Flash confirmed for the Palm Pre

February 17th, 2009 •
Tags: Adobe Flash, flash, iPhone, Palm Pre, pre, smartphone

Gizmodo reports that Flash support is definitely happening on the Pre giving it one more mark in the “win” column over the iPhone. Palm is mounting quite an attack and seems to be specifically targetting complaints of iPhone users which sounds to me like a good way to differentiate your product from a very similar one in the same space. If they would just open up the platform for native apps, I would be on board.

Confirmed: Palm Pre To Support Flash

Console-quality iPhone games

February 17th, 2009 • 1 comment
Tags: ExZeus, Gaming, I Love Katamari, iPhone games, mobile gaming, Payback, Rolando, SimCity

Apple’s launch of the app store last year was an amazing success with games making up a large part of the catalog. However, with rumors of iPhone Flash getting hot and heavy, the need for 100 native Sudoku apps, 20 solitaire apps, and probably 1,000 variations of sliding block puzzles will diminish quickly. My suggestion is to insure that the $10 game you buy today is not going to be trumped in three months by a free Flash game three months down the line. In light of that, here are some iPhone games that really make the phone feel like a full-fledged gaming console rather than just a place I can go to pay for games that are free online.

Payback ($6.99)- Payback is a very true-to-the-original GTA clone. I’m sure many of you are only familiar with the GTA series since the third game in the series was released for PS2. This is a little different. This game is very similar to the first two GTA titles for PC (also for PSOne, I believe). The perspective is top-down. You go to phone booths, pickup missions, and complete them for points. Once you reach the point goal, you can move on to the next area. I have a couple of minor complaints. The light poles in the game do not come down even if you hit them with a tank… literally. Not only that, but they stop your vehicle immediately and completely upon impact. The cops in the game are very nonchalant. You can often steal another car in front of them, run over someone, or run into their cop car with your vehicle without raising their suspicions that you might be up to no good. In spite of this minor gripe, this game is definitely a steal. There is spoken dialog and a cool radio just like modern GTA games!

ExZeus ($5.99)- This game comes straight from Japanese arcades. The PS2 version was released only in Europe. The Dreamcast also saw a version at some point in time (probably on a continent on which I do not reside). This is a shoot ‘em up that puts the camera behind a giant mech which you move on the x and y axes using tilt control. Attacks are executed using a number of tapping gestures on the right side of the screen. Tapping the left side of the screen locks enemies for a homing-rocket attacks. It’s great fun and and very polished especially well under the $10 price point.

I Love Katamari ($7.99)- The Katamari series has held a special place in my heart since the original Katamari Damacy for PS2. This particular version was destroyed by critics upon release because of some major slowdown issues, but those were fixed shortly after with the first update. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, you play as the Prince who is sent to earth by his father, the King of the Cosmos, to roll around a giant sticky ball called a katamari and pick up objects. These objects range from paperclips and matchboxes to tables, people, and much larger objects still. While the katamari is small, it can only pick up small objects, but, as it gains mass, it can pick up much larger objects. There are a number of modes including the story mode in which the King asks you to roll up a specific object in each level and a mode which has you trying to stop rolling when your katamari reaches a given size. It is wacky, but it is simple addictive fun.

Rolando ($5.99)- Here we have a super-cute and complete platformer that uses the accelerometer to great effect. The graphics could probably be duplicated in Flash, but the tilt control upon which the game is built is uniquely its own. It also contains a level of polish that few Flash games ever achieve. Roll your Rolandos through each stage solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles to reach the exit. Some stages also have elements that you interact with directly by touch. Each Rolando has a unique personality which makes the game more endearing than most you will play on this platform. Start with the lite version and see if you like it.

SimCity ($7.99)- This is SimCity 3000 adapted for the iPhone. It is an excellent and complete version of the game. Amazing to me is that the game was not watered down for the mobile platform. This isn’t SimCity “Lite.” You’re out there zoning, placing roads and water lines, and talking with advisors just like its desktop counterpart. Maybe this experience could be reproduced in Flash, but it never has to my knowledge.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive. Nor am I trying to suggest that you should not buy simpler games on the platform; they certainly fill a need as well. However, as a hardcore gamer, there is a thirst in me that no quantity of puzzle and card games can ever quench. Lucky for me (and those like me), the iPhone offers a powerful gaming platform that developers (like those of the aforementioned titles) have really begun to exploit to the fullest. These are some of the finest examples of exactly what the iPhone is capable of in the mobile gaming space.

iPhone review: Heavy Mach.

February 16th, 2009 •
Tags: action games, arcade games, heavy mach, iPhone games, iphone gaming

I picked Heavy Mach. up after seeing the review over at TouchArcade. It illustrates one of the most fantastic aspects of the iPhone gaming marketplace in the app store: a small-time developer can make a game that, while it is obviously a high-quality game, is very simple relative to the console games of today, put a $3-$7 price on it, sell a ton of copies, and make a healthy profit to maintain a viable business. As a consumer, I don’t really have to do a lot of deliberating to decide if I should spend $3 on a game. I check the reviews on iTunes. If they are largely positive, I may look at a couple of the negative reviews first to see if the reviewer is coherent, second to see if they have a complaint I could see myself sharing. If not, I’m probably hitting the “Buy” button.

This is one such case: a game that launched to a number of good reviews including the aforementioned TouchArcade review. It looked cool enough—even slightly reminiscent of Metal Slug. If you like action arcade games, you should own this game especially considering the bargain price.

There are a number of good things to say about the game, but I will start with a few minor complaints. I believe the game could use a little more guidance. It actually took a while before I realized I was controlling the movement of the tank. The game seems to calibrate the acceleromter control such that holding the phone level moves the tank forward to the right. I thought the game was just setup so that the tank proceeded through the level automatically. It wasn’t until I reached a boss that I could not defeat in the time it would have taken me to proceed past him that I realized I could tilt to move backward or maintain my position. It also took a while to figure out how to jump. I knew I could jump after watching a video of the game in action, but it took a bit of fiddling to realize I needed to tap the lever. It also isn’t immediately obvious that the position of your tap on the screen controls the trajectory of your shot since most players will naturally tap in the direction of enemies anyway. Also, I recently discovered I have a double-jump. I discovered this after upgrading my movement so I’m not sure if this was a feature added in the upgrade or if I had just missed it before.

My only other substantive complaint is that it is a bit difficult to change weapons in the heat of battle. As it stands, the player taps on the weapon icon on the HUD to scroll through the available weapons. You can gain access to quite a few weapons at a time which makes it a bit tedious to scroll all the way through the options while also dodging fire from three or four on-screen enemies.

Others have mentioned that the in-game “Menu” button does not work which I’m sure will be fixed soon. It doesn’t really have a profound effect on the game although it would be nice to have a way to pause the action which I’m sure this button would provide.

There are far more good things to say about this game. As I mentioned, the game seems to calibrate so that holding the phone level advances your tank. You will find yourself moving forward more often than not so it is helpful to be able to hold the phone in the neutral position to accomplish this. Even the acceleromter controls are very tight. This comes from the fact that there are only three states: moving left, moving right, and not moving. It’s very easy to move around. The rest of the controls are simple. I found myself sometimes having trouble finding the jump lever while also watching the action on the screen, but this was rare.

There are two basic mechanics in the game: shooting enemies and dodging enemy fire. Shooting is simple to execute by tapping in the direction you wish to fire. Dodging is very challenging because there are often multiple enemies firing shots that take different trajectories. Although this can get a little hairy at times, it never feels cheap. You can almost always escape death by manuvering with skill. Some enemies also drop crates that contain weapons, powerups, or health pickups to get you through the tough parts.

The sound effects in the game are satisfying. Explosions, bullets, and missles all feel “large” as they should. The game doesn’t have music which makes it a bit of a bummer that it stops the music from the iPod app when you launch the game.

This is currently one of my favorite action games on the platform alongside Chopper, 2079, and Blue Attack. If you’re looking for a quick and satisfying action experience on the go, I can’t imagine Heavy Mach. would disappoint you. New levels are promised in a free update to this game that already oozes value from every orifice. Tomorrow morning, ditch Starbucks for the local convenient store coffee and spend the savings on this!

Heavy Mach. on iTunes

USB computer repair kit

February 15th, 2009 •
Tags: diagnostics, drive maintenance, flash drive, malware, pc repair, portable apps, repair, spyware, usb

ReadWriteWeb has posted about a new release of a Computer Repair Utility Kit—a collection of 57 applications to copy to your USB flash drive in case of emergencies. Most of the applications need not be installed on the offending machine. They cover the gamut from drive maintenance and diagnostics to spyware and virus removal. If you find yourself fixing lots of Windows-based machines, this would certainly be a useful toolkit to have. It’s under 100 MB so you will still have tons of room on your drive unless it’s a very old one.

A Computer Repair Utility Kit You Can Run From a Thumb Drive

Windows 7 tips

February 12th, 2009 •
Tags: Microsoft, Software, tips, Windows, Windows 7

I have to admit even though for about a year now my primary machine has been a Mac, I’m just a little excited about Windows 7. It’s monumental that this release of Windows will actually lower resource requirements. When has that ever happened in the past?

For all you Windows 7 beta-testers out there, Techmeme has come through with 50 seriously useful Windows 7 tips. A cursory glance at the tips reveals that 7 has a number of new tricks up its sleeve including some long-needed additions (like built-in support for burning ISO images) as well as some novelties (like the ability to screen-capture problems you have for easy sending to your in-family tech support).

I never had the Vista problems everyone else complained about (and I was even running x64). It was just a coincidence that I discovered the beauty and simplicity of MacOS during Vista’s reign over DOS-based machines, but it certainly looks like Microsoft is taking some steps in the right direction with the latest iteration of the platform.

Create rich Gmail signatures in Firefox with Blank Canvas

February 10th, 2009 •
Tags: Blank Canvas, e-mail, email, Firefox extensions, gmail, gmail signatures, signatures

Blank Canvas is a FireFox extension which allows you to create HTML signatures for automatic inclusion in your outgoing mail from Gmail. Gmail has offered signatures for some time, but they are plain text only. This means no images, no links, and no layout. You simply enter some characters, spaces, and line breaks, and the recipient sees those in your message. This is a little inflexible for web nuts like you and I. We want to be remembered. We want attention! Blank Canvas gives us all that in a slick package.

Once you have installed the extension, it places three or four (depending on your options) controls to the right of the “From” field in Gmail when composing a message. The first is a dropdown menu which allows you to select one of four different signatures. If you have multiple sending accounts setup in Gmail, you have four signature slots for each one. In other words, the signature I have named “Default” can be different when I am sending from my primary account versus sending from the account provided by my employer. This is very handy. For most of my accounts, I am posting my personal contact information as well as the raddevon.com logo linked to the site. For my work account, I have my name, work e-mail account, and work phone number. Once I change sending accounts, these signatures are automatically swapped.

The second button displayed activates the editor. The editor is where the action happens. The top box allows the user to enter the HTML to generate the desired signature. The bottom pane displays the preview. There is also a link above the editing box that sends the user to a page with some basic tips about building a signature.

The third button reinserts the signature in case there are problems. It is only visible once activated using the fourth button—Options. The options are minimal. You may choose whether to insert the signature above or below quoted text when sending a reply, provide alternative names for your four signatures, and display the “Reinsert” button.

The extension works wonderfully. I have noticed two quirks with my e-mail signatures, and I’m almost certain they are limitations within Gmail itself. First, the preview will show alternate link colors when your signature is styled as such with CSS. However, these are reverted back to default colors when the e-mail is actually sent. Second, I had included a Skype link to allow recipients to click my Skype username and call me directly. That link appears to be nerfed by Gmail when it reaches its recipient. I imagine Gmail limits the protocols of any links in e-mail to a list of “safe” protocols. Evidently, “skype:” is not among them.

If you’re not already an HTML guru, there are a few concepts you will want to keep in mind:

1. Line breaks in HTML are not as simple as pressing the “Enter” key. HTML ignores any white space beyond the first press of the space bar. Line breaks must be invoked by placing a <br /> in the desired location.
2. Images use this tag: <img src="http://path.to/image.jpg" />. Of course, you will have to insert your own path based on the image’s location. It can’t be on your hard drive. Otherwise, anyone without access to that drive (which describes most of your desired recipients) will not see it. Try a free image hosting service like ImageShack if you aren’t sure where to put your image.
3. Hyperlinks are made with <a href="http://path.to/page.html"> </a>. You may notice this tag has two sides. Anything between is linked to the path referenced by the “href” attribute. This can be plain text to link a word or words, or it can be an image tag to link that image.
4. If you want to use CSS in your signature, you can use it inline by adding a “style” attribute to whichever element you want to affect. If it’s an image, that would look something like this: <img src="http://path.to/image.jpg" style="insert CSS here" />. If you want to style a block of text, you can enclose it in a <div></div> tag with a style attribute like this: <div style="insert CSS here">Text to style</div>. There are other ways to add CSS as well, but this is the simplest.

This should get you going. Now, get out there and create a killer signature to make a big impression on your recipients. Plug your blog, give people a way to contact you, and pimp your expertise. Ready, set, GO!

Get Emoji on non-jailbroken iPhones for free

February 9th, 2009 •
Tags: emoji, emoticons, hack, icons, iPhone

I recently tried a little hack using a $.99 iPhone app to enable the cute Japanese Emoji icons on my iPhone. They are definitely a novelty with limited utility as they only show up to other iPhone users, but, if you know other users, they are actually pretty cool. They sure beat Ascii emoticons. There are a ton of the things covering nearly every idea or emotion you could possibly want to convey.

Jailbroken phones have had methods for unlocking them virtually since the Emoji were added to the iPhone, but non-jailbreakers have only recently gotten a couple of somewhat convoluted ways to access them. Here is a new method that looks pretty simple. It uses an iPhone app called Spell Number (iTunes link) that is available for free. It involves entering a specific number into the app to unlock the international keyboards. Hit the link for the entire procedure.

Easter egg on Spell Number v1.03 that enable Emoji icon on non-jailbreak iPhone/iPhone Touch (via Waterworld)

Cream of the cloud: The top premium web services

February 9th, 2009 • 7 comments
Tags: Backblaze, cloud computing, Dropbox, Flickr, lynda.com, metafilter, MobileMe, o'reilly safari, online services, Photo sharing, premium web services, SmugMug, web services

Photo by Flickr user zerega

There has been much talk in the past year about cloud computing. Some like it; some don’t. Say what you will, but there are some services that can only be provided through the cloud. As a result, the concept has been around forever and will probably never leave. There are some really stellar services available that make your computing life a lot easier. Several weeks back, I posted a question on Ask.Metafilter asking what are the favorite premium online services. Some of the answers I expected while others I had never heard of. Let’s hit the highlights (in no particular order).

1. Flickr- This was one of the most oft repeated responses. Flickr is a fan favorite. It has a huge community and a great featureset for organizing and sharing photos. If you’re going to use a photo sharing service, it’s a pretty safe bet your friends already have accounts here because Flickr offers both free and paid accounts. The free account limits uploading to 100MB per month and only allows you access to your last 200 pictures. The paid account lifts both of these limits and comes with a few other perks as well like video storage for video up to 90 seconds. Paid accounts are $24.95 per year.
2. SmugMug- SmugMug fans are quick to talk about features and support which are the two areas that make this service stand out. It is a photo-sharing service like Flickr, but it doesn’t have quite the userbase of the Flickr service. They do not offer a free version of their service, but users may share with people who do not have a membership. SmugMug has three different levels of accounts offering different features. Each of these is more pricey than Flickr’s service which is probably why they have fewer users. Accounts range from $39.95 to $149.95 per year.
3. Dropbox- If you want an easy way to store files online, Dropbox has to be it. Install the client, tie it in to your account, and drop files into the Dropbox folder. You can also install the client on multiple machine, link all of them to your account, and wait for it to synchronize your Dropbox folder across all computers. It supports Mac, PC, and Linux. This is another service with both free and paid offerings. The free service offers a healthy 2GB of storage, but the paid version (at $9.99 per month or $99 per year) gives you a whopping 50GB of storage space.
4. Backblaze- Get unlimited online backup from Backblaze for $5 per month per computer. It supports Mac and PC. Backblaze prides itself on requiring little to no user intervention. It backs up all the files on your computer. Everything. If you lose your data, you can redownload it or, for a fee, they will mail you the files on DVD or an external hard drive.
5. Safari- O’Reilly Publishing offers online access to a huge library of technical books. Users may access 10 titles at a time for $22.99 per month or an unlimited number of titles for $42.99 per month. If you need to catch up on your knowledge or if you just need to keep up with the ever-changing tech landscape, this would be a cheap alternatives to purchasing a plethora of books at $40 to $60 each.
6. lynda.com- For $25 per month, lynda.com offers a plethora of video tutorials for many current creative and programming technologies like Flash, Photoshop, and PHP. It seems like a great quick way to get up to speed on a particular technology that you need familiarity with for an upcoming project. You can watch some of the early lessons for free before you buy. They are very well-done.
7. MetaFilter- A predictable response coming from the community, but this is truly justified. The cost is $5 for a membership. That’s not $5 per month or per year. Just $5. This entitles you to post on the “community weblog” at metafilter.com once per 24 hours and ask a question at ask.metafilter.com once per week. I have never actually posted to the blog, but I frequently tap the community for answers and am always surprised by the quality and depth of knowledge. Almost any question no matter how specialized or obscure receives attention.

I’m not entirely sold on the cloud as a place to create and store data. I will probably never subscribe to Apple’s MobileMe and be locked in to paying $100 per year for access to my data and services I have become dependent upon. However, some services are uniquely suited to being outsourced to the cloud. In these services, there is often value and justification for a reasonable subscription fee. We are not returning to the days of dumb terminals in which most of our activities take place outside our own machine, but people are beginning to realize the merits of the emerging trend of “the cloud.”

Track iPhone app price drops through RSS

February 8th, 2009 •
Tags: app store, deal, iPhone, price drop, price tracker

The next time you’re on the fence about whether or not to purchase an app and price is a factor, here is a simple way to watch for a price drop. App store games and applications seem to drop in price much more quickly than most other pieces of software so it’s often worth it to wait a couple of weeks. Apps often drop $5-$10 in practically no time!

I created this Yahoo Pipe which asks for the app name and generates an RSS feed that will update whenever the price of the app decreases. I myself could probably have saved $20-30 up to this point if I weren’t so impulsive!

App store price drop tracker

Which apps should you start tracking? Of course, I have a few suggestions (in no particular order). For your convenience, I have already linked the titles to their respective price drop feeds. The feeds will appear empty unless a recent price drop has occurred.

1. Baseball Superstars- Popular baseball game available on several mobile platforms
2. Guitar Rock Tour- Rhythm game akin to Tap Tap Revenge
3. SimCity- Deep city-building simulator
4. Things- Slick task management app
5. PushupFu- Makes doing pushups a game using your iPhone
6. Touchgrind- Fingerboard simulation. Skateboard with your fingers
7. Hero of Sparta- Has been compared to God of War
8. Tweetie- Fantastic Twitter client
   

MacHeist 3 lets you legally steal software

February 7th, 2009 •
Tags: free, mac apps, MacHeist, Software

Mac users can forget about Bittorrent because the new Macheist is up. You can win free software for solving a few puzzles that aren’t too difficult. The haul for this mission is ShoveBox, KavaTunes, and some Valentines e-mail stationary. Not too bad. This is my first time participating in the Macheist, and I have to say it’s pretty cool. If you’re interested in some free Mac apps (and later a cheap bundle of Mac apps), it’s definitely worth a look.