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Final Fantasy concert at Boston Symphony Hall on March 10
"Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy" will be performed at Boston's Symphony Hall on March 10. The concert features compositions by Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu, covering the past 25 years of the series.The concert will be conducted by Grammy Award-winning artist Arnie Roth leading Boston's Video Game Orchestra (VGO) and Choir Força. Final Fantasy composer Masashi Hamauzu will be in attendance.Tickets are still available, with the standard price running $43.50-$76.00 and VIP tickets for $126.00. The acoustics are pretty spectacular in the space and we understand tickets are selling quickly, so get your personal assistant Moogle to order tickets immediately if you're interested.
VGo telepresence robot gets Verizon LTE, we go eyes-on (video)
The idea of a telepresence robot isn't exactly new in the tech world, considering there's been a few going to school in the place of teenagers for over a year now. But the VGo 'bot -- a chest-high roving device that has a display and camera built-in and allows patients and others to interact with a remote operator -- is at CES this year to show off its inclusion of Verizon LTE, instead of the WiFi-only model we've seen in times past. Certainly, the robot can default to WiFi in the absence of Big Red's next-gen network, but the nationwide coverage definitely gives the robot a lot more appeal... even if it is a mere $6,000. Expect to see the 4G-enabled Johnny Five available in the next two or three weeks. To see exactly what the robot's capable of, check out the gallery below and the video after the break.
Texas student sends robot to school in his place, can't get it to do his homework
You may have recently seen telepresence robots played for laughs on The Big Bang Theory, but they do also have quite a few practical purposes, and high school student Lyndon Baty from Knox City, Texas is now using one to particularly great effect. He has a weakened immune system that prevents him from actually attending school, so he's using a remotely-controlled Vgo telepresence "robot" that allows him to move from class to class and interact with teachers and other students using nothing more than his laptop and webcam at home. The bot itself is four-feet tall, self-balancing, and simply packs a basic video conferencing system up top that allows its operator to interact with their surroundings -- at $5,000, it's also considerably cheaper than some other similar options. As Popular Science notes, however, this isn't the first time that a telepresence bot has gone to school -- a student in Russia suffering from leukemia has also been using a similar bot since September of last year as part of a pilot project from the robot's designers. Head on past the break for the local news report from Texas.
Boston Globe features Berklee's growing video game music composition program
Boston's Berklee College of Music continues to expand its curriculum for video game music. The Boston Globe has a feature on the program, which this semester includes five classes in game audio and scoring (in a musical sense). The piece covers the basics of the program, from the first class started four years ago to the compositions being put together for local indie games. Berklee isn't the only school with video game audio classes, as Yale, New York University and local rival New England Conservatory also feature programs. The thing that really makes Berklee stand out, however, is its Video Game Music Club, which reportedly has 300 members. Check out the Globe piece for a nice introduction to Berklee's growing recognition of the medium.
You're going to love the Video Game Orchestra
You're all familiar with Video Games Live by this point, and with good reason, it's a great organization. But we want to make sure you don't miss out on one of our new favorites in the field: the Video Game Orchestra, a collection of volunteers just playing for the love of the music.We've got video of the Boston-based group's take on Metal Gear Solid 3 after the break, but we're betting you're going to want to see all of the clips on its YouTube channel right here.
