Of Golden Gates & Maple Leaves

This past weekend was a bit of a whirlwind. So much so that by arriving at work Monday morning, it almost felt like a dream, and that I had never left.

As you may or may not know, since 1999 I've worked at RPGFan. Mostly as a graphic designer, but I've had my hands in most of the site by now. One of the companies whose games we heavily cover - NIS America - holds a press event in the summer. This year it was at the Zebulon Restaurant & Bar in San Francisco. As the closest RPGFan editor to the area, I chose to go and represent the site. The idea was to go Thursday and stay for a long weekend, but I had a better, crazier plan.

I spent most of Thursday in San Francisco, and while I wasn't there very long, I got to see my share of sights, at least those found just east of the Financial District where I was. I checked out the Westfield Centre mall, which seems like a weird thing to do on vacation, but I like going to "normal" places like that just to see how it differs from what I'm used to. And wow, it was a pretty nice mall. Unfortunately it was too classy for even a GameStop, so I mostly just looked at a couple girly stores for a certain someone. I visited the Metreon, which I knew is past its heyday, but didn't know it would be so depressing and pathetic. There were so few people there, I'd often be in an area where I didn't see another soul.

 

In stark contrast, right outside is the Yerba Buena Gardens, filled with people lounging on the grass, walking, talking and so on. The best part of the Gardens (which is really just a park) is the awesome Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in and around a gorgeous waterfall. Giant pieces of etched glass contained parts of his speeches, and I had to read every one. Whenever I got back to this city, I need to see this again. Maybe at night, cause it seems cool when lit up. The last thing I checked out on the block was the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an art museum that currently is featuring all manner of creations created from everyday objects - an entire wall of one room is devoted to Frankenstein-ish chairs pieced together from other chairs. And for good measure, my beloved $1500 Optimus keyboards were on display. Still awesome, still over ten times the money any keyboard should ever cost.

 

I saw some other random but interesting sights, buildings, and my first two story Apple Store with its sexy glass staircase.

  

The heart of the trip was the NIS event, and it was great. We had the restaurant to ourselves, to the dismay of many people who came by and wanted to just get a drink. The good people of NIS had both an extensive all-you-can-eat spread of food, an open bar (!) and six or so stations set up with their next two releases (Atelier Rorona and Cladun). I played Rorona quite a bit, had uh, seven drinks, including a "Disgaea Special," a drink concocted by NIS' awesome PR person of mysterious ingredients. It tasted like rocket fuel more than anything, yet I oddly wanted another one. Alas, nobody knew what went into making it.

 

While the event was for the press, NIS held a contest that allowed two "normal" folks into the event to partake in the fun. I ended up spending most of my night with one of these contest winners and her friends. I sadly did not get contact information for them, but they were super awesome people, and made the night that much more enjoyable. Also they gave me a ride back to my hotel to spare me from another $60 cab ride. I <3 you guys, if you're out there.

As the lone attending editor for my site, it was of course up to me to then cover the event, which I did in two ways: first was a spontaneous live stream of everything I could type on our official Twitter account, followed by a more formal article on the site proper. I'm quite proud of both, the former being fun to do, and the latter being possibly the longest article I've penned for the site. It was also written and posted entirely via my iPhone! I started it at the San Francisco Airport as I waited for my plane, finished it up ON said flight, and finally posted it after arriving in Vancouver.

Oh wait, what? Yeah, I also went to Vancouver after only a day in San Fran, though for drastically different reasons. Now, that is the really important story, but it's also highly personal, so I won't be talking about it here, save to say that I love Canada and several individuals in it, and can't wait to go back.

iPhone OS 4.0 Features: Part 4 of 7

#4: iAd
Apple's iAd platform may be getting scrutinized by the FTC, but let's just talk as if everything goes as planned for Apple. Which it probably will anyway.

Ads were never something I imagined I'd be discussing in an iPhone feature post. Fact is, if you've downloaded even a few free apps on your iPhone, you've probably had some exposure to inline ads - I mean, a developer has to make a profit somehow, right? The problem, much like web-based ads, is that they're often obnoxious, if not obtrusive enough, that you won't be compelled to click on them. Or tap, in this case. Many users install browser plug-ins to disable ads, especially Flash-based ads. (Though the vocal masses that once lauded ClicktoFlash seem to have been silenced by people who insist we need more Flash online. Suspicious! But that's a whole 'nother ugly topic.)

But why disable ads? You don't hear people complaining about ads in magazines or newspapers. It's how many of us first learn of products or services we might not have otherwise known about. The only magazine I even read any more is Photoshop User, and it has ads like every other magazine. But I've learned about some cool things because of that fact. Television ads fall somewhere between the web and magazines: they're viewed by millions, cause hey, what ELSE are you going to do for two minutes until your show comes back on? Bake a pie? TiVo and other DVRs let us skip past commercials, but so did the old-school VCR, if we so desired.

So why watch ads at all? Because sometimes we want to be informed. We may have a need for Product X, but didn't know it existed prior to the commercial. Or maybe we just didn't know that our favorite cleaning product has an improved formula and now works even BETTER at fighting tough stains and pet odors. And you may not have known you were looking for a new car, but that 2011 Mustang looks pretty good on TV, and… wait, 31 MPG? Really? Well maybe I should go check it out...

So that's the educational and informational side. There's also the entertainment angle. There are truly some great minds in the ad business, crafting anything from sensational and artistic ads often used for cars (See Lincoln's ads for some of my favorites - the MKZ ad in particular is simply stunning), to downright hilarious ones. The Super Bowl alone is enough to convince anyone the value of ads. They get people talking, and the most effective will get you interested in whatever is being advertised.

Why is it then, that advertising online and inside apps fails to have that effect? It's one word, and simple to point out, but hard to achieve: Quality. As TV advertising proves (I say, based on no actual knowledge of industry numbers), quality ads see results. How many times have you been speeding past commercials on your DVR only to rewind because you want to see your favorite one?

Is achieving quality ads online so hard because of the low entrance barrier? After all, anyone at a computer can get some simple image editor and create an ad, even those that have no business doing so. Is a solution to this to simply let a company with immensely high aesthetic standards control what ads are displayed through it's service? Apple seems to think so. And you know what?

They might be on to something.

The mock ads that Apple created and showed off for Toy Story 3 and Nike were fantastic, and could completely change what we think of when we think of online advertising. Offering simple games or other interactive experiences, wallpaper downloads, and even links to other apps WITHIN the ad are potential game-changers. Perhaps one of the most important aspects are that you never leave the app when viewing the ad. Knowing you won't have to switch apps and get back to where you were before viewing the ad is a huge plus for users.

Anyway, I understand Apple's examples weren't real ads, but they highlight the possibilities beautifully. From offering a better user experience, and applying some actual design standards to ads, I think they're going to be more enticing to people, and overall a good decision by Steve Jobs and company.

To be clear though, don't misunderstand me: If Apple pitched iAd as the one and only option to advertise within apps moving forward, I wouldn't exactly applaud the move, and I'm pretty sure it would be a bigger PR disaster than any rejected app story thus far. Thankfully, much like Game Center, iAd is an opt-in service. If a developer wants to use the platform, they can, and Apple controls & sells the ads, each side gets their cut, and everyone is happy. If not, hey, just keep doing what you're doing. Hard to argue the concept, especially if you're a developer looking to get your name out there with a free app or two, but still need to, you know, eat.

In the end, with or without iAd (iAds?), we're going to be seeing ads in some apps, so if we can be looking at something of higher quality than the norm, that even offers us some functionality and a pleasant experience, instead of, say…

...I really think I'd be okay with that.

Photoshop CS5: Subtract & Divide Blend Modes

Remember in my previous post when I wrote this?

"New Subtract and Divide blend modes. Good luck finding a use for either."

It didn't take long until I came across a video (via Adobe's John Nack, of course) that proved I was jumping the gun. Take a look:



So Divide and Subtract do have some interesting potential, it turns out. Said potential is just not immediately obvious like most blend modes, and requires a bit of finessing. The more you know, eh?

Photoshop CS5: The Little(r) Things

If you happen to follow Adobe's various public outlets such as their Facebook and Twitter feeds, or my personal favorite, the blog of Photoshop Product Manager John Nack, you may have heard about the Photoshop team's "Just Do It" initiative - JDI for short - for the CS5 cycle. In short, the development team took a week off from working on brand new features, instead working on tweaks to existing tools and commands, in part based on customer feedback. It was a great idea, and proved fruitful as many cool little things made their way into Photoshop CS5 as a result. If you want more details on the JDI stuff, try this link.

What I wanted to do was compile a list of the OTHER little things that got changed in Photoshop CS5, but that Adobe didn't publicly document - probably because most are so minor, they aren't selling points on their own. However, those of us obsessed with details (i.e. me) might find this stuff interesting. You might be surprised how many there are. Let's go!

iPhone OS 4.0 Features: Part 3 of 7

The idea behind making this series into seven parts was to highlight the seven "tentpole" features of iPhone OS 4.0 that Steve Jobs and company highlighted. Then I refreshed my memory on the list and realized a few things:

An improved Mail is welcome, and a nice addition, but the key changes are simply threaded message views and a unified inbox. The latter of course being a feature users have been begging for. All nice stuff, but nothing worth devoting a whole post to. Do you look forward to a unified inbox for all of your e-mail accounts like most of us do? Well good, you're getting it. Next!

iBooks on iPhone and iPod touch devices is cool, and should relieve many people who worried it was an iPad-only feature. I don't really know how popular it will be, as the reason it's such a big deal on the iPad is the bigger screen that's better suited to reading for long periods. The syncing between all your devices is a nice touch though, and clearly a "yeah, we can do that too" message to Amazon.

The new Enterprise features seem nice, but are completely meaningless to me personally.

What this means is that I could turn this into a four part series and appear a liar for promising seven. Instead, I've decided to stick to seven, but I'll branch out into some of those 100 minor features, instead of stopping at the major ones.

Long preface aside, let's continue with the next tentpole feature I am going to discuss, Game Center, and what it means for both users and developers.

#3: Game Center
As soon as the App Store launched, it was clear that gaming was going to be a large portion of its catalog. The iPhone as a platform was so far beyond everything else on the market (and still is, though the margin has gotten smaller in the last year or so), there was an amazing amount of potential as a mobile gaming device. Games that weren't quite on par with grade-A DS or PSP titles, but were light years ahead of the sub-sub-par "games" one usually associated with a mobile phone.

It wasn't long before we had the kinds of games that would benefit from a platform similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live or Sony's PlayStation Network. Or Nintendo's... Oh right, still waiting on that. Xbox Live in particular has proven itself to be a fantastic model for a social gaming network. For whatever it's worth, I think it's the most well-designed product ever to come out of Microsoft. For online gaming, comparing scores with friends and the world, and so much more, these services play a huge part in how people interact with each other and their games.

Back to the iPhone. While Apple didn't build such a structure into the iPhone OS, several developers saw fit to collaborate on a few of these systems themselves, the most notable being OpenFeint, Plus+, and Crystal. OpenFeint is the one I have the most experience with myself, and is generally a pretty consistent experience from game to game. It's a great system offering leaderboards, achievements, social features and so on. I'm sure all of the others are just as good as well, but the simple fact that there are multiple systems/networks on he platform underlines is a potential hinderance to the platform.

The Case for One Social Gaming Network

Users have wanted one official, built-in social gaming network for a long time, even if you don't hear about it as much as in the pre-OpenFeint days. One problem is that there's no telling which games will use which network, since devs are free to use any of several options. It fragments the market, and potentially confuses users. You can, for example, see what other games your friends are playing, but only if said games happen to be on that network. Not to mention the need to sign up and manage friend lists on each. What if I want to see ALL the games my friends play? Or see when they're online and send them an invite?

One of my favorite little puzzle games for the iPhone is Piyo Blocks by Big Pixel Studios. As a match-3 puzzler, it's perfect for integrating a social gaming network, most notably for scoring purposes. The game uses OpenFeint, which was nice since I was already using it. I don't know the details behind it, but when Piyo Blocks 2 came to the iPad, Chillingo took up the publishing reigns, and the game therefore uses their own Crystal network. So now I have two games in the same series using two different networks. I don't actually feel like setting up a Crystal profile/account just for one game, and really found myself wanting this mythical "One Network" solution. While this is just one example, I'm sure I'm not alone.

I was both surprised and relieved when Apple revealed Game Center. It was them embracing gaming like never before, even more than when they shifted their entire marketing program behind the iPod touch to focus on games. It promises to be a big win for gamers, finally offering one official network backed by a company with endless resources. For end users, there's really no drawback here: The other networks should still be around, as developers aren't required to use Apple's system, so there will be plenty of choices. Right?

Obsolete?

Game Center's announcement was a big shock to all developers, and certainly those behind OpenFeint and other existing services. Did Apple just make all of these obsolete? That's the question on a lot of people's minds, though I'd say that's not the case. There's already talk of methods that will help people migrate their stuff to Game Center - by choice, of course. Does this mean that developers will be able to support both Apple and third-party services in a single app? If that's the case, it's going to make things interesting, and not as dire as some fear.

Besides that, having a new service out there is already inspiring devs to plan new features that will go beyond what Game Center will provide, to give both other developers and users incentive to continue using a third-party solution. Competition is good, right?

All in all, I think Game Center is a win for everyone. It gives the platform the dedicated, integrated social gaming network it so desperately needs, but without obliterating the existing ones. We won't see Game Center in full until later this year - I'm guessing the fall, but it's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Top Ten Moments Part 2 of 2

Well, I didn't intend to take so long to post this, but here we are. Part 2 of my Top Ten Buffy Moments includes five more scenes that I feel stand out above the rest, and further prove Buffy was one of the greatest shows ever made. It was also a complete coincidence that three of these five ended up being the 20th episode of their respective seasons.

So what else made the list? Check it out after the break…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Top Ten Moments Part 1 of 2

I'm a big Joss Whedon fan. My love of his shows started when I randomly decided to start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the outset of it's third season. I really don't know why exactly I was so intent on watching it, though I recall TV Guide lavishing praise on it at the time, so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Plus that blonde girl in the lead was pretty.

Little did I know what I was getting into, and how deeply I would become invested in this show with the silly name and its characters. I've been a diehard fan of everything Joss does since, and have wept with the rest of the fandom in the dark days of cancellation. While I believe Firefly would have been my favorite Joss show had it continued, and I feel by its final season, I was slightly more in love with Angel as a show, it all started with Buffy, which will always be the standard to which I hold all future entertainment.

Considering my love for these shows, I intend for them to be a recurring theme on this blog. The first few posts I have planned are probably a bit unoriginal or obvious, but it seems like a good place to start: the good old Top 10 Lists. The first one is going to be dedicated to moments or scenes, and eventually we'll get to my favorite overall episodes. As you can imagine, we're going to start with Buffy. Note that any episode I'm including on my Favorite Episodes list will be excluded from this one - if only to prevent me from picking several scenes from a single episode.

Since I get wordy when discussing things I'm passionate about, I decided to split this list into two posts. Below are five of the ten scenes. As it's hard enough to pick just ten, and impossible to put them in order, these are organized randomly, after the break.

iPhone OS 4.0 Tentpole Features: Part 2 of 7

Part two of my series on the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 focuses on the feature I'm most excited about so far: Folders.

#2: Folders
Once upon a time, the iPhone had a single home screen, and life was simple. Eventually we were able to add websites as icons to our home screen, which meant we needed more space, so Apple added multiple home screens. Then a little thing called the App Store debuted in the summer of 2008 and everything changed. People suddenly found themselves with 3, 4, 7 pages of apps, and at 16 per page, it became quite daunting to both move about and find the app they wanted. There simply had to be a better way to do this. Over time - specifically in mid- to late 2009, Apple introduced two features that helped alleviate - but not solve - the clutter. One was a feature of the iPhone OS itself, and the other a feature of iTunes.

Interim Solutions
The iPhone-based solution was Spotlight search, introduced in summer 2009 with iPhone OS 3.0. Like its counterpart introduced in Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), Spotlight is easily accessible and fast as can be, and makes for an excellent app launcher, much like on the Mac. You can simply swipe left from your main home screen, type the first couple letters of your app, and tap the search result to launch it. Boom. Simple. It works fine, though for me it still feels more natural to browse by swiping back and forth between screens, so I don't find myself using Spotlight on the iPhone anywhere near as often as on my Mac (which is constantly).

The next, and even better attempt to fix the "too many apps" syndrome was bundled with the release of iTunes 9.0 in September 2009. Now, when your iPhone is plugged in to your computer, you get not only a full list of synced apps, but images depicting each home screen and their layouts, enabling you to quickly drag and drop apps between screens, even several at once. It's a great addition to the software, and one I use frequently, but there's one thing it can't fix: 7 full pages of apps is still 112 individual icons, no matter how logical your organization is. Many people were hoping for folders to consolidate similar apps and cut down on the amount of home screens they had to swipe through without having to just remove things from their iPhones. Of course, very few people - if any - seemed to have a realistic and usable approach to do so.

The Real Solution
It should be a shock to nobody that Apple found a great method. Let us feign surprise.

Feign!

Okay. Clearly, a desktop-like interface for creating and working with folders wasn't going to work here. The solution had to be something that felt natural within the OS, that fit with the way we already interact with our devices. Apple had already introduced what is essentially an "Edit" mode with firmware 1.1.3 that made it simple to move apps around and from screen to screen, so I suppose it was natural that folder creation and modification would be handled in Edit Mode. Or Wiggle Mode, if you prefer.

So to make a folder we just drag one app onto another? That's it? The OS even automatically names the folder based on the type and genre of the apps you put in the folder, which is great, simple and will probably suffice for a lot of people. For the rest of us, we can still name the folders to whatever we want as well. The UI for them is superb too: folder contents are revealed by the home screen background splitting and sliding apart, as if the apps live "behind" the home screen. The icons outside of the active folder then dim, making it clear that while in the folder, you're only interacting with the apps inside.

I probably don't need to explain at all why this is useful. I've spent a good deal of time moving apps around and organizing them in a certain fashion. I discovered a newfound love for word games after the App Store launched, and currently have ten of them on my iPhone, so I always want to keep those together on one screen. I have certain areas devoted to different things - brand new stuff and Lite versions I'm trying out live on screen #2, social-based apps are clustered together, as are utilities, photo-related apps, and my favorite of all my faux categories: "Games with round icons," seen here:

Needless to say, I live to organize and categorize, which is all well and good until I get new apps and it throws off my careful planning. Being able to move all of my "categorized areas" into folders is the one feature of iPhone OS 4 that's going to change the way I use my iPhone more than any other. Never again will downloading a new app or three mess with my organized app ecosystem, forcing a reshuffling of 7 or 8 screens of apps. In fact, I won't even have 7-8 screens of apps to scroll through anymore, so I'll be able to get to everything that much faster.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about Folders, so June/July can't get here soon enough.

iPhone OS App Spotlight: Pastebot

Pastebot
by Tapbots

There are upwards of 180,000 apps in the App Store today, but there are very few that can claim to be nearly as well-designed as Tapbots' three "bots" apps: Weightbot, Convertbot and Pastebot. All three are worthwhile apps, each designed to serve only one function, but to do it exceedingly well. The most useful in my eyes is the third and newest 'bot, Pastebot.

Pastebot is, essentially, a clipboard manager. You simply copy something from any app that supports it - text or image - and launch Pastebot. Whatever you copied is automatically imported and stored in the app's clipboard. From here, you can organize your clippings into whatever folders you'd like, and have at your disposal many options for using said clippings. A single tap on anything in the list will copy that item for you to paste elsewhere. The cool blue LED-style light you see next to the clipping isn't just eye candy: it's a helpful indicator of what's sitting on your clipboard, ready to be pasted.

For text clippings, you get useful info like character and word counts, and a variety of filters you can run on the text. If you want to convert all text to upper or lowercase, run a find & replace, or even something as specific as converting to and from "smart quotes," you can do all of that with ease.

Image clippings are even more interesting to work with. A single tap brings up an info panel with the date it was captured and pixel dimensions. Quick and easy cropping and rotating is a button away. The image filters are simple, but useful if you just want to quickly adjust brightness, or make a black & white or sepia image.

All of this so far sounds good, right? Functionally, there's little you could be left wanting here. I'd even say it goes well above what you'd expect from something that's just meant to manage your clippings. Even so, there's still two killer features of Pastebot that put it further over the top:

Sync

Tapbots offers a free Mac OS X app that runs as a preference pane called Pastebot Sync. After installing it and pairing your iPhone or iPod touch with it, you've opened up a whole new way of connecting your mobile and desktop lives. The Mac app will run at all times in the background, aware of any "copy" command you make. If you have Pastebot running on your iPhone, whatever text or image you copy on your Mac is instantly pushed to Pastebot. In addition, you can tap and hold on something on your iPhone and it will paste into whatever Mac app you're in (logically speaking - you of course can't paste a JPEG into Safari's address bar, for example). This is especially useful for URLs you may come across online that you'd rather read or access on a computer later.

All of this amounts to an incredibly useful addition and extension of an already impressive app. But there's one last thing that truly takes Pastebot to a higher place.

The UI
A functional user interface - and this should go without saying - is a must, and a beautiful user interface can sometimes be hard to find. They're out there, and sometimes even from a company besides Apple or Adobe (yes, I actually do love the CS4 UI). The trick, of course, is finding a UI that's both of these things. The interface of Pastebot is gorgeous on a level that would make Steve Jobs proud. Everything about it is clearly custom-made, but it still feels and behaves like a native iPhone app. An elegant dark theme is complemented by slick animation, thoughtful layout, and even cool (not annoying!) sound effects. The only app I've used that has anywhere near this level of polish is Convertbot - another Tapbots app.

If any of these features seem useful to you, give Pastebot a try: there's a lot of functionality here for $2.99. Heck, there's a lot of functionality here for it to justify a $9.99 price tag, but that's just me.

iPad Compatibility
As of now, Pastebot runs and works just fine on the iPad, though it still runs as an iPhone app. Tapbots recently made a blog post regarding the iPad that's worth a read. In short, provided they create iPad-specific versions of their three apps so far, Pastebot will be first on the list, but nothing is set in stone. If nothing else, they're working on an update to the Sync prefpane, which currently is only designed to work with one device: Something that was really never an issue before people were wanting to sync both an iPhone and iPad to one computer.

In any case, Pastebot itself runs perfectly fine on the iPad, and once the sync situation is resolved, is perfectly usable until the theoretical iPad-optimized version comes along.

Links
Tapbots website
Pastebot (iTunes Link)

iPhone OS 4.0 Tentpole Features: Part 1 of 7

Earlier this week, Apple delivered a preview of the forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0, and while they offered a glimpse into several of over 100 user features (Quick Look?), they highlighted seven major changes, which Steve Jobs referred to as "Tentpole Features." This series of posts are my thoughts on each.

#1: Multitasking
I don't really know if multitasking is truly the most-requested feature by users, or by Engadget writers who cite it as a point of alleged failure on the part of Apple's engineers. In any case, multitasking on a mobile device has certainly become a hot topic in recent months. But how important is this on mobile devices like the iPhone?

While the idea of having more than one app running at once is a nice one, I very rarely find a situation that requires it, or that I find myself bemoaning a better method than what we have. There's two key reasons: One, another app is generally only a home button press and tap away, and two, several apps maintain their current state so that when you switch back to them, you're in the same place as before.

Of course, both of these arguments have some key-shaped holes in them. Maybe you're needing to switch between apps you normally store on say, your first and sixth home screen. Outside of some icon shuffling or constant trips to Spotlight (a decent solution, but one that would become tiring), there's no quick way to do this, and it becomes a frustrating exercise.

Second, several apps do NOT maintain their current state, so it's a hit or miss affair. Every time the situation arises, we have to pause and ask ourselves, "Should I answer this text/call now?" followed by, "If I do, will this game stay right here until I get back?"

I'm happy to see that tools are being included in the SDK that should allow nearly all developers to do this moving forward, and easily, from the sounds of it.

Up until the event, any time I would read a story, blog post or tweet about potential multitasking, the lone example I would see as an app that would benefit was Pandora. I constantly looked for other examples, just to find out if people really wanted true multitasking, or if they just wanted Apple to allow Pandora & other music streaming apps special rules to run in the background. Don't get me wrong, Pandora is the prime example of why multitasking is important. I would love to use it myself, but never do simply because I'd want to do other things while listening. So this is great news for the ever-growing community of music lovers. And me.

That said, it was exciting to see just what extent Apple was going to implement multitasking, and what other apps would utilize it. I think we're going to see Pandora and Skype usage on iDevices explode. It's also going to do wonders for messaging apps: be it text, IM, email and so on, if taken advantage of properly.

When we're talking about running several things at once on a mobile device, the first worry most people will have is about battery life. And rightly so, if you look at the competition and their multitasking offerings. Sure, run all the apps you want simultaneously, but you better keep an eye on what's running, and watch that battery indicator, unless you want to find yourself suddenly without the ability to even make a phone call. See, it wasn't that Apple was being lazy by not implementing this, it's that they're concerned with the experience people have with their products, and wouldn't want the iPhone to suddenly appear to have a drastically-reduced battery life. It would be giving people what they asked, but also harming people's perception of the device. Apple's solution of allowing just the part of an app that NEEDS to run in the background (audio only for Pandora, for example) is brilliant, and should get around this issue. It'll still affect battery life of course, but not nearly as much as it could, and not to the extent it does on competing platforms either.

As a side note, I believe 'perception' is also the main reason that multitasking won't be offered on older hardware. It's a fact the current iPhone and iPod touch have superior internals, so while I imagine multitasking would function on older devices, it was probably too sluggish and, again, didn't offer the kind of user experience Apple would want to deliver. In their minds, maybe it was better to simply say an iPhone 2G couldn't do something at all, instead of allowing it and having legions of disappointed users. If so, I'd say it was a good call.

In conclusion, while I feel switching tasks is still generally pretty quick - even swiping five pages to access another app takes <2 seconds - there's some fantastic benefits to this model, and I think it goes without saying it will greatly change the way we use our iPhones and iPod touches.

And, eventually, our iPads, which I'm pleased to say I effortlessly typed this post on.

iPhone App Spotlight: Glyder & Glyder 2

One of the recurring features I'll be running here are what I'm calling iPhone App Spotlight. The name is partially derived from the Spotlight search technology in both Mac OS X and the iPhone OS (remember when the iPhone OS was still considered OS X? What happened?). It's also because I couldn't come up with anything catchier. But anyway! These "Spotlights" can and will feature any kind of app, game, utility or other that I've found is a shining example of the iPhone & iPod touch as a platform. I'm opening the series with a look at one of my favorite games and its more recent sequel.

Glyder
by Glu

To properly explain my feelings about Glyder, we first have to go back to the fall of 1996, and the release of Nintendo's Pilotwings 64. A cartoony flight simulator, Pilotwings 64 had players piloting a variety of crafts such as a hang glider and jet pack, and presented them with missions to clear in order to advance to more difficult areas. All of these modes and methods of transportation had some form of rule: You either had to fly through a series of rings or land on a target (among others), often within a set time limit or number of attempts. The final mode players could unlock was "Birdman" mode, which instead of placing the game's characters inside a craft of any kind strapped wings to their arms and allowed one to freely roam various areas at your leisure. Once I got access to Birdman, I rarely played any other aspect of the game, because the idea of free flight without limits or the opportunity of failure (there were no goals to the mode) greatly appealed to the adventure and exploration junkie inside of me.

Imagine then my feeling, well over 12 years later, to see a game coming out for the iPhone that feels very much inspired by this free flight mode I adore so much. I followed news of Glyder intently, and couldn't download it fast enough upon its release. I proceeded to finish the game in two sittings.

Glyder places gamers in control of Eryn, in a story that is basically just laid out on the game's title/loading screen: Eryn has managed to get herself sucked into some sort of dimensional rift, and armed only with her glider, must find a way back home. There's not a lot to the story, but there doesn't need to be. It's enough of a premise that you're motivated to go forth and explore this strange new world.

The game is completely controlled by the iPhone's accelerometer, so tilting the device will let you steer left and right along with diving forward to gain momentum. Glyder is one of the best examples of a game that's perfectly suited to this platform, and truly takes advantage of the hardware, instead of just using the accelerometer for simple "shake" gestures. In addition, the simplicity of the controls means two other things: First, anyone could easily pick up the game and play, as the controls are intuitive enough for a beginner. There's a slight learning curve in adjusting to the motion control, but there's no need to memorize a series of buttons or what does what. Second, your view is never obscured while playing, since the only reason to touch the screen is to navigate the menus.

The land is divided into six islands that you can freely explore. Unlike Pilotwings' flying mode, there are things to do and collect, in the form of floating crystals and achievements. Collecting all of the game's crystals is required to access every area and subsequently finish the game, but like with other platforms, achievements are simply little awards for accomplishing various goals. These range from reaching a certain altitude, discovering little nooks and crannies and so on. These add quite a bit to the game's replay value if you've managed to collect all of the crystals. Even better, after some time on the market, the game was updated to include a second set of crystals once you've completed the main game, in a sorta Zelda "second quest" way.

There's a lot to love about the simplistic charm of Glyder. From the game's music - which yes, is a single song, but the mood of which perfectly suits the game - to the varied locales and otherworldly atmosphere, the list just goes on. Last summer I had an issue with my then-new iPhone 3GS and lost all my game data and scores. For the most part it was a big downer, but I actually was a bit excited that in the face of that, it meant I had a reason to start the game anew and experience it again, which I did.

As of this writing, Glyder is $2.99 in the iTunes Store (US). Several times since it's release it's been on sale for as low as $0.99. Three bucks is certainly a paltry sum for such a lovely experience if you ask me, but if you manage to catch it at 99 cents, it's pretty much a required purchase. Also, for those on-the-fencers, a free version of the game is available as well.

Glyder 2
by Glu

With how much fun I had playing Glyder, I was overjoyed when I first heard mention of a sequel. Released late in 2009 was the aptly-named Glyder 2, which managed to add to and improve to varying degrees everything about the original game. That said, Glyder 2 is, if you boil it down, more of the same. Personally, with how big a fan I became of the original, all I wanted was more of the same with minor tweaks, so this suited me just fine.

The major additions to Glyder 2 are the various outfits and wing styles you can collect on your journey. While the outfits are purely cosmetic, each of the wing sets have their own set of stats, each handling differently. This adds a slight layer of strategy to the adventure, as certain wings are better suited to any given task at hand. Some of the tighter passageways or timed challenges can in fact only be accomplished with specific wings, either based on their speed or handling.

There isn't a great deal else to speak of in regards to changes. The core gameplay remains here, though some of the returning aspects of the gameplay have been improved provides a more fluid experience. There's a greater number of achievements to earn, and a decent amount of little 'side quests', that, like collecting crystals, prove integral to finishing the game, and serve to break up the gameplay a bit from being a pure crystal hunt. Because of all these little things, Glyder 2 manages to be just that much better than the original.

Like Glyder, its sequel is also currently priced at $2.99 (US).

While Glyder 2 is essentially a more polished version of the original, each game presents its own unique locations and challenges, meaning the first game can still hold its own next to its newer cousin. Personally, I'd recommend both if the gameplay interests players enough. Again, there's a free version of Glyder available to get a taste for it. Though of course, if you decide to only pick up one of the games, go for Glyder 2. It's an experience that shouldn't be missed.

Fin
So there's my not-so-brief look at Glyder & Glyder 2. Feel free to share your thoughts below, and if you have a suggestion for an app I should look into, let's hear it!


Links
(Will open in iTunes)

Glyder
Glyder Free
Glyder 2

Heart & Soul

I was going to title this entry "Show Unexpected," just to be clever, but decided against it. Though I clearly still wanted to share that little tidbit with you.

I'm often wary of watching a new TV show I expect to like. This of course is because of the love I develop for shows and characters that end up not working out, either due to short-sightedness by the network (Firefly, Wonderfalls, Drive) or simply because people weren't watching while the network managed to bring the show back after a failed season (the recently-ended Dollhouse).

Last weekend, as a receiver of the frequent "New on iTunes" e-mails, I noticed they were offering the pilot episodes of The Deep End, and a show called Life Unexpected for free. The Deep End recently caught my eye, not because of the premise - because I had no idea what it was before watching - but because one of the leads is Tina Majorino, and she was so great in Veronica Mars, I jumped at the chance to see her in a new show. And then it's a show about lawyers, and well, I'm not sure if I intend to um, dive back in. It's not bad by any means, but law shows aren't usually my thing.

Life Unexpected, however, is. This one I knew even less about, I just grabbed the pilot on a whim. Imagine my surprise, as a huge fan of Roswell, to see the lovely Shiri Appleby as one of the show's stars! And while I drifted away from the show eventually, I recall liking Kerr Smith on Dawson's Creek back in the day, so that's two wins so far. The real star, of course, is Britt(any) Robertson:

Adorable.

So, premise. In a nutshell, Britt stars as Lux, a 15 year old living in Portland, Oregon with her seventh (or so) foster family, and being pretty unhappy about this. As one could imagine. She has money saved, and her plan is to become emancipated to finally be free of her situation. The trick is that she needs her biological parents' signatures to do so, and manages to track down her father, Nate Bazile, who typically goes by "Baze." It's through him that Lux learns that her mother is part of a morning radio show duo she's listened to most of her life. Since it seems as if she hasn't aged a day, it's hard to see Shiri Appleby as a 32-year-old mother at first, but considering she really IS 31 in reality, you can't argue too much. Maybe I'm just used to Liz Parker. In short, upon learning of Lux's paltry savings, lack of income, and the presence of her parents, the judge does not approve her emancipation, and instead grants temporary custody to Nate and Cate (love those names), who haven't seen each other in years and don't exactly see eye on eye on most things.

That's where things start off, but I won't go past that, since I recommend anyone reading this to check out the first episode either via iTunes (and note its 5-star average score on over 350 reviews) or on The CW's site.

The first reviewer on iTunes mentions that this show reminded them of a 'classic' WB show, from the era of Dawson's Creek, and I'm inclined to agree with that. The show is smartly written, and has a cast of characters that feel like real people, actual and whole. It seems like it would be very easy to write Lux as an overly-emotional... well, brat. Remember Tia in Uncle Buck? It's true that she has trouble adjusting to a new life, and with her experiences in foster homes, that's to be expected. Where the show succeeds is that she manages to keep this side in check. She actually does know and acknowledge that her parents care for her, even when they're not doing a great job at parenting. More than that, she *wants* a real family and a home to come back to after school. Something real. Something she's never had before. This is my favorite part of the show so far, because it exemplifies what I said earlier about the depth of the characters. They - Lux especially - are very much layered as we all are, and rise above the one-dimensional characters we see in far too many shows. And let's face it, reality.

What makes me elevate a show above others is what made me love Firefly. It's what makes me feel How I Met Your Mother is the best sitcom on TV right now, and that it will go down as one of the all-time greats in the end. Heart and soul. HIMYM shows this all the time, as it overcomes the typical sitcom formula of modern times of simplistic people who live to mock one another. Instead, you have these friends with diverse personalities who all truly care for each other when all is said and done, and for all the laughs and silliness we get, there's always a sincere moment waiting. Again, heart and soul. It's why that show works so well I feel, and why Life Unexpected does too. It manages to bring us a family drama with just enough comedy, none of the immaturity seen in many "teen" shows, and none of the overly in-your-face heavy-handed morality you may find in a typical "family" show. It's simply just the right combination of everything.

We're only three episodes in, but I already can't miss a week. I do hope the show finds an audience and sticks around, because I truly think we need more of these kinds of shows on TV.

An Introduction

I suppose I should have made this as my first post, but that iPad stuff was just dying to get out. So hello, anyone who may actually be reading this. You may be wondering what you've stumbled onto, besides a generically-named blog prefaced with a studio name that doesn't yet have a functioning website. I thought maybe it was worth posting some form of introduction, so here it is.

Who am I? I'm a twenty-something (though not for long…) graphic designer in SoCal. I've been into art most of my life, and that passion turned digital to a small extent when my parents bought an Apple IIc for the family in the mid-80s. With its rudimentary drawing and painting tools, I couldn't tell you what I may have created, but maybe that's for the best. Later came the Performa and Mac OS System 7, which is where my roots in what would become modern-day Mac OS took form. At that point, my creative outlet was ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, where I learned about raster and vector imaging, even though I didn't know either term at the time. The real step towards getting me where I am now was when I was introduced to Illustrator and Photoshop in 1999, two applications that I could never do without, and not just because they're the reason I'm employed. Since all of my computing time has been spent on Apple products, I quickly became a diehard fan of Apple products - even the G4 Cube, failure that it may have been.

Computing desires aside, I'm a big fan of well-crafted fiction, and ever since I saw my first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the fall of 1998 (for reference, it was the two-part season two finale during its broadcast leading up to the season three premiere), I knew I came across something amazing. I won't get heavily into it here, but fast forward to 2010, and I can't watch a movie or TV show, or hell, play an RPG without drawing comparisons to Joss Whedon's methods of writing and storytelling. There's simply nobody better in my eyes than Joss and his associates - and family for that matter!

Assuming as you read this you have some knowledge of who Steve Jobs and Joss Whedon are, most of the above could be summarized with a statement about how those two men are the biggest influences on my entertainment and livelihood, and through their products and productions have played a gigantic role in who I am, what I do, and how I see life. I know that sounds at best silly, and at worst ridiculous or preposterous, but anyone with a similar love for either (and I know plenty of you are out there) will understand me.

Okay, enough about me. What the hell is this blog? I made a joke about the generic name earlier. Part of me wanted to come up with a great name, like Daring Fireball, but then I realized it was already taken, so thanks a lot, John Gruber. (I should clarify that as sarcasm, as I love the stuff he posts to that site) There was also the fact that I didn't want to pick a name that would limit me to one category or type of content. And well, I wanted the Valkyrie Studio connection.

Originally I drafted up a list of topics, and I intend to more or less stand by them. There'll probably be some randomness here and there, but generally I intend to talk about tech-related things, TV, and design here, with some recurring features - namely, one on noteworthy iPhone apps - and see how it goes. If I had to pick one theme for all of it, it would be positive. Or good. Or whatever other words come up in the thesaurus under "positive."

It was always a goal of mine here, to be a counter point to all the negativity out there, and it was something I decided even BEFORE both Conan O'Brien and President Obama reminded our nation about the pitfalls of overwhelming cynicism that so many people live by today. As Conan said, it accomplishes nothing, so as silly as it sounds to say aloud - or type out - I'll do my part to contribute to the anti-cynical side of life.

That said, next post: Puppies! (or more likely, something about Life Unexpected, my favorite new show of this season)

The iPad

I don't even have the layout finalized yet on this thing, but there's too much to say here to wait.


You may have seen Apple's new iPad. Prior to its announcement, it was the stuff of legend - rumored since 2003, the 'Apple tablet' was written off more than once as vaporware. It wasn't until the iPhone came around that people started thinking it would actually come to fruition. And now that it has, people are angry. Wait, what? Angry?


Granted, this doesn't apply to everyone out there, but certainly to the fervent fans who expected the device to do everything a Macbook Pro and iPhone can do in one device, plus all kinds of far-fetched rumored features, and of course, have fantastic battery life. It's an odd thing that I see in many 'hardcore' Mac communities: So many people that feel Apple "owes" them something, or that a device will completely fail and is, ultimately, worthless, because it doesn't do that one thing they personally want.


To be fair to these folk, the iPad (and the event itself) certainly did not deliver on a great deal of what people expected. There's no multi-tasking, though the rumor mill implied this would be a feature of iPhone OS 4.0, and therefore software-based. Also, there was no iPhone 4.0 shown off, or a fourth-generation iPhone. Or Macbook Pro speed bumps. Or iLife 2010. Why did anyone seriously expect ALL of that to happen at one event? It would have been chaotic, unfocused, and allow very little time devoted to each feature. Plus, let's face it: A brand-new entry in the product line SHOULD take center stage for an event, like the iPhone did in 2007. Finally, to all those disappointed: Apple never announced any of these things would take place, nor did they disclose details on the iPad prior to today. You can cry in your latte all day about what was "supposed" to be included, but you all fed into the rumors and set your expectations so ridiculously high, there was no possible way you would be satisfied. All of these feelings of disappointment are self-inflicted.


Okay, enough of that. Let's look at what the iPad really is, and what some (including myself) thought or expected it to be. One huge question mark leading into this week was what OS the device would run. I think most people really did expect it to run the iPhone OS, but of course not-so-secretly wanted a full OS X experience, to be able to have an ultra-portable Mac that could run all our software. Using Photoshop on a multi-touch screen in that form factor? Sign me up! There's many reasons the iPad doesn't run OS X, and I'd have to assume battery life could be one of the biggest. However, I firmly believe this 'Mac Tablet' (or iPad Pro?) will definitely be coming one day, and that the iPad is a stepping stone towards that goal. That's something I'll get into in another post.


The easiest way to describe the iPad to people is "a giant iPod touch," which is true in terms of its form factor, though once you get a look at the software running on the device, I think referring to it in such a way is a disservice. Let's look at a few examples. More can be seen on the iPad Gallery at Apple.

iPod

So here we have a shot of the iPod app as seen on the iPhone/iPod. Its clearly designed to be as compact as possible, and to work on a small form factor. And boy, does it work. The iPod navigation experience has improved so much on these devices, I could never go back to the click wheel stuff.

Here's a shot of the "same" iPod app running on the iPad. There's barely a similarity: What's presented here is much closer to a portable version of OS X's iTunes. This is but one of many examples of how Apple re-created apps to fit the iPad, and didn't just decide to "make them big." So we're not using a device with OS X, but we're getting a very similar feel to a traditional desktop app here.

Calendar

I unfortunately am not an important person. I don't have to schedule meetings, and rarely have so many things planned that I need to put them into a calendar. So as much as I like what I'm about to talk about, I'm not sure I personally will use much of it - but others will, which is what's important.

The Calendar app highlights another important aspect of app design on the iPad: Not only have they been redesigned with a large screen in mind, but many of them completely re-orient themselves depending on the... well, orientation of the device. The iPhone - particularly in version 3.0, supports landscape view in most apps, which people like for the wider keyboard. It's a nice touch, though generally all that's happening is the interface gets wider to fill the space. The Messages app in particular benefits very little from this aspect, namely because chat bubbles don't extend to fill the area, so it just wastes space.

What Apple did with the iPad is something I hope makes its way to the 'small' iPhone OS devices. Look at the Calendar there (or several other apps, but this is my favorite example). You're presented with the same information, but it's laid out to fit how you hold the device, but without any hinderance. In fact, in the case of Mail and Notes, you even get the benefit of seeing your inbox and list of notes on the left edge alongside the main app area.

What it boils down to is that some serious thought was put into the portrait and landscape modes so that we didn't just get the same view in both. Instead of just choosing 'narrow' or 'wide,' we can pick a layout that best fits with what we want to do, simply by rotating the device. If you're cleaning up your inbox, you'll go with landscape to be able to see all your messages at a glance to decide what to keep. But if you're just composing a new e-mail, switch to portrait to hide the inbox and just focus on the task at hand.

I think we're going to see much more of this from both Apple and third-party apps as the iPad gets closer to release. It's not really discussed much right now, and is mostly just seen on Apple's product pages, but I think it's going to be a very important aspect of the iPad, and a key differentiating factor between it and its smaller cousins.

That's probably a long enough post for now. In a future post, I'll talk about where I think this is all leading, namely to the Mac OS X-based tablet some were hoping for this time around.

In the meantime, as Apple fans, we should remain positive about this. Let's not get so wrapped up in what we thought might be coming, or what rumor sites led us to believe. If you take away all those unrealistic expectations, what the iPad will bring is going to be fantastic, and again, I still believe that if the multi-tasking rumors have any truth to them, we'll see it in a software update. From every hands-on impression I read, the iPad is damn fast, so I've no doubt the hardware could handle it.

Also, remember how we were expecting a price point of $700-1000? Shouldn't we be elated at a $499 entry price? I know I am.