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More Pay it Forward–Akoha

I saw Akoha‘s TechCrunch 50 presentation a while back, and I really liked the idea.  I liked it enough to part with $5 to get a set of cards, and if you know me, you know how I love a crisp $5 note backed by the full faith and credit of these United States.

The concept behind Akoha is pretty simple–do something nice for someone, and burden them with the task of doing the same for someone else. What’s cool is the little cards you give them with their “mission” have unique IDs. When they go to Akoha’s website and enter the ID of the card you’ve given them they can see who had the card before them and where in the world it has been. Sort of like Where’s George with a cool user interface.

Oh, and each mission has points associated with it. Some of the missions are really simple like “Take Someone for Coffee” or “Make Someone Smile”, and there are even “Wildcard” missions you can make up for yourself.

I’m interested to see if I’m just idealistic, or if my friends are willing to play along.

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Life Changing Event Today

I played Rock Band.

Yeah, I’m old…didn’t even know this game existed, or didn’t pay attention when I saw something about it. Either way, this game rocks. I’ve never understood Guitar Hero. Even my buddy who introduced me to Rock Band says Guitar Hero is boring. I can play a little bit, so it never made sense to get a game to fake play guitar.

But a chance to fake play the drums? Now that’s a different story. I SUCK at playing real drums. Well, actually I suck at playing Rock Band drums too, but oh well. I am so glad I don’t own an XBox 360 or I’d have to go out and buy this game immediately.

I don’t know what the GTA IV hype is all about. Everyone is saying it’s the best game ever. It must be pretty damn good if this is coming from people who have played Rock Band.

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Me Fit? Maybe Not. How About Wii Fit?

So the other night I was watching Chelsea Handler and she had Tina Yothers on. You know, the girl from Family Ties who wasn’t Mallory? Anyway, she was pretty hard core about being on Celebrity Fit Club, and seemed like a pretty cool woman, so the next time I saw Celebrity Fit Club was on I watched about 10 minutes of it.

Still with me? Ok, during the commercial break there was a commercial for the Wii Fit featuring Tina Yothers working out. I sort of assumed that the Wii Fit or something like it already existed, but the commercial said it was coming soon. I went over the Amazon to check out this video for the Wii, which isn’t quite as cool as the Tina Yothers commercial, mostly because Tina Yothers isn’t in it.

I watched the long version of the video, and I gotta tell you…I can’t see anyone getting fit with this thing for a few reasons. I can see where it’s better than just hanging out on the couch, but I don’t see it getting anyone truly fit.

The “heavy bag” is just punching the air. If you’ve ever spent any quality time with a heavy bag you know exactly why it wears you down–because it’s heavy. I don’t have the exact numbers, but the density of air probably isn’t anything close to the density of a heavy bag. How is this different from the regular Wii boxing game?

Then there’s the strength training program that has you doing push-ups and torso twists. Again, better than nothing, but do you need a trainer for this? And jogging in place? Really? The balance games looked pretty fun, but I don’t see how you can practice balance without actually having to balance. I mean, without actually feeling gravity, they’re more like leaning games than balance games.

I guess I’m saying that there’s no way I’d buy this game. Then again, I don’t even have a Wii.