Among people who own an iPad or other tablet computer, many of them are engaging with other, older forms of media less than they used to, according to a new study by GfK MRI. Unsurprisingly, printed books, newspapers and magazines are being read less by tablet owners, who now have a wealth of new digital sources of news, magazine content and eBooks.

Taking an even bigger hit than all of the above, however, are video game consoles. Fifty-nine percent of tablet owners said they use gaming consoles like the XBox 360, Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation less frequently than they used to. Instead, they're playing more games on their tablets.

Although the iPad and other emerging platforms don't quite have the same selection of video games offered on more traditional consoles, they've given birth to whole new generation of mobile games, from the simple, yet addictive Angry Birds to more complex, immersive games akin to something you'd see on an established console platform. Of the top twenty most popular paid iPad apps in the iTunes App Store, half of them are games, three of which are different versions of Angry Birds.

This trend toward tablet-based gaming, reading and Web browsing is only beginning. The first iPad was only launched last year, with the second one coming out in 2011, to much success. In November, Amazon will start shipping its own tablet, which is less than half the cost of the iPad and is designed specifically for purchasing and consuming books, video, news, magazines and games.

While working as an engineer for Fairchild Semiconductor in the mid-1970s, Lawson created the Fairchild Channel F video game console. That was the type that took a different software cartridge for each game.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, he moved out to California to join the new company Fairchild Semiconductor where he served as Chief Hardware Engineer[4] and director of engineering and marketing. As the Village Voice notes, he was a member of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club. Other members included Apple's Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

After Atari had taken the video gaming market, Lawson launched Videosoft, to develop games for it. In the early 1970s, Lawson had created the second ever arcade game (after Pong), Demolition Derby

He had in his later years suffered with diabetes and used a wheelchair, though he continued an active life building controls for lasers and telescopes. Last month he was, finally, honored by the International Game Developers Association.

Vintage Computing and Games has a wonderful interview with the man conducted in 2009.

He is survived by his wife, whom he married in 1965, his brother, Michael, of Queens, New York, and his daughter Karen and son Marc, both of Smyrna, Georgia.

Other sources: Wikipedia

Pay-what-you-want has become an interesting alternative business model online, with bands like Radiohead demonstrating that it can be an even more successful than traditional pricing. Of course, not everyone can generate quite that buzz, and a recent study pointed to another option if you can't command rockstar attention for your pay-as-you-want endeavor: combine it with a voluntary payment to charity.

This second bundle includes 5 different games - critically-rated puzzle game Braid, point-and-click adventure game Machinarium, puzzle game Osmos, action game Cortex Command and a new real-time strategy game (launching as part of the bundle) Revenge of the Titans. The games are DRM-free and work across platforms; there are Windows, Mac and Linux versions of all 5 games, with Braid and Cortex Command making their Linux debut in the bundle. (A good thing, as Linux users contributed twice as much as Windows users last time around.)

When you purchase the games, you can set your price, then allocate how much of that goes to the game developers, how much to charity, and how much is a "tip" for the Humble Bundle itself (as Humble Bundle doesn't have one of its own games in this package).

The charities remain the same as they did the first time around: the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play. And if the study about charity donations improving a pay-as-you-want campaign is right, then that's a boon to this second endeavor.

Humble Bundle, which has just been accepted into Y Combinator's incubator program, hopes to repeat its previous success. According to Graham, "It could be that we just got really lucky, but we think it might be something more substantial, that if you treat your customers well by not imposing onerous DRM on them and supporting Mac OS X and Linux (supporting Mac and Linux literally doubled our revenue last time) they will treat you well too."

After all, it's not terribly difficult to find BitTorrents of games and download them for free, no matter the price that game makers set. So with the Humble Bundle, you get to set your own price, download great games, and support both indie game developers and charities at the same time.

The law seeks to place a large sticker on "objectionable games," banning their sale to those under 18, with large fines for non-compliance. The law has been opposed by the video game industry, not surprisingly. But it's also been positioned as a free speech issue.

Violent video game means a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being, if those acts are depicted in the game in a manner that does either of the following:
(A) Comes within all of the following descriptions:

(i) A reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.
(ii) It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.
(iii) It causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

A Miller Test for Violence?"

The opening lines certainly sound a lot like another famous Supreme Court argument about objectionable speech - the Miller Test - that an "average person" and "community standards" to arbitrating what is and isn't offensive. And as such, if the Supreme Court agrees with the state of California, it means that violent video games are not protected by the First Amendment.

But the Supreme Court Justices seemed to question this argument today. Wondering what the difference between a "violent video game" "deviant violent video game," Justice Scalia asked if the same logic could be applied on a ban of sale of violent comic books to children. "What about Grimms' fairy tales?" asked Justice Ginsberg. "Why are video games special?" Justice Kennedy cautioned against adding the depiction or description of "violence" to the areas that are not protected as free speech.

The line of questioning today and the attitude from the Justices seems to point to a decision in favor of the video games industry, a $10 billion a year. A ruling is expected in June.

Here is a link to the written transcript of today's session. Although you can listen to audio from the Supreme Court, today's oral arguments won't be available online until the end of the week.

Zynga had expressed dissatisfaction with the terms Facebook enforced on the company, and were reported looking around for alternative platforms. Its collaboration with Yahoo was one step away, MSN's Game Portal another, and its relationship with Google an even bigger one.

Zynga Grows Like Mad

The $29 million Zynga had raised several years ago - for a total at the time of $40 million - almost seem like small potatoes now. Tech Crunch reported that it upped the total to half a billion in the last year, including a deal with Softbank.

"Zynga's revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, say our sources. This blows previous estimates out of the water."

Google Games

Google's desire to build a gaming destination site, Google Games, meshes nicely with Zynga's leadership in the social game sphere, not to mention its estimated $5 billion in worth and 200 million users.

Google's also been conscientious about serving its "downstream" - those areas of interest people track from the search engine. The next in line, as we reported, is gaming.

The group works in Israel toward establishing freedom of movement for Palestinians. The blockade by the Israeli government of the Gaza Strip is an object lesson in what they believe is wrong with current Israeli policy. So to express the trials of impinged movement they have leveraged game dynamics to share the experience.

Gilad Baker, the game's chief animator, explained the goal of the game.

"We faced a challenge - how to make military documents accessible to the public. Our solution was to integrate them into the personal stories of real people in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to help people understand the policy".

The three character types are confronted with different obstacles and required to get very creative in surmounting them. The Gazan student has to employ a flying hat to convince a military mailbox to examine her request to study at a West Bank University. The West Bank family man enters play by being catapulted from a bench beside his home in the West Bank into Gaza and has to get back. The Gazan businessman has to avoid or neutralize giant coins that threaten the ice cream factory he is trying to open in the West Bank.

According to Palestine Notes, the characters were composites based on real people.

"The student is based in part on the story of Berlanty Azzam, the 22-year-old Bethlehem University student from Gaza who was seized by Israeli soldiers and removed to Gaza just two months before completing her degree."

Reflecting the membership of the nonprofit and the reality of the people involved in the real-world conflicts the game describes, the game can be played in Arabic, Hebrew or English.

"It's been a ton of work, but the Mac is great for the same reason the PC is great - they are both open systems that let gamers and game developers be as close as possible."

David Chartier pointed out on Macworld that this was not a slapdash job porting this over to the Mac.

This isn't some duct-taped Java port that limps along with a fraction of its Windows counterpart's features. Valve used native Cocoa tools, even going so far as to re-engineer the Steam client and store on Windows to use Apple's WebKit rendering engine

And yes, for the record, I am ashamed of the headline

Without having made a game ourselves yet, we can only guess that it will still be fairly challenging to make a fun and addictive game, as we have seen plenty of games made the 'old fashioned way' that aren't all that great. But with the rapid development time and greater accessibility that GameSalad offers, we can see it becoming popular for making more niche games, say for example a custom game for a friend's birthday, or a game that celebrates an event, like a company anniversary.

HopeLab, a nonprofit organization founded by Pam Omidyar, was named one of Fast Company magazine's 2009 Social Enterprises of the Year this month for its efforts in improving the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness.

Re-Mission players pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels through the bodies of cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections and managing the side effects of cancer.

Re-Mission is available to young people with cancer free of charge. The game can be ordered or downloaded here.