Yesterday a Kickstarter campaign was launched for a new gaming console called OUYA. An hour ago they passed $3.1M pledged, and bet by the time I finish writing this post they’ll hit $3.3M. It’s still got 28 more days to go, and where else are you going to get a $99 gaming console? Seriously.

What’s up with this thing? OUYA is going to be an Android based console. Which means, basically, apps on your TV. Or, really, an App Store on your TV. The idea is fairly solid. Android is a platform that developers are already familiar with and popular games will surely be ported immediately to test the Cash Climate in a new market. The company has said that all the games must have some sort of freeness to them. Whether that’s just totally free, just a trial version, or pay for premium content, or, like, you know, the last boss is absolutely invincible unless you drop a hundo on that dude. I’d want to create the best game ever but make it so the character actually has to eat and you can only get e-food with real $$$. I’d make so much money.

I feel no shame in simply copy/pasting the tech specs:

Specifications:

• Tegra3 quad-core processor
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB of internal flash storage
• HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth LE 4.0
• USB 2.0 (one)
• Wireless controller with standard controls (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button), a touchpad
• Android 4.0

It needs to be noted that the coolest thing here is how open these OUYA guys are to hackers. The box, designed by Yves Behar of fuseproject, will have standard screws so that anybody can jump in there, and rooting the thing doesn’t void the warranty. It’s an open invitation for developers and hardware hobbyists alike to open up on this thing. As of this moment (3:55pm on Day 2 of this Kickstarter drive) there will be 23,859 OUYA consoles shipping out in March 2013. That’s pretty impressive.

It sort of came out of nowhere but with the recent success of Double Fine, Wastland 2, and Shadowrun (so stoked!!) Returns, and now OUYA, Kickstarter and Gaming are like these soulmates and who the heck knew? This should be the model for everything. Instead of pitching to producers, who get all their info on the consumer from focus groups and failed marketing campaigns, developers can pitch directly to us. We know what consumer want because that’s eff-king us.

Of course, now we have to wait to see if these guys can back it up and deliver products that we actually want as much as we imagined we wanted them. That’s going to be a high high hurdle, dudes. But if this works out it could really do good things for the future of creator/consumer dialogue.

Are you going to grab an OUYA while they’re just $99? What do you think?

Follow Carib Guerra on Twitter @44carib

Okay, so we all agree: it’s a bummer that the Fourth of July lands smack in the middle of the week this year. Alas, there isn’t much we can do about that, but there is something we can help you with to make your day of fireworks and fun that much easier.

Meet the official app of the 36th Annual Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks!

Macy’s has teamed up with the tech gurus at MyCityWay to provide an all-in-one, must-have app that will make your Independence Day sparkle like, well, a sparkler. You may remember back in November 2011, Macy’s and MyCityWay partnered together for the first-ever Thanksgiving Day Parade app, which provided an up-to-the-minute rundown of the parade, so your daughter didn’t miss that elusive Hello Kitty balloon, alongside a gazillion other helpful tips.

That was balloons, this is fireworks. Free for your iPhone or Android or any mobile device, the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks app provides everything you – or out-of-town guests – need to know to get the best view of the dazzling show by the Hudson River, as well as what to do once you’re waiting for the fun to begin. Get transit info and details on where to go – even play the synchronized musical score from your phone as you and the kiddos ooooh and aaaahhhhh. The app offers the lowdown on the weather and even tidbits about Katy Perry (she’s a performer, you know). One feature we love: the bathroom locator (genius!).

To read the full article at New York Family Magazine click here.

It felt a little strange the first time I put it on. The battery pack on the headset was light as the single AAA inside, but its square weight ove my ear wasn’t, like, uncomfortable? Just maybe unnatural. Once I got the Neurosky Mindwave Mobile set up, though—and started controlling my computer with my brain—it was sort of very awesome. Actually kind of totally awesome.

The Mindwave Mobile is the first Brain Computer Interface (BCI) controller to work on Android and iOS as well as Mac and PC. Unlike the company’s previous first: The First Affordable BCI Headset, the $99 Mindwave, the Mobile version uses Bluetooth to wirelessly communicate with your computer. The active tech about it is a dry sensor that reads changes in the brain’s electrical activity like what’s up with Electroencephalograms (EEG). Traditional EEGs would need an electrically conducive goop smear where sensor meets scalp. Which, obviously, what a pain, right?

Right. Okay, so it’s easy—enough—to use. Even though sometimes it would slip on my head and whatever I’d been doing would be suddenly not done. And what was I doing, you ask? Well there’re a few games bundled up with the unit. A title called Zombie Pop was surprisingly fun. Basically one of those carnival games where you shoot water in a clown’s mouth till a balloon pops. Except you inexplicably work in some sort of Zombie factory, and they’re coming down a conveyor line, and instead of water you have to focus your brain might towards inflating their ugly green heads. When they get big enough you blink and a needles swings down and pops their heads like…like…like flesh balloons at a Zombie Carnival, I suppose.

No. It wouldn’t be fun save for the fact that—yes—the controls are your damn brain! WTF? The Mindwave Mobile reads two mental states, attentive or meditative, and eye blinks. So. If you can imagine if early Nintendo had first released a console whose controller was a d-pad with only two directions and then a single button, and you’re a game developer and they ask you to make a game and you’re, all, “Well, sure, man. I can make that game, but have y’all consid—” But they say just do it, and so you do, then now you understand the limitations of the games available for the Mindwave. Though it does sort of surprise me that no Pong clone is available yet. Since that’s probably exactly what our hypothetical game designer would have come out with.

Maybe the issue there is that switching your mental state isn’t so easy as thumbing a joystick. See, for me it was super easy to hit the ‘meditative’ state where you’re not quite focused on any one thing (this will come as no surprise to my teachers in elementary school), but, for my roommate who helped me test the headset, he could snap into ‘attentive’ no problem. The brief tutorial advised me to try thinking of song lyrics in my head so that I’d be focused on something. This works. But, of course, when one is thinking of lyrics one is not thinking about playing a game.

Even this petty hardship though has some benefit—and until some more engaging titles are dropped this might be the best justification for paying $130 for the Mindwave Mobile—because, when you actively switch your focus on and off with this sort of direct feedback over and over, it becomes easier to do each time. It really does. After a few sessions of Zombie Pop I no longer had to invoke Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now—the only song I could conjure at the time—and really started laying waste to some zombie domes, as though some stunted mental mage, with my brain forces alone.

Some developers have tried to exploit this direct feedback with educational apps—like Imagercize ($6), Math Trainer ($0), and Focus Pocus($149?!)—designed to help students understand what it feels like to be in their best mental state. The potential for this is great. Like, drop the Ritalin, kids. Learn to tighten your thinking caps instead.

If I were the future billionaire who figured out how to market BCI headsets like the Mindwave Mobile my calendar would be all power brunches with SAT prep centers. That’s what’s up.