Buzzer App for Kindle Fire

Now you can use a Kindle Fire as a game show buzzer with Game Show Presenter PLUS software. The BigRedBuzzer app from Buzzers.com allows up to 4 players to have buzzer buttons on the Fire. The app costs 99 cents. You'll also need the free PickMe!Keys laptop/desktop software (Mac or PC) that can be downloaded at buzzers.com

Mac Game Show PLUS Updated for Lion

Game Show Presenter PLUS is now compatible with Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) and includes many new features and fixes in the new version 6.0. If you are a current user, there's an upgrade for the program. Contact us for details on that. Note that V6 needs a Mac Intel machine, so older PowerPC Macs should not upgrade to this new version.

New Mac Version Begins Beta Testing

Game Show Presenter PLUS now has a new beta version for MacOS 10.4 and higher. This version aims to be compatible with Apple's new "Lion" OS, to be released soon. If you are a Mac user running the Lion OS beta and you'd like to beta test Game Show PLUS as well, drop us a note.

Brain Improvement Program Gets Amnesia

The brain improvement game I've been testing has suddenly lost its memory! This is like finding out your personal trainer eats Twinkies for breakfast. All records of my daily efforts are gone. The "Body and Brain Connection" Kinect game has amnesia.

Here's what happened: Every day for three weeks I've been using "Body and Brain Connection" game on Kinect and writing about it in this blog. The other day, I signed in to the brain-age game and it welcomed me as a "new player". New player? Hey, I've been using this thing daily for 3 weeks! I signed out, restarted and signed in again. Same thing.

My brain went into troubleshooting mode. There had been an overnight power outage in our neighborhood, though the X-Box and Kinect machines were switched off and connected to power surge protectors. And no other Kinect games were suffering from amnesia. Oddly, when I entered the stats area of the brain-age game it had no record of my prior efforts, but the game did retain records for two visitors who played the game briefly weeks ago. No joy. No justice.


Further checking found the X-Box's date had reset to 2005, probably a result of the power outage. I set it right. Since the brain-age game maintains a calendar of player's use and periodic test scores, I can see how having the date rollback might mix it up. Yet it did retain results for the two other players, but not me. (Maybe I cursed the dancing lightbulb guy on the loading screen once too often and this is his revenge.)

So, it's back to neuron one for this old brain. As a new player, the game made me take a baseline test. I scored 45. Better than my first baseline score of 57. I guess that's my consolation prize.