Festival season is in full swing and now a new event is looking to earn a spot alongside Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza as the hottest concerts of the summer. LiveList co-founder Allen Sanford joins Cheddar to discuss launching The BeachLife Festival in Los Angeles.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a decade since the first National Robotics Week. A decade ago I was a fledgling robotics blogger and was absolutely convinced that within the next 10 years, robots would be everywhere. That hasn’t quite happened (yet), but robots certainly are a lot more places and doing a lot more things than they were in 2010, and that’s definitely worth celebrating!
National Robotics Week 2019 officially starts this Saturday, and runs from 6 to 14 April. To get everyone excited, the organizers put together this awesome video featuring a lineup of star roboticists: Ayanna Howard (Georgia Tech), Colin Angle (iRobot), Ian Bernstein (Misty Robotics), Kate Darling (MIT Media Lab), Mark Palatucci (Anki), and Rodney Brooks (MIT).
When he was a child, John Hanke was obsessed with pull-out maps from National Geographic magazines, spending hours poring over names and topographic features. So in some ways, it makes sense that the Niantic CEO wants to help map the entire world with augmented reality.
At the Game Developers Conference 2019 in San Francisco, Hanke talked about why developers should continue pursuing AR, and how it can be a force for good if done right. Niantic popularized consumer AR through location-based mobile apps like Ingress and Pokémon Go, and is applying that expertise to the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. One thing that all three games share in common is that they’re part of Niantic’s overarching mission of incorporating AR into the world in a fun and interesting way.
For all the hype around the blockchain – the computer algorithms behind the popular Bitcoin cryptocurrency – there are some real, solid promise behind the technology. Los Angeles-based Lucid Sight (www.lucidsight.com) is applying that technology “behind the scenes” to help power video games, using the digital asset features of blockchain to build ownership and scarcity into collectible video games. We caught up with Randy Saaf, the CEO of Lucid Sight, to learn more about how exactly the company is doing that, and why. Lucid Sight recently announced a $6M funding round from such investors as the ML, Salem Partners, The Galaxy EOS VC Fund, Digital Currency Group, Breakaway Growth, Frontier Venture Capital, and Animoca Brands.
Lucid Sight said that it has raised $6 million in funding to expand its MLB Champions and Crypto Space Commander blockchain games to traditional game platforms.
Los Angeles-based Lucid Sight has now raised $11 million to fuel the growth of its digital ownership games company will also launch Scarcity Engine, a software developer tool that will help bridge the gap between blockchain and traditional gaming platforms.
