Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Murder #Mystery Could Be First #VR Feature #Film | Fast Company #virtualreality

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Behold MansLaughter, the marriage of virtual reality, murder mystery, choose-your-own-adventure, and the visual style of George Lucas’s famous dystopian film, THX 1138.

Made specifically for Samsung’s virtual reality headset, the Gear VR, MansLaughter is billed as the first-ever VR feature film. The brainchild of filmmaker David Marlett, the movie brings viewers into the world of a cold-blooded killer, letting them choose how they watch the story unfold in a unique way made possible only because of VR. READ MORE: Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Murder Mystery Could Be First VR Feature Film | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.

Biodiversity Heritage Library Launches #Crowdsourcing #Games | Library Journal #libraries #search #gamification #volunteer

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The Purposeful Gaming and BHL project recently launched its first two browser-based video games, Smorball and Beanstalk.  Both are designed to offer players a fun online diversion while helping the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) enable full-text searching of digitized materials. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which was awarded in December 2013, the project is exploring how games might be used to entice people to participate in crowdsourcing efforts at libraries and museums. READ MORE: Biodiversity Heritage Library Launches Crowdsourcing Games | Library Journal

60 Bookish Films #Streaming on #Netflix | BookRiot #books #film

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Here’s a new list to watch on Netflix streaming that originated as a book, short story, or comic. READ: 60 Bookish Films Streaming on Netflix | BookRiot.

How to Spot Whodunnit: Academics Crack Agatha Christie’s Code | The Guardian #AgathaChristie #books

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Rather than watching brain-numbing reality television this summer, I am determined to watch all 13 series of Agatha Christie’s Poroit TV series starring David Suchet. Just finished Series 6 and will be picking up Series 7 & 8 from my local library today. I correctly guess the culprit only half the time. It’s been awesome. Yes, I am a bit of a mystery genre geek.   

For almost 100 years, Agatha Christie has beguiled readers with her much-loved mysteries. But now a panel of experts claims to have worked out how to answer the perennial question: whodunnit?

To celebrate the 125th anniversary of the birth of the world’s best-selling novelist, academics have created a formula that they claim will enable the reader to identify the killer before the likes of Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple have managed the feat.

The research, commissioned by the TV channel Drama, analysed 27 of the prolific writer’s books – 83 were published during her lifetime – including classics such as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. The experts concluded that where the novel was set, the main mode of transport used and how the victim dies were among the key clues. READ MORE: How to spot whodunnit: academics crack Agatha Christie’s code | Books | The Guardian.

Generate a 3D Hologram With Your Smartphone | Mashable #makerspaces #holograms #tech

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Regardless whether the hologram created is actually in 3D, this project would make a fantastic makerspace activity!

LONDON – If you happen to have an old CD case and a few basic tools lying around, this one will make a pretty cool party trick. British YouTuber and independent tech reviewer Mrwhosetheboss has uploaded an instructional video on how to turn any old smartphone into a 3D hologram projector – using nothing more complicated than a sharp knife, a ruler, a pen and paper, an old CD case and four squares of sticky tape. READ MORE: Here’s how you can generate a 3D hologram with your smartphone | Mashable

The Key to #Digital #Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED #kids #education #museums #interactive

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IF YOU WANT to teach your kid about ecology, sustainability, or the future of interactive education, take them to the New York Hall of Science and head for the giant virtual waterfall.

The massive digital faucet feeds the ecosystems of Connected Worlds, a cutting-edge installation that aims to teach youngsters about environmental science by immersing them in it. It’s an interactive simulation big enough to walk around inside—virtual reality that’s not piped into a headset but projected onto a real physical space.

Kids can shape the environment through a clever combination of physical and digital interaction. READ MORE: The Key to Digital Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED.

[Interactive] Map of American Literature’s Most Epic #RoadTrips | Atlas Obscura #literature #maps #books

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The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature's Most Epic Road Trips | Atlas Obscura

The above map is the result of a painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature. It includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s descriptions of the landscape as they traveled across it, or you can zoom in to see how different authors have written about the same place at different times. READ MORE: The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips | Atlas Obscura.

School #Librarians Want More #Tech—and Bandwidth | SLJ 2015 Tech Survey #schools #libraries

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IPads, maker spaces, 3-D printers, and coding skills top the tech wish lists for 1,259 school librarians across the country, according to School Library Journal’s (SLJ) 2015 Technology Survey. Educators are hungry to bring their students even more—whether that’s robotics classes or Arduino kits.

“New computers, tablets, video equipment, all digital tools, instruction on usage, [and] enough bandwidth” count among the must-haves for Andrea Oshima, a school librarian at Aviara Oaks Elementary School in Carlsbad, CA. Currently, 64 percent of school librarians consider themselves tech leaders in their schools—and 28 percent feel that their tech skills afford them increased job security. READ MORE:  School Librarians Want More Tech—and Bandwidth | SLJ 2015 Tech Survey | School Library Journal.

Here Are 5 Contenders For A New, #Female #MacGyver – Will One Help Drive #Girls To Engineering? | Co.Create #STEM

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Awesome on so many levels!!

Could television be the secret weapon that gets more girls into science There is no shortage of initiatives that aim to get girls interested in STEM careers from an early age. From GoldieBlox’s building kits and storybooks to the 8-week summer camp Girls Who Code teaching teens the fundamentals of robotics and web development. That’s because in order to right the lopsided gender balance in science, engineering, and math, research indicates that it’s important to engage girls while they are young and encourage them to continue to pursue STEM careers. And we all know how important diversity is to business, particularly as it becomes more globally connected.

Yet engineering toys and school programs can’t necessarily stem the tide of media images that continue to push the idea the typical scientist, programmer, or engineer is a white guy working alone. That’s why the USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and the National Academy of Engineering pooled their resources in partnership with the MacGyver Foundation and together they’re crowdsourcing a concept for a new television show starring a strong female scientist —the next MacGyver. READ MORE: Here Are 5 Contenders For A New, Female MacGyver–Will One Help Drive Girls To Engineering? | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce.

@Google Translate’s App Now Instantly #Translates Printed Text In 27 #Languages | TechCrunch #apps #tech

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One of the most intense experiences you’ll ever have is visiting a country that speaks a language different than yours. There’s a host of tools you can use, but Google’s Translate product has leapfrogged just about everything out there over the years.

Its most handy, and impressive, tool is the six-month-old instant translation feature, using the goodies from the acquired Word Lens, that lets you point your camera at something written in another language, say a sign, and it’ll translate into your language with ridiculous accuracy in almost real-time.

Today, that feature is expanding today from seven languages to 27 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. The update is rolling out over both iOS and Android.

READ MORE: Google Translate’s App Now Instantly Translates Printed Text In 27 Languages | TechCrunch.

Link to Google Translate on iTunes.