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Osmo

playosmo.com

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Re: Osmo

#71

Post by cognivore »

Greenisus wrote: post #14

I don't understand all the hate in this thread. This is a clever and creative use of technology that combines a favorite toy (iPad) with the one thing it lacks: physical interaction with real world objects. From what I understand (I'm a new dad so I'm still reading and learning), this sort of thing is very important for a developing mind.

'cause it looks like total B.S. from people who don't know what they're talking about or what kids will really play with in the long term.

For the same money you can get a something much healthier and long lasting in the form of a bike or, hell, a bunch of cardboard boxes and some art supplies and then let them go wild. Build themselves a transmogrifier or something. Make their own freakin' puzzles.

My most beloved set of toys as a child was a bunch of plastic dinosaurs, a tiny pair of pliers, a trashed bike I was free to do whatever I liked to (bottle rocket launchers on the handlebars - oh yeah), and a really nice set of crayons and a giant roll of butcher paper. I'm not quite at the "get off my lawn" stage, but that isn't a toy, it's a product. Hence, the hate.

Re: Osmo

#72

Post by mikeash »

User9812 wrote: post #68
mikeash wrote: post #15

OK, seriously, why is it so hard for companies to just tell me what their product is? I guess it's some sort of augmented reality thing? With a clip-on mirror? (???) And a standard Tangram game? "For the first time, fun knows no limits." Did somebody redesign zombo.com for the 21st century and try to attach a product to it? There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at the basic task of…

It's one of those trick sites, where you never realize you can scroll down (thank you fullscreen image trend). Go back to the site, scroll. First thing you'll see... Setup is a snap. Simply mount Osmo over your iPad's front‑facing camera. Reflective Artificial Intelligence and a built‑in mirror recognize and respond to your every real‑world move. Then it goes on to describe the available games, and has other key info…

I scrolled all the way down, but nothing tells me what it is. I didn't watch the video, though.

The bit you quoted raises more questions than it answers. Why is there a mirror? What the hell is "reflective artificial intelligence"? What does it do with the recognition of your real-world moves?

Re: Osmo

#73

Post by at-fates-hands »

eykanal wrote: post #57

Am I the only one who saw this and was hoping it was an online remake of Cyan's Cosmic Osmo [1]? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Osmo_and_the_Worlds_Beyo...

Apparently I'm the only one. I used to play this over at a neighbors house all the time when I was a little ankle biter.

Re: Osmo

#74

Post by [deleted] »

bpicolo wrote: post #69
Pxtl wrote: post #54

It's a neat concept - a nice, polished AR kit. The actual tangram concept is a bit disappointing though - dragging simple objects around on a flat surface is already something the iPad excels at. In this case it feels like it's somewhat obsoleted by modern touch-screens. Obviously there are cases where touch-screens fail, but simple tangram puzzles work just fine with them. I'd be interested in seeing this expanded t…

It's not really AR, just reading things through a mirror and camera. It's not actually showing you any reality. Just sayin'.

[deleted]

Re: Osmo

#75

Post by User9812 »

mikeash wrote: post #72
User9812 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of those trick sites, where you never realize you can scroll down (thank you fullscreen image trend). Go back to the site, scroll. First thing you'll see... Setup is a snap. Simply mount Osmo over your iPad's front‑facing camera. Reflective Artificial Intelligence and a built‑in mirror recognize and respond to your every real‑world move. Then it goes on to describe the available games, and has other key info…

I scrolled all the way down, but nothing tells me what it is. I didn't watch the video, though. The bit you quoted raises more questions than it answers. Why is there a mirror? What the hell is "reflective artificial intelligence"? What does it do with the recognition of your real-world moves?

I thought that was self-explanatory. Your iPad camera faces forward, the mirror redirects it down to the playing surface. The AI tries to track the location of the letters and colored blocks in the mirrored image.

What does it do? The examples are pretty obvious, what more are you looking for?

Arrange tangible puzzle pieces into matching on‑screen shapes.

Be the first to guess and spell out the on‑screen hidden word by tossing down real‑life letters faster than your friends. A related picture gives the clue.

Re: Osmo

#76

Post by dahart »

MarcScott wrote: post #52
butterfi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The educational world is besieged by companies convinced that their technology is not only the solution to our educational woes, but a fat business opportunity waiting to be exploited. Teachers in classrooms have been burned so many times by technology that fails to deliver and uneven implementation across the district, that they instinctively cover their wallets every time a new company shows up promising to "revolu…

I've been teaching for over 10 years now and have weathered the storms of many technology revolutions in the classroom. Interactive white boards It grows very tiresome.

I wish Osmo all the best, and hope it breaks the mold.

But I have to agree about schools and tech, and generally about tech and education. Spend more time with your kids, and don't expect an iPad to teach your kids anything, and you'll be in a better place. I say this being a huge lover of technology, having developed ipad apps and video games professionally.

The school my kids are in is continually blowing large sums of money buying technology that they don't leverage in the classroom. They can't leverage tech in the classroom, the teachers aren't developers, and they're not even trained in basic tech, and they don't have the money for the training because they're spending the money on e-whiteboards. The money would go so much further paying for art teachers, or supplies, or school activities, or almost anything.

Our art classes are no longer funded by the state or school district, the school hires a part time art teacher to teach a class once a week, or maybe every other week. And yet they're buying ipads and interactive white boards. Its insane, and really, really sad. The interactive whiteboards are a complete joke and costs thousands a pop.

Our entire state (UT) is using automated essay scoring, which does not, and will never, work. Not even a little. I know the school district, and the state, has been having discussions with the essay scoring software company, and they're being told it will improve. The school system has no idea that this fundamentally will not work, and the software company is fully incapable of improving automated essay scoring. One night I came home from work to find my child in tears and my wife on the verge of tears trying to help, because my kid couldn't figure out how to get the goal score on his automated essay the teacher had set. A couple of quick tests, and I discovered the software largely grades on length alone. We pasted the text of a proposal to ban automated essay scoring from all US schools, and his essay suddenly had a perfect score. What a joke, and the state is spending tax money on a statewide contract for this ridiculous and worthless software.

Re: Osmo

#77

Post by ovulator »

Greenisus wrote: post #14

I don't understand all the hate in this thread. This is a clever and creative use of technology that combines a favorite toy (iPad) with the one thing it lacks: physical interaction with real world objects. From what I understand (I'm a new dad so I'm still reading and learning), this sort of thing is very important for a developing mind.

As a new fellow new dad, I saw this and thought "that is very impressive technology", but as a learning instrument and toy, why is the iPad required?

The iPad seems like a replacement for the parent. Instead of an iPad I can sit sown with a kid and say, what letters do we need to spell fruit, and I can sit and help her find them. Or what shapes can we make with these blocks, or can you help dad make a cat?

The technology in here seems to be an attempt at automating the parenting, so instead of me sitting down with my daughter I leave her in a room alone with the iPad (as seen in the video) and go do something else.

Re: Osmo

#78

Post by mikeash »

dragonwriter wrote: post #35
mikeash wrote: post #15

OK, seriously, why is it so hard for companies to just tell me what their product is? I guess it's some sort of augmented reality thing? With a clip-on mirror? (???) And a standard Tangram game? "For the first time, fun knows no limits." Did somebody redesign zombo.com for the 21st century and try to attach a product to it? There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at the basic task of…

> There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at the basic task of telling people what they're selling. It's baffling. Its not at all baffling. Selling product is about creating feelings of need for the product, not creating an accurate rational understanding of what the product does. There's a few markets (like marketing development tools to developers -- but, notably, not marketing dev…

Do companies really try to create a feeling of need in people who don't even know what it is?

Certainly there's a ton of advertising out there that rests on "feeling of need", but it's always for stuff that everybody knows about. That subtle Rolex ad doesn't need to tell you "this device tells you what time it is wherever you go" because everybody already knows what a wristwatch is. Coca-Cola ads can focus on cute animated polar bears instead of "this is a carbonated sweet drink" because everybody knows their product. (Even then, they almost always show people actually drinking the stuff.)

If you have a new product, one that you're saying is different from anything else out there, surely you need to tell people what it is if you want them to think they need it.

Re: Osmo

#79

Post by bstpierre »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #64
mikeash wrote: post #15

OK, seriously, why is it so hard for companies to just tell me what their product is? I guess it's some sort of augmented reality thing? With a clip-on mirror? (???) And a standard Tangram game? "For the first time, fun knows no limits." Did somebody redesign zombo.com for the 21st century and try to attach a product to it? There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at the basic task of…

"Fun with no limits" is a stick and a paper hat. Sometimes I wonder what other people's childhoods were like. After reading their site and watching their video my chief question was whether this thing exists, or if you can preorder it and they'll start thinking about whether it's feasible or not, like many kickstarter-type things.

> "Fun with no limits" is a stick and a paper hat.

This is what I came to say. This thing has a limit, and that is that you are tethered to the thing. And as an electronic thing, it is relatively fragile. You can't take it into the sandbox or a snow fort, and you can't get it wet or muddy. It looks a sit-at-a-desk toy, and that's just not a natural state for kids.

When I was a kid (and now that I watch my kids play), we were all over the place (backyard, woods, indoors, basement) and playing with all kinds of non-toys (sticks, rocks, couch-cushion-forts, and on rare & precious occasions a huge cardboard box or section of discarded pegboard) and putting toys together in unexpected ways (matchbox + lego; scraps of lumber + any toy => catapult; does every kid use their bike training wheels to prop up the bike in order to make rooster tails in puddles?).

For $60, I can buy a giant pile of stuff from the hardware store that we can use to make all kinds of "burglar alarms" (rube goldberg machines to ring a bell -- a favorite rainy day activity) that will involve a whole bunch more learning than anything like osmo can provide.

I'm somewhat biased towards being anti-technology, but it's really a bias against technology for technology's sake. This thing may be fun, and if that's what you want, go for it, but I can't really see that it's solving any particular problem per se.

Re: Osmo

#80

Post by mikeash »

User9812 wrote: post #75
mikeash wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I scrolled all the way down, but nothing tells me what it is. I didn't watch the video, though. The bit you quoted raises more questions than it answers. Why is there a mirror? What the hell is "reflective artificial intelligence"? What does it do with the recognition of your real-world moves?

I thought that was self-explanatory. Your iPad camera faces forward, the mirror redirects it down to the playing surface. The AI tries to track the location of the letters and colored blocks in the mirrored image. What does it do? The examples are pretty obvious, what more are you looking for? Arrange tangible puzzle pieces into matching on‑screen shapes. Be the first to guess and spell out the on‑screen hidden word…

Maybe the problem is just that what it does is so far removed from the superlative language used to describe the product as a whole? The introduction leaves me with the impression that it must be more than a silly augmented reality puzzle game.

I still don't understand the mirror. iPads have a camera in the back already....

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