Shidonni brings imagination to children’s online play
Spot Cool Stuff recently took a visit to places in Hawaii where the hit TV show LOST was filmed. That was our way of biding time until the day the show’s fifth season arrived on Blu-ray.
Happily, that day has come!
As a kid we used to sled on a wooden Flexible Flyer. As a college student we used sled on food trays we, um, “creative acquired” from the school cafeteria. That’s what sledding was like back then. This is sledding today:
Spot Cool Stuff laments the general direction children’s toys have taken away from requiring imagination. Surely, part of the issue has been the proliferation of online gaming websites aimed at kids.
But if websites have been part of the problem maybe they can be part of the solution? That’s the idea behind the Israel-based start-up Shidonni.
Shidonni has a variety of fun, imagination-enhansing online games for children. Kids can draw animals, for example, upload the drawing to the Shindonni site, and then have their animal creation roam around the virtual Shindonni world for others users to see.
And here’s our favorite part: On Shidonni you can take a child’s drawing of an imaginary creature and then turn it into a real life stuffed animal!
For years now there have been good skateboard video games out there (the Skate series by Electronic Arts being our favorite among them). But there’s something ultimately unsatisfying about controlling a virtual skateboarder by way of a joystick. Even Skate, which is a truly fun game, is really just glorified driving game with a skateboard on the screen instead of a car or motorcycle or whatever.
The new Tony Hawk: Ride offers to change that—the game for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 comes with a physical skateboard controller.
If you like to be under the sea—or at least like your movie plots to take place there—you’ve got several dozens of submarine-oriented flicks to choose from. There’s something compelling about the submarine genre of movies: the close quarters, the life-and-death nature of it, the mystery of what’s out there in the dark and vast ocean depths.
Here’s a rundown of our personal favorite ten submarine movies:
Looking for something to wear to your next costume party? If you have a car battery, spare 42-inch LCD TV—and a whole lot of time—you could go as an oversized working Apple iPhone.
As fans of the hit ABC television series LOST watch the riveting drama about a group of airplane crash survivors on a mysterious island they often ponder questions of love, fate and survival. What exactly is the Dharma Project? and What do those numbers mean? are questions almost every LOST fan has asked themselves. They inevitably also ask Where exactly are all these gorgeous tropical scenes filmed?
The vast majority of LOST was set in various locations around Hawaii. Even many of the locations that were supposedly not on the survivor’s island were shot in the Aloha State. The Sydney airport in LOST, for example, was really the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu.
Here’s our roundup of our favorite Hawaii LOST filming locations. They are each worthy travel destinations, both for those who are fans of the show and those who have never scene it (ie LOST fans-in-waiting):
Time was that it was difficult to hear music that didn’t make it onto your local radio stations. Which is to say, it was difficult to hear the vast majority of music available.
Not so today. The internet is the great music equalizer. If you are looking to expand your musical horizons, or simply hear a cool tune you’ve never heard before, here are eight of our favorite sites. Though some have pay options, each site can be enjoyed free of charge:
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