night game
This is the kind of game that I really love. Great art. Simple game play. Tranquil.
crappy name: niche or no success
I don’t know why but it still ticks me off everytime I see a web 2.0 company struggling, I can’t help but wonder why they picked such a stupid name. I kinda feel that probably a good deal of the problem they have alluring users (besides the fact that their service may not be that great) is that their name is not spellable. The whole web 2.0 naming scheme brought on because of the lack of available URLs is just churning out sites that no one can find, unless they are moderately fanatical or ask their friends who the URL should be spelled.
These days the sites with the two random words like YumBunny/JuicyCampus/TechCrunch impress me since I’m sure if I heard it once I’d be able to find my way to the site without having to do some kind of google search. I think the next big thing in URL naming after the vowel-less or double constanant names subside will the the 3 word phrases.
(Raj driven to rage after reading about yet another weirdly spelled Web 2.0 company is struggling on TechCrunch)
backlit
I never took much notice of cover art on high resolution screens on various DAPs. Today though, looking at Baron Bane’s “Orchids” EP and loving the subtle gradient of the art I realized that a good deal of it’s appeal was the fact that it was backlit. Now that a lot of us are buying music as digital downloads, I starting thinking about how our first view of new cover art is in the form of pixels on a monitors or DAP/mobile phone screens rather than the printed initial view we’ve enjoyed in the past. Even though the vast majority of music purchased today is still on CDs but I can’t help but wonder if cover art these days is optimized to be viewed on backlit screens.
batteries not included
Walking through the mall I noticed a small banner up for FAO Schwarz. It had the typical nutcracker, rocking horse silhouettes, you know, the iconic toy store imagery. I couldn’t help but wonder though, why they were still relating toys to rocking horses and nutcrackers. I understand the allure and magic of classic toys but kids these days don’t play with the classics, they play with stuff that’s heavily promoted on TV, probably powered by batteries. And then I started thinking, “What if Best Buy advertised their electronics with a silhouette of cassette tapes and old Atari 2600 joystick?” Well, that probably wouldn’t work out for them.
The possible underlying goodness hidden within the new DSi
We know the basics of this thing. It’s a slightly less pretty version of the DS Lite minus the GBA slot, a little less battery life, a new content store, the ability to play mp3s (off an SD card), slightly bigger screens and two new cameras. So far the press’s reaction has been the same as mine, in that it’s a pretty underwhelming update to the DS.
However, the more the I’ve been thinking of it there could be some hidden magic in there. Yes, adding a camera is pretty bland, even two…so what? But what if Nintendo were to revisit some of their own gimmickry they love so much and have fun with those cameras. Do you remember the Nintendo e-Card reader from years ago. Games would come encoded on trading cards that when swiped on the reader, a game would be loaded into the GBA’s RAM. You can still find NOS (new old stock) Balloon Fight and Donkey Kong e-cards at some stores. It was a pretty cool idea, hiding games in collectable coded cards that could be played when swiped on the e-Card reader. The e-Card reader was never a commercial success…which I’m sure had a lot to do with the fact that the super clunky attachment made it just too cumbersome to use regularly.
Imagine Nintendo taking this concept to a new level. There’s something out there called QR Codes which are basically matrix barcodes. There are already applications available on mobile phones that can decode the QR Codes into useful marketing fluff such as links to websites or video clips etc. Imagine using the camera to take pictures of such codes hidden in magazines, posted on billboards, posters, inside Wii games (photograph the TV screen) etc. Imagine those data encoded codes unlocking new games, demos or other marketing fluff. Nintendo knows how to create fads, after all they did create Pokemon and now they can take the “collect’em all!” mentality to the next level by using QR Codes (or a proprietary Nintendo variant) to be found, saved and maybe shared. Microsoft is already doing something similar with Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise recognizing the little barcodes on Viva Pinata trading cards through the Vision Camera.
That’s just one off the wall idea…I’m sure Nintendo is perfectly capable of creating something new, brilliant and hopefully not gimmicky.
you’ve got to be kidding me
After Comcast completely missed a scheduled install date for new cable broadband service at my house and then botched the install job when they did show up the next day, I decided to call up and get this installation back on track. I figured I’d explain what had happened and then have them send down the necessary guy or team to finish the install.
I explained a bit to the rep I was talking to before she said “You’ll need to talk to the Department of Incomplete Installs to get this rolling again.”
Say what?! THE DEPARTMENT OF INCOMPLETE INSTALLS! They actually have a department for this? Really?
iPhone 3G Blues by Leah D’Emilio
The world needs more pretty girls singing about technology.
iPhone in the car
There are very few things out there in technology that just work the way you think they should. So recently I’ve been thinking about how my iPhone and car have worked very well together. I wouldn’t change a thing. The set up goes like this. I connect the iPhone to my car’s auxiliary jack so my music, audiobooks, and podcasts can by played through my car speakers. Next, bluetooth connects the iPhone with my car for all calls.
While I’m driving I usually listening to a podcast, audiobook from Audible or my music and it all comes through beautifully through my car speakers. When I get a call, the iPhone fades the song, book, or podcast down, pauses it and rings. I just click “Answer” on the iPhone screen or press that nifty button on my steering wheel to answer the call. To end the call, I just hang up and the iPhone automatically resumes where left off from, slowly bring the song, book or podcast back up to the previous volume level.
Another thing I’m able to do is actually stream audio off the net while I’m driving (regardless of the data speed). A lot of times, if I don’t have a certain podcast downloaded and synced I end up just using Safari to navigate to whatever webpage hosts the podcast and click on “download mp3″…and as the mp3 downloads, it’s playable so I basically have a streaming podcast playing in my car while I’m cruisin‘ down the highway. In addition to that, the new App Store has Last.fm and Pandora apps so you can stream music off the net directly on the iPhone.
Sure, there are other phones that can do this, but nothing does it quite as elegantly. The fade in, fade out of whatever i’m listening to (with pause), the flawless bluetooth integration and the ability to stream music or other content on the go is perfection.
Android is overrated: Why it won’t take over the world.
By now you’ve probably heard of Google’s Android initiative. It’s a new mobile phone platform (OS) to compete with the likes of OS X iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm OS. What so special about it? Well, its by Google so that means it’s backed by a whole lotta money and hype. I’m not saying it’s bad…I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I don’t think it’s the next big thing. Back when it was first announced, the tech press was blown away and thought Apple’s iPhone was in trouble. After all, it’s Google and Google knows how to make a decent product. What the tech press seems to have forgotten is that you need two things to make a phone a mainstream success. The right user interface and some slick hardware. There’s a good chance that Google will get some decent OS out there but there is no way the phone hardware makers will be able to suddenly be able to create something with the industrial design to rival Apple’s iPhone. Having one out of the two things ain’t bad. Palm got pretty far with the Treo before they let the Palm OS and hardware grow old and stale.
Android will do fine. Techie geeks will drool over it. Most people, normal people that don’t care about the techie stuff and won’t buy into the hype will just end up getting an iPhone because it’s just plain slick, hardware and software. The general population will upgrade to iPhones from their RAZRs and techie peeps will upgrade to Android from their Treo or Windows mobile phone. (And Blackberry users will just buy new Blackberries).
There are a few more reasons I think Android won’t work out like multiple handset configurations, and a sucky SDK but for now let’s just stick with the sub par hardware.
coming full circle
It’s funny sometimes how things play out. Sometimes technologies and ideas are way ahead of the curve. It could be a great idea and great execution released in an incompatible culture. Or it could be a great idea at just the right time but with execution. Sometimes it just takes time and a good idea will come back around.
Do you remember the internet appliances from years ago? The idea was to have a cheap thin client to be specialized in accessing the internet (aka information superhighway or cyberspace). It was a great idea, but people had privacy concerns, they were too expensive and the product just faded away. For some reason it seemed like nearly all of them had LCD screens, which at the time were cool and still quite expensive.
Recently while going through my room I found lots of old tech flyers that I’d collected during my visits to various conventions, E3, Comdex, CES etc. One such flyers was from Be, an innovative “independent” OS developer. They never could quite get traction as mainstream OS developer and they decided to refocus the company to develop an OS for internet appliances, BEIA (Be Internet Appliance). Which I think got it’s only commercial release in Sony’s eVilla, which ended up being a flop. I remember during that time there used to quite a few announced internet appliances back then (Netpliance, etc), but very few actually made it to market.
Today, people seem to be pretty comfortable or getting more comfortable with having their files stored on someone elses servers. Linux based thin OSs are common place on the new netbooks and MIDs (mobile internet devices)…the spiritual successors to the internet appliances of late 90′ and early 00’s.