It’s right around the corner! The East Coast Game Conference! I’ve gone a couple of times, and if I were not traveling overseas this year, I would certainly make my way to this conference. If you get a chance to go, I’d love to get some of your impressions of this year’s conference. Either comment to this entry, or let me know and I will collect the links for people.
The Facebook Phone
I was sitting in a long meeting yesterday, and had completely forgotten about the “big” Facebook announcement, when I saw a live stream tweet come across my screen. Figuring I could watch a live blog, and still provide the appropriate engagement in the meeting I was in, launched the link. To my surprise, it wasn’t a late April Fool’s joke, Facebook was announcing their Facebook Phone.
Well not really a phone, but a new app launcher for Android, which would replace your default launcher and wrap you up in the Facebook experience. My first reaction was, oh no! Here we go again, we are going back to Q-Link, Prodigy, and AOL. A closed ecosystem whose goal was to keep you locked up in their space. Then I realized, no, it’s not that bad… it’s worse!
Facebook’s value is you as a data source. That is why it is free. And by wedging itself between you and your apps, messaging, and phone service, they gain even more information about you. I even tweeted my worst case thought. As an app developer, there is some value in using Facebook as a sign-in message. You can get access to your users’ information, timeline, etc. The social graph that I get on our Facebook page provides all kinds of neat demographic data about the type of people who follow this site.
However, what if Facebook decides that they don’t want to launch your app on a Facebook phone?
The fact that many of the major carriers have immediately jumped on this and will be offering devices in days using this new interface as the default launcher (Can you opt out if you get one of the phones and don’t like it?), is another worrying event. Facebook also has made this capability available in the Android version of their App, so users can turn it on themselves as soon as the service is available! Given the history that Facebook has on user security policy and how confusing and complex they make their settings, all with the goal of getting more and more of your data out of you.
What do you think of yesterday’s announcement?
Finally Back to the Meetup
Last night I made back to one of my favorite Meetups – Triangle Cocoaheads. The format of the meetup is that there are a few speakers and then people can stand up a showcase an app they are working on. Josh Johnson and Jay Thrash gave two great presentations – Josh showed off how to build a AVFoundation playlist application and Jay showed off Square’s PonyDebugger.
Being a podcaster and video editor, I felt that Josh’s explanation of AVFoundation was great. I had the aha moment that most this framework is just like doing a multitrack editing experience. You build up a composition, which contains tracks, and within tracks you have the actual audio pieces. You can apply mixers to the track, which is an array of params which apply attributes which manipulate the sound. We focused strictly on volume controls, because the demo application was about creating a cross fade between songs. Josh then showed the application he is currently working on where utilized all he showed us. As soon as the video is posted I will link to it. Great job!
Jay then took the group thru PonyDebugger. This allows you to do realtime analysis of your app, either on the simulator or on device. Everything you want to know about it can be found at GitHub. I’ve been looking for a tool like this, as it provides three basic features: Network traffic debugger, Core Data Browser, and View Hierarchy Debugger. The way this is achieved is by adding about 7 lines of code. Amazing!
The session then turned into a discussion on CocoaPods. Now I’ve not used this before, so it was interesting to learn about this, but when the discussion went to CocoaPods vs. GitSubTrees, and GitSubModules it went over my head. Mainly because I am writing my code from scratch with no real third party libraries. Also, I’ve not been working with others, so needing to keep multiple people on the same level of code across machines and libraries is not relevant. But a pretty good discussion ensued and while the group didn’t come to any consensus of which is best, I think this was a great new add to the Meetup.
I am looking forward to getting back into this meetup.
Missed the S4 launch?
Well, as everything would have it, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Launch happened while I was unavailable to watch the live stream. I’ve been trying to find a reliable video but so far the ones I found, have been market private. Oh well, the blogs have been full of tons of good information. Here are just a few of the sites:
Android Central
Business Insider
One of the key things that I was surprised about was the total lack of actually showing the device in person. Apple does a really good job about showing the demos “live” and connecting the devices to the large screens.
Having said that, I did pick up a new device this week, in order to start working on my own Android application programming. I picked up a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (10.1 Inch). The reason I chose it was the price, and availability in a near by store. I must say that I was surprised that I had to charge it before I could use the device. It is NOT snappy. But for testing my application it will work. Maybe that means I will focus on improving performance of the app.
How do you test your app across platforms?
Galaxy IV Launch day
Today is Samsung’s big announcement of the Galaxy IV. The number of leaks and pictures out there are phenomenal, so we probably don’t have to guess what it will look like. Probably don’t have to worry about the specs. The big question is how will it perform? Will it continue to be the Android phone that the masses must have? Will it over take the iPhone 5 in sales?
My goal is to try and catch some of the livestreams today and update this post to talk about what is announced. If I do…
iBooks verses Kindle Books verses Paper Books
One of the things that I like to do is to read books on programming. I guess given my day job and other activities, I don’t get enough time in the day to write code as much as I’d like. (I can’t just jump in and out of code, like I can in a book.) I tend to have books in multiple formats, and wanted to spend a few minutes thinking thru the pros and cons of each format. (Note that when I say Kindle format, I really mean general ebook formats).
Kindle Format
This is my preferred format for reading technical books. The main reason is I can have access to the same book, across so many platforms that I always have the book with me. I can read it on my phone or tablet, I can read it on my Mac or Windows PC and I can read it on my Kindle. The graphics aren’t always the best, but the various readers all do a really good job of getting me to my highlights or my notes. Additionally, I get visibility of how others are highlighting the book.
iBook Format
While I really like the iBook format, it has great highlighting and notes capabilities, there are some books that really take advantage of embedded media to help explain concepts, the biggest complaint I have is that I can only really take advantage of technical books on my iPad. Yes, some of them can be read on the iPhone, but if they are using all the cool features of iBooks, then they only install on the iPad. A great example of this is the series by Kevin J McNeish. The author has done a great job of integrating content but I can only view it on the iPad.
Paper Format
Let’s face it, paper is by far the easiest to deal with. The problem is, you can’t always have all your books with you. You need to plan ahead and ensure that if you are traveling you have the right books with you for the projects you may be learning. Also, I eventually run out of shelf space in my office, and I hate throwing out old books. I still have books on HTML programming from 1996. The O’Reily team does deal with this nicely, in that they allow you free or cheap access to ebook formats for any book you buy.
Perhaps the publishers will all get together one day and allow for digital downloads of books you buy. However, I wouldn’t hold my breath, since easy ripping of CD’s and DVD’s helped drive the digital download of those media, and ripping a book to digital format is a bit harder. I have a decent sheet feeder on my scanner. I’ve tried scanning in some back issue magazines so I could read them on the plane when traveling. The amount of effort it took to do that encouraged me to just re-buy the issues electronically.
Mobile – A New Era of Computing – How has it turned out for you?
As part of my day job, I read a lot of Analyst reports and they all seem to be talking about Mobile being the new Era of Computing. I’ve been trying to understand what that really means. Yes, I can recognize that we’ve had shifts between the centralized days of Main Frames, to the Client-Server Days of the PC, to the Server based days of the Web, and now we have this Mobile era. Is Mobile, Client-Server Web? Some companies do this, as they use HTML5 and Mobile Web apps, but I don’t think this is what we mean. So I am asking for your help, if Mobile is a truly a new era of computing, we should be able to address the following questions:
- How have you changed your computing habits?
- Has this changed how you and your customers interact?
- Has this changed your development practices?
- What do you see as the longest lasting change?
- What change were you expecting that has not occurred?
Final Day – Future visions
It is always amazing to me how fast this week goes. Saturday came and went, and I am flying home today. I went to two sessions and then spent the rest of the day on the show floor, deciding to skip my last planned session. This ultimately was the right decision, as I got time to see people and booths in more detail.
The first session I went to was on creating eBooks without pulling your hair out.
My simplistic expectation was that this session was going to focus on Apple’s iBooks, I am so glad that I was wrong. Serenity Caldwell, an associate editor at MacWorld Magazine, and the editor of many of their Super Guides, went thru the workflow of creating three types of eBooks (text only, text and pictures, and text, pictures, animation and video) and how to target the three major platforms – ePub (non-DRM), Mobi (Kindel DRM), and iBooks (Apple’s proprietary format). She explained the tools you need to pick up (both OSS -Open Source Software, and for pay), and even included some of her own code snippets to help you get started… I learned a lot.
The second session, was a follow-up to a session I went to last year – Student Projects from the Hawaii Prep Academy boarding school on the big island of Hawaii. I have really enjoyed these student presentations, as they show all the passion of science that I had at that age, and they come up with some really innovative ideas. I hope to post a video montage, since I shot a bunch of video on my iPhone. The one and only complaint I had was that their teacher spent too much time telling you about what you were about to see, as well as what they learned, what they used, etc. that the students didn’t have much time to show off their work, nor did they say anything much more than the teacher. I think next year they should let the students talk more. The first student was working with HDR (High Dynamic Range) pictures to build VR (Virtual reality) maps of their campus and the Keck observatory. The second student showcased work she was doing using the Emotiv Epoc headset to research how we react to music. I’ve had one of these at home for a few years, and the technology and API is amazing! The third student utilized the headset to control a AR Drone quadrocopter. The Fourth student was doing research on recognizing patterns in electrical usage within hotels, with the goal of reducing the extreme cost of energy. At the current time, electricity on the Islands is 4 times the cost of the most expensive mainland costs. She got this idea after doing research on DNA. She can now look at a set of waves and tell you what is a Laptop verses a refrigerator. They are also working on identifying GMO in food. Another student showcased how she build a radio telescope and can pick up the Doppler shift of Jupiter. And the final presentation was a student who is from Italy and is studying the three types of waves caused by earth quakes. This is important because the third type, can predict Tsunami’s and since Hawaii is receives no other warnings based on Latin American earthquakes this is critical information. The interesting aspect was that school can get three free sensors from Quake Cather Network, this is a crowdsourcing effort sponsored by Standford. I am going to see if I can order a set for myself.
The rest of the day I hung out on the show floor, and got to see the iPad based robot from Double Robot that allows you to be at the office and interact with people from anywhere in the world. I talked to the guys from AgileBits, Smile, CrashPlan, BlueMicrophones, Ecamm Networks, and many many more. I will try and post some more detailed reviews of some of the other people I talked to and whose software I recently picked up.
Looking forward to going back next year!
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Traders vs Trinars – Intro
Welcome to “Trinars Vs. Traders”, the space-based turn-based strategy game where you try to take over the entire solar system.
After a bloody civil war that engulfed the entire solar system an uneasy peace has begun. It is now up to you to decide how this peace will progress. But it won’t be easy, on the fringe of known space there is a race of aliens which seem hellbent on destroying everything in the solar system. They have recently been increasing their attacks, becoming more and more brazen as they work their way to the capital planet. They don’t steal, they don’t run away, they just kill.
You are either a merchant or a military captain, and only you can stop this onslaught…Good Luck!