Last Throwback Thursday, we covered the NES Zapper; a well known and respected Nintendo accessory. This week, we are going to go a little bit more obscure… with the Power Glove. The Power Glove was an accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System that never really took off. Made in 1989 by U.S. toy company Mattel, the Glove was a wearable NES controller that was meant to track the movements of your hand in order to control gameplay. While we never owned a Power Glove ourselves (a little too rich for our 7 year-old blood), we do remember it making a cameo in the 1989 film The Wizard. One of the more memorable movie lines from a 12-year old dweeb with teased hair was: “I love the power glove. It’s so bad.” Oh, and how bad it was. There were only two, count em’ two, titles released with specific Power Glove functionality; although you could technically use any game by entering codes on the gloves keypad. While sales of the wearable controller were — by all accounts — an unmitigated disaster, duality can be seen between the Glove and the current technology used in the Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote. How about it? Anyone have a rich uncle that gifted you a Power Glove? Oh, and we’ve got that awesomely bad clip from The Wizard ready for you after the bounce.
BGR Throwback Thursday is a weekly series covering our (and your) favorite gadgets, games, and software of yesterday and yesteryear
GetGlue, the social recommendation service from startup Adaptive Blue, shared some impressive growth stats today: Its users are logging an average of 150,000 check-ins and reviews per day over the last month, up from 100,000 a few months ago.
While those may not seem like huge numbers, the whole area of social recommendation is still early, and it’s worth taking note when the first movers are showing traction.
Once a user builds their network of likes (which can be shared on Facebook or Twitter), the service will begin to suggest items they may like based on other users. The most popular items can trend to the top of the suggested list, all in real time.
Earning stickers for checking in may sound familiar. Foursquare lets users earn badges for checking into specific locations. Also like Foursquare, GetGlue has sealed several branded sticker deals for users, including with big names like Showtime, Warner Bros, Random House, Universal Pictures and others (pictured above).
While Adaptive Blue was founded in 2006, GetGlue is relatively new. It will be interesting to see if GetGlue can sustain its momentum and even launch a new genre-focused era of location-based social networks in the future.
Hollywood was granted a major victory by the FCC this past week in a decision that gives the studios permission to shut down the analog ports on home entertainment equipment such as televisions, cable boxes, and satellite receivers. The decision stems from a 2008 request by the Hollywood studios which asked for the power to block analog outputs which lack copyright protection and can be recorded from freely. Blocking these analog ports is an anti-piracy measure that would force television programming to play back via digital outputs which have copyright protection to prevent the recording of the video signal. This power to shut down the analog hole would only be used for first run content which, according to the studios, has the highest rate of piracy. Blocking this potential avenue for piracy would allow the studios to bring new content to the viewing audience sooner as well. New releases in exchange for Hollywood control of home entertainment equipment, sounds like a deal with the devil great decision, no?
GetGlue