ETC-Portugal student project WAYLA has been accepted into the Emerging Technology venue at this year's SIGGRAPH.
WAYLA is an original game that takes advantage of the unique properties of gaze-based interaction (reflexive saccade, for example) to achieve a gaming experience that is not available with traditional input devices. In most games, players need to continuously look at and switch among multiple targets and avoid distractors. As commercial eye-tracking technology become more affordable, it is becoming one of the emerging technologies of the near future. WAYLA is at the forefront of utilizing this new technology, and it will yield many valuable insights and lessons for the next generation of game development.
The team consist of ETC-Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute students: Wein Chang, Po-an Shen and Kushal Ponnam and Helena Barbosa from Madeira Interactive Technology Institute with faculty advisers Monchu Chen Carnegie Mellon University, Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute and Sergi Bermúdez Madeira Interactive Technology Institute.
The Emerging Technologies program at this year's SIGGRAPH will present innovative technologies and applications in several fields, from displays and input devices to collaborative environments and robotics, and technologies that apply to film and game production. For those of you going to SIGGRAPH in July, make sure to stop by and check out the ETC project.
Congratulations and best of luck to the WAYLA team!
A few weeks back we learned that ETC student Brad Buchanan was awarded an EA scholarship. We recently found out that ETC alum Animish Gadve had also won the scholarship! Animish was on a summer internship last summer as a software engineer with All Play. If you would like to read the Q&A with Animish, go to EA's website.
Congratulations to Animish!
about the EA Scholarship:
Every summer, EA awards scholarships to EA interns and co-ops in honor of retired Board Members Dick Asher, Tim Mott and Gary Kusin, with an additional scholarship added this year for Linda Srere.
EA awards two $10,000 and three $5,000 scholarships to the applicants that best demonstrated passion, potential and financial need. Students were asked to submit essays on why they deserve the scholarship, why they want to work at EA, along with their transcripts, a recommendation letter from a manager or studio executive and their midpoint evaluation. The five recipients were determined by a panel of judges comprised of some of our top executives and talent experts at EA.
ETC faculty member Shirley Saldamarco attended the Alpha Lab demo days and shared this article for the ETC Global News Page
ETC Spin Off company, digital dream labs made their presentation May 14, at Alpha Lab Demo Days, to Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurial community. Matt Stewart('12), CEO and Co-Founder, wowed the audience with his energetic illustration of dreamWare™ their “toy to tablet” learning platform. Also at Demo Day were Co-Founders Justin Sabo('12) and Peter Kinney('13), artist, Aaron Clark and intern, Corrine Charlton. 
digital dream labs was the final presentation of the day and as soon as Matt walked off the stage, the group was circled by investors wanting to learn more. Over 100 venture capital firms from across the country – and at least four from as far away as Abu Dhabi – were present for the event. It was very exciting to see the interest generated by digital dream labs.
dreamWare™ is a platform that bridges the gap between worlds: nostalgic, hands-on learning meets engaging, digital technology. Children solve simple sequence puzzles in real life that are transmitted wirelessly to a tablet or other electronic device for continued interaction. The product has been play tested with over 100 children ages 4-12; and the company has already secured 14 paying customers (and counting) for the Pilot Program, who will receive their hardware and software in August 2013. The premise of the game is the player must help an island full of dinosaurs before the island’s resident volcano explodes. To do this, the kids must send commands to the dinosaurs on screen using puzzle pieces that plug into the tray. Then they can watch the commands acted on screen. It looks like a high-tech ice cube tray and it hooks up to a Mac or PC or tablet and helps kids learn logic and sequence — basics for computer science. While the children are having loads of fun, they’re being exposed to STEM education and computer science in particular, through play.
dreamWare™ is the company’s second product release. The dreamTableTop, their flagship museum exhibit, is an interactive tabletop experience combining puzzle blocks with virtual environments. The experience teaches children abstract computer science principles by allowing them to explore different combinations of physical puzzle blocks.
Innovation Works AlphaLab program is an intensive, 20-week program for launching the next generation of software, entertainment technology and Internet-related companies. AlphaLab provides funding, free office space, and expertise to help companies rapidly develop their technology, gain early user feedback, develop go-to-market strategies, and move toward commercialization.
ETC project team Amalgamedia, together with the band Anti-Flag, spent the spring semester creating a one of a kind transmedia experience. The team created a web based interactive music video for Anti-Flag using Facebook, HTML5 and film. The experience will take a user on a journey to see how their information posted on Facebook is really used.
The project is now live on monetizinginc.com so go ahead and check it out!
Nice work to the Amalgamedia team: Patrick Shore, Alex Loughran, Chen Yang, Simeng Yang, Frank Hamilton and Himanshu Vartak!
ETC alum Ben Miller ('10) sent an email announcing the release of a new iPad game, Superfugu.
SUPERFUGU is a wild underwater adventure, filled with fun, friends, and danger! Animated by Avatar’s Academy Award ® winning Animation Director Andy Jones, with ocean science narrated by Hero of the Planet Dr. Sylvia Earle. A mysterious enemy invades the Reef and it’s up to you to take control of the hilarious, bad-to-the-bone pufferfish Fugu to save your friends. Collect golden coins and beautiful fish species, escape killer sea snakes and deadly sharks, and become the superhero of the Reef, the first Habitat released in this breakthrough adventure game!
Much success to our friends at Wemodmia, the game looks beautiful!
