This gaming marketplace runs on the blockchain

I met Andrew Prell almost 30 years ago when the brash young Louisville native introduced his hometown to virtual reality gaming. 

Prell had rigged a helmet with two video screens connected to a pair of computers running a 3-D version of Castle Wolfenstein, a popular shooting game of that period. His Reality Rocket made its debut at the Kentucky State Fair and a version was a popular attraction later at a local arcade. 

The Reality Rocket went on to become the first VR arcade system manufactured in the US while Prell went on to explore new opportunities in interactive gaming. Today, Prell is the CEO at Silica Nexus, a startup that time to be the first gaming marketplace that runs on the blockchain.

The company is in the early stages of a fundraising launched on the investment crowdfunding platform Wefunder. The goal of the company, according to the Wefunder page, is to finance “a platform that spans devices, gaming systems, and in-person entertainment centers, creating one virtual universe for the gaming community.”

The marketplace will allow users to buy, sell, and trade in-game assets and gift cards from a variety of popular games using a new cryptocurrency called DROID, tokens that were minted in 2018 on the Ethereum blockchain. Prell and his backers see Silica Nexus as a way to increase and enhance the market for in-game items and eventually link disparate games.    

The company hope to raise $250,000 from investors who pledge $100 or more. Investors will qualify for get equity shares in the company at a future time. For more details, check out the Silica Nexus website and the profile on Wefunder.  

By: Ric Manning On 7/12/2021

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Radio Garden's dial tunes in 8,000 stations

Growing up in a small town in Midwestern farm country, radio was my link to the larger world. New York deejay Cousin Brucie introduced me to The Beatles while Dick Biondi at WLS in Chicago delivered The Rolling Stones. Baseball arrives on summer nights from clear-channel AM stations in St. Louis, Detroit and Cincinnati. With my father’s shortwave radio, I could travel the world through the BBC and Deutsche Welle.

I recalled my radio days recently when I heard about Radio Garden, a website that lets listeners roam the globe by clicking into live local broadcasts. The collection includes tiny FM stations in Africa and national broadcasting services on almost every continent. Radio Garden was launched just last week and so far roughly 8,000 stations have signed on.

The station locations are represented as green dots on rotating globe that looks a little like Google Earth. Put your cursor near a dot and the broadcast will materialize, after a few moments of static hiss, along with the name or call letters for the station.

Radio Garden was created using public funds provided by the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision. Jonathan Puckey, one of people behind this project, explained the goal of Radio Garden in an interview with Deepak Singh that was posted this week on the NPR website.

"The main idea is to help radio makers and listeners connect with distant cultures and re-connect with people from home and thousands of miles away."

Using his mouse, Singh tuned into a station in Lahore, Pakistan (where they were playing American hits), moved on to Dew Delhi, India, stations in Iran and Ghana, and then to a college radio station in Maine based about 30 miles from his home.

In addition to live broadcasts, the site also offers clips from radio history, stories from people who used radio to cross borders and a collection of station ID jingles like those used by pop stations in the 1960s. When I clicked Jingles, they were playing the musical IDs for WAKY, the Top 40 station that ruled Louisville is AM radio’s heyday.

By: Ric Manning On 12/18/2016

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Louisville's Hacker Hostel

My friend Richard Meadows looked at a four-room shotgun house in Louisville's Portland neighborhood and saw something no one else would see: a site for the city's first hacker hostel.

Richard and his wife, Suzi, renovated the house, adding some special touches including a five-foot conference table, a wall-sized whiteboard, two sets of bunk beds and a Wi-Fi network. Oh, and the wall outlets have USB ports for charging cables.

Hacker hostels have popped up in other cities, including several in the Silicon Valley area. Meadows sees the house as a place where coders and entrepreneurs could gather for meetings and coding sessions and give out-of-towners an inexpensive place to crash.

The Louisville hostel was profiled in  this week's LEO Weekly and in an post at Insider Louisville.

By: Ric Manning On 10/02/2013

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