Tag: media

Kids News Technology

New Video Game Helps Kids With Autism

An amazing new “video game” is helping kids with autism show their emotions in their facial expressions.

Autism affects the brain’s development of social and communication skills.

People with autism typically have difficulty recognizing facial expressions and emotions.

The new video game, called FaceMaze, was developed to help kids with autism recognize what certain emotions look like, and what they mean—for instance, smiling, frowning or looking sad.

The video game looks and plays a lot like Pac-Man, a popular video game from the 1980s.

Breaking News News Technology

Do You Want to Buy A Piece Of Facebook?

Facebook is the most popular “social networking” website in the world and it may be for sale soon. Or at least part of it.

A “social networking” website is one that lets people meet and chat with each other—not face-to-face, but over the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are two popular social networking websites.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook with some university friends in 2004. Recently, he decided to “go public” with Facebook. In this case, that means people he doesn’t even know will be allowed to buy a share (part) of the company.

Right now, Facebook is privately owned by some individuals and companies. Zuckerberg himself owns 24 per cent or almost one-quarter of Facebook–the largest portion.

When a company “goes public,” it is given a value (for instance, Facebook is said to be worth $100-billion) and that value is divided into “shares.” Those shares, which each represent a tiny piece of the value of the company, are then offered for sale.

Entertainment News Sports

Super Bowl Commercials Don’t Disappoint

Many people like to fast-forward through commercials on TV.

However, there is one time when many people want to watch the commercials. And that’s during the Super Bowl football game.

The Super Bowl was played last Sunday.

It has become a tradition that the commercials shown during the Super Bowl are particularly interesting to watch. Many of them are funny.

For instance, in a Volkswagen ad, a dog sees a Volkswagen go by his house. He wants to chase it, but he’s too fat to fit through the doggie door.

So he starts exercising himself to get in shape.

He chases his own tennis ball, and he swims laps in a pool.

Eventually, he is able to fit through the doggie door and chase the car.

Arts News

White Room + Children + Dots = Art!

What do you get when you start with a white room and then give thousands of children coloured dot stickers?

That is exactly what artist Yayoi Kusama wanted to find out.

She painted a room in the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art completely white.

The walls, floor and ceiling were white. The piano was white. The couch, TV and seats were white. Even a fern was painted white.

And then she invited thousands of children inside.

Entertainment Kids

Justin Bieber Is Home For The Holidays

Justin Bieber came home for the holidays on Wednesday night – to Canada.

The Stratford, Ont.-born teen idol spread plenty of good cheer while visiting Toronto.

One of the first things he did on arriving in the country was to hold a benefit concert and raise $500,000 for Bieber’s Believe charity, for the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, Sunnybrook Foundation and Project Medishare.

The concert, held at Toronto’s historic Massey Hall, was taped for a TV special that aired on MuchMusic and CTV last night. It was called Justin Bieber: Home for the Holidays.

Lighter Technology

Google Offers Holiday Easter Eggs

If you type the words “let it snow” (without the quotation marks) into the search engine Google.com or Google.ca*, you probably won’t be surprised when Google gives you back a list of links to the classic Christmas song.

What might surprise you, however, is that it will also start snowing on your computer screen!

Eventually, so much “snow” will fall that your screen will fog up. But don’t worry, you can click on Google’s “defrost” button to clear it again. You can also use your mouse to “wipe” the screen clean.

News

Subaru Canada Apologizes To Truckers

The car maker, Subaru Canada, has had to take one of its radio ads off the air.

The ad tells people that “roads are an unpredictable place, so drive with confidence.”

It then tells people that Subaru cars are very safe.

To demonstrate what it means by “unpredictable place,” the ad describes a truck driver who hasn’t slept in two days and is nearly asleep at the wheel.

The trucker is also described as eating a bag of ketchup potato chips while he’s driving.

Science

The First Mummy In 3,000 Years

The body of Alan Billis, who died of cancer recently will be the first one in the modern world to be mummified like the ancient Egyptians were.

While he was terminally ill with lung cancer, Billis—a taxi driver in the UK—signed up for the procedure.

Dr. Stephen Buckley is a scientist who has been working for nearly 20 years to figure out how to mummify bodies in the same way Egyptian bodies like Tutankhamun’s were preserved.

His process was filmed for a television documentary on Britain’s Channel Four TV station.

News

Inventor, Innovator, Genius – Steve Jobs’ Legacy

Steve Jobs changed forever the way the world views, and interacts with, technology.

Jobs passed away last week, at the age of 56, from cancer.

Jobs helped to invent many products including the Macintosh computer, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad. Along with Steve Wozniak, he founded computer company Apple.

It may be difficult for young people, who may have never known computers and phones before Steve Jobs changed them, to understand the massive impact he made.

A 1984 video of Jobs unveiling a brand-new product called the Macintosh computer, gives some idea.

To us today, the technology seems horribly outdated, clunky and… can you believe it? the images on the tiny computer screen aren’t even in colour!

But listen to the audience in the video as Jobs walks over to a small bag and takes the computer out. It has a handle! It’s small enough to carry! It has graphics, not just text! The audience gasps, cheers and claps because no one has ever seen anything like it.

News Sports

Blue Jays New Logo “Leaked” Online

The Blue Jays baseball team is changing its logo.

Teams often change their logo when they want to portray their team in a new way.

In this case, the Jays likely want their logo to emphasize the fact that they are Canadian.

Their new logo design is a big secret. They don’t want anyone to know what it will look like until they unveil it to the media and the public at a big event.

The logo they posted on their site looks quite a bit like an old logo they used to have, with the Canadian maple leaf quite a bit bigger.

However, the website Uni Watch (Uni stands for uniform) has obtained what it says is a copy of the proposed logo.