Caine’s Arcade gets its 9 year old creator a place at college

Caine Monroy is a 9 year old boy from Los Angeles. He loves arcade games, so he built his own arcade out of cardboard. Nirvan Mullick, a filmmaker, became his first customer, and posted about it on the internet. Then a flashmob turned up, and the arcade made enough money to put Caine through college. Watch Mullick’s fantastic documentary below and visit the website.

Community’s Joel McHale stars in a new viral Nintendo 3DS advert

We love Community here at Digixav, and we also love hilarious adverts. When you roll the two together, you get Nintendo’s fantastic new viral 3DS video with Joel McHale, best known as Jeff Winger from Community. If you haven’t seen Community, watch the video below and then click here. If you do watch it, just enjoy the video.

#sixseasonsandamovie

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion

In a post on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company has purchased Instagram for $1 billion. Read his post below.

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

How to avoid getting killed by an email

We’ve all been there. You have just gone to a certain place, at a certain time on a certain date, done a special thing and the thing you suspected would happen has indeed just happened, not to mention the fact that you’ve just seen whatever the fuck it is that lives in your mirror, been told in detail how you’re going to die, and the highly demonic and invincible thing you summoned is heading towards you. Also, everyone in your family is dead, your friends are all missing and you’re being framed by someone with access to your bedroom. What the fuck do you do now?

Well, you’ve come to the right place to find out!

These are the rules you must follow in order to not become the victim of chain emails and to come out alive and kicking if the worst does happen. With the help of this guide you too can be the catatonic, traumatised wreck as opposed to the guy currently being worn as a coat by some dude who kills you in your sleep. Just keep these simple rules in mind.

  1. Mirrors and darkness don’t mix.
  2. Mirrors are a general no in chain emails as there is nothing more sinister.
  3. There is zero chance of survival if you look at the thing that no one else can see, so don’t do that.
  4. If you are alone at night in a creepy mental institution, take some time to consider what the fuck are you doing there, then, if it is appropriate to do so, GTFO.
  5. Avoid going to places where everyone else who went there never came back or died inexplicably.
  6. If someone covered in blood stops your vehicle at night and asks to come with you, it would probably be in your best interests to politely decline.
  7. Killing is the last method of survival. Use it sparingly, but without fear.
  8. Who was on the phone is always a good thing to ponder. If you don’t know who it is, don’t fucking answer.
  9. Area 51 is simply too well guarded to let you get in. On the other hand, it is too well guarded to let any alien out.
  10. Invoking demons, speaking weird languages and performing rituals of any kind is considered dangerous. Refrain from doing that, especially around abandoned warehouses, churches, psychiatric institutions, forests and at home in front of a mirror at night.
  11. Always have a Bible next to your bed. It provides average reading material, proof of beliefs and a really heavy object to throw at enemies.
  12. Don’t count on Holy Water. Get a sturdy vial of sulphuric acid as, while water in the eyes is not nice, acid is probably be a better option.
  13. If you find 666 messages on your phone or email, consider changing the service provider. Also, don’t bother listening to or reading the messages. It’s spam. Sent by a demon, possibly, but spam nevertheless.
  14. If you need to sign it in blood, it’s bullshit. All genuine paranormal beings will accept contracts signed either digitally or in ink.
  15. Before you start swimming in the ice-cold waters of a murky lake at the centre of a dark forest at midnight, ask yourself why… just why.
  16. Watching TV static for long periods may be hazardous to your health, try Sky TV. They now install free!
  17. Get a cat. Those furry little hairballs seem to perceive unnatural phenomena better than us, and if desperate, simply throw it at whatever is about to get you.
  18. Try not to close your eyes, ever. If you must, do so only briefly.
  19. If you are too old to play with dolls, you do not need to be anywhere near one of the creepy little fuckers.
  20. If you like to plan ahead and have some money, buy your auntie and uncle a house in Bel-Air. Nothing can harm you there no matter how scared your mother is. Not even Carlton.

Carlton

Follow these simple rules and little harm will come to you. Either way, the important thing is to make sure your tale is told, copied, and pasted repeatedly.

Also, if you don’t click a share button below and post this on your Facebook page, a little girl who died by accidentally dropping a Nokia on her face will come to you at 11:00 at night and kill you in your sleep. I am deadly serious.

Nokia & AT&T unveil their Lumia 900 ad campaign

Nokia‘s Lumia 900 launches this weekend, with both Nokia and AT&T promising their largest ever ad campaign – even bigger than that for the first iPhone. The Smartphone Beta Test ads, starring Chris Parnell of Saturday Night Live fame, state how every smartphone in the last 5 years has been part of an elaborate beta test.

Do you think the campaign will work? Watch the ads and vote in our poll below.

Update: Here is another ad for the phone, but not with Chris Parnell or reference to the Smartphone Beta Test. This one is pure AT&T.

On The Nokia Lumia 900 And How AT&T Is The Phone’s Only Downside

The long-awaited Nokia Lumia 900 launches this weekend on AT&T in the USA, but we are still awaiting a release date for European markets. When it comes, our own Windows Phone fanboy Henry Hunt will get one straight away, and, with the help of my 710 and forthcoming 800 reviews, we can help you find if a Nokia Windows Phone is right for you.

Google wants to make the web more mobile

Google wants to make the web more mobile, and is willing to splash the cash to do so.

Kevin Fitchard's avatarGigaom

Google(s goog) wants to bring more small websites to mobile phones, and to help nudge those sites along it’s willing to foot the bill for a year. Google, with the help of mobile Web optimization startup Duda Mobile, is offering for 12 months free hosting and customization of Web sites for mobile browsers in an effort to make more Internet content mobile-friendly.

Fortune first broke the story Thursday morning, reporting that the initiative as a new service, but according to The Next Web, the offer is really an extension of the Go Mo program Google launched in November. TNW cited a post on Duda Mobile’s blog that has since been removed from its Website:

“Our hope is that by offering both the education AND the service at no cost for one year, we can help businesses make the shift to mobile more quickly, benefiting both their business as well…

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Things That Should Exist: Electric slippers

This week I want to talk about something that I do in fact hold very close to my heart: my slippers.

Overall. and slightly off topic I admit, I have to say that slippers are completely underrated. They come in all different shapes and sizes ranging from small ones to big ones. I know – fantastic idea. There are also so many different designs. You could, for example, go for a pair that looks like a furry little animal or just a simple plain blue pair. Or, if you’re really cool, go for a pair that look like feet.

Foot Slippers

Now – back on to my main point about what should exist somewhere in the whole wide world. Warm-up slippers are my first idea for these wonderful devices. I’ve seen things like this but I’m not talking about slippers that you can put in the microwave to heat up before you wear them. I’m talking about slippers that you can actually switch on with a small electrical heater somewhere in the shoe.

I feel that I could greatly benefit from this as I tend not to wear socks at home so, when my feet are getting a bit chilly, I could simply slip on a pair of electric slippers! Of course you’d have to sort out the safety features, and make sure they don’t set on fire, but otherwise I feel this could be a great invention.

My next idea is for the people who normally clean up after themselves and have to do some sort of housework every now and again. The idea is that you can magnetise the soles of the slippers, using some sort of magical thing that I don’t really understand, so that, as you walk around the house, in your bedroom, on your carpet or wherever, your slippers pick up any stray dust around the house.

This would save you using a vacuum so often and it would be operated by a switch so that you can get rid of all the dust on your slipper and also so you can choose when to have it on or not. Also, I feel it would generally be very entertaining to see what you would be able to pick up, such as a pin or something.

A brilliant idea that came from someone very close to me. They suggested a pair of vibrating or massaging slippers. These would be perfect for those people who just can’t get enough massaging. I don’t know how they would work, but I can just imagine lying down on a sofa or my bed watching something or playing on my Xbox/PS3 whilst my slippers rub my feet for just the expense of some batteries (assuming they’re battery-powered).

That’s about it for this week and I hope you all go out now and actually value how brilliant your slippers could be, if you own a pair and sometimes bother to wear them.

WP7 AOTW: Gerbil Physics

This week’s Windows Phone app of the week is Gerbil Physics by Pencel Games. This great game is one of my favourite games on the Windows Phone platform. It may sound weird, but you play as an apprentice to a gerbil wizard who has to save the other gerbils from the toad king and his army of flying penguins. The toad king has imprisoned the other gerbils inside indestructible blocks and he has made them into monuments to himself. You have to destroy them in order to save your fellow fur balls.

Gerbil Physics

As you can see from the picture above, you do this through a mixture of bombs, explosives and other demolition equipment to get all the gerbils below the magical yellow line. This simple game, with an excellent back-story, comes with 200G of fairly challenging achievements, which is a nice change from games such as Collapse which it took me about 10 mins to get all the achievements.

Gerbil Physics, Windows Phone, £2.29
Download from the Marketplace or visit the website

Instagram launches on Android after iOS exclusivity

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app cum social network, finally launched on Android today. The app, which lets users apply filters to their pictures and share them across a variety of social networks, including within its own community, has proved wildly popular since its launch on iOS, with over 30 million registered users (from myself to Justin Bieber) and Apple naming it as the best iPhone app of 2011. If you have a phone running Android 2.2 or later and you want to see what all the fuss is about, head over to Google Play for the free download (unless you have the new HTC One X), but don’t blame me if you become addicted. I hear it can have that effect on people.

Instagram, Android & iOS, Free
Download from the App Store or Google Play or visit the website