is interesting (if a bit disheartening for some classes). Here's the basic class breakdown, but for more details on precise numbers of each class and talent spec breakdowns, check the original post.5v5 Arenas Paladin: 18% Warrior: 18% Priest: 14% Shaman: 12% Mage: 12% Warlock: 11% Rogue: 6% Hunter: 5% Druid: 4% 3v3 Arenas Warrior: 16% Priest: 15% Paladin: 15% Warlock: 14% Mage: 13% Rogue: 12% Shaman: 8% Druid: 6% Hunter: 2% 2v2 Arenas Warlock: 21% Priest: 15% Paladin: 15% Warrior: 14% Rogue: 13% Druid: 9% Mage: 5% Shaman: 5% Hunter: 2%
Harris to hook 31 NFL stadiums up with HD instant replay
Although instant replay has its fair share of supporters and critics, it's here to stay in the NFL, and if you're hoping that the grainy SD playback that refs have to review might lead to a beneficial miscue, don't count on it. The NFL has teamed with Harris Corporation to install 33 NEXIO HD servers (plus 33 more for redundancy), an HD version of FORCE (Football Officiating Replay Challenge Expeditor) software, and routing / distribution gear that will enable officials to look back at questionable plays in "stunning high-definition." Every NFL stadium but three -- the ones "being replaced" in Irving, TX, Indianapolis, IN, and East Rutherford, NJ -- will be equipped with high-definition equipment and recabled "before the upcoming season." As expected, such (potentially superfluous) upgrades won't come without selling quite a few grossly overpriced sodas and soft pretzels, as it's estimated to cost each club around $300,000.Read - NFL Instant Replay becomes permanentRead - Harris to provide HD equipment to NFL
Aibo to join Robot Hall of Fame
To the list of those whose extraordinary contributions to our culture were not recognized during their lifetimes -- think Vincent Van Gogh, Franz Kafka, Joey Ramone -- let us now add a coda for a creature whose existence was cut short far too early, but who will now be memorialized in a most fitting way: Aibo. Sony's late, lamented robotic dog will soon enjoy a place of honor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame, sharing the accolades with such other luminaries as Asimo, the Mars Pathfinder and Astro Boy (the Hall of Fame honors both real and fictional robots). The induction ceremony (which will also include Gort of "klaatu barada nikto" fame) will be on June 21. We only -- sob -- wish Aibo had made it just a little longer, to enjoy this honor.
