Angry Birds News: Bad Piggies Cookbook App & CERN Partnership
Amidst all the hoopla of updates here in the Angry Birds Universe — from the release of Bad Piggies to their invasion of the original Angry Birds app — there has been quite a bit of news not related to actual gaming.
Bad Piggies Cookbook App
About a year ago, Rovio released a hardcover book called Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes, which featured many different recipes for cooking eggs and all that jazz. (If you’re interested, we wrote about it briefly last July.) But given the new “digital” age of — well, of absolutely everything in the world — this book has been turned into an app for iPad! Any iPad owners who are interested should look for “Bad Piggies Best Egg Recipes” in the AppStore. (No word on whether it will be made available for any other devices; e.g., iPhone, Android.) A few notes about this release:
- This is a full-fledged app in the AppStore, not part of the Newstand, iBooks, etc.
- The app will be on sale for $0.99 USD for a limited time; otherwise, it’s $4.99 USD.
- Includes 41 recipes, which I believe is less than the full book (which makes sense, as it was about $20 for the hardcover).
- Many other fun tidbits, such as animated illustrations, social media integration, both metric and imperial options, and a built-in egg timer.
- The cookbook is easy to use and the step-by-step instructions are easy to follow.
- Includes the ability to rate the recipe on a — wait for it — 3 star scale.
- You can also snap a picture of your dish from within the app and save it to the “Photo Gallery”.
Angry Birds Playground Initiative
In more educational news (and less gruesome to those who just love the adorable eggs that the Angry Birds strive to protect), Rovio and the Angry Birds have teamed up with CERN! For those who wish to learn, CERN is a grandfathered acronym, originally standing for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), though they soon changed their name to Organisation (Organization) two years after their 1952 founding. Nonetheless, CERN is likely the world leader in particle physics, operating the world’s largest laboratory in the field, the Large Hadron Collider, and many other particle accelerators. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t include that CERN was also the employer of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, co-inventor of the World Wide Web.
So, now that the history lesson is done, back to the birds. Rovio and CERN are teaming up in a project called Angry Birds Playground. The goal of this program is to educate 3 to 8 year olds about the sciences, in particular physics. The collaboration between the world’s foremost physicists and the world’s most popular feathered friends aims to use the Angry Birds as learning aids for quantum physics via board games, books, and more. (No official word on an app yet, though there have been many online documentaries about the physics of the Angry Birds Universe.)
As some of you may know, I’m a graduate student pursuing my Ph.D. in mathematics. In this way, I absolutely must give my nod to both Rovio and CERN, as this is a fantastic idea. The education of the modern youth cannot be ignored. The following quote certainly summarizes both the enormous need for such education, and the terrific mindset of the collaboration:
“Modern physics has been around for 100 years, but it’s still a mystery to many people. Working together with Rovio, we can teach kids quantum physics by making it fun and easy to understand.”
— Rolf Landua (Head of Education, CERN)
