Playpower.org

Remember Visicalc?

Priya Ganapati of Wired Magazine just posted an awesome article on Playpower. Check it out!  She really nailed the finer points of our mission, but also presented the project as a *lot* of fun.

ETech has been a fantastic experience so far.  There is such a variety of interesting people.  For example, here’s a picture of Jeremy and I talking to Bob Frankston, who developed Visicalc.  If you weren’t around in 1979, that’s the world’s first spreadsheet program, developed on the 6502 based Apple II. It turned the home computer into a useful business tool.

He said he’ll try to find the source code for us.  That’s so awesome.

Read the Wired Article

Brady Forrest introducing the "$20 Computer"

Thanks for letting Playpower start the first day of talks at ETech 09! As people walked in, 8-bit music was playing from chiptune artists around the world playing, including GOTO80, Nullsleep, Starpause, Firebrand Boy, Trash80, Paza, and minusbaby.

In case you were wondering, SF local Starpause will be playing a live set at our presentation at 4:10pm, today. He’s in the SF chiptune party crew DUTYCYCLE. The global 8-bit chiptune scene has been extremely helpful to playpower.org, and for that, we thank you.

(Thanks, Alasdair!)

TV-Computer with Chinese GUI and mouse

Millions of clones of the Nintendo Famicom are being produced every year.  These are primarily distributed to “emerging middle class” consumers throughout the developing world.  Interestingly, producing and selling these hardware clones is now legal, as the patents have expired on the Famicom.

Many of the “Famiclones” are currently marketed as educational computers (”LERRN CIMPUTERS THE FUN WAY” proclaims one box) and contain a variety of not-so-effective educational games.  I suppose the margins on a $12 computer don’t encourage much R&D in effective game-based pedagogy!  So that’s why Playpower seeks to produce new “affordable, effective and fun” learning games, and distribute them directly to the manufacturers as a “market intervention”.  In this model, there is no cost for designing hardware, getting it manufactured, or distributing it to millions of kids in the developing world–we only have to design and produce effective learning games!

Therefore, in order to build our open-source developer community, we’re teaming up with Makershed.com to sell TV-computers to potential developers in the USA– and at the same time, raise money to support The Playpower Foundation.   If there is enough demand for these in the USA, we may even be able to start shipping versions that can directly play old NES cartridges!  (the current version requires a 72-pin to 60-pin converter, which is sold separately).

The first TV-computers available in the states will be sold at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, beginning March 9, 2009.

Genuine NES Dev Cartridge

One of Playpower’s major goals is to create an open-source development kit for creating new games on the $12 TV-computer.  Currently, it is far more difficult to produce new software for the TV-computer than on, say, the iPhone.  Programming for the 6502 generally requires assembly coding, which is straightforward to learn, but is not terribly accessible.

Open-source developers have provided some great tools for this purpose, however.  Specifically, cc65.org is a community producing free C compilers for 6502-based systems (including the NES).  We’ll hopefully post some functional code this week, after testing it in our development cartridge.

Also, feel free to drop by our demo this Thursday, Feb 19, at the UC San Diego Engineering Research Expo, which is taking place on the first floor of Calit2.

• a device for decreasing the transmission rate of HIV/AIDS from mothers to their babies,
• a charcoal crushing machine to help make charcoal briquettes from carbonized corn cobs.
• a ropeway system to help craftswomen in the Himalayas get their products to market.
• a pearl millet thresher
• an incubator for low birth weight babies in the developing world
• a super low-cost computer for educational programs
• an interlocking stabilized soil block maker
• a pico-hydro electric generator
• a hand-held tool for isolating DNA for improving diagnostic capability
• a device for generating electricity from a treadle pump

Thanks Doc!

The great folks at the Edgerton Center were kind enough to host us during our time at the International Development and Design Summit (IDDS).  In fact, Jim Sales helped us take this classic picture of a bullet going through some crayons; notice that the bullet has actually been deformed by the crayons! (Photo credit to Jess Gatley of the Boston Herald.  He was taking pictures of our team, and Jim asked if he wanted to photograph the crayons.)

Coincidentally, PLAYPOWER’s Daniel Rehn completed his thesis on the amazing late Doc Edgerton

LA Gallery Opening Thursday, August 14.  http://www.iam8bit.net/ for more info