I don’t normally comment on things on the news or products being developed. However, Brain Age for the Gameboy DS caught my attention.
The whole point of the game is to put yourself through a series of supposed “brain exercises” that have been designed to strengthen your Prefrontal Cortex, which is your brain’s “control tower”.
Using WPF/w a Tablet PC I bet someone could build a more powerful and useful version of this kind of application /w all the wonderful bells and whistles of an online application. Why WPF? Without going on a rant I’ll sum it up with this — It’s stupid easy to make sexy and functional user interfaces. Not just 2d either - you could easily mix 2d/3d elements and even have some video in there too.
If I was developing such an application I would include all of the ‘types’ of brain building activities included in this book - Brain Building. Heck, you could even mix in direct satellite imagery from Local.Live.com or Google Earth. Maybe its just me but I think all these new “Web2.0″ apps are a joke — we should be writing applications that cross-consume the vast amount of information and services on the net into applications that improve ourselves and our lives. Not just saving ourselves a validation post-back and seeing who is friends with whom.
Is there value in building applications like this? I think so — This would be an incredible indie product. Even if you didn’t sell a single copy it sure would be a good mental exercise:)
