Brick Labs

I never played beyond the Beta. While I did play, it was fun… sad to see that they just couldn’t make it viable (aka, pay for itself).

LEGO Universe to close in 2012

Online game will close on January 31, 2012. The LEGO Group’s digital offerings will continue to develop over the coming years.

November 4, 2011 – The LEGO Group today announced that it will close LEGO® Universe, an MMOG (massively-multiplayer online game) that has been in operation since the autumn of 2010.

In spite of very positive player feedback and a large number of players in the free play zone, it has not been possible to convert a satisfactory number of players to paying subscribers. It has therefore been decided to close the game as of January 31, 2012.

“The LEGO Universe team can take pride in having developed and launched a great LEGO experience that many players will miss,” said Jesper Vilstrup, Vice President, LEGO Universe. “Right now, we have almost 2 million players in LEGO Universe, and we get extremely positive feedback from players. Unfortunately, we have not been able to build a satisfactory revenue model in our target group, and therefore, have decided to close the game.”

Despite the change, the ambition to develop and run a digital business remains. In future, it is the intention to further pursue cooperation with partners. The LEGO Group has a strong and continuing partnership with TT Games Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to create digital LEGO experiences within video games. A further expansion in the digital area will mainly be based on similar partnerships.

“The development of our digital offerings continues to be a very important element in our strategy,” said Mads Nipper, Executive Vice President, LEGO Group. “We have more than 20 million visitors on www.LEGO.com every month, and LEGO video games are among the bestselling children’s video games with sales of more than 60 million units in the last five years. Through our experience developing and running LEGO Universe, we have gained a lot of valuable insights, and we have a very strong foundation for future development in the digital area.”

As a consequence of the closure, the LEGO Universe staff has today been informed that the ‘Play Well Studios’ in Louisville, Colorado and the game’s marketing function in Billund, Denmark will be closed. This will affect 115 employees. All affected employees will be offered assistance in finding new jobs inside or outside the LEGO Group.

Thank to The Brothers Brick for the notice.

Squishy Circuits – These are pretty slick… I’m thinking on making some for my kids to play with.

Corkscrew drive propels robot across tough terrain – Slow, but interesting

DARPA Concludes Nano Air Vehicle Program – Watch the video.  ‘nuff said.

Robotic seagull takes flight in Europe – Watch the video.  This blows away the nano air vehicle.

This is a collection of Netduino projects and useful posts that I’ve seen on the Netduino Forums.

Projects:

picoUPS — tiny uninteruptable power supply

Music with a Piezo Speaker

System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch class

Silverlight Client and Server for Netduino Plus

Tips:

InterruptPort please stop interrupting me!

How to setup IP address

Can´t build Blinky , buid error

Simpfan (from the NXT Step forums) has come up with a system that seems to work quite well.  Damien blogged about it on The NXT Step.

How do you store your LEGO parts?

Stefan from the Netduino forums has a neat little project.  Or should I say… Project Box?

He took the blue Netduino box (the one the Netduino and Netduino Plus comes in) and turns it into a project box. (He is also working on making both an overlay, so you can print off the template to cut out your Netduino box, and overlays for the various Sparkfun boxes.

Here is a photo of the Netduino, inside the box, with all three cables connected.

All the directions can be found here:  Create Your Own Netduino Project Box.

VB Support!  Now that I’ve learned a lot of C#, and with the new job, using some C#, I’m not sure I want to write VB code for the Netduino… but, it’s now available.  There are lots of bug fixes in the new firmware too..

Read more on the Netduino forums:  Breaking news: .NET MF 4.2 Beta 1, VB.NET support, and more

For the 2 (or maybe 3) of you who do visit my site, and aren’t familiar with The NXT Step… you’ve been missing out on an excellent blog related to the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kits and projects.

They recently posted a bit of news… I’ll let you go read it for yourself.

Good luck Jim!