Apple also declined to comment on whether the service would remain open to the public. Hopstop, a public transit map company, acquired by Apple in July, still remains open for business.Apple has integrated Bing search into Siri and Twitter, Facebook and other social services into its iOS and Mac OS X operating systems.A team of Caltech researchers has mined pop culture to create a new computer game that connects with youngsters who put up a wall between them and learning quantum mechanics.The researchers joined game developers from E-Line Media and MineCraftEdu to develope "qCraft." The Google-funded project takes the world of the popular game "Minecraft" and injects it with lessons on quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the behavior of matter and light at both the atomic and subatomic scale.
"This is a game, so when you get into it, you're learning something, you're not just playing," said Spyridon Michalakis, staff researcher and manager of outreach for Caltech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter."You learn painlessly," added Aleksander Kubica, a Ph.D. student in physics at Caltech and one of the consultants on "qCraft."The educational game launched Oct. 15 after five months of development. It has been downloaded 14,839 times, according to Michalakis. Various bundle packs containing "qCraft" have been downloaded more than 2 million times, he said. An official "qCraft" curriculum will be released this month."QCraft" is a variation, or mod,Detectives began looking for Harvey
of "Minecraft," a game that contains little direction other than guide your block-headed avatar to stack or crumble cubes to build a fortress from various ghoulies before eventually building an empire.
"QCraft" builds on that premise to subtly infuse three key concepts of quantum mechanics: observational dependency, superposition and entanglement. Players break or build the "observer dependent blocks" littering the game's landscape. One side of the block may appear gold at first glance, but use your avatar to double-take and see that side has turned diamond, or disappear completely. The properties of some blocks can also be "entangled" with other blocks."The kids have a blast building things that they could never build before," Michalakis said.Since launching in 2009, the original "Minecraft" has been purchased 12.8 million times across several platforms, according to the official website. The game's signature blocky, 16-bit landscape, building tools and characters can be found on shirts, mugs and toys. Some YouTube users have uploaded videos of their proudest achievements in "Minecraft," including replicas of Los Angeles.