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Programming through play: Why teaching kids to code will change how the rest of us code

Jun04
by on June 4, 2014 at 1:31 pm
Posted In: Analysis and Opinion, Around the Web, Design & Dev

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Raj Sidhu is a designer, Web developer, and creator of Code Monkey Island, a board game that introduces kids to programming fundamentals. I felt pretty jealous as I walked into the computer room of the elementary school I was visiting. The hulking PCs of my youth – with their giant floppy disk drives and 8-bit copies of Oregon Trail – were nowhere to be seen. Instead, children were happily tapping away at Photoshop and playing Web games on pristine, wafer-thin iMacs. I had come to the school to have a group of kids play-test Code Monkey Island – a board game I had designed…

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Preggie for iPhone is a social network for mums-to-be

Jun04
by on June 4, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Insider

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Preggie is a new social network  for expectant mums. The currently iPhone-only app (Android coming soon) is designed as a platform for mums-to-be to discuss all things related to, well, pregnancy and babies. Though it can be used as a standalone social network to chat with anyone anywhere in the world, it will also help you hook up with other mothers in your area which could, of course, lead to real-world meetups. In your personal profile, you indicate what stage of the pregnancy you’re at too, which should go some way towards connecting you with the most suitable online buddies….

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Temple Run sprints past a colossal 1 billion downloads

Jun04
by on June 4, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web

Temple Run and its sequel have topped an eye-watering 1 billion downloads across all platforms, The Verge reports. The achievement doesn’t include the spin-offs that Imangi Studios developed in partnership with Disney – Temple Run Brave and Temple Run Oz – so total downloads for the franchise will be even higher. It’s a huge milestone and further highlights the massive audience that developers are able to target across smartphones and tablets. Temple Run was one of the first “endless runner” games to hit the mainstream and its reputation alone has ensured its long-tail success. The game (and its numbered sequel)…

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How GitHub rival GitLab is building a business with just 0.1% paying customers

Jun04
by on June 4, 2014 at 12:15 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Profiles and Interviews

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Long-distance relationships are never easy, but it seems to be less so for the relationships between co-founders of tech companies. Living proof of this are the CEO and CTO of GitLab, which provides a self-hosted open-source collaboration platform intended for software developers. Simply speaking, GitLab is a GitHub that you can install on your own server for free to have full control over your code. GitLab’s author and CTO Dmitriy Zaporozhets lives in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, while his co-founder and the company’s CEO Sytse Sijbrandij is based out of Utrecht, the Netherlands. This country was where I first met him,…

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Rovio’s Angry Birds Stella spin-off will arrive this fall with a new game, cartoon, toys and more

Jun04
by on June 4, 2014 at 12:07 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Rovio is readying a multimedia charge for Angry Birds Stella, a new spin-off based on its immensely popular mobile video games. A new title featuring the titular character Stella and her friends Poppy, Willow, Dahlia and Luca will arrive with familiar “slingshot gameplay” in September. The game will be set in a new locale – the treetops of Golden Island – and integrate with a new line of collectible Telepods figures. The game will be supplemented with a 13-episode animated series on ToonsTV, its media streaming service for Samsung smart TVs, Roku streaming deices, the Angry Birds apps and the…

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