Apple Computer, Cupertino, announced this week its "Cocoa World of Winter Contest." The contest, which runs until Feb. 3, is open to children ages of five to 18. Using Apple's newly introduced interactive media authoring tool named Cocoa, entrants design a "World of Winter" that demonstrates the child's interpretation of winter. The software required for the contest, which is available free in a test version, runs only on Macintosh computers at this time.
Each entry must be accompanied by a two to three paragraph description explaining how the Winter Cocoa World works and what it means to the young designer. The easy-to-use Cocoa software is available for free download via the Internet (http://cocoa.apple.com/).
Introduced in December 1996, Cocoa allows children to build simulations, games, and interactive worlds on their desktop computer and share them on the Internet, quickly and easily. According to Karl May, product line manager for Internet authoring tools, this interactive tool teaches children logical reasoning similar to that needed for programming, without requiring the child to learn a complicated programming language.
"Apple has always been an industry leader with its products aimed at helping kids learn. Cocoa is another example of our commitment to this young audience and we're hoping that the 'World of Winter' contest will encourage fun, as well as learning," explained May. "The Worlds they submit do not have to be complicated--this is something that a child could complete in as little as an hour," he added.
Entrants fall into two age groups: the kids group for children ages 5-11 years and the youth group for ages 12-18 years. Final judging will be based on appearance and originality/creativity of the animated world, as well as the clarity and relevance of the written explanation. Prizes for each age group include:
First prize: 1 Apple 600/27 Scanner
Second prize: 1 Apple QuickTake Digital Camera
Honorable Mention: 10 Cocoa World tee shirts
The Cocoa World of Winter entry must be a file format saved by Apple's Cocoa software and must run with Apple's Cocoa software or Apple's cocoa plug-in for Netscape Navigator.
Entries can be submitted via email (cocoa.contest@apple.com) or on a floppy disk via mail to: Cocoa World of Winter Contest, Apple Computer, Inc., 1 Infinite Loop Mail Stop 305-4MM, Cupertino, CA 95014. For a complete description of official rules, consult the Cocoa website at http://cocoa.apple.com/
About Cocoa: With Cocoa, children can create characters–which can include anything from raindrop to a flower or a fish–on their computers and incorporate them into simulations, games, animations, nonlinear stories, and interactive worlds. The characters and objects act and relate to each other according to rules shown to them by the author.
As a world runs, the characters behave according to the rules the author has given them. Characters' reactions involve movement, animation, playing sounds, and creating or deleting other objects. May explained, "A child can create a character that is snow and can tell the snow to fall from the sky. Then the child can create a character called the sun, which can be asked to melt the snow--we call this show and tell technology."
Using Cocoa, children can take advantage of the worldwide web to build an evolving interactive story. By sharing cocoa worlds across the Internet, authors can build a library of characters and rules from which increasingly sophisticated worlds can be built.
The design release for this product is available for a temporary period, is unsupported and not fully tested. The software is provided as is, without any warranty. Final product versions are planned for late 1997; pricing has not yet been determined for these upcoming products.