Take A Plunge

In July 2008, Tapulous released a music game for the iPhone called Tap Tap Revenge (TTR). It became a massive hit reaching the 1 million users mark within its first few weeks. Over the last year and a half, TTR and its sequels have 25 millions installations and are the most popular series on the App Store. Now Tapulous has come up with an entirely new music-focused gaming series: Riddim Ribbon (iTunes link), which features the Black Eyed Peas.

Riddim Ribbon can be said as a fusion between racing, popular songs, and little bit of remixing music. Once you choose a song, the game takes you to a hyper-colorful racetrack. Here you can pilot a futuristic spherical vehicle. The track is has small orbs and obstacles and a path shows you where you should be drive. You can control your vehicle by tilting the iPhone from side to side (its common in racing games though). Riddim Ribbon has a special twist: you actually can modify the music you’re listening to during the race depending on how you navigate the course.

Cost

This initial version of the game has 3 songs by the Black Eyed Peas for $2.99. You can have additional levels for a dollar each.

Riddim Ribbon believes that the game will be able to monetize through the App Store’s in-app purchases. “In-app purchases” allows developers to upsell new virtual goods, songs, and features after a user has installed an application.

The Zune HD game Audio Surf has a lot of similarities to Riddim Ribbon.

The website of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest software vendor, has been hacked. You will see a “For Sale” message on the site. The message is  written in both French and English. It may be important to know that the company produces security systems software.

The hack is believed to be a DNS hijack. Such attack is similar to the breach that Twitter succumbed to last year.

Apple has revealed the device about after  year or more. The iPad is somewhat like a bigger iPhone.

The features

• 1GHz Apple A4 processor
• 0.5? thick
• 1.5 pounds
• 9.7? Capacitive touchscreen (1024×768)
• 16-64GB of SSD storage
• 3G available but not in all iPads
• $14.99 for 250MB, $29.99 for unlimited data on AT&T (no contract)
• 3G iPads are unlocked, have GSM micro SIMs
• Accelerometer, Compass
• 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1
• Runs iPhone apps in window or pixel doubling
• Hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics
• SDK out today
• $499 for 16GB base model, $830 for all maxed out
• Dock with hard keyboard available

Prices start at $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. Adding 3G costs $130.

There are some great apps which includes 3D games, a calendar, a nice email app, and a New York Times app.

There are some things that you may not like much

• No camera so no video chat
• Limited space - 64GB
• No SD or multi-card reader means that’s all the storage you get
• iPod dock connection only means no easy connection of USB devices

See how the Apple iPad works. See how a few applications are actually being used.

The video shows Apple’s new Keynote app and the new iBooks app in action.

Many students study alone and sometimes they face problems which they could not find an answer to. In that case, they can now try out entrepreneur Pooja Nath’s startup Piazzza which wants to make group learning a reality.

Piazzza is still in a private beta. This site will help classmates to share their questions and answers. The sharing will happen in a special format that’s a mixture between a wiki and a forum. Each class will have own hub for Q&A. Students will be able to bookmark any questions they want to find out the answer of. Each answer can contain contributions from multiple students in a wiki style.

Students can sign up free and create Piazzza hubs for their classes. Piazzza will also have answer space for the professors. The answers of the professors will be separated from the students’ to make them easier to find.

It will also help the professors to understand which topics they should explain better in the class by seeing which subjects are more bookmarked.

Right now, Piazzza has opened to around 600 students across 9 classes. It will open to around 50 classes in a few months. Initial response from professors has been quite positive .