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kottke.org posts about Angry Birds

Why is Sergey Brin so good at Angry Birds?

I spent perhaps too much time this morning pondering one of the mysteries of the internet: Sergey Brin’s astronomically high scores on the Google+ version of Angry Birds. For instance, Brin’s high score on the easiest level of the game is 36240. It’s a legit score (here’s a higher one) and he has impressive scores on several other levels. But in 15 minutes of playing this morning, I couldn’t get within a thousand points of his score. (Hey, at least I beat Kevin Rose.)

Google+ Angry Birds

So does Brin actually spend time obsessively playing Angry Birds to get those high scores (instead of, say, running Google or his other ventures) or has he written a program of some sort to produce near-optimal scores or does he have a fleet of interns playing as him for hours on end? We need to know this vital info…if you’re interviewing Sergey at an upcoming conference, please ask him about this!


Angry Birds theme, covered by Pomplamoose

Angry Birds is still the top paid app in the App Store. And Pomplamoose is still twee and adorable. (via β˜…glass)


Two new Angry Birds games coming soon

The big new game will be called Angry Birds Rio. It’s a movie tie-in (blech), but as long as the game features a ton of that trademark bird-flinging action, who cares?

There will also be a Valentine’s Day edition of Angry Birds, perfect for ignoring your beloved on that special day.


Birds, still angry

A nice Angry Birds illustration:

Angry Birds Illo

See also the Angry Birds peace treaty.


The physics of Angry Birds

Using motion tracking software, Rhett Allain finds out if the flight of the slingshotted Angry Birds adheres to the laws of physics.

The only force acting on the bird (if the bird is not moving too fast) would be the gravitational force from the Earth. This is where I see lots of intro-student mistakes. They tend to want to put some force in the horizontal direction because the bird is moving that way. DON’T do that. That is what Aristotle would have you believe, but you don’t want to be in his club. There is no horizontal force in this case β€” no air resistance.

He also determines the height of the red bird: about 2.3 feet tall. The big red bird must be at least double that.