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- CoPilot live is updated and continues 30 day free trial offer
Filed under: iPhone, App Review
A new version of CoPilot Live enhances and fixes a lot of issues in the previous versions. According to the company, the app now includes improved guidance at complex intersections, Facebook status updates, free local search, and the latest maps of North America. More than 15,000 miles of roads have been added, 73 completely updated counties and hundreds of map improvements submitted by the CoPilot Live User Community.
If you want to try a sophisticated nav app but don't want to shell out any money right away, ALK technologies is continuing to offer a free version of CoPilot Live Directions for a month. The app is full featured, and includes things like voice guidance and 3D mapping.
If you decide not to buy the app, you'll lose the voice guidance and 3D, but still will have use of turn by turn directions throughout the U.S. and Canada. If you want to upgrade after the 30 days, the app charges U.S. $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year. You can get more details on the free app deal here.
We've reviewed the app before and gave it average marks. User reviews have complained about out of date maps and frequent app crashes. Hopefully this new version fixes a lot of the issues reported.
Having this app as a subscription tends to make it pretty expensive over time, but it has a low cost of entry. After using it for a couple of years, you could have bought the higher rated TomTom or Navigon apps.
Another alternative from ALK is CoPilot Live North America. It's $29.99 at the app store, and it's a one-time purchase with turn-by-turn voice directions, 3D maps and a pretty good points of interest database. Here again, some additional features are extra like live traffic alerts and fuel prices.
I've said before, and will say again that there are just too many confusing options in buying the CoPilot family of apps. The company does keep updating the software, and improving it, so if you are totally motivated by price the apps are worth a look. I'd prefer to just buy a nav app and not have to worry about constant up-sell of features or renewing my subscription. I understand charging for traffic or fuel price info, as the all the map companies have to license some external data, but I think the ALK bewildering options and pay-as-you-go philosophy may not be worth the trouble for many.TUAWCoPilot live is updated and continues 30 day free trial offer originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone - apple - Canada - Facebook - TomTom
Переслать - IT pros: Macs cost less to manage than PCs
Filed under: Enterprise, Surveys and Polls
The Enterprise Desktop Alliance (an association of several Mac-centric IT vendors) recently surveyed 260 IT administrators in the US to find out which computing environment is cheaper to manage: PCs or Macs. It turns out Macs cost less to manage than PCs for 65% of the IT admins surveyed. 19% of survey respondents said the two platforms cost the same to manage, while 16% said PCs cost less to manage than Macs.
According to the survey, Macs were cheaper to troubleshoot and required fewer help desk calls; system configuration, user training, and servers/networks/printing were all cheaper for a Mac environment than a PC environment. Software licensing fees turned out to be nearly identical for both platforms.
The survey doesn't factor in the costs of the Macs themselves; Macs do present a large up-front investment, especially compared to the budget-priced Dells you usually see populating most office cubicles. However, half of the survey respondents noted they switched to a Mac platform because of a lower total cost of ownership.
The up-front cost is still a turn-off to many IT admins, though, some of whom clearly haven't even bothered shopping around for a Mac because of the perceived expense: "You can buy a PC for $400, while the cheapest Mac is over a thousand," one admin noted. Apparently someone's never heard of the Mac mini, which ranges from $599 for the cheapest model up to $999 for the server-class Mini. Even the cheapest Mac mini would be a more than capable replacement for a $400 Dell or HP computer.
After having worked in a PC-only office environment, I'm not surprised at all that Macs turn out to be cheaper to manage than PCs. The Dell workstations we used at my last job in the US crapped out on us all the time, and software issues cost us hours of lost productivity every week. Between Windows XP, Office 2000, IE 6, and Lotus Notes, our IT admins were kept very busy, especially since almost none of the rank-and-file office workers had the confidence to troubleshoot even the most basic Windows errors themselves. This was at a very large media corporation, too, one that easily could have afforded better hardware and software if they hadn't been so entrenched in the "Macs are too expensive" mindset.
Apple doesn't tend to go out of its way to target Macs to the enterprise, preferring instead to focus on everyday consumers. Even so, it looks like IT admins, frustrated with the support issues and high maintenance costs of PCs, are at least starting to consider the Mac as a viable alternate platform.
[h/t Infoworld]TUAWIT pros: Macs cost less to manage than PCs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Hands-on with Superbrothers' Sword and Sorcery
Filed under: Developer, iPhone
"Superbrothers" is the alias of Craig Adams, a Toronto-based artist who specializes in pixel-based artwork and cinema. He's a big fan of musician Jim Guthrie, and after the two met a while ago (and discovered they were actually fans of each other), he was inspired to create a few music videos of the songs that he heard. Then, a little while back, Adams ran into a few guys from Capy, a game developer (they've made some great puzzle titles like Clash of Heroes for the DS and Critter Crunch for PSN) also from Toronto, and he decided to team up with them to make his first game, and release it on the iPhone.
I got to play the game for the first time at GDC, and what I found was an interesting mix of art, music, and gameplay that shows just how amazing a platform like the iPhone can be, both for independent developers and for artists who just want to express themselves (or music they like) in an interactive format. Read on to find out what the game is like, and how it uses the iPhone's assets and Superbrothers' creativity to create a singular experience.
It's an exploratory affair -- the game slowly unfolds through Superbrothers' art, with Guthrie's tunes slowly building up piece by piece in the background. You play a sort of a knight character, with a sword and shield, who slowly wanders down into a forest where deer and rabbits run out of the path ahead of you. The game entreats you as you drag the character around the screen -- words like "look," "listen," and "investigate" give short commands as they appear on screen, and the whole scene is doused in a moody atmosphere. Adams' art style really takes over -- one sequence where the character walks along a lake with the word "reflect" glowing above is quite serene and beautiful -- but always lets the music set the pace and tone (for this first level anyway). You can even pinch-to-zoom during certain parts of the level, to look for secrets or just to enjoy the scenery.
Eventually, the character gives slow chase to a sort of bear/man monster, and after following it into a gigantic tree, the game's first battle scene commences. You can see video of both of these scenes online, but playing it is obviously more involving -- you must turn the iPhone on its side to unsheath your sword (as the game switches to a vertical view), and even during battle, your moves and attacks are never actually laid out for you; instead the game leaves it to you that you need to swipe at a certain time, hold your finger on the screen to charge up a swing, or touch a certain part to pull back or detect. Even during the boss battle, the music still reigns, with the bear/man you fight bashing on his shield as a bassy drum beat bangs on the soundtrack.
After the fight, with the bear/man vanquished, our knight headed back out into the woods and back home to his wife and hearth, just in time for the game to throw out a quick teaser of the next level: a dark feral shape threatening the tranquil homestead.
Adams admitted that he'd crunched just before GDC to try and get a playable demo of the game ready, so there's probably a little more time in development to go than the "few more months" he suggested to us. But this game is obviously a labor of love for the artist -- he said he's done video game work professionally before, but never under the Superbrothers' banner, so this seems like his chance to bring the aesthetic to a media that's near and dear to him.
We'll keep an eye out for the game when it releases -- it's definitely not the kind of game that's targeting the Top Grossing list or bent on getting as much revenue from users as possible. Instead, Sword and Sorcery seems like an interactive art project, and it seems like an experience that should be very much welcome on the iPhone.TUAWGDC 2010: Hands-on with Superbrothers' Sword and Sorcery originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Apple's new Senior Prototype Engineer to work on wearable computing
Filed under: Apple Corporate
More news from the HR department, as Apple's hiring is extending beyond the Googleplex raid noted earlier. The company's new Senior Prototype Engineer, Richard W. DeVaul, has a Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT. The cool part, Computerworld notes, is that DeVaul has experience in wearable technologies. He's the co-founder of AWare Technologies, and his dissertation was on a project called "The Memory Glasses," a wearable memory aid that required minimal attention from the user.
The only wearable technology that Apple has produced is the Nike+ iPod kit. When stuck inside a sneaker (or attached to the laces), it feeds information to an app running on an iPod or iPhone regarding a jogger's speed, distance, calories burned and so on. While serious runners have questioned its accuracy, it has motivated a number of otherwise couch-bound geeks to hit the street.
As Computerworld points out, Apple has patented a large number of wearable fitness devices lately. Perhaps it's these that DeVaul will be working with, though we imagine that such a brilliant engineer will have his own ideas. In either case, we're looking forward to what comes of this new collaboration.
[Via MacRumors]
TUAWApple's new Senior Prototype Engineer to work on wearable computing originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - A "plastic bag" or "an iPad case"? You be the judge.
Filed under: iPad
I was surfing on Amazon over the weekend and decided to see what would come up when I searched for "iPad". One of the first results was: TrendyDigital WaterGuard Waterproof Case/Cover for Apple iPad, Blue Border and what caught my attention was that it only had one star. That seemed pretty severe, given that the iPad was only available for pre-order on Friday. How could an accessory already be getting bad reviews?!
The answer? Amazon reviewer ffass from Brooklyn, NY United States gave it a one-star review because "This appears to be a $20 plastic bag. Very trendy, indeed." ffass went on to say: "Wow. 'TrendyDigital' hopes that hyperventilating iPad users will be crazed enough to by [sic] this $20 bag for their spiffy new gadgets. Give me a break."
Sure enough, that's what it looks like, although to be fair it also has a strap to "wear around neck or shoulder." The product description says it is a "Great companion when you use your Ipad [sic] at the beach, near the pool side, in the bathtub or at the kitchen table."
One man's "plastic bag" is another man's "custom-made form fitting transparent case" and these are the distinctions which make marketing the multi-billion dollar industry that it is. I learned from Neven Mrgan than you can, in fact, use an iPhone in a plastic bag (useful for checking recipes on your iPhone while cooking), so it is possible that this "WaterGuard" case would work just fine. What strikes me as odd is that when I went back to look today, the review no longer appears on the product page.If I go to fass' profile page, the review and rating still appear, but if you click through to the product page it says "No customer reviews yet."
I can't offer any explanation for this, and I wouldn't want to jump right into conspiracy theories when some sort of technical glitch seems much more likely, but I suspect that we will start to see a wide range of random iPad accessories of debatable merit start to show up. Have you spotted any? Let us know in the comments.
TUAWA "plastic bag" or "an iPad case"? You be the judge. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - FCC wants to know your mobile broadband speed
Filed under: iPhone
You may remember that Verizon started running ads a while ago showing AT&T's anemic 3G coverage map. AT&T responded by saying "Our coverage includes 97% of the country!" In the small print on Verizon's ads they make it clear that AT&T does have coverage outside of 3G. In the small print on AT&T's ads they make it clear 3G isn't available everywhere.What kind of difference does 3G really make? For American wireless users, the FCC is interested in knowing how fast your mobile broadband really is. The agency has released a free iPhone app, made by Ookla, who also made the free Speedtest.net Speed Test app for iPhone (there is also an Android version).
In case you're concerned about your personal information ending up in the servers of the Feds, note the app disclaimer: "Results may be pooled to analyze the quality and coverage of mobile broadband connections across the United States as part of a larger effort by the FCC to identify areas with insufficient or nonexistent access to broadband." More details can be found on the FCC's page here.I downloaded the app and ran three sets of tests: on Wi-Fi (connected to DSL), on 3G, and on Edge. I ran each set three time: i.e. 3 times on Wi-Fi, 3 times on 3G, and 3 times on Edge, and then averaged the results to try to offset any temporary network glitches that would throw off the results. I also made sure I was using the same server for each test. (You can either let it select the best server based on your location or choose one manually from a list.)
Read on for the results...This is the first time that I've purposefully disabled 3G on my iPhone 3GS (go to Preferences > General > Network) and Edge is painfully slow. In fact, while on Edge I had to re-run the test numerous times just to get 3 usable datapoints, because sometimes the test simply never completed. After the test results were in, I emailed myself a copy of the CSV report.
The results aren't pretty, especially if you are someone who lives in an area without 3G coverage from AT&T.
Here is a chart made of my results from the average of the three tests (and please note that, as shown in the screenshot, I was in a "5 bars" area, which should give AT&T the most favorable results possible):
Update: There's some confusion here due to the way that the app exports data. The numbers below are correct but the units which were originally shown were not.Network Download
Higher is betterUpload
Higher is betterLatency (ms)
Lower is betterWi-Fi 4,371 kbps 612 kbps 741 kbps 3G 1960 kbps 310 kbps 1,054 kbps Edge 64.3 kpbs 54 kbps 4,936 kbps There is more information about this quality test available at Broadband.gov.
AT&T also released an app called Mark the Spot to simplify reporting of trouble spots, which is a nice gesture. I hope that there will be some noticeable improvement in frequently reported areas. When I look at the chart above of the Edge speeds, I am reminded that AT&T didn't claim that Verizon was wrong, they claimed Verizon was misleading by making people think there was no coverage outside of 3G areas. AT&T wants to show you this data coverage map. but if you want to get a 3G map from AT&T... well, they give you a list instead. There used to be a checkbox (as shown here in my Flickr feed) to show AT&T's 3G/Mobile broadband coverage.
That checkbox option no longer exists. In fact, I couldn't find any way to get a map from AT&T showing me where the 3G coverage is and where it isn't.
Gee... I wonder why.
Update: You can find the 3G coverage area if you look a specific address and then "zoom out". For example see here. Thanks to Brian Allen and jwkpiano for reminding me how to get at it. Still, it seems like they could have easily put the same chart on the nationwide map, doesn't it?
So: what kind of speeds are you getting from AT&T? Download the app and let us know your 3G and Edge speeds.TUAWFCC wants to know your mobile broadband speed originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Apple announces iPad battery replacement service
Filed under: Hardware, Apple, iPad
Apple's new iPad battery replacement service is actually an iPad replacement service. Apple announced this week that if an IPad requires service due to a dead or dying battery, it will replace that iPad entirely with free shipping. The service itself costs US$99.
Note that the battery must have died on its own accord; if you dropped it, spilled Mountain Dew inside or otherwise damaged the iPad in a way that diminished the battery's functioning, it's not covered. Also, the iPad you receive will not contain any of your data, so make a full backup before you send the defective unit off to Apple (and do a factory restore to remove all of your data if you're the paranoid type).
You can get the process started at an Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider. Apple says to expect the whole exchange to take about 1 week.
[Via MacUser]TUAWApple announces iPad battery replacement service originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Found Footage: VMware gets schooled by Parallels in MacTech benchmarks
Filed under: Gaming
Many Mac owners who install Windows do so for gaming. Those uninterested in Boot Camp can try out virtualization software, which lets you run Windows in a virtual environment on a Mac. The two most popular are VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Before making a purchase decision, wouldn't it be great to see how they handle graphics side-by-side? You drive a car before you buy it, right?
The folks at MacTech thought so, and set up identical machines for testing purposes. In the video above you'll see two MacBook Pros running Windows XP over Mac OS 10.6.2 via VMWare Fusion 3 (on the left) and Parallels Desktop 5 (on the right). They were put through several graphics-intensive tests simultaneously with dramatic results. We don't want to spoil the surprise, but suffice to say that Fusion got spanked.
You can get all of the details on the test, setups and results here.TUAWFound Footage: VMware gets schooled by Parallels in MacTech benchmarks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Ngmoco's Neil Young on how freemium will change the App Store world
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, Developer, iPhone, iPad
On the third day of GDC 2010, Ngmoco's Neil Young took the stage in one of the largest rooms at the conference to talk about what his company had "unlearned" in its time in the App Store. Ngmoco has become a large and polarizing figure in the world of App Store development -- after starting out with a big investment from the iFund, it's moved quickly to become one of the biggest iPhone-only developers, and after starting out with a few premium titles like the very successful Rolando, have recently made waves with its "freemium" business model. Young talked about the company's history so far, and went in-depth on Ngmoco's plan for ruling the App Store and why he believes it's the "most significant shift and opportunity for [game developers] since the birth of this business."
We've summarized Young's long address in this post. It was pretty incredible -- not only did Young lay out his idea of a clear plan for building and developing a large portfolio of very profitable App Store titles "at scale" (the company plans to release twenty new freemium products on the iPhone in the near future, as well as six titles on the iPad), but he made it very clear that he fervently believes that freemium and the model he's structured is the future of the video game business.
He began with a recounting of the history of the company (complete with a Mark Twain quote and impersonation -- later in the lively talk, he also imitated Don King and sang a line from High School Musical), from all the way back at standing in a line "outside of an Apple Store in Santa Monica" waiting to buy an iPhone. He said he quickly saw that the iPhone changed the usage pattern of a smartphone -- usability and capability meant people were interacting with it in new ways. He saw that people were using over half of their time with the iPhone "not making a telephone call," and was convinced enough that games could be a big market that he called up an old partner and went to work. Ngmoco started with a $5.6 million round of funding from the iFund, and Young and his company were in business.
He said that the first idea Ngmoco had was to use "highly instrumented" free apps to promote premium products. It would run a bunch of quick, free apps out to the App Store, monitor how and when people used them, and then use that knowledge to promote more in-depth, premium apps. Ngmoco released Mazefinger, Topple, Dr. Awesome, Dropship, and its "first commercial hit," Rolando, all in that first round, using the free apps to drive sales of the higher-level premium apps. After a little while and a lot of data gathering, the company concluded a few things: premium apps were working, but the fast apps were not. Ngmoco would need a better way to reach a bigger audience, and it'd need to do that fast -- Young said that at that time, the App Store market was growing at 400%, but actual app releases were growing 1200%, so his company decided that "it's going to get messy."
So it began phase 2. First, another round of funding, and $10 million investment. All legacy products were shipped or killed, and focus was placed on premium titles only -- Star Defense and Rolando 2 -- while the Plus+ network was created for app promotion (to replace the "fast apps" that it'd started with). But it didn't work out: "Star Defense disappointed us," said Young, "and Rolando 2 did better, but it didn't map to the growth of the market."
Ngmoco didn't like what it was seeing at other companies either -- in the first few quarters of 2009, the average price in the top five paid apps was only $1.68, and that basically consisted of a few big name premium apps like Rock Band bringing up the average from 99 cents. At that rate, said Young, a company would have to keep a game in the top five for 365 days straight (a relatively impossible task, he said) to make only $12 million. In short, it wasn't possible, in the paid app section of the store, to make a quality application and profit off of it long term at scale.
Still, Ngmoco did believe that usage patterns on the iPhone still showed that there was a market to be found, so it went to phase 3 -- "Freeing ourselves," Young called it. He and his company decided that an app was a trade with customers -- customers would pay money to have the company fill out their free time. And that's how the company attached itself to the concept of DAUs.
DAUs, explained Young, are "daily active uniques" -- all of the people who log into an app to play with it daily, the number of unique users per given day. The company is also interested in dollars (actually cents) per DAU, or the average number of cents earned per daily user. 250,000 users may play your free app every day, but only 2% may actually pay for it using in-app purchases. If that money total equals $5000, Young said that's like 2,000 users (the average number of downloads for the top list of paid apps at the time) buying your app for $2.50. In short, you don't need to have a paid app at all -- you just need to monetize usage for that 2%.
And so in July of 2009, Ngmoco began its push for freemium. The company looked at its library, and killed or shelved everything that it didn't believe would be viable in a free-to-play model. After that, it had only two titles ready to go: Eliminate (which was called Eliminate Pro in the App Store, because that was meant to be the premium version, and the name never got changed), and Touch Pets. It also purchased a social MMO called Epic Pet Wars, and let it operate on its own, silently watching and learning what they could about how it all worked, all while "seeding" its own Plus+ network.
And that worked. Eliminate and Touch Pets both went to the #1 spot on the App Store on their releases, and Touch Pets is still growing -- it had its highest-grossing day on Valentine's Day of this year. "Vision became math," said Young, and he was convinced he had something. The design of both of those apps actually drove DAUs, and more DAUs meant more engagement, which meant more in-app purchases, which meant more profit. Ngmoco, Young believes, has "tangibly connected" game design to business success in a model that it can replicate. And he believes the biggest game in this model is yet to come -- if Ngmoco can make a game with 10 million DAUs, and design it well enough to get more than five cents per DAU, then "that would be a really, really big business."
One more round of financing, this time $25 million, and Ngmoco is taking the freemium model off to the races. Godfinger and We Rule are currently in beta (which, in the strange environment of the App Store, means they're only released in the Canadian region, not only because "we like them and they seem nice," Young joked, but because they are 5% of the global audience and happen to map pretty nicely to 75% of Ngmoco's business, in the US and the UK), and the company is planning a whole slew of titles for this year.
Next, Young ran through the three ways he believes this model is completely rethinking game design. First, it's doing things different in terms of development: traditionally, a large team of people works for a long time on a game, and once it's been through QA and testing phases, the game is released, with possible DLC afterwards. When Ngmoco started making games, it did things a little differently -- much shorter development times, highly instrumentalized (to track customer usage), with a team of five to seven people for fairly constant updates (to keep users engaged).
But under the freemium model, the plan looks very different in three major ways. First, development only takes a few months, and only until the company develops an MVP ("Minimum Viable Product") -- a game that's not yet finished, but polished enough to be released. Then there's a limited period of testing in Canada, and then the game is not released, but simply made "live," at which point a small team of different people (because developers tend to get tired of a product soon after release, Young said) oversees it through "active," "sustain," and eventually "sunset" phases.
The business model is also very different -- in a freemium model, the few subsidize the many. Young compared this to old-school arcades, where only a few "very engaged users" (about 2%, he pointed out) were constantly dropping quarters into arcade machines, even though lots of people came and played them. "Free to play is the new quartersink," he said, and then went further to say that in Ngmoco games, the "core compulsion loop is limited" even further by social interaction and gameplay mechanics (like Eliminate's Energy), which means they have an even better chance to "motivate" users than arcades ever had.
And this, said Young, is the real shift in the business -- the design of games can directly increase retention, which can directly increase profits. Ngmoco can "build designs as beautiful engines" that will scale with its audiences. And its goal is to create games that require monetization not simply as a gate to content, but as an "enabler" -- instead of preventing enjoyment while not paying, it wants to "enable" enjoyment for users who are "motivated" to pay.
Time can also be used as a gameplay variable, said Young, and the company is planning to use push notifications to increase engagement -- your games will send you notices that you need to take some action or that something has happened, and you'll be pulled back into becoming a DAU. And Young ran through the various ways that companies would be able to monetize those DAUs -- they can sell ads in the apps or use links to sell other apps on the store, or they can sell virtual goods directly to customers (Touch Pets, said Young, is making about $2.87 per transaction, and Eliminate is making about $2.17 per average transaction, which he expects will be low for them in the future.
Finally, Young said that hits will look very different under this model -- apps will make the Top Grossing chart in the app store, but being in that chart will be the result of their sales, not the reason for them. And he believes that Ngmoco's biggest game is still to be made -- all of the Plus+ apps average about two sessions per DAU (in other words, most people log into them about two times a day), Ngmoco apps as a whole log about 3 sessions per DAU, and We Rule, the first big release with lessons learned under this model, logs about 5.
Young believes that when Ngmoco finally gets its "superhits" going, the revenues will put other handheld gaming platforms "to shame," and even approach the revenues of mainstream console games. "This is the biggest transition since gaming began," Young told the crowd, and finished his address to rapturous applause.TUAWGDC 2010: Ngmoco's Neil Young on how freemium will change the App Store world originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: The Parrot AR.Drone's augmented reality
Filed under: Accessories, Gaming, Hardware, Peripherals, Software, Developer, iPhone
We actually got to play with the iPhone-controlled Parrot AR.Drone quadricopter back at Macworld a little while ago, but we didn't get a chance to see the "AR" part of it (augmented reality, of course) until GDC last week. Parrot pulled out the AR targets for us, and while the games they had running were very rudimentary, we did get a good feel for the action.
The verdict? It works, but it's not that fun yet. Sure enough, when the Drone's cameras picked up the weird pattern of black and white dots and/or the striped tube that the company attached to the top of a second Drone, the iPhone displayed a lock-on target or the weird robot that you can see above (that's the iPhone's video running out to a television, something that's technically a no-no under the current SDK). And when the drone moved around it, the display faithfully showed the 3D model -- it didn't look actually real, but you could fly around and interact with it. And after you blasted it with enough missiles, it exploded.
In short, we saw a prototype, not an actual game -- there was no scoring and no real goal except to show off the copter. Which is fine -- Parrot isn't a game developer. When I asked if they had anyone currently developing games for the device, they didn't have an answer. Eventually, the code will be open source, and anyone who wants to will be able to come along and develop for it, so we might get some playable games eventually, but from my impressions, that will have to be after the launch later this year.
I had much more fun just trying to fly the drone around -- while the AR will work great as a selling point, there's not any software up and running yet (that we've seen, anyway) that will really change the way you use the device. But that's probably fine for those who were already sold on picking it up -- it's fun enough just to fly the copter around.TUAWGDC 2010: The Parrot AR.Drone's augmented reality originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - NY Times details Google/Apple relationship souring
Filed under: Apple Corporate
What began as a jovial relationship between Google and Apple has devolved into an ugly personal and legal battle that's only getting worse.
In 2006, Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt joined Apple's board of directors. Google and Apple collaborated on the iPhone's mapping services, and a year later, Schmidt joined Jobs on stage during the iPhone's introduction at Macworld Expo. The two men were all smiles and compliments, and the venture looked bright.
After the iPhone's release in the US, both companies went about their business, both collaboratively and independently. While Apple worked on solidifying a foothold in the global smartphone market, Google continued development on Android and the Chrome OS -- both competitors to Apple's iPhone and OS X. Eventually, the divergent interests of Apple and Google came to a head, and Dr. Schmidt resigned from his position on Apple's board due to "...conflicts of interest."
Today, The New York Times points out, the chasm between these two men and their companies is deep and personal. At a recent town hall-style employee meeting, Jobs had harsh words for his former collaborator:
"We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them."
Schmidt offered a conciliatory response to the Times, saying, "I continue to believe, as many do, that Steve Jobs is the best C.E.O. in the world today, and I admire Apple and Steve enormously."
Earlier this month, Apple sued HTC, the Taiwan-based handset manufacturer that builds the Nexus One for Google, for 20 patent violations related to the iPhone. While Google was not named in the suit, it's generally held that this was meant as a warning shot across Google's bow. "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO." We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
Just this week there's been some jousting of personnel. On one hand, RJ Pittman, a prominent product manager at Google, has left the company to join Apple. Yesterday he said, "My last day at Google. Incredible experience. Amazing people. Moved mountains. Next chapter. Hello Apple." via Twitter (the tweet has since been deleted). In an email that TechCrunch obtained, Mr. Pittman told his former coworkers, "I was sprung from Google by a little company down the road that you might have heard of called Apple...They've created a pretty neat role for me, which I will be able to talk about soon after I've started working there."
On the other hand, former Sun technologist Tim Bray (co-inventor of XML) has joined Google's Android team, and quickly posted some harsh words for the iPhone:
"The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger. I hate it."
Rumors suggest that Apple will replace Google as the iPhone's default search engine (an arrangement that earns Apple millions of dollars every year) with Bing. Google continues to push Android and Chrome, Apple moves ever further towards its own goals, and the battle is going to get uglier.TUAWNY Times details Google/Apple relationship souring originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, Developer
When I was reminded of its name at GDC, I couldn't recall hearing much about Engineous Games. It's the development studio founded by Nitzan Wilnai, a former software developer at EA and Yahoo who's gone to work making iPhone games for himself. But I did recall Engenious' first title, Tatomic, which I wrote about a while ago -- it was a great puzzler that put a new spin on Tetris' falling block gameplay.
Unfortunately, despite my purchase, Tatomic didn't sell as well as Wilnai would have liked, so he's decided to "create a game that would sell itself." It's called Sketch Nation Shooter, and he sat down to show it to me last week in San Francisco. He started off the demo by promising that he would make a game for me in two minutes, and sure enough, 98 seconds later, he had a custom spaceship shooter game up and running, as you can see in the photo above.
So how did he do it? Sketch Nation Shooter is really a whole genre of games -- it allows you to create your own shooter game using your own art, rules, and designs. Whenever you head in to create, you can choose Basic or Advance, and Wilnai first showed me basic -- it asks you to take a picture of a drawing (it should be surrounded by white, in relatively good light and so on), and then it analyzes that drawing and turns it into a graphic for your shooter's player character. You can do the same with enemies, and the game adds their pictures as well. Then hit play, and within just a few minutes, you've got a Gradius-style shooter -- your ship just kicks out a continuous stream of fire, and you control it by moving your finger around the screen as the ship stays in view right on front of it.
But what's really cool is what happens after the shooter is made. Wilnai has set up a few servers to run the game, and so players can upload and share their creations with everyone playing Sketch Nation Shooter. Not only can you make and share games with your friends (the game uses your Facebook login to sign in), but you can access anyone's games, and games are even rated (so you can just dive in and play the top 10 rated games any time you want). Every game has its own leaderboard as well, both globally and among your friends, so not only can you play whatever games are invented, but you can compete on each for the best score.
The Advanced editor really takes things over the top -- you can add multiple enemies and define their weapons and behaviors (create kamakazi enemies, have them run patterns, or just have them hover at the top of the screen), and you can even create levels just by drawing and taking pictures of those, and define boss creatures and set their hit points, attack types, and so on. The game is very customizable, and even if you're not artistically inclined, there are included art packs to chose from, featuring themed art that you can use in the games however you like.
And if nothing else, it'll be interesting to see what people come up with -- I got to play an Under-the-Sea inspired shooter by Wilnai's wife, a World War II shooter, and even a game called "Traffic" that took shooting out of the equation entirely and just had you maneuvering a car through a crowded highway. And that's just what Wilnai and his beta testers thought of -- you can pretty easily imagine a Little Big Planet-style community popping up around this one as designers get more and more creative with the options. That's what Wilnai meant as "a game that sells itself" -- he's hoping people will make games and get their friends to download the app just to try them out.
He's not sure about a price yet, but he did promise that since your friends may be entreating you to buy it to play their shooters, it'll be "cheap enough to check it out." And the app is due out on the store sometime in early April -- if you've wanted to create an iPhone game for yourself without actually downloading the SDK, you might want to give this one a look.TUAWGDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - TomTom for U.S. and Canada updated with real time traffic and more
Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch
We told you it was coming, and now it has arrived. The popular US$59.95 TomTom app is ready to hit the road with real time traffic available as an additional in-app purchase.
Included with the 1.3 update at no additional charge is Google local search, revised map data, music fading, automatic day and night mode based on your location, and the ability to add locations from other applications.
The real time traffic option has some nice features. Updates are received every 3 minutes. If a delay along your route is found, you will get notification from the app and automatically be re-routed. The not-so-great feature is that the traffic info will set you back $19.95 for 12 months of information. By contrast, when I reviewed the live traffic option on the Navigon app in November, it was a one time price of $19.95. The Navigon app itself is 10 bucks more expensive than the TomTom app that includes the U.S. and Canada, but those yearly fees from TomTom can add up.
All the navigation app developers are loading up their products with more and more features, and iPhone owners are lucky to have the chance to agonize a bit over which app to get. There are worse problems to have.
The TomTom nav app works on an iPhone or an iPod touch but using it with the iPod touch requires a car kit. Including Canada and the U.S., the app costs $69.95.
[Thanks Jared for the tip]
TUAWTomTom for U.S. and Canada updated with real time traffic and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Internet, Developer, iPhone
Booyah is an App Store company with quite a few lessons in its past already. The founders are former developers at Blizzard (they worked on both Diablo and World of Warcraft before setting off on their own), and after their first app, Booyah Society, didn't exactly strike gold on the App Store, they went back to the drawing board on their idea of "real life achievements," and have done much better with their latest app, MyTown -- it's one of the top grossing apps around, with more users and higher engagement than the popular Foursquare.
We got to sit down with CEO Keith Lee for an interview at GDC, and he told us about what they learned from Booyah Society, why Booyah is convinced that real-life social gaming is where it's at, and what they think of the iPad (and what Blizzard thinks of the iPhone). Read on for more.
So you guys left Blizzard and formed your own company. How long ago was that? And let us know why as well.
So after announcing Diablo III in Paris, my two co-founders, Brian [Morrisroe] and Sam [Christiansen], we left Blizzard because we were just inspired by the idea of doing something that was based on the real world. And we thought that the advent of smartphones and cameras, as well as GPS would give us an interesting opportunity to expose a lot of the game mechanics that we learned working at Blizzard doing everything from World of Warcraft to Diablo, but to apply it to a big audience. So that's what excited us, not just drive people to play hundreds of hours to get an epic sword on a PC, but to drive them to actually spend hundreds of hours to level up in the real world, and that can be as simple as leveling up by going to a fitness place, or by leveling up in music by doing stuff at a concert with your friends. So that's what really excited us. The mission for our company is to create new experiences for the masses by intersecting the real world and the virtual world. We launched a year and a half ago, and we're based in San Francisco, and we've launched our most recent app, called MyTown. MyTown now is the most popular location-based mobile game.
It is. I'm an MMO player for a long time, and when iPhone first came out, one of the things I thought of was, this is a device that knows where it is, can see where it is, has all of this information on it...a location-based MMO is kind of like the big thing to do. Was there anything else going on or did you have anything you took influence from at the time?
Our original idea was to make a social game called Booyah Society based around your Facebook and Twitter games, and then to fill the pause with communication. We realized though that we just tried to do too much at one time, especially for something that's more concise like the iPhone. Understanding that form factor, we took a step back, and we actually learned to simplify our app. So Booyah Society was last year, and we decided let's just focus on GPS. Let's build a game just around that -- what could be the most compelling idea around it? And then we came out with the idea of MyTown, which is essentially, a game based around real world property ownership.
I played Booyah Society, and I wrote about it, and the problem with it was that while it was cool to give yourself achievements or rewards for doing certain things, there was no check on it.
No validation, right. That's one of the biggest challenges when you start to intersect the real world and the virtual worlds. Now you have to spend 90% of your time thinking about proper validation. Because if someone really loves your games, he's going to get hacked and cheated. When you can validate activities through your backend servers like in a "pure MMO," it's a lot easier than, "Did you really go to the sports place or work out today?"
Yeah in Booyah when I played it, you could basically type in, "I flew on a unicorn today," and there was nothing there to check it.
Absolutely. So we took that step back and said well what can we do to actually incent [sic] people to be excited about an activity? And we said hey, property ownership is perfect, people don't want to lie about it, because they actually do care about the places they frequent. If I really like my local yogurt store, I want to buy it. That's a form of self-expression, they have an emotional tie to that location. And so once we realized that ownership was this incentiveidea, we wrapped the whole game around that, and generally the validation problem was solved. And the great thing too is that if you're checking in to the different locations in our game -- like right now, I can't check in to a place in Palo Alto or New York, I can only check in here. So the accuracy can be higher than in the past when you said that you can fly a unicorn or something like that.
Right. Now whenever we talk about checking in, people think Foursquare. And this is a fact that I don't think a lot of people realize: MyTown is bigger than Foursquare in terms of your users, right?
Right now, MyTown has hit 1.3 to 1.4 million registered users, so yes, they're at about 350,000, so we're about five times larger. But I think the biggest difference for us is that we have created a game that users engage throughout the day. The typical users for Foursquare and those social utility apps are about five to six minutes a day. We are now clocking in eighty minutes a day of usage for the average user, we have more users as well, and the cool thing is that we've created a complete virtual economy based on checking in, so I check into Moscone, I'm going to get more like virtual items that are different from going to an H&M. So for example, right now we're doing deals with H&M retail stores to award virtual items and goods based on proximity to their location. And it's really cool because, just this week, there are 40 million items being purchased and consumed. Every week now. And that's something that Foursquare has zero of.
For all of Foursquare's press and all of the people using it, it's not a game, it's a network. And what you guys have done is turn checking in to a game -- you can build your own stores, and charge rent, and earn points, and so on. Do you think that's why you have more users, or does it limit the potential audience by ruling out people who "don't play games"?
I think we started off at the same place as Foursquare, as a social utility. But then realizing eventually that we're a game, we'll be starting to diverge dramatically. I think the big idea here is that we're going to sit on top of the location graph, and we're going to be using all of this new data, check-in data, from Facebook, Google, anyone else out there. We're going to be able to leverage the location graph with all of this new metadata. Just like what the social graph looked like four or five years ago when Zynga and all of these other social games sat on top of it. So the big difference here is that we'll be the frontrunner to creation location-based social games that no one's ever done before. Foursquare and all of these other guys are actually creating the content that we'd love to use. We're currently going to use Foursquare's API and Gowalla's API. They're there to win the social-based platform play, which Facebook will completely wipe them out in about 6-8 months.
Yeah, outside of the realm of the iPhone, that's interesting right there.
The thing is, what differentiates them when Facebook decides to add a check-in feature that's part of their status update across all their applications on every single platform? The biggest difference is that they have 450 million users, and with such a large user base, they could work any deals with any marketers that decide to do that. I know that's the direction that Foursquare and Gowalla want to go -- they want to be an advertising platform based on location.
You've got a head start on that. You've got a deal with H&M already --
That's right.
And I know back when you were working on Booyah Society, that's what you were talking about.
It's funny because we created the game wrapped around this real-world Monopoly idea, we started to garner 100,000 users a week, and now we can actually do some of the things we wanted to do with Booyah Society, the original vision. As we continue to partner with every venue in every location it becomes increasing more compelling for them to check-in and level up for working out, and we can have achievements based around that. And that's one of the things that differentiates us from these other products. And I think we're still like at the top 40 on the App Store after two and a half months. Pretty crazy.
In terms of virtual items, I know when you check into the game, you can get virtual items that will power up the game. I haven't seen in the app myself, but are there in-app purchases in there, and how's that working?
Yeah we're actually doing in-app purchases, where you can buy virtual goods to help you get more slots, add power, level you up more quickly. We're actually one of the Top Grossing apps in the App Store as well. We make money through in-app purchases, our second revenue stream is location-based ads, and then third of all, brand partnerships with all these different clients. So the great thing is that there's so many opportunities once you create a great game that people are spending an hour in, the value behind virtual goods that people want to spend and buy now, is worth a lot more the more time every day that people spend time in the app. They care about it, and actually, what's interesting too is that we're noticing that people do really spend a lot more on virtual goods and items because they're related to real locations. If it was just a random supermarket, that doesn't matter to me, but if it's the one I go to every day, my favorite Whole Foods market, I actually want to level up and upgrade it, because you can never own that in the real world, so it's kind of a cool fantasy of being this virtual property tycoon. We're realizing that you can have a product marketed with a real world idea.
It's almost like a social connection with a building, which is a weird thing to say, but...
Yeah. We're going to be launching an update next week that's going to be focusing on social, so we're going to have all the features that Foursquare and Gowalla have -- you'll be able to view other people's profiles, see the towns that they've made, the things that they've done. And I think it'll be very interesting for me to look at my friends and see what places they own. Because we actually limit the number of stores that you can actually keep. You can only have a maximum of 25. So you'll have to see if people are getting it because they want money or because they love their favorite Apple Store next door to them. It tells about their personality, and we'll have notifications where we can see what people are buying and selling. It's more interesting than just checking in, because I don't care if you went to Starbucks this morning, I only care if you check into a party or a club that I care about. How interesting would it be if you ended up in Napa and you bought like a hot new winery? I'd probably start a dialog or conversation if I saw that from a person on Facebook. Because it doesn't happen that often, when you buy and sell a property, but it tells you a lot about that person.
I did want to talk about the future -- you said there's a social patch coming?
Yeah, we're releasing another update next week focused on social. So friends lists, messaging, in-app messaging, gifting will be available there. And we'll start to add some very interesting viral growth mechanics or loops that haven't worked out yet on iPhone but have been done on other platforms. And this is the best way to defeat the issues that people are having on the App Store in terms of promotion -- it costs a lot of money to advertise to be on the top 100 charts. I think that people haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how to create all of these interesting viral channels. Imagine I gifted you with a new slot for your property, or gave you a little Godzilla art pack, or I visited your place and I pranked you, kind of destroying your town for an hour. These are the sort of things that I think can create really cool social loops, loops that haven't been done before, and the great thing is that people can send it around to their friends, and you don't have to advertise at all. Your cost of acquisition is a lot lower.
Is the company working on anything else or is MyTown your focus right now?
Right now, MyTown is definitely our number one focus, but as I mentioned before, we've started to understand now that we're there to create real experiences on top of this location graph, and now that we've spent a lot of time developing our location database, and as our guys are now veterans all at making iPhone apps, the time that it would take and the resources would be a fourth of the time we spent on MyTown, which already only took us two months to do. So we're very, very exciting about coming up with new ways to leverage what we've already built, and maybe a different theme or target market or something. So yes, we are working on a few other really exciting games, and that's an area we're very excited about as we grow.
Cool. Because you came from Blizzard, I want to ask: They've been poking around the iPhone, but what do you think of their strategy for it?
The relationship that we have with Blizzard is loose in a sense that they knew that we were going to be working on products that were going to be highly differentiated from a big MMO. Rob Pardo is one of our advisors, so he also has to really think about the implications of what we're doing in the real world. He's a great person, he has such a strong user experience design sense that we get a lot of really great feedback. I can't speak for the strategy of what Blizzard is doing in the next few years, but I think their products like WoW are so highly engaging right now that it makes sense to find ways to get their users or new users exposed to World of Warcraft. And it makes sense to me that building products on the iPhone or other platforms is a really great way to introduce it to more users or casual users. I know we've all heard of it, but there's still people out there in the iPhone/iPod touch base that might want to have a taste of something new branded with World of Warcraft. I can totally imagine them making a game based on the Murloc or something else. I think that could be really interesting to introduce it to a new audience.
And one last thing, with April 3rd coming up very quickly, MyTown doesn't really seem like an app that would work well on the iPad, but are you all interested in iPad?
We're extremely excited and we have been looking at the APIs a lot and kind of just trying to get as much information as we can to make a better deicision. Our strategy right now is to create some of the best experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. That said, our product would probably work a bit better if there was a more refined GPS system on the iPad.
Is it a challenge then, or are you fine with just being on the iPhone?
We are currently investigating being on the iPad. We're all very bullish on that. That said, I think that if we were going to do something specific to the iPad, we would want to create an experience that's real world and that leverages something that's unique on the iPad itself.
Great. Thanks!TUAWGDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Saving your surfing on the Mac
Filed under: Features, Cool tools
I'd wager that most of you spend as much of your time on the web as I do, and that it's one of the first places you look for answers to just about any question. As a web designer, I look there for inspiration, solutions and am constantly learning how to improve my design and my code with the help of the internet community.It's become important, over time, for me to be able to re-locate the answers I've found, and to archive things that have made a difference for me. I don't just want a folder full of bookmarks, I want to be able to search my local repository in a more abstract way. The tools for doing this are abundant, and many of them free. I thought I'd share part of my current system for saving my tracks across the 'net.
First, I should note that, wherever possible, I use OpenMeta tags to classify the things I save. This isn't always an option, depending on my tool of choice, but it helps bring some coherence to the elements of my system and makes it easy to search across programs with Spotlight. You can search for tags in Spotlight using a "tag:" prefix, and applications like Evernote allow similar results using a "keyword:" prefix. You can merge Evernote and OpenMeta tag searches using an "OR" statement. A spotlight search fortag:inspiration OR keyword:inspirationwill get you items tagged "inspiration" in either Evernote or an OpenMeta program. These can be saved as Smart Folders, too, for common searches.Saving solutions and ideas
Evernote is a very good "surfing" repository for me. I clip the important sections of text using a custom clipper and create new notes from them. My custom clipper (an AppleScript/Javascript System Service) isn't terribly important, the default clippers will give much the same result (mine just handles code and images a little better). What you end up with is a taggable, full-text-searchable bookmark to the original web page. You can save entire PDF's, but I've found that keeping my Evernote notebooks trim and text-based works best in the long run.As a side note, the previously-mentioned HistoryHound can make it very easy to search in retrospect for pages you might not have realized you wanted to save at the time, and Instapaper is excellent for gathering pages you want to read but don't have time at the moment. The combination keeps my notebooks and local searches from being cluttered with things I haven't even read yet.
Collecting Inspiration
If I need a full-page image of the site, I have a couple of options. If it's just an inspiring design I want to archive, I use LittleSnapper to snap, categorize, tag and annotate the page. If I want to be able to Spotlight search the full text of the page, though, I use the oft-forgotten Paparazzi! to capture a vector PDF, and then tag it as I save it using Default Folder X (or soon after, using Tags). The beta version of Paparazzi! has given me no trouble, despite a lack of updates, and has proven to be a valuable tool.Bookmarking
In cases where I just need a bookmark/description record of a page (and sometimes even if I've already archived it in another fashion), Delicious and Pinboard are excellent tools for the job. I especially enjoy using them with Delibar, a great app for both storing and searching my bookmarks on either service.The Tags application from Gravity can also directly tag web pages in Safari and Firefox, making it possible to include them in your Spotlight searches. There are several applications available which can make your Delicious bookmarks show up in your Spotlight index as well.
In Safari, in case you don't know, you can access the first nine non-folder bookmarks with Command-[1-9]. I keep all of my bookmarklets and commonly used links in folders, so the only shortcut-accessible bookmarks in my toolbar are my surfing tools. I also prepend the bookmark name with a number, reminding me what Command-number combination will launch it: 1. Quix, 2. Delibar, 3. Read Later (Instapaper), etc..
Capturing Code
When it comes to code snippets, I'm still looking for the perfect system. I really, really like Snippets, but I'm not completely sold on its integration with my workflow yet. I've found that Evernote -- with my little custom clipper -- works quite well. The basic trick is to strip out any line numbers in code blocks and maintain the pre/code formatting on import. Evernote will then respect indentation, and applies a monospaced font for readability. The other option I've found to work well is to save snippets as plain text files in a "Snippets" folder, add a description in the comments (based on the language of the snippet) and tag them with Tags or Default Folder X.
Taking notes
For keeping notes that aren't directly related to a URL or general search, I keep VoodooPad open pretty much all of the time my computer is running. With some scripts borrowed from Ian Beck and slightly customized, I can grab notes and tag them on the fly. If, while I'm surfing and searching, I come up with an idea for a project or post, I just send it to my VoodooPad scratchpad. I use the tag "blogaboutit" to add it to my collection of post ideas, or "freetime" and "project" to add it to a list of project ideas I might get around to someday. I can include links, notes and attributions in VoodooPad, and can send it straight to my scratchpad from LaunchBar. Some other scripts in my arsenal also allow me to save complete batches of tabs as a markdown list to Evernote or VoodooPad to archive entire search/surfing sessions with a date, time and primary subject.Tagging
When it comes to the tagging part, I generally tag based on the type of archive it is (snippet, inspiration, reference, etc.), any tags that would help me find that specific archive again, and then some special tags. For example, I use the tag "problemsolved" in combination with a tag specific to the search I made to find this answer. That makes it easy, next time I run into the same problem, to locate the answer using the same query that led me to it originally. This trick can be used on Delicious, in Evernote, on plain text files, and even on PDF's with annotations and tags. By the way, I use Skim for PDF annotations and notes because it makes much easier-to-Spotlight notes than Preview or Acrobat (among a host of other great features).
Admittedly, this is too many tools to keep track of, which is why Spotlight and custom scripts (to automate everything) are so important to me. Spotlight allows me to use the best tool for each situation, and then bring them all together in a seamless search. That's the gist of my toolbox, though, and hopefully it will give you some ideas for expanding your own.
TUAWSaving your surfing on the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures
One of the best things about going to a convention like GDC is what we in the business call "doing research," which you might know as "playing games." We often get to check out the latest and greatest that developers are working on, and so when Tactile Entertainment offered us a chance to check out their upcoming Pocket Creatures title, we gladly took it. The company is founded by four friends from Denmark, one of whom used to be the Development Manager at Crytek (makers of the PC graphics engine and its flagship shooter Crysis), and Pocket Creatures, due out later this year, is their first title.
The game's backstory tells of an island somewhere with an egg in an ancient temple, and in an intro movie, the egg hatches to reveal the game's main creature character. But the game isn't merely a virtual pet simulator. While you can pet the little guy to make him happy or slap him to make him sad, the rest of the game actually embodies a pretty complex ecosystem, of which the creature and his emotions and abilities are only a part.
Early on in the game, the creature was hungry, so we shook a tree growing elsewhere on the touchscreen, and out dropped a banana. The creature wouldn't eat it at first, so instead we pulled a carrot out of the ground and fed that to him. As he interacted with the carrot, a meter showed up on the bottom of the screen, with the marker all the way to the green, positive side on the left -- the creature liked carrots. He didn't like bananas, however, but with a little petting and reward added to the banana offer, he eventually learned to like it and ate it up.
The peel was carried away by a few ants who appeared on the scene, and this was where things got interesting. Almost anything on the island can be interacted with in some way, and often even more than one way. We dragged an ant to a small nearby pond, where a set of eyes was peeking out, and dropping it in there brought out a platypus. Grabbing the platypus and scratching him across the ground created a small hole in the dirt, and placing the half-eaten carrot there created a sproutling. Sproutlings need water to grow, of course, and while we were told that there were a few ways to get water to the hole, one seemed pretty sadistic -- we smacked the little creature around until he began to cry, and a small raincloud appeared above his head to show that he was sad. Dragging the raincloud over to the sproutling watered it, and we were off to the races.
The game is full of relationships like that -- feeding the creature certain things can activate certain powers as well, and those can be used on critters and items in the rest of the world for all different kinds of interactions. He can eat a lightning fruit, and gain the power to zap all sorts of things, changing them in some way. Or he can eat a love fruit, and gain the power to convert enemies into friends. Tactile made it clear that if you wanted to turn the island into your own personal garden of peace, that was possible, but they want to make sure and "play in either direction" -- you can turn your creature and his surroundings into a mess, if that's what you'd rather do.
For each of your actions, you'll get rewarded with various achievements. Those achievements not only track everything you do in the game, but they also give you items that you can use to customize the creature's appearance -- earn the "Devil" achievement and you can get some horns to wear, or earn the "Angel" (whatever that is -- they haven't created all of the different criteria yet) achievement, and you can wear some wings. You can even earn both, and keep both items -- however you want to play it is fine.
Tactile says they're planning to keep the content coming as well -- "we like the way Pocket God is doing it," they told us during the demo. They haven't settled on a price yet, but they do realize that the game has a lot of potential on the iPad. Even before the game was announced, they said, "the concept was already there for a touch tablet," even if it wasn't done by Apple. But like all developers, they're unsure of making any plans before they actually see the product. "Our destiny is sealed by somebody behind a secret door somewhere."
If there's an issue with Pocket Creatures, it's that the game might be too open in this early stage -- there were so many things to do and so many relationships that not too many of them were clearly apparent in our short time with the game. But we did get to see a feature that allowed them to place some tips in the landscape, and they're continuing to tune and work on development, so hopefully by release, even the most complicated of relationships will be accessible. We'll keep an eye out for it when it shows up on the App Store in a few months.TUAWGDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Talkcast Reminder: Tonight at 10pm EDT, now with added fun!
Filed under: Hardware, Retail, iPad
Yes, that's 10pm Eastern DAYLIGHT Time; hopefully by now you've worked out exactly what time it is where you are so you can show up on time instead of coming in at the end. (Thanks, cell phone with automatically updated clock!) Tonight's show will also include the debut of a TUAW challenge! What kind of challenge? Tune in to find out!
While you're there, I'm sure we can find some other Apple news to discuss this evening. I'm sure if we look really hard there is some interesting tidbit out there for all of us to chat about...
Unlike those customer service recordings that try to convince you, your call really IS important to us. Without the audience, we are just talking to ourselves, and what fun would that be? To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!TUAWTalkcast Reminder: Tonight at 10pm EDT, now with added fun! originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Ask TUAW: Clocks, screen guards, MacBook hard drive replacement, NFS automount, and more
Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAW
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about replacing a MacBook hard drive, refreshing a NFS mount, getting a simple clock on screen, improving iCal's note handling, and more.
As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.Felix asks
I'm a iMac user in search for a USB hub and a FireWire hub with a Mac-like design. Sure there are several of them (especially USB hubs) that have a Macish look but then theres the thing about performance. Some years ago I bought a USB2.0 hub just to find that some of the ports feel much slower than others and that sometimes my iPod (now my iPhone) just don't get recharged at all when connected to the hub. So my question is, what do you think are the most Mac-like looking and well performing USB and FireWire hubs available?
Here are a couple of combo hubs you might be interested in from Belkin and IOGEAR. The Belkin hub does not feature its own power supply (apparently it draws more current from the FireWire port), whereas the IOGEAR does have an independent power supply, so if you're concerned about power you might want to go in that direction. In general if you want particularly "Macish" hubs, I'd recommend searching for ones made for the Mac mini (there are quite a few out there).
Derek asksI recently replaced the LCD in my aged Powerbook 15" 1.33 (A1095). When it arrived on my doorstep there was a plastic film applied on the face to protect it during shipping. I've always had a problem with the LCD on this Powerbook (and my old G3 Wallstreet, for that matter) touching the keyboard when the lid is shut, thusly leaving permanent marks on the face of the display. So, I left the film on the replacement LCD, and it has worked very well to protect the new screen. However, it's starting to peel and bubble on one edge and I'd like to replace it. Does anyone make screen protectors such as the variety of stick-on protectors for iPod Touch/iPhones in sizes for laptop screens? I have considered hitting the local megamart and just getting several to piece together, but I think the seams would be more annoying than the bubbling.
There are several different film screen protectors available, such as this Crystal Screen Guard at Amazon. The biggest problem is finding one that will exactly fit your PowerBook, since most everything sold today is made for the MacBook Pro line. I think that the PowerBook actually had a 15.2" screen, rather than the 15.4" screen on the MacBook Pro. So I'm guessing you'd have to trim down a MacBook Pro Screen Guard to fit your PowerBook.
SMartenup asksI would like to find a way to save all of my open programs / documents, and then restore to that same set of programs & documents. Is there any way to do this?
OS X does have a feature called Safe Sleep, which is much like the hibernation features on other operating systems. When invoked it saves the state of your Mac to the hard drive and then actually shuts the computer off. When you restart the machine, it will be restored to the state that was saved. There's a handy Preference Pane app called SmartSleep that will allow you to invoke Safe Sleep automatically.I get the sense, however, that what you want is something analogous to session saving a web browser's tabs, but for all your open documents. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything that does quite what you want.
ooglek asksI have a 250GB SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS. I've had it for about 3 years, and it works well enough. Now on Snow Leopard both my 2008 Mac Pro and my 2006 Macbook Pro can access the NAS via NFS Automount setup in the Disk Utility (new for Snow Leopard). My problem is that when I take my laptop out of my home office, when I come back, I have no way to "refresh" or reconnect to the NFS mount. I'm not sure if it is hung (used to have to kill nfsd in Leopard), awaiting some user action or just not set up right.
I don't have much experience with NFS mounts, but if I'm understanding the problem correctly you need to flush the cache with the sudo automount -vc command. That should cause it to essentially "refresh." Check out this thread over at Apple Discussions.
vulgo asksI am a long time Mac user and as far as I can think back I was using Microsofts Entourage as a calendar and before that Outlook for Mac. Since I got my iPhone 2 years ago I always wanted to migrate to iCal to use that as my main calendar application because of synching reasons. Unfortunately iCal is in my opinion a bad solution. It sure does allow notes in the notes field but there is no way to work properly with lots of text in the notes field like you can easily do in Entourage. You cannot just drag the corner of the window and make it bigger to get a good overview about what you write or copy/paste there. The column is and stays just too small. Do you have any idea for a good solution to make iCal fulfill the task of a proper note field without moving to another software?
I know you asked for a solution that involves iCal, but I don't really think there is one. I completely agree with you that the iCal notes interface is terrible, but I'm not aware of any way to make it work better. However, if you are willing to drop a little coin, you should check out BusyCal ($49), which offers iCal / MobileMe / iPhone compatibility and superior better features, including a much more robust notes field (especially in List View).
David asksI desperately need a bigger drive for my MacBook. Everyone says it's pretty easy to replace, I just need to buy a 2.5" SATA drive. But I'm so afraid of buying the wrong drive that I can't make a purchase. Here's why: Some folks have strongly recommend not using a drive that is larger than 250GB, and/or faster then SATA 150, 5400RPM. And most of the drives available out there are at least 320GB and often SATA 300 and 7200RPM. Am I being too conservative in my desire to stick to the recommended guidelines? Should I just stop worrying and buy a bigger/faster drive? If I understand the articles, I could/should be safe with a bigger drive as long as I don't use more than 250GB of the drive? I'm nervous enough about replacing my drive so any advice you have would be much appreciated.
Frankly, I don't really understand why anybody would tell you that you have to be limited to 250GB. I am aware of no reason whatsoever that you would need to limit yourself to a drive that small. You should be able to install any 9mm thick 2.5" SATA drive you like, including SATA 2 (SATA 300) / 7200 RPM drives. One thing to consider is that faster 7200 RPM drives will be more power hungry, thus potentially reducing your battery life and increasing heat (your MacBook likely shipped with a 4200 RPM drive, so a 5400 RPM drive might be a good compromise). If you're particularly paranoid you could get a Mac-specific upgrade kit, like those from MCE Tech or OWC, but you don't really need to do that. One nice thing about some of these kits is that they include an external enclosure allowing you to continue to use the old drive as an external hard drive.No matter which drive you end up with, it's a good idea to get an external enclosure, or at least a USB to SATA adapter (like this one). That way, as soon as you get it you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! ($27.95) to clone your existing drive to the new drive. Then install the new drive into the computer and you should be able to start right back up where you left off without reinstalling anything. Good luck!
Update: I had confused the default MacBook Air 4200 RPM hard drive with the MacBook's. Clarified that HD thickness can matter (9mm vs. 12mm: you want a 9mm drive).
Brent asksI am running dual monitors with my macbook and I don't need a menu bar on both, but I would like a clock running on the second screen. What is the best thing I could use?
There are a gajillion little clock apps available for OS X. Check out this search at MacUpdate for a sense of what's out there. You'll probably have to churn through a few of them until you find one that fits your style. If you want a place to start, check out SimpleFloatingClock.
David asksFor the upcoming iPad my wife and I are planning on sharing one. Our question is about the email. Is there a way to switch users so to our email is not available to the other. I don't see any way of doing that on the iphone, but we don't share them.
Obviously we don't know for sure yet, but everything so far indicates that the iPad will function more or less like the iPhone. That being the case, just as the iPhone doesn't support multiple users, I consider it extremely unlikely that the iPad will either.
TUAWAsk TUAW: Clocks, screen guards, MacBook hard drive replacement, NFS automount, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Boo Hoo! SimplifyMedia dropping products and changing direction
Filed under: Multimedia, Internet Tools, iTunes, iPhone, Music
The problem is, we just don't know where they're going. In a Saturday blog post, the company announced it is "...taking a new direction" and won't be offering their current apps to new users.
SimplifyMedia has been offering free software for computer-to-computer and iPhone-to-computer music sharing over the internet. Using the iPhone app, you could connect to your computer at home and stream albums, playlists or songs without any complicated firewall setups. A newer version of the software also allowed remote access to your iPhoto library.
It also looks like the company is going to slowly sunset current customer accounts but will continue to keep them functioning for at least another 3 months.
The Simplify iPhone app has been removed from the App Store, and the company says new account creation will be disabled soon.
I don't have any idea where the company is headed, but the current product will be missed. SimplifyMedia was offered for Mac, PC and Ubuntu.
[Thanks to Robert for the tip]TUAWBoo Hoo! SimplifyMedia dropping products and changing direction originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Civilization V probably Mac-bound (eventually)
I've been working like crazy for TUAW here at GDC 2010 (and there's a lot more coverage yet to come), but I did take a little time for myself this afternoon and go see the demo that Firaxis is showing off here of this fall's Civilization V. The latest and greatest Civ is quite different from the past iterations. As you can see in the above photo, the squares have become hexes for the first time ever, units will no longer stack (I know!), and culture will grow only as you pay gold to grow it, one hex at a time. Even though I really only went to see this game because I'm such a huge fan, I did get to ask one question for you: when is this game coming out on the Mac?
The rep was noncommittal, as you might expect, but he did say that every single previous version of Civilization has eventually come to the Mac, and that Civ V would probably not be an exception. He didn't have a timeline, but given the recent arrivals in the world of Mac gaming, I'd guess that it'll be sooner rather than later. The game's not due out until fall on PC, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Here's hoping that Valve's big announcement will encourage other great game companies to hit our platform as early as they can.TUAWGDC 2010: Civilization V probably Mac-bound (eventually) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Rumor: iPad in-store reservations may be over 40,000
Filed under: Retail, Rumors, iPad
In the wake of yesterday's iPad sales estimates of 50K in the first couple of hours (now revised by Silicon Alley Insider and Apple 2.0 to about 91,000 in the first six hours), we have an unconfirmed but plausible number from inside the retail stores. According to our source, the in-store pickup reservation count differential between the start of the day and closing time was about 41,000; that represents reservations for the WiFi iPad only.
If you've got a pickup reservation and you happen to know your ID number for it -- and you made your reservation either at the very beginning of the day yesterday, or at the very end of the day -- let us know in the comments and we'll start doing some arithmetic. We'll also try to cross-confirm this number with other little birdies from the retail front. Update: Looks like there's no tracking info on the registration emails. Drat.
Update #2: Separate confirmation on the estimate for Saturday & further counts lead us toward about 50,000 reservations during the course of the weekend.
TUAWRumor: iPad in-store reservations may be over 40,000 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPhone backups a bit slow? Dump those images
Filed under: Tips and tricks, Odds and ends, iPhone
If your iPhone backups and restores are taking a ridiculously long time, Apple suggests you take a quick peek at your Camera Roll.
In a new Knowledge Base entry, Apple reminds users that photos are backed up each time you do a sync, even if there are no changes to the Camera Roll. The result can be a sluggish backup or restore.
If you already have the photos copied into iPhoto, you're good to erase them from the Camera Roll. Apple has some advice for getting the pictures back to your iPhone if you need to:
1. Ensure the iPhone is connected to your computer.
2. Open iTunes.
3. Select the iPhone in the Devices list in the left column.
4. Click the Photos tab.
5. Ensure that "Sync photos from" is enabled and choose the appropriate source from the adjacent pop-up menu. For example, if you imported your photos into an application (like iPhoto), you would select that application in the list. If you imported your photos to a folder (using Image Capture, Scanner and Camera Wizard, or Windows Photo Gallery), you would select Choose Folder and then the folder in question.
6. Click Apply or Sync.
The article details procedures for Macs, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
There are other things that can slow down backups. I've seen them be very slow one day and quite snappy the next. Explanations can sometimes be hard to come by, but regular backups will keep the times down. Also, if you've added a lot of new apps, your first backup after adding them can be pretty long.
For more details on the issues with a full Camera Roll check the Knowledge Base article, and don't let those photos on your phone get out of control.TUAWiPhone backups a bit slow? Dump those images originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Checking in from Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, aboard the M/S Regatta
Filed under: iPad
It seems that a lot of Apple-related events happen while I'm on cruise ships. Back in 1998, for example, I was aboard a cruise ship when I read the headline that Apple had decided to drop the Newton MessagePad. Before we went on this trip, I knew that Apple would start taking iPad pre-orders and reservations on March 12, so I expected that I'd just be able to pull up the Apple website early in the morning, pop in my reservation, and then go on with my vacation. Little did I know that it was going to take me until 4 PM local time (3 PM ET) on March 12th to get my reservation into the system.
Just before I went to sleep the evening of March 11th, I saw a post here on TUAW that outlined when the Apple Online Store would open for pre-orders and reservations. Doing a quick time calculation in my head, I determined that I'd be able to pop in at 9:30 AM local time and make my order... no, wait a second. At 8:30 AM, I was going to be taking a ship's tender over to shore. Dang.
We were scheduled for the proverbial "three hour tour" in this beautiful tropical location, so I decided to be patient and wait until I got back to the ship at about 11:30 AM local time. Of course, when we were on the other side of the Samana peninsula at 12 PM local time and still hadn't left, I realized that I was going to really have to put the order on hold for a while.
The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed... well, at least the tender going back to the ship was getting bounced around pretty good. We finally headed back towards the ship when they announced that we'd have to go to Cayo Levantado, a small resort island in the midst of the bay, to transfer to a larger tender before returning to the ship.
Eventually, at about 2 PM, we were back aboard the ship and I was ready to run to our stateroom, fire up the MacBook Air, and make my order. However, "she who must be obeyed" was starving (as was I), so we stopped at the ship's poolside grill for a quick bite to eat. Everyone else who had been on a shore excursion was thinking the same thing, so the line for a quick bite was moving slowly.
Finally, after talking with some fellow passengers, having a beer, and finishing our lunch, we made our way down to the stateroom where I fired up the computer, hooked into the horribly expensive and ridiculously slow shipboard Wi-Fi, and started the reservation process at about 3:15 PM local time.
How expensive? Can you say US$0.60 per minute? Of course you can! How slow? I think the 300-baud modem that I had with my original Commodore VIC-20 was faster! The total reservation process, which would probably take about 5 minutes on my office Internet connection, took about 45 minutes to complete. Thank God we had a bottle of wine to open and drink while waiting....
Well, all is done and I've reserved a 64GB iPad for pickup on April 3rd. I'll also have some great and funny memories of this day every time I turn on that iPad.TUAWChecking in from Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, aboard the M/S Regatta originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Use DynDNS for better success with Back To My Mac
Filed under: MobileMe
Many folks were excited when Apple announced Back to My Mac as part of MobileMe. Being able to remotely access your Mac from anywhere sounded like magic. We're used to products from Apple that "just work" but for most people most of the time, Back to My Mac "just doesn't."To maximize your chances, you're supposed to use a supported router, but even that's no guarantee. At home I have an Airport Extreme Base Station (Wireless-N), and at the office I have an Airport Extreme Dual-Band model. I don't think it's possible to get a "more compliant" setup, yet I still can't get it to work most of the time.
Under the adage "nothing ventured, nothing gained," I took a chance and signed up for a free account with DynDNS. DynDNS gives you a free hostname which will go to your computer even when your IP address changes. There are scads of DynDNS domain names available, but for the purposes of this example, let's assume that your domain name is imac.homeip.net.
After you've signed up for your free account and chosen a hostname, download and install the DynDNS Updater for Mac and install it on the machine you want to access via Back to My Mac. (If you want to do this for more than one computer, you will need a different DynDNS hostname for each computer. You can get up to five at no cost.)
Once you have it running, make sure that it has updated, and then switch to your other Mac. You could launch Screen Sharing.app directly from /System/Library/CoreServices, but a much better suggestion is to install the free ScreenSharingMenulet which will sit in your menu bar. ScreenSharingMenulet will remember hosts that you have previously connected to, meaning that you don't have to re-type the hostnames. Click on the menu bar icon, select "New Connection..." and then enter your DynDNS hostname (i.e. imac.homeip.net) and check the "Add to My Computers" box so it will appear in the My Computers sub-menu in the future. Click "Connect" and cross your fingers.
If it still doesn't work, I have a few more suggestions, but I warn you, we're going to get a little technical here. First, you're going to want to setup a DHCP Reservation for the computer you are trying to connect to. The process isn't very difficult. Essentially what you are doing is telling the router to always assign the same IP address to the computer you are trying to access. After you have done that, tell the router to send all traffic directly to that computer. On the Airport Express this is called the "Default Host" and is found on the Internet Tab under "NAT" but other routers have different names for it (I believe Linksys routers refer to this as the "DMZ" host. Check your router's documentation if you're not sure.)
Warning: once you do this you are bypassing your router's firewall. Mac OS X has a firewall, but it is not enabled by default. Launch System Preferences and click on the Security panel followed by Firewall tab. If it doesn't say "Firewall: On" be sure to enable it.
Update: Several comments below suggest that putting your Mac as the "Default Host" or "DMZ" will make your Mac insecure. I don't know of any evidence that that is true - "gut instinct" is not evidence - assuming the Mac OS X Firewall is enabled. That said, you can try using Port Mapping or Port Forwarding to forward to port 5900 (the port Screen Sharing uses). If you can block all access to your Mac except for that one port, it obviously reduces the number of potential ports that a malicious attacker could try to access your Mac. As one commenter suggested, you could even map different ports to forward to port 5900 on various Macs behind the same DynDNS hostname. In AirPort Utility you can find Port Mapping configuration under "Internet" and then click on the "NAT" tab. This will still require that you use DHCP Reservations, as above.If all else fails, you might want to try another direction: Back to My Mac through iChat. I haven't actually tried that, but it's another option.
I can't explain why using a DynDNS domain name works more reliably than the built-in Bonjour sharing/connecting method, but after days of unsuccessfully trying to connect to my work computer, I have been able to connect via DynDNS without fail. As my Dad taught me long ago, "A good strategy is that which works."
TUAWUse DynDNS for better success with Back To My Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - "Overwhelming" demand limiting iPad in-store pickup
Filed under: Retail, Apple, iPad
According to MacDailyNews, shoppers who placed iPad pre-orders this morning are being told by Apple Store employees that demand could affect their plans for in-store pickup.
It seems that several customers ordered iPads this morning, opting for at-home delivery. For whatever reason, they later changed their minds and opted for in-store pickup. That's when things got tricky.
When requesting the switch, those customers are being told that their existing orders will have to be cancelled and new in-store orders placed. However, the employees warn, demand for the iPad has been so "overwhelming" today that they can no longer guarantee that an in-store pickup order will be available on April 3rd if placed at this late hour.
As of this writing, the online Apple Store notes that Wi-Fi iPads ordered today will be able for pickup at Apple Retail Store "...between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on April 3."
In other words: Selling like hotcakes.TUAW"Overwhelming" demand limiting iPad in-store pickup originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Possibly as many as 50,000 iPads pre-ordered in first two hours
Filed under: Retail, Apple Financial, iPad
The early adopters are out in force today. Based on analysis from Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog & the investors of the AAPL board on Investor Village, it seems that as many as 50,000 iPads were pre-ordered in its first two hours of availability this morning. That's pretty staggering demand, especially considering that on a typical day Apple only receives an average of 15,000 online orders for all products combined.
Naturally, we have no way of knowing if these numbers are exact as of yet. The numbers reflect over 50,000 orders placed in two hours, and the percentage of those that are iPad orders isn't clear. Considering that the iPad was just made available for pre-order today, however, and the 15K daily average noted above, it's likely the majority of orders placed this morning were indeed for the iPad. Additionally, the numbers only reflect the number of orders placed, not the number of units ordered; taken with the 2-pad maximum for today's pre-orders, the data does suggest that somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 iPad pre-orders were placed within two hours of its availability.
This suggests a huge demand for the device, at least among early adopters. It will be very interesting to see if this trend is repeated once the iPad is actually available in stores.
One interesting note: even if all 50,000 of those iPads were the $499 version (which is very unlikely), based on iSuppli's analysis of that unit's build cost, it means Apple gained nearly $13.5 million inrevenueprofit from the iPad alone in a mere two hours -- and that's the bare minimum. Once you factor in all the other models and their higher prices, the numbers climb by several million dollars. Even for a company with a market cap in excess of $205 billion, that's still pretty amazing performance.
[h/t MacRumors]TUAWPossibly as many as 50,000 iPads pre-ordered in first two hours originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPad 101: iPad AppleCare pros & cons
Considering AppleCare for your iPad? I know that I am. For $99, AppleCare extends your iPad warranty coverage to two years from the date of purchase. Although AppleCare tends to be expensive, for certain purchases it can really save you, especially for devices which run a higher risk of component failure over a lifetime of hard use -- such as laptops and other mobile tech.
Many Apple aficionados tend to avoid buying AppleCare for robust devices like the Mac mini series. Those units tend either to die right away or last forever. They are highly self-serviceable for anyone who has a reasonable degree of comfort with a screwdriver.
The iPad and the iPhone, on the other hand, can feel like accidents waiting to happen. Without a simple avenue for owner-repair, they are more of a black box purchase. And their components can and do die much more unexpectedly. In my history of purchasing iPhones and iPod touches, I have personally encountered video driver death and massive touchscreen failure.
To be fair, both of these incidents happened within a month or so of purchase, so keep that in mind as well. For many devices, component failures tend to show themselves fairly soon. With a standard iPad purchase, you are covered for 90 days of phone support and a 1 year hardware warranty without any need for a further AppleCare payment, according to the Apple representative I talked to this morning.
What's more, if you want to wait, you can. Purchasing AppleCare extends standard iPad coverage to 2 years each of phone support and hardware warranty. You can buy AppleCare up until the last day of your 1 year complimentary coverage, so there's not really a rush unless you need phone support during that time.
I know I'm completely out in speculation territory, but I kind of think that the component failure rate for these devices tends to be a bit higher than for desktop systems. I base this on several years of hanging around with other iPhone and iPod touch users and listening to their stories rather than on any consistent study. So I tend to err on the "I know I'm kind of getting ripped off buying this extended warranty from AppleCare but that's okay for my piece of mind" side.
AppleCare may be a big additional price to grapple with when you're already coughing up $499 or more for the device, but consider that this object is going to bounce around with you most of the places you go, and take abuse accordingly. TUAW colleague Mike Rose suggests AppleCare on any mobile device where paying the repair or replacement cost out of your own pocket would be more painful than you'd like. TUAW commenters also point out that buying your iPad with American Express automatically doubles your warranty coverage so you won't need to buy AppleCare at all (or gives you 4 years of coverage with Applecare-- TUAW reader TJ contacted Amex and a service rep stated that they only double original mfgrs warranty, not extended care.)
Apple tends to be one of the least obnoxious companies around when it comes to actually following-through on their extended warranties. Anyone who has visited a genius bar with a sick Apple product will recognize that having a diagnostic and repair service in-store helps create an atmosphere of getting devices fixed without an argument. And that's a very nice thing, indeed.
Admittedly, Apple has been a little rotten about it's various moisture sensors (especially the ones near the microphone for the iPhone -- where you naturally blow hot moist air while talking) but you can always insist that repair persons open devices to check the interior moisture sensors as well.
Another thing about AppleCare is that it does make your early-adopter iPad a lot more re-sellable via eBay. As TUAW commenters have pointed out, being able to state that your device has an extended warranty in place can help it stand out among other auctions and offer extra end-purchaser confidence.
So, bottom line? You will have a year or so to decide about AppleCare after purchasing your new iPad, but sometimes it's simply nice to know that a problem will be taken care of.TUAWiPad 101: iPad AppleCare pros & cons originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPad 101: Managing your 3G data plans
Filed under: iPad
Much as I love AT&T's prepaid services, their interactive system for purchasing feature packages... well, it kind of sucks. I can't count the number of hours I have spent on their 611 purchase line trying to get the chirpy fake human at the other end (no, seriously, the robot is very cheerful and upbeat) to properly confirm my correct order.
With the help of human operators (who cannot, by the way, actually effect the purchase), I have a cheat sheet that sits next to my computer and gets updated as they change their menu system: sometimes you have to say "yes". Sometimes you have to say "buy it". It's all a bit of a mess.
So when I read through Apple's updated iPad 3G page, I was delighted to see that you can add your prepaid 3G feature packages from the iPad without ever having to speak to chirpy fake humans. It's all done from the padtop. And that, let me say, is marvelous.
No, you won't be able to use AT&T prepaid cards, which is a pity. I'd rather enter a card number onto my iPad when sitting at an airport, for example, than my personal credit card information (thank you, AT&T, not), and you have to sign up for recurring plans (see the screenshot), but it looks like it's going to be a way better and friendlier experience than my 611 nightmares.
One of the great things about the 250 MB limited plan is that you'll be warned about how much of your data you've used. Apple's writeup states, "[iPad] will even let you know when you're running out [of data]. You'll get three alerts as you near your 250MB limit -- at 20 percent, 10 percent, and zero." At that time, you can add more data (in 250 MB increments) or upgrade to "unlimited" (likely capped at 5GB) for the forseeable future. There is no option for "oops, I underestimated my needs, can I just pay the remaining difference and hop onto the unlimited plan just for this month," so keep that in mind as well.
There's a big old "Cancel Plan" button that you can tap at any time that will get you out of any further purchases. Being a pre-paid AT&T plan, there's pretty much a zero percent chance that you'll get any refunds on unused services, so watch your calendar carefully while living in auto-renew-land.
As TUAW reader DJFriar points out, the service change takes effect when your current plan runs out of data or reaches its normal expiration date, i.e. it follows AT&T's norm for prepaid feature plans. See the Plan Options wording on this graphic from Apple's website.
Apple's write-up indicates that your device can automatically take advantage of Wi-Fi connections when they are available, in places like Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, which offer free Wi-Fi for anyone who has signed up for an AT&T data plan. That's going to be another way to stretch your data if you opt for the 250MB plan.TUAWiPad 101: Managing your 3G data plans originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPad 101: Reserve an iPad from outside the US
Filed under: iPad
If you're living in Canada or Mexico -- but close enough to the border to make a trip to a US Apple Store -- Clean My Screen has posted instructions for reserving an iPad outside of the US. There are 23 steps in the guide, but it doesn't look terribly complicated.
It involves the creation of a new account with a US address and no payment method, but with a real email address. Then you can confirm your account and make a reservation, although you'll need to make a trek (or have a friend in a convenient location do it) to a brick-and-mortar US Apple Store to retrieve your iPad.As noted in the article, having a US iTunes account can be handy for a handful of other reasons, including being used to buy free apps and music, and potentially get free eBooks once the iBook Store opens. If you live outside of iPad reservation territory, give it a shot and let us know how you fare.
TUAWiPad 101: Reserve an iPad from outside the US originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Quizarium the multiplayer trivia app is nearly ready for prime-time
Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
Quizarium [free], a multiplayer iPhone/iPod touch trivia game, arrived in the App Store today. I got a chance to look at a pre-release copy and I found some problems with the interface and flow of the game. Some problems will be solved either upon release, since an update is being approved right now, or within a few days after release. According to Anthony Almanza, one of the developers at Lithuanian software development firm On5, Apple has gotten much quicker with approving updates. I spoke with Anthony at length about the app and offered a number of suggestions that will be implemented quite soon.
Quizarium uses the Plus+ social play network which allows many players to compete against each other by answering trivia questions in a number of set category rooms, or in new rooms that can be created by users. A server problem was found yesterday (and a revision quickly submitted), so room creation may or may not be activated upon release. I really didn't get a great feel for how a multiplayer game would look since, at most, I played against two people from On5, but I can imagine that the action will be pretty intense.
To play, you flick the screen up to view the entire list of category rooms, and when you tap on a room, the game starts. You are shown with a trivia question for 60 seconds, or until someone gives a correct answer. You can see the minute tick down by watching a progress bar at the top of the screen. Hints are given as time passes, showing you how many letters are in the answer and, as time is running out, you'll see the first few letters of the answer appearing. If you are the first with the correct answer, you gain points and receive awards courtesy of the Plus+ network. Tapping the Plus+ button on the main screen shows you your awards and takes you to the leaderboard where you'll see just how well you've done. Weekly leaderboards will be updated every Monday night. There is also an overall Plus+ network leaderboard.
Quizarium [free], a multiplayer iPhone/iPod touch trivia game, arrived in the App Store today. I got a chance to look at a pre-release copy and I found some problems with the interface and flow of the game. Some problems will be solved either upon release, since an update is being approved right now, or within a few days after release. According to Anthony Almanza, one of the developers at Lithuanian software development firm On5, Apple has gotten much quicker with approving updates. I spoke with Anthony at length about the app and offered a number of suggestions that will be implemented quite soon.
Quizarium uses the Plus+ social play network which allows many players to compete against each other by answering trivia questions in a number of set category rooms, or in new rooms that can be created by users. A server problem was found yesterday (and a revision quickly submitted), so room creation may or may not be activated upon release. I really didn't get a great feel for how a multiplayer game would look since, at most, I played against two people from On5, but I can imagine that the action will be pretty intense.
To play, you flick the screen up to view the entire list of category rooms, and when you tap on a room, the game starts. You are shown with a trivia question for 60 seconds, or until someone gives a correct answer. You can see the minute tick down by watching a progress bar at the top of the screen. Hints are given as time passes, showing you how many letters are in the answer and, as time is running out, you'll see the first few letters of the answer appearing. If you are the first with the correct answer, you gain points and receive awards courtesy of the Plus+ network. Tapping the Plus+ button on the main screen shows you your awards and takes you to the leaderboard where you'll see just how well you've done. Weekly leaderboards will be updated every Monday night. There is also an overall Plus+ network leaderboard.TUAWQuizarium the multiplayer trivia app is nearly ready for prime-time originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Fallen Earth comes to the Mac, brings an iPhone app
Filed under: Macworld, Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store
Fallen Earth is a respectable postapocalyptic MMO -- I've never played it (one MMO is enough for me, and the gigantic World of Warcraft is still claiming my time), but it's grown pretty popular since release in September of last year. And now the game is set to pick up another chunk of audience, as the owner Icarus Studios has announced that they're releasing a Mac client for the game. It's currently in beta (and was made using Wine), but if you're interested in trying out a new MMO with a postapocalyptic twist, head on over, give the client a download (you'll need a game account, though there's a free trial available), and give the team a good Mac welcome.
That's not all, though -- Icarus is also working on their very own iPhone app, and I got to play with it this week at their GDC 2010 booth. For Fallen Earth players, it'll be a must-get, but even if you're not currently a player of the game, the app is a shining example of what's possible with a "supplementary" game application -- it allows for all sorts of in-game functions directly from Apple's handheld device.
The app is pretty barebones in terms of main screen UI -- there's simply a menu that leads you off to all of the app's various functions. But the functions are what's most fascinating about this: almost anything that you can do outside of combat in the game can actually be performed using the iPhone app. It works as a full gear and inventory viewer -- Icarus has replicated the game's UI for the player character's gear and inventory, so you can browse and examine your gear within in the app just like you can any time in the game.
That's not unheard of in the current MMO space (Blizzard has a similar viewer app for WoW), but this is: Fallen Earth's app goes beyond just viewing to actually acting and interacting with items in the real game. Logging into the app is just like logging into the game, so you can check the ingame mail system directly from the app, and even send mail out to other players from the iPhone. You can craft items directly on the iPhone, assuming you have the items in your inventory -- and even if you don't, you can access the in-game auction house to both buy and sell items from within the app. Purchased items appear in the mail window, so you can collect them there -- if one of your guildies needs a certain item crafted and you're away from your main PC client, you can log on to the app, buy the necessary crafting materials, craft the items (crafting is a passive action in the game that can sometimes take hours, so you can set items in the queue via the app), and then send them items away to your friend all without ever using the desktop client. Crafting gives XP, too, so you could potentially level your character using just the iPhone app. That's pretty incredible.
The app also has full messaging and chat ability -- you can chat directly with players either in the game (or even logged in using their own iPhone), and send private messages, chat in certain channels, and anything else you can do in the normal game. And it also has a full set of in-game maps installed, so even though you can't explore the game world with your character, you can still examine it.
It's a pretty impressive application, especially for one that's designed just to supplement the full game client. Dave Haydysch, Icarus' associate production manager, told us that the company had worked with Showtime to make an iPhone game based on the Dexter television show, and since they'd already ported most of their game engine for that project, they figured it wouldn't be too hard to make their own iPhone app. He wasn't sure on a release date yet, and the company hasn't yet decided a price -- "talks" about whether it should be free or not "are ongoing," he said.
And just for the heck of it, we asked him about the iPad -- certainly, the app would work on the iPad, but would Icarus want to put their game on there? Like most developers, they haven't actually seen the device yet, so he didn't have a firm word for us. "We haven't looked at the iPad," he said, "but the possibilities are there." Very interesting to see a larger MMO developer use the iPhone to extend their brand in this way.TUAWGDC 2010: Fallen Earth comes to the Mac, brings an iPhone app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPad adds Screen Rotation lock. Recumbent users scream "Finally!"
Filed under: Apple
Apple has finally added a screen rotation lock to one of its iPhone OS computing products. The button, which appears on the side of the new iPad will lock the device into its current orientation, preventing the unit from responding to re-orientation events. For everyone who has ever tried to play a game while lying down on a couch or a bed, let me say: Thank you, Apple!
Finally, we'll be able to lock our orientation in place and not worry about an overly helpful system trying to do its best to keep up with the way we hold our screens. If you've ever tried reading a webpage, scanning mail, or just playing a game on the iPhone while lying on your side, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Can't wait for this to appear on the next iPhone as well!
Thanks, Attila - hat tip to The LoopTUAWiPad adds Screen Rotation lock. Recumbent users scream "Finally!" originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPad fever: What didja get?
Filed under: Retail, Apple, iPad
With iPad preorders finally available, at least for USians, I was relieved to place my order for an 16 GB iPad, due to be delivered on or after April 3rd.
Along with a bluetooth keyboard (which I've been meaning to pick up for some time now), a case, and taxes, the whole kit & kaboodle came to about $650 for me.
I declined AppleCare for the moment, and am now feeling a little conflicted. At $99 for two years of coverage, it seemed a little steep. However, AppleCare has saved me in the past; it's something I've meant to buy on less robust items and earlier technology. I'm probably going to end up adding it on, although please feel free to convince me otherwise in the comments.
I kept with my decision to go with the 16GB unit for now. I may end up passing the unit along to family once I'm ready to upgrade to a better system, but I do need a unit as soon as possible for work. Out of the accessories on offer, I felt that the case was going to be really handy for day-to-day use.
I passed on the dock (both the regular and keyboard varieties; I have enough charging desk space without), the USB power adapter (I've got plenty left-over from iPhones, along with Apple-branded cables), the VGA adapter (my existing component cable should work for the moment, but it's something I'll likely pick up at a later date), and the MobileMe membership (do I even need to justify that decision?). None of these seemed compelling enough for immediate pre-order. Interestingly, Apple does not seem to offer any engraving options for the iPad yet, although I'm guessing they will at some point.
So what did you end up ordering? Did you go for one of the overseas ordering work-arounds that have been posted around the 'net? What size did you buy and why? Did you pick up accessories? If so, which ones did you decide on and what motivated that decision?
Share your pre-order details in the comments!TUAWiPad fever: What didja get? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: From rags to riches on the App Store
Filed under: Gaming, Developer, App Store
While we weren't able to stay the whole time (the life of a TUAW blogger at a covention is varied and hectic), the iPhone Game Developers' Luncheon at GDC 2010 was a pretty enlightening experience. After a little varied networking among guests, hosts PlayHaven, Cooley Godward Kronish (a law firm that specializes in startup companies), and MplayIt started up the panel discussion. The iPhone developers in attendance were Igor Pusenjak of Lima Sky (the creators of the very popular Doodle Jump) and Bryan Mitchell, a solo developer who created a game called Geared that's risen to the top of the App Store charts.
The most interesting thing we learned at the luncheon (in among a lot of legal talk about forming corporations and copyright law) was where these two developers came from. Mitchell was a filmmaker who had to work construction "after film work dried up in Las Vegas," and decided to jump in on the app business to make extra money. His game only made a few bucks a day at first, but after spending a little on advertising, Apple featured his game in "What's Hot." After that, he was off to the races.
Likewise, the Lima Sky developers came from humble roots. Pusenjak and his brother are from Croatia, and when the brother's job there looked a little shaky, Pusenjak decided to get into game design to try and earn his brother some extra cash (and himself some beer money). Doodle Jump was the latest in a long line of projects that included a bubble wrap simulator (Mitchell actually said he had five games that "failed" -- only had a few bucks coming in a day), and Pusenjak said that even though they "already had the computers," he feared at first that the $100 dev program investment might not have been money well spent.
Doodle Jump didn't fly off the shelves right away, either, according to the developers -- the very first day, they had 21 copies downloaded (which sounds pretty good, but they thought it was a minor start). But eventually, it got up to the point where they were making a few hundred dollars a week, and of course now the game is competing with Bejeweled as the highest-grossing game on the App Store ever.
Pusenjak also shared a little insight on how a developer should represent itself in the App Store. While there are good reasons to stay as an individual in the store, his company had to make the jump to a business account. It worked out better for them, but it took them a while to get around to changing the actual name listing in the App Store.
It wasn't the longest or most in-depth session that we've seen this week, but it was cool to get some more insights about the App Store directly from developers at the luncheon.
Update: A few corrections have been made to this post: Doodle Jump was not Lima Sky's second project, Apple changed Lima Sky's listed App Store name very quickly when asked (the delay was the result of the company, not Apple), and comments about App Store customer registration were misinterpreted.TUAWGDC 2010: From rags to riches on the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - ClickToFlash 1.6b7 solves YouTube's "Old Flash? Go upgrade!" message
Filed under: Internet Tools
If you have ClickToFlash installed, you may have seen a note telling you that you have an old version of Flash and encouraging you to upgrade.As you might expect, you don't need to upgrade Flash, but you do need to upgrade ClickToFlash. The current version is ClickToFlash-1.6b7-upload1.zip, but you may have go to the Github page for ClickToFlash to download it.
Jonathan Rentzsch explained that he hasn't been able to update it himself due to illness. However, given that it is open-source, four others (identified as ndfred, Justin, ssp and lapcat) identified the problem and a solution, and Rentzsch merged it back into the main branch of the code.
That's pretty awesome, if you ask me.
So if you've run into this problem at YouTube, take a few minutes, download the new version, quit Safari, and run the installer. Voilà!
TUAWClickToFlash 1.6b7 solves YouTube's "Old Flash? Go upgrade!" message originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Hands-on with Faraway
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPad
Steph Thirion's first iPhone game was Eliss, a touchscreen-based arcade game that had you combining and maneuvering planets around one another, and trying to size-match them up with black holes to earn points. As he told us (stay tuned for an exclusive interview with the indie developer), it was pretty hard -- even more so than he actually intended it to be. So, for his second iPhone game, Faraway, he's gone much simpler. Inspired by the iPhone game Canabalt, Thirion has created a one-button game in which the goal is nothing less than to explore the universe. He has it running on a Mac at the show (so he can project the video onto a bigger screen), and we got to have some hands-on time with the new game.
You control a comet that flies around an inky black void speckled with dots and circles; the pixelated space aesthetic from Eliss is back. This time, however, there's only one control, and it's a tap anywhere on the screen. Doing so will cause your comet to gravitate towards the nearest static dot, which will then slingshot you around the star until you let go, and the comet flings off in a new direction. There's an arrow pointing off of the screen, and by timing slingshots correctly, you will face the comet in the direction of the arrow.
Once you get moving the right way for a length of time (the game has a counter constantly counting down), you'll hit a gigantic circular body, like a large white sun. Once you hit that shape, the screen flashes, and you enter into another gameplay mode -- your comet will drag a line around the screen, and anytime you gravitate to a star, the line will connect between the stars you gravitate to. Continue connecting the line, and you can continue to rack up points, but cross or touch the line (or the outside edge of the screen), and that point of the game is over -- you're given your score and your comet is sent off in a new direction, a little bit of time added to the clock that's still counting down to game end.
It sounds complicated, but in practice, the one-button simplicity keeps it fairly easy to understand. There are also various shapes to hit outside of the gigantic sun you're aiming for -- red polygons that hit your comet will make it go faster for a little while (allowing you to close space to the next sun that much more quickly), and white polygons will add time to the overall clock, letting you play the game that much longer.
The game tracks your best score, but that's it, really -- the goal is to keep the comet going for as long as possible. And it's addictive -- just like Canabalt, every time you play you feel like you've figured out a new trick, or if you just hit a star's gravity just right, you'll careen off into a new high score.
It's a lot of fun. Thirion hasn't decided on a price or release date yet (stay tuned for more information in our upcoming interview), but especially if you like the one-button simplicity of Canabalt (and who doesn't?), Faraway seems like it'll be a fun expedition into the reaches of space.
TUAWGDC 2010: Hands-on with Faraway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Get ready for those iPad pre-orders! Apple Store down
Filed under: iPad
The Apple Store is currently down in the US, the UK and the rest of the world. Grab your credit card and get ready for the iPad pre-orders to begin at 5:30PT, 7:30 Central, 8:30ET, and 1:30 GMT!
...and back up now, orders pouring in. Note that Apple is offering $30 off of MobileMe subscriptions with the purchase of an iPad. Preorders are limited to two per person, and devices will ship for delivery on 4/3 where Saturday delivery is available.TUAWGet ready for those iPad pre-orders! Apple Store down originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iCalShare relaunches
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
After a long absence iCalShare.com has relaunched with new search tools and an improved user interface. iCalShare is a site dedicated to sharing calendars for use in applications like iCal, Google Calendar, or Outlook among dozens of other web and desktop apps. The site contains over 3,500 calendars across 40 different categories from Academics to Television. Calendars are free to download and can be used with any desktop or website application that can import iCalendar files.
How it works: Just search the site for a calendar of your choosing, click "subscribe" and that calendar will automatically be added to your iCal. Since it's a subscription-based calendar, it will automatically update whenever the author edits the calendar. You can also create and share your own calendars on iCalShare for free after registering with the site. Whether you're a Harvard student, a DC Young Democrat, or a movie buff, there's a calendar for you.
iCalShare was first launched in 2002 and spotlighted by Steve Jobs during his 2003 keynote speech. The site was created by Patrick Crowley, a technologist and long-time Mac user.
TUAWiCalShare relaunches originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: The secret to App Store success
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, Developer, App Store
For the last panel of GDC 2010 day two, David Whatley of Critical Thought took the stage to talk about the App Store success he found with his games geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm, and almost dared other iPhone developers to follow his "guaranteed plan" to go from "zero to Time Magazine." He's got quite a background in the trenches of coding and game development, having designed and run online mulitplayer games for over a decade with his "day job" at a company called Simutronics, but he decided to take to the iPhone in his spare time both to learn the platform and see what he could do with it.
First things first, he said, to make an iPhone game, you've got to figure out your goals as a business. He talked about the potential on the iPhone in terms of millions of dollars, but of course, since "99.9% of businesses on the App Store make no money," it's much more likely that if something goes wrong during development or something doesn't click right, the money will drop down to just "a few bucks." It's a balance of costs (which he relabeled as "risks") vs. revenue -- it's very easy, he said, to make money on the App Store, but the issue most developers have is that they let costs get away from them by having too big a team or by investing too much development time, and that comes straight out of their bottom line.
To save money on his bottom line, Whatley made a big deal out of hiring a PR firm. He hired Triple Point PR to handle his publicity (and namedropped them multiple times; like many similar firms, they send us PR notices here at TUAW), and he says that as a developer, that helped him remove a part of the business he didn't like (press and user interaction) completely from his equation, for what turned out to be only 6% of the revenue (he made a deal with them to get a percentage of the backend based on a few goals he gave).
He said to the audience that a PR firm is extremely important in app sales, because of the press cycle. A PR company sent word of his app (especially his second app, since he'd already created somewhat of a reputation with his first app) out to niche outlets like TUAW and Touch Arcade [Excuse us? Niche? -Ed.], and those outlets gained the attention of Apple, which placed his app in the iTunes promotional channels. That led to major sales, of course, and then the mainstream media (his app was featured in Maxim magazine) wrote about apps featured by Apple, which led to even more sales. In short, he said to developers at the conference, PR hands information off to "gamer press," which attracts Apple, which attracts mainstream media, which all goes back to sales numbers.
And he wasn't shy about numbers either: he's made $251,000 with geoDefense. That's only part of the revenue -- a certain part went to Apple, $15,000 went to the PR firm, and then he had $2,000 in overhead, which he said was literally a Mac on his Mastercard. Given that he already had the coding skills and business experience necessary to publish a successful app, that's quite a return.
So how can developers replicate that? He said that the X-factor is probably the most important part -- while you can follow the rest of his instructions to a T, and "do everything right," your app still needs to have that "X-factor" of being something people want to play and share. He also recommended that developers establish their goals early on and stick to them -- "if you're getting into this to be a millionaire," he said, "you haven't thought it through. If you get into it to learn to be a millionaire, you probably have."
Likewise, he joked that he had a foolproof solution to defeating piracy once and for all, and it was... "make a game no one wants." Finally, he showed a picture of himself working on a MacBook from a beach in Bali, and said that he'd been extremely happy with the success he'd found in the App Store -- like a few other developers at the conference, he made it clear that Apple is offering up quite an opportunity to smalltime developers, and that with the right mindset and discipline, there is money to be made.TUAWGDC 2010: The secret to App Store success originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Barnes & Noble eReader for iPad coming soon
Filed under: Odds and ends, Freeware, iPad
That's the word from the giant U.S. bookseller. There is already a version for the iPhone and iPod touch, and Barnes & Noble says customers can expect the free software around the time of the iPad launch.
The reader will give B&N customers access to more than a million eBooks, as well as selected newspapers and magazines.
The Barnes 7 Noble Nook, which competes with the Amazon Kindle, has only been out a short time, but if the iPad is a success a heck of a lot more people may be reading B&N books on Apple's device rather than the Nook. Now we have to wait and see if there is a Kindle app for the iPad (other than the already-released and popular Kindle app for iPhone), but I think it is a foregone conclusion.
It sounds like Apple is going to allow these competing book apps on the iPad, rather than forcing people to only use the iBooks store; if so, that's a good thing.
[Via Engadget]TUAWBarnes & Noble eReader for iPad coming soon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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