New 2D Action Game for iPhone OS
My brother’s vision of a 2D action game, paying homage to the greats from back when we were growing up, is beginning to come into its own. He’s just posted to Pixel Road, his game development blog. Plethora of nuggets on development, UI, design choices, and badassery.
Mag+ Predicts the Future of Reading
Awesome videos prototyping the potential of reading with future technologies. Instead of the complicated, website-like projects being spun by Conde Nast, the gentlemen at Berg and Bonnier R&D have envisioned a purer segue from paper to screen. And I completely agree with their approach: focus on the design elements of paper periodicals and deliver them to the screen. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly enjoy reading periodicals on websites in the browser default font, with animated Flash ads littered everywhere. I’d rather view things like they used to be, and I’ll bet most other people would, too.
Slate Dissects Publications on Tablets
Not entirely sure they are correct in assuming the digitization of periodicals for this generation is equivalent to the digitization back in the CD-ROM days, but it is at the very least a condemning perspective on otherwise over-hyped expectations.
Instapaper Parser Gets Update
One of my favorite iPhone apps received a solid improvement yesterday. Instapaper’s text parser can more intelligently remove text likely unrelated to the body content of a page, and also will include some inline images. The “Read Later” bookmarklet can be updated with this new parser via an Accounts setting.
(via Instapaper Blog)
Ibis Reader & Book Shelf
The Ibis Reader fantastically uses HTML5 (particularly offline storage), works well with the ePub standard, and should operate just fine on any mobile device whose browser supports HTML5.
End the Madness
Andy Kessler’s Why AT&T Killed Google Voice article is definitely worth reading — it touches on a number of important telecommunications items (the Google Voice app issue notwithstanding), especially the state of the industry in terms of data. Sure, AT&T is a business, hosts a massively expensive wireless infrastructure, and should charge whatever they want in a free marketplace. But when we look at their pricing structure, it makes no sense — no sense, in particular, to how the rest of the computing world operates: in data transfers.
My favorite:
As any parent of teenagers knows, text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. After the first month and a $320 bill, we all pony up $10 a month for unlimited texting plans. Same for Internet access. With my iPhone, I pay $30 a month for unlimited data service (actually, one gigabyte per month). Is it worth that? The à la carte price for other not-so-smart phones is $5 per megabyte (one-thousandth of a gigabyte) per month. So we buy monthly plans. Margins in AT&T’s Wireless segment are an embarrassingly high 25%
Timbuk2’s FLAP
Timbuk2’s FLAP (Flexible Light and Power) ensures portable, environmentally friendly lighting for all. Their idea is “creat[ing] a solar powered LED light that’s disguised as a messenger bag.”
Badass and probably unnecessary.
