RHINOCEROS IN "ANGRY RHINO RAMPAGE" GAME AIM TO KILL POACHERS AND FIGHT EXTINCTION
SAN JOSE, CA--February 25, 2010-- Like some gamers, Rhinos are known for exhibiting sudden bursts of aggressiveness. In a hot new game released this week, users can channel their inner Rhino, killing poachers, smashing fruit carts and racking up points for being aggressive.
Rhinos also have good reason to be angry as an endangered species. Poaching of these animals has reached an all-time high according to the World Wildlife Foundation. Despite being illegal in many countries, trade of Rhino horn for traditional Asian medicine drives the demand for poaching by sophisticated criminal networks using helicopters, night-vision equipment, veterinary tranquilizers and silencers to kill Rhinos at protected conservatories.
This is what makes the creators of the game at Milk Drinking Cow (MDC) so angry. In the game "Angry Rhino Rampage" you too can take out your aggression on fruit carts and poachers. Here is the inside scoop on the game from MDC Director, Halana Mediavilla, "It is easy to play and insanely hard to master. The rhino speeds up faster and faster as he leaves a trail of destruction across the African Savannah. Run as far as you can while smashing through poachers, cleverly placed fruit carts, tranquilizer darts and helicopters while collecting your all-time high scores and picking up health to keep you going in this frenzied, fast-paced action game. Finally there is a runner game with some guts--we dare you to play it!"
SILICON VALLEY PHILANTHROPIST DEBUTS BOUTIQUE APP COMPANY “MILK DRINKING COW”
SAN JOSE, CA--February 22, 2010--Silicon Valley entrepreneur & philanthropist, Bob Twaalfhoven’s latest venture takes form as a creative iPhone application development and publishing boutique company titled Milk Drinking Cow (MDC).
As hinted by their name, MDC is staffed by a fun group of artists, game designers and programmers dedicated to creating useful, fun and innovative apps while bringing awareness of environmental and social issues to users. One of their larger purposes is also to continue along their creator’s line of philanthropy, donating profits of app sales to charities.
Mr. Twaalfhoven, an MIT graduate and seasoned computer programmer (known for his successful software company BobCAD-CAM), has donated millions of dollars to non-profit organizations ranging in causes from drug education, disaster relief and abolishment of human rights abuses.
MDC’s apps and games are currently being download all over the world.
NEW MUSIC FOR NEW TECHNOLOGY - ARTIST EXPLORES "UNSUNG" TRENDS IN 21ST CENTURY MUSIC INDUSTRY
SAN JOSE, CA--March 11, 2011--Technology advances quickly and Bay Area musician Miles Alden has channeled his passion for music toward new artistic platforms, created by technology, to flatter with his talent. Transforming music in the mobile gaming and applications industry from second-rate--or even irrelevant--is where he's started.
"I compose music for mobile games like I would for a movie or theater production," Alden states, "To help tell the story."
It seems musical accompaniment to 21st Century games require a much higher level of sophistication than their humble forefathers, like such memorably simple songs as the original Mario Brothers theme. "Audiences, like gamers, expect more than just background music," he says. Having good quality music (which doesn't have to be droned out) accompany the games he works on, gives this musician and quiet game enthusiast, "a sense of accomplishment."
Choosing Broadway over boy bands in his youth, this professional singer/songwriter/pianist began his career in 1999 as the youngest cast member in the Broadway production of Saturday Night Fever. Now he's literally turned his music career into a game while composing and producing all music and audio effects for iPhone game development and publishing boutique Milk Drinking Cow.
His latest score can be heard on MDC's hot new game Angry Rhino Rampage, available in the App Store.
QUIRKY APP OF THE DAY: BADASS FORTUNE COOKIE
BY KATHRYN on Fri May 13th, 2011
I try to remove the mysticism of my app selection. I would love to come back to developers with a staggering story of my discovery of their hard work. I would convey a story of a sacred cellar in my basement that only two other people hold the key to. Each day, we would pass around a crystal ball and reveal to the other two our consensus of what app we need to review next. In our lair of brother and sisterhood, our mutual respect for the developers would be convened in a post-review reception of cookies and punch. Lately, I’m lucky if I manage to grab a glass of Kool-aid between sentences and incoherent shouts along the lines of , “Mommy’s working” and “Quit poking your brother with that.”
Truth be told, it’s a lot of dumb luck. I just find them. I like them, and I write about them. I’m sure there are developers out there with fantastic or utterly abysmal apps that deserve love, attention, or a poking finger depending on how bad it might be. I just don’t find them. Every so often though, the app finds me. Today, my Badass Fortune Cookie doled out the humorous tough love that everyone sometimes needs. There was nothing special to it. All it is, is an app that you shake. A fortune cookie rattles around and cracks open, bequeathing it’s superb ancient knowledge to you with twangy music and greasy table cloth backgrounds.
It was one of those days where from the get-go you’re doing stuff you hate. Stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable. Then, you keep doing more and more of it until you’re up to your eyeballs in misery, and it’s only noon. It’s 11:00 at night, and I’m sitting here, telling people about an app that insults them. It’s been one of those days. Yet, I opened up this promising titled app, gave the fortune cookie a shake, and it told me, “Well, aren’t you a waste of two billion years of evolution.”
I actually held it still for a moment to try and process what it just said to me. After waiting all day in clinics and three (count them, three) bureaucratic government offices only to get nothing done and drive home through a lightning storm that had me making deals with God, I was suddenly a waste of evolution. Then, I laughed. I laughed so hard it started to hurt. Listening to the horrible Chinese music in the background and seeing that silly, stupid fortune on the screen made my day just a little bit better. I went through the entire cycle of sayings, just for the little laughs, and not because I needed to write a review.
Sometimes, it’s good to have a free little app remind you that you aren’t the center of the universe, you’re problems aren’t that bad, and sheep do, in fact, shrink in the rain. It’s good to open a little something that found you and have an animated fortune cookie to shake around, only to have it crack open and tell you something a long the lines of your mother being overweight.
So, take the time to download a little bit of happiness from a Badass Fortune Cookie. It’s that kind of “quirky.” It brings a slanted smile to your face, and slow head shake at some of the stupid, one-liners. It’s a free app, so just go have some fun with it. You’ve earned it. Because according to my fortune, you should laugh at your problems; everyone else does.
ZAP PHONICS READING GAMES: BY MILK DRINKING COW
Reviewed By: Luke Patrick
With every passing week, I’m more and more impressed with the amount of quality educational apps available for the iPhone. And Zap Phonics, by developer Milk Drinking Cow, is no exception. The game offers a solid, if brief, step in your child’s language development, and the comfortably kitschy package the lesson is wrapped will delight any toddler.
As Zap Phonics explains in its forward, the traditional method of teaching children the names of letters before the sounds they make can create problems with first language acquisition. To avoid any such issues, the reading game Zap Phonics offers features the phonological sounds of the letters, and actively encourages your child to make the sounds themselves. The idea is that this reinforces language learning in the toddler, and improves their ability to interpret the symbols as sounds. That’s the science at work here, but how exactly does the app go about teaching?
At the core of the app is a simple drag-and-drop mechanic that any young child will have no problem using. Zap Phonics’ pleasant main characters, Zap and Gus, produce a pile of letters which which can be touched and moved. Once pressed, Zap will pronounce the sound each letter makes. After a bout of quick introductions, Zap shows you a pile of letters that must be guided into Gus’ bucket. And of course, the letter is said aloud each time it is dragged home. It’s a very intuitive mechanic, and it’s simple enough to be entertaining, but not so complex as to distract from the lesson at hand.
Zap Phonics is a well-designed, decently acted, and lesson-rich app that will entertain your youngster while teaching him or her the sounds of letters. However, its brevity is an issue to address and considering there are so many other quality apps available for young children, it must be weighed carefully—but it received a recommendation nonetheless. Your child will love the characters, graphics, and sounds, and you’ll love the knowledge they gain from playing.
ZAP AND GUS ARE MY HEROES
By Cynthia McClelland Gregory
Zap and Gus are heroes at my house. Not only do they entertain my three-year-old, but they are teaching phonics at the same time with the "gradient method". Don't know what gradient method is? Me either! So I looked it up. Here is what it means...actually, I had trouble finding a concise definition and my head started to hurt reading abstract articles that I'm pretty certain had nothing to do with what I was searching for, so I'll just go with "It's a phonics game that makes my son laugh." Work for you? It's a simple game geared to toddlers just learning their letter sounds and perfect for helping my son generalize letter symbols and sounds. Touch a letter and it rises up into the air making the appropriate sound. Feed Gus letter sounds and be rewarded with a catchy tune. Self-esteem building, clear phonics presentation, fine-motor skills exercises, and lots of giggles from my little guy make Zap Phonics the App of the Day.
Zap Phonics Reading Game is developed by Milk Drinking Cow and available FREE in the iTunes store as of this posting.
APPLE NAMES ZAP PHONICS A STAFF FAVORITE
SAN JOSE, CA--August 21, 2011--The innovative child development app Zap Phonics has been named a new staff favorite by Apple. This is the first installment in a series of Zap Phonics themed reading games to be released and has seen tens of thousands of downloads since it's debut in April.
Developed by master educator Lyn Demaree, Zap Phonics is the only game that combines phonics with a gradient learning method that is geared towards toddlers and Pre-Kindergarteners. Zap has been helping thousands of young children learn to read by teaching them the sounds that letters make versus the names of the letters.
"Surprisingly, knowing the alphabet alone does not help a child learn to read - it just teaches memorization skills. It is only when your child associates each letter symbol with the correct sounds that he or she will be firmly on the path to becoming an independent reader, able to form an infinite number of words from the 26 letters," Ms. Demaree says.
Milk Drinking Cow, the app's publisher, plans to produce many more of this series over the next 12 months based on the initial release's popularity. They have also hinted at giving Zap fans an exciting new 3D world, and making the app available on other platforms.
